Zimbabwe journal: 2005 part 6

This is a journal from my trip to Zimbabwe in 2005, when I stayed with my friend Louis in Harare.

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Even without trying, things start to happen after you insert yourself into another context for a while. I have been here two weeks, and new things are becoming familiar, and I am becoming familiar to others. The checkout girls in the supermarket give me with a bright smile and greeting every morning as we puzzle over how many hundred thousand Zim dollars are needed to buy dinner. They laugh with me, following up on yesterday’s conversation.

I have found that you don’t even have to try, the energy exchange begins

Susan bustled around me this morning, making the bed, as I sat at my computer with Virimai on my lap, she “typing” on the unused keyboard beside my laptop. Susan suddenly stood up and said, “You are not like the others, the white women, medem.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I want to stay with you.”

“You want to come to America? You and Virimai? That would be nice for me, wouldn’t it.”

“Yes. I want to stay with you. You know, Mrs. Cole (the landlady who has a large house a couple of meters away) doesn’t like my daughter. She doesn’t want her here. You are different. You are not like the others.”

“Thank you. Virimai is my pet. It’s much more fun playing with her than playing with my cats.” We laughed over that, including Virimai who has not got a clue what I am saying as she speaks no English. She’s learned a few words through me, like “banana,” but certainly could not understand that.

“I wish you would stay.” Susan said.

That was sweet.

Then I left for the gym, and afterwards walked with my camera this time down the road canopied with African trees that I had walked down yesterday, walking all the way to the end and onto the footpath that leads through forested land after the road ends. There are such footpaths everywhere in Harare because the people walk everywhere. I was taking pictures of plants because, being a botanical dunce, I wanted to have pictures to show others to identify. A man walked past me and said good morning, which I returned. He then stopped a few meters on, turned around and said, “You are studying?”

“Just taking pictures of plants,” I answered.

“Oh.” There was a pause as he looked at me for a moment. “I would like to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“I write stories and poetry.”

I was so surprised that I didn’t understand him. “Excuse me?”

“I write stories. Fiction stories. And Poetry. I would like you to see them.”

“I’d love to see them.”

He was a man of about 35 or 40, standing a very respectful two meters distant from me so I didn’t feel threatened. His English was many notches above what I usually hear from passing Africans, and his manner was formal and poised, his English articulate and well formed. It was entirely possible that this man wrote fiction and poetry.

I told him that I, too was a writer, and we talked for some time. He was on his way to the Swiss ambassador’s residence, where his wife works, and where they live. He is training to be an electrician, but said that these days the contracts for electrical work are disappearing, and he is trying to do something else.

“How strange that we should meet just here,” he said – 30 meters off the road, on a footpath traveled only by Africans, among the flowers of Harare Zimbabwe.

I told him to bring his stories and poems to the gym, and to leave them at the desk. We exchanged addresses, and parted. I then went to the gym and told them to expect a package for me from Kennedy Mabika.

What a strange and wonderful experience.

I emerged onto the footpath along the main road to go to the supermarket and a white man greeted me going in the other direction. I returned the greeting. Then a black man carrying a white plastic bag with a few teeth missing, bloodshot eyes, shorter than I, a big smile, said “Why is that white man begging? Do you know he stopped me and asked me if I could help him?”

I laughed. “White people beg. You should see New York City. There are thousands of white beggars there.”

“Really?” This was astounding news.

“Maybe he’s crazy?” I suggested.

The man thought that was very funny.

“It is very hard here right now. Very hard. There is not enough rain and we cannot get mealie meal. And you know in Zimbabwe we eat only mealie meal.”

“You would have to eat something else, I guess, right? I mean, potatoes or vegetables, or peanuts or eggs or something?”

“Our stomachs love only mealie meal.”

He launched into the customary diatribe, spoken with harsh words, but mild affect, against the government. How the government could be changed but it would be very dangerous to try.

" I’ve got enough problems with the stupid political situation in my own country without getting involved in Zimbabwe’s problems,“ I said.

“Life is very hard here now. Now it is very hard,” he answered. Then came the pitch. The only way he could get ahead was by having rand (South African) or dollars, and could I help him.

“I only help people I know, and I don’t know you,” I answered.

“What is that?” He changed the subject, asking about my camera. “Is it a phone? What is it?”

“It’s a camera.”

I have no idea what he talked about then because trucks came roaring by and he talked and talked and I couldn’t understand him. He seemed to be telling me that if I helped other people God, and particularly Jesus God, would smile on me, that if I helped others, good things would come to me, and Jesus was watching. I don’t understand that stuff even when Americans speak to me in English so no wonder. I’ll go along with “what comes around goes around” but don’t respond well to threats of Jesus’s ire.

He then began on another tack, responding to my previous protestation that I didn’t know him. “You say you don’t know me. My name is Innocent.”

“I’ve got to go shopping over there.” I motioned at the supermarket across the street and stepped onto the diagonal path between the footpath and the road. “Good luck to you, Innocent,”

“Good luck, good-bye Medem, and god bless you.”

Full of these two encounters, I shopped with the smiling checkout girls and came home, where Virimai, who is 18 months old, carried on our by-now tradition of coming out to greet me and taking one of my bags to carry. I always arrange to have a very light bag for her. Her greeting is not words but an upward thrust of the head, over and over again, like a nod, only in the other direction.

Susan told me that Samuel at the Embassy had called. I had called him before asking him if there were any Unitarians in Zimbabwe, and he tried to find out. The Unitarians have apparently put in appearances, sponsored events, helped with HIV, etc. in Zimbabwe, but only in the short term. No permanent fellowship has been established, though Samuel’s looking into it

Samuel, too, struck up a conversation with me, asking me where I fellowshipped in Harare, and I told him I was visiting. He invited me to join him at his church this Sunday, the “One Way Ministry.” I am somewhat tempted to join him out of curiosity, but I don’t have transportation, and time is getting short here. I really only want to find Unitarians, and even then only for information purposes, I don’t want to go to church. Maybe if I were staying longer, but not now.

He then did his version of the complaint about the government, how things were going from bad to worse here, life was getting harder and harder, and what chance did I think he had, with a degree in communications and public relations, to make it in the US.

“You work in the United States Embassy and you’re asking ME?” I laughed.

He laughed too, but persevered.

“I know people from all over the world who have come to New York and made it. They work in a yoghurt shop, like the partner in one of the law firms I worked in – he joined the firm as an associate and couldn’t join the firm right away because he had to give two weeks’ notice to the yoghurt shop; or they drive a taxi, like a Ukranian doctor friend of mine. You have to work your ass off and not be proud and you can make it.”

“That’s what I understand,” he answered, and reiterated his invitation to church this weekend

That was this morning. It’s now 12:30 and I’m about to get down to my own work, but from the looks of it, I’d better be ready for anything.