Zimbabwe journal: 2005 part 7

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

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How many times have I talked with my attorney friends about how they lose all the promising young female associates when they have babies. Taking care of your babies is basically incompatible with an ambitious work life for most women. Of course, the female associates take a pile of money with them when they leave, having earned at around the top of any field for entry level positions, but they feel the same feelings as other women. They look at a six week old baby, who is so tiny, so vulnerable, so obviously in need of constant attention, instruction, care, and say no to a return to the 12-hour days at the office..

Today I was walking back from the gym, falling in slightly behind an African woman who was walking in the same direction. She turned and said something to me which I did not understand.

“Excuse me?”

“I need a job,” she said. She was well spoken, tidy, clear-eyed, pleasant, about 40, maybe.

“Oh. What do you do?”

“I am a cook.”

“What kinds of things do you cook?”

“Oh, stir fried chicken, Chinese food – many chicken dishes in particular. I am an expert in chicken. Do you need a cook? I have lost my job.”

“I’m just a visitor here so I don’t need a cook. In fact, I have been enjoying cooking here, my own shopping. I haven’t eaten sadza yet though.”

She laughed.

“My friend is going to take me to a restaurant this weekend where they serve sadza, and I will finally have it. What happened? Why did you lose your job?”

“Because of my daughter. They didn’t want my daughter there. And what could I do? I had to find a place for her to live. I have no mother and father. They are both dead.” She was not asking for sympathy, simply explaining.

“Is your daughter living somewhere now?”

“Yes. About half an hour from Harare. She is finishing school. She’s fifteen now, so I can leave here there, but now I have to find a job.”

“How are you going about looking for a job?”

“I put notes in stores, and when people need someone, they call me. But really, so many of the white people are leaving that there are fewer and fewer jobs.”

“I have heard that from other people, too.”

“I used to take care of wild animals.” She smiled with joy.

“Really? What do you mean?”

“I raised leopards from tiny babies. I would take them at one month, and begin to train them ...” she went into the details of what was done with the leopard babies at one month, two months, three months, etc. “They used to come running to me as if I were their mother.”

“Do you think you could work for a veterinarian? An animal doctor?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You know, in America people have lots of dogs and cats, and the animal doctors make a good living, but I don’t see many dogs and cats here. If there were lots of animal doctors you could work for one of them.”

She shrugged.

Child care. From the unemployed in Africa to women employed at the highest level in New York City.

I am sitting at my computer and from time to time hear the lumbering of a steel gate opening. Occasionally the bell to the gate to this house rings, I go to the speaker and say hello, and there is no answer. At first I thought maybe the intercom was not working, and I buzzed open the gate and went to the door to see who it was. It was a friend of Susan’s, who asked for her, and when I said Susan had gone, she turned around and went back out. By the time she turned around, the gate had clanged closed behind her and I had to buzz it open again.

I was cautioned against opening the gate if I didn’t know who was there. For obvious, but sobering, reasons. Another house was burgled last night, 7-8 computers and other things taken. The house was guarded, and the guards were tied up with metal chains while the burglars took the computers.

Guards are commonly hired at expensive houses. One person has been carrying around 2 million Zim dollars to pay for the guards (that is about $180.00), but the phone where he must call to have them pick up the money has been out of order. So the rumor was that the guards were going to be withdrawn last night, causing all kinds of urgent action which resolved the situation.

I also learned today that the exchange rate has risen from 9800 to 1,000. In two weeks.

Today, Saturday, we drove to Mbari, the market where “you can find anything.” I don’t know how to convey in words the raw life flowing through that market. We went through the food section, into the dense electronics section, tools and batteries and nails and millet meal. There were people milling, sitting, nursing, sleeping, selling, chatting, laughing, singing, looking hostilely, looking curiously. Greetings issued from everywhere, and when I greeted them back a string of small conversations followed, with little feeling of harangue or harassment.

One woman was sitting cross legged on the ground with one child about four years old standing next to here, and a baby at her breast. Behind her was another mother sitting on an oil can, with her head lying on a table a couple of feet higher than the oil can, fast asleep, with her child sitting quietly at her head.

We went into the shed which had art objects – musical instruments, baskets, perfume bottles, jewelry, wall hangings, carved bread baskets, soapstone carvings, fascination after fascination. I had the feeling that I was having conversations with the sellers, not fending them off. The prices were reasonable, and I will go back next week to make some purchases.

The market is corrugated iron-roofed shed after shed, filling with flowing streams of people.

In search of the soapstone school which Louis wanted to show me, we passed a group of young men. One of them reached out toward my camera with a smile on his face. I slapped his arm and said, “Oh no you don’t,” he laughed, then we asked him where the school was and he called after Louis, in Shona, “Don’t get lost old man,” and Louis turned to him and quipped, in Shona, “I’m sure I won’t, young man,” which shocked and amused them.

We went to the Roots of Africa restaurant, where we ordered sadza, the national dish. I asked Givemore to take pictures of us in front of the restaurant with my disposable camera. I also wanted him to take pictures with the digital camera, but Louis, good-naturedly, objected, and I desisted. He doesn’t like having his picture taken, but I want to remember this trip, and him, and would have loved a picture. I have others. Never mind.

Inside, the roof was of grass, tiles on the floor, heavy wooden chairs upholstered with cloth with an African pattern. Wood is everywhere in Zimbabwe because it is quite lush with trees, and lumber is a big industry here. There was one other customer, a lone black man sitting at a table towards the back.

The menu was sadza, with either bream from Kariba, or “country chicken.” I took the country chicken, Louis took the bream. We had to wait quite a while for it, and the waitress explained that they were making the bream fresh. She finally brought it – a mound of mealie meal, which I would have called hominy, and a chicken thigh and wing in sauce, accompanied by chopped up kale. Louis had the same, except he also had a chopped up tomato salad and a whole fried fish, which he said was delicious.

Before the dish was brought out the waitress brought around a bowl of warm water and a pitcher, with which she poured water over our hands before we began.

“You’ll notice she brought it to me first,” Louis said with a bemused smile. “Women come second. That’s just the way it is around here.”

You eat sadza with your fingers, taking a ball of mealie meal and dipping it in sauce or decorating it with some chicken or kale before eating it. It was delicious, and messy. Our beer glasses were sticky with sadza from our fingers.

After we finished, the waitress brought around the bowl with soapy warm water in it, and poured this over our hands, which we rubbed together until we got the mess off. Louis was taken care of first again. He asked if there was a towel to wipe our hands. It took so long for her to come back that we finally just shook our hands dry. The waitress came around about five minutes later with another bowl of warm water, this time clear water to wash off the soap. She had a towel in her hand which she gave us after we had washed.

“Why don’t you provide a towel every time?” Lousi asked. “It’s nicer to be able to wipe your hands.”

“Because people take them,” she explained apologeticallly. I was at that moment wiping my hands on the towel, and I reached over the started to put it in Louis’s open shirt, “Here Louis, take this.”

She laughed.

“Is the restaurant usually full?” Louis asked the waitress.

“It’s about a quarter local people, and many tourists. But at dinner especially there are many people,” she claimed.

The food was very tasty, and it cost 96,000 Zim dollars, less than $10 American. Louis gave her a nice tip as she was very pleasant

We then went outside and sat on a low wall waiting for Givemore.

“We’re being truly African now,” I remarked. . “Sitting outside on the street waiting for something to happen.”

Givemore and his uncle showed up about 15 minutes later, and we were off. We dropped them in downtown Harare, which was flowing with a steady stream of people. There were long lines at the bank, and I confirmed with Louis that those people were waiting to cash their pay checks. Given the inflation rate, it’s important to get your check cashed right away so you can spend your money before it loses its value.

I went to a party last night. It was the going away party for John, Louis’s oldest friend, who had been visiting Zimbabwe for three weeks, after being away for one and a half years in Scotland. The party was in a house behind a wall and a gate with a couple of acres of gardens and lawn. It was dark and I couldn’t see the details of the gardens, but close to the house there the skeletal trunks of trees made beautiful patterns against the full mooned sky. The sky was clear and there were masses of stars.

We spent most of the evening on the porch which was about three meters wide under a substantial roof, with tables and armchairs on every part of it.

The lights are going out in Zimbabwe. The friend who went to Scotland left behind presidency of a supermarket chain. The value of the supermarket chain has gone into the pockets of the new owner, and the supermarket’s shelves are denuded. John’s daughter is going to school in Scotland, and will not return. The children are leaving, leaving, leaving to Australia, England, other parts of Europe, the U.S., South Africa.

John spoke strongly against South Africa, which is becoming more and more an armed camp, even in Cape Town. Walls around houses, topped with razor wire. So many white Africans turn to South Africa especially Cape Town, for a place where they can live without leaving their whole lives behind.

I don’t want to say too much about what I heard in the way of criticism. It could put people here in danger. I suspect we will be hearing a great deal more about Zimbabwe in the next month or so. In one of the ironies, however, I have heard high praise for the president, Robert Mugabe, for his intelligence, his commitment to education, and many other qualities. How can it be that such a fine person, in the view of many people who disagree with him, can lead a country which has come to such ruin? “Having their freedom is worth it,” is one view I have heard. Or they view it as an inevitable phase that the place must go through in order to establish itself ultimately on a higher plane. But how many lights have to go out before someone finds the new light bulbs? If ever. I don’t find myself possessed of faith in this modus operandi. Of course when change happens, people have to go through a period of adjustment and suffering. I’ve been surprised before at seeing a healthy result from a period of deep suffering, but this paradigm has me a little doubtful.

I am going next week back to the US, where we can go down the driveway and pick up our Sunday papers without buzzing ourselves out of a cement wall and steel gate. In Arizona they have walls around their houses, but this is to keep out the rattlesnakes.

As I spend more and more time here, I think deeper and deeper about various thought boxes I have built for myself over the years in America. Many of them are challenged in Africa.

We visited the botanical garden today, about a half hour outside of Harare. It was a shambles. It specializes in aloes and has a dozen or so varieties of aloe, some small, some 6 feet tall. Unlabeled. You just had to know what an aloe looks like. There was one other car there. The road was awful. I looked at the ruin of what had been a beautiful, well, still was a beautiful place,