- Dear Family and Friends,
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- Saying goodbye to an old man this week was really sad.
Joe is one of the forgotten generation, one of hundreds of thousands quietly
slipping away in front of our eyes. Not cared for by Mr Mugabe's government
and ignored by Mr Tsvangirai's party, Joe is 4 years older than our country's
President but there is no dignity in his old age. There is no free or subsidized
medical care for Joe, no rent assistance or food stamps, not even a bus
pass for the elderly men and women who have made it through Zimbabwe's
collapse.
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- For the last seven or eight years everything in Joe's
life had become a struggle for survival. He lost his pension, investments,
savings and insurance policies as inflation reeled into hundreds, thousands
and millions of percent. When he couldn't afford, and then couldn't find
food to buy, he dug up his small back garden and planted maize, beans,
pumpkins and sweet potatoes.
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- When Joe's wife passed away he couldn't afford to erect
a headstone on her grave. This, he said with tears in his eyes, has been
the hardest thing to bear in the last decade.
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- When I went to say goodbye to Joe and have one last cup
of tea with him, we talked as we often did about growing fruit trees and
about mulch and compost. Joe has got green fingers, greener than anyone
I've ever known. Delaying the final farewell, Joe told me about fruit bats
that spend their days in the funnels of banana leaves and then the talked
turned to the new arrival in my garden. A Spotted Eagle Owl has moved in
and seems to have taken up residence in a big old Msasa tree.
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- Every morning he is there, sitting completely still in
almost exactly the same place on the branch as the day before. His droppings
are the only thing that give him away: filled with fur and fluff, brown
beetle bodies and a mass of rats bones which litter the ground under the
Msasa tree.
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- Whenever I pass by this huge bird called Zizi in Shona,
is watching me from behind big yellow eyes, following my every move. With
his ear tufts standing high, Zizi presents an imposing figure, mobbed and
scolded by little birds, feared and stoned by most people around here who
say he is linked to witchcraft.
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- When I must say goodbye to Joe, I know how much I'll
miss him and our talks about bananas and figs, birds and trees and about
the nightmare of everyday life in Zimbabwe. But much more than that, I'll
miss our talks about his lifetime spent living, and loving, Africa.
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- Until next time, spare a thought for Zimbabwe's older
generation who can't afford to live, or die in the land of their birth.
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- Thanks for reading,
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- love, Cathy
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- Copyright cathy buckle 24 April 2010. www.cathybuckle.com
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- For information or orders of my new book: "INNOCENT
VICTIMS" or previous books "African Tears" and "Beyond
Tears," or to subscribe/unsubscribe to this newsletter, please write
to: cbuckle@mango.zw
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