- Dear Family and Friends,
-
- It's so hard to tell people what life in Zimbabwe
is like now but this week I'd like to try and describe a typical day of
mine. I often sit on the step outside my front door at 4.45am having a
cup of tea and watching dawn break. I've always been an early morning person
but these days I get up early out of necessity and not choice because it's
the early bird that finds food, fuel and everything else in Zimbabwe now.
It is so beautiful to sit out early in the morning and watch the things
that are the very essence of life here. Weaver birds with their magnificent
breeding colours flit around the lawn picking up all the Christmas beetles
that have hit the lights overnight. Lilac breasted rollers squabble on
the telephone lines and every now and again a hammerkop comes down and
nods and bobs his head as he patrols the garden for insects. Over
the wall I wave to my neighbour who is already hard at it. He is in
his suit, jacket hanging on a thorn bush, tie flipped over his shoulder,
sleeves rolled up and a hoe in his hand. He is weeding between the lines
of maize and beans that he's planted on the side of the road in front of
my house. There are already a lot of people on the road but they're not
going to work, they're going to find food and are all heading for a house
a block away with a big kitchen and an enterprising owner. It is known
as a "tuck shop" and you can get more of life's basics here
than you can in the big supermarkets in Marondera town. Every morning people
rush to stand in line outside the back door of the tuck shop. The line
starts at 5am, the owner gives everyone a small piece of cardboard with
a number on it indicating the order in which they will be served. 100 or
more people wait until 5.30am when the door opens and each person may buy
one loaf of bread. By 6am there's nothing left.
-
- I thank God for that loaf of bread because it means my
10 year old son will have a sandwich in his school lunchbox. It also means
that I won't have to jostle amongst the 47 trucks and 500 people waiting
at the one and only bakery still operating in Marondera. Taking Richie
to school has become a bit of a nightmare. It's only a 2 kilometre journey
but the dirt road hasn't been graded for many months and the pot holes
and ruts are so bad that 30km/h is about top speed on the good bits. Once
a week I go straight from school into Marondera town to find two things
- food or petrol. I haven't done very well on the food side this week because
there's almost nothing to buy that I can afford anymore. There have been
no basics at all (there is no petrol or diesel so very few delivery
trucks have come our way) and everything else has rocketed in price. A
simple packet of biscuits which was one hundred dollars last week is now
just over two hundred dollars. A pack of chewing gum that was 52 dollars
last week is 224 today. I confine my purchases to things for Richies lunch
box and a newspaper (which was 60 dollars on Monday and 100 dollars by
Wednesday). A young boy called Marvellous guards my car while
I'm in the supermarket and I give him ten dollars when I come out, not
because the car needs guarding but because he's hungry. I hear a rumour
that there might be petrol coming in to one of the 4 filling stations in
town and go straight there. By the time I arrive the queue is already so
long that I can't see the beginning so I get into the line and wait
with everyone else. It took 2 hours and 22 minutes for me to get to the
front of the queue, hot, pretty fed up and with a stinking headache.
In those 2 and a half hours I saw the real face of life in a small country
town in Zimbabwe today.
-
- In every direction you look there are people waiting
for something whether it's a lift in a minibus or a vendor selling vegetables.
Crowds of men stand around bottle stores drinking beer from brown plastic
bottles known as scuds. A woman with a small enamel bowl comes to my car
window and tries to persuade me to buy a small plastic tube filled with
frozen drink. These frozen coloured drinks used to be called cent-a cools
because they cost one cent, now we just call them freezits. The woman wants
$50 each for them and doesn't try and persuade me when I say no because
there are plenty of other customers in the petrol queue behind me.
-
- Two young men in green uniforms with shining red police
boots and carrying black rubber truncheons strutted up the road. Everyone
looked away, these are the notorious graduates from the Border Gezi training
camps and we call them "green bombers" because they wreak havoc
in every direction. The two went up to a man with a pile of wilting cabbages,
picked one up, poked it, laughed scornfully and threw it down. The cabbage
rolled heavily onto the road and no-one moved or said anything until the
green bombers had walked on.
-
- A man wearing blue overalls and a black leather hat caught
my attention. He was sitting on a tyre on the roadside and decanting brandy
into a half empty coke bottle. His wife, her face wreathed in new scars,
stood beside him with one bag of fertilizer and two large bags of
belongings. A minibus with the name "Commander" was waved
down by the woman and brandy man sat drinking while his woman negotiated
a price. Asked where he wanted to go to, brandy man said "to the farms"
and he carried on drinking while his woman broke her back carrying first
the 2 bags and then the 50kg sack of fertilizer to the vehicle. Brandy
man is one of Zimbabwe's new farmers and it is in him that we have to put
our hope and trust. It's hard to explain why one of Zimbabwe's new
farmers is sitting on the roadside getting drunk at 11 in the morning during
the busiest time of our growing season. It's just as hard to explain why
President Mugabe and his cabinet just gave themselves their second pay
rise of the year and backdated it to July while we get up before
dawn to queue for a loaf of bread and 6 million Zimbabweans are starving.
-
- There is no sign of the threatened US "intrusive
intervention" into Zimbabwe yet but perhaps the shooting at a road
block in Mutare last week of an American citizen will spur them into action.
My sincerest condolences to Howard and the family of Richard Gilman
who I had been corresponding with for some time and who has done so very
much to help children and others in need in Mutare. Richard's loving,
compassion and good deeds will not go un-remembered, not by me nor the
840 children he had raised money to feed at a remote school in Mutare.
I continue to wear my yellow ribbon of silent protest, today it is
for Richard Gilman.
-
- Until next week, with love, cathy
-
- <http://africantears.netfirms.com>http://africantears.netfirms.com
- Copyright cathy buckle Saturday 16th November 2002.
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