Shortly before I left the UK a very good friend of mine – a chap I was at school with in Zimbabwe – presented me with a parting gift. It is a framed copy of a $100 billion note. That is Zimbabwe Dollars. Surrounding the crisp untainted bill behind the glass are the words: ‘In Case of Emergency Sell the Frame’. We had a good chortle about this and I thanked him very much, already picturing it above my imaginary bar, in my imaginary entertainment room, in my imaginary dream Australian home. No more imagining if it was Australian Dollars!
This denomination, although only recently introduced in Zimbabwe, is already out of date. Not even the most desperate of street vendors will accept it, and revealing a wad of these notes as a hawker offers cheap cigarettes and windscreen wiper blades at your car window is a sure way of ending the haggling. It is nigh on impossible for me to explain here the relentless descent of Zimbabwe’s economy. I don’t mean the reasons behind the collapse, those are obvious. I mean the actual numbers, figures, sums, and percentages. Let me put it as follows:
In the early 1980’s the Zimbabwe Dollar was level with the British Pound Sterling. At my Grade Seven school dance in 1989 (my final year of junior school) I was dropped off at the school gates with Z$20 in my pocket and a rather sturdy hockey player called Nicky on my arm. Around the year 2000 my parents left Zimbabwe for a round-the-world holiday taking in Australia, Britain and the USA. It cost them the same as it cost me to take my mother and grandmother for lunch in 2001. A mate of mine has given me Z$100 billion from 2008 as a keepsake, and on Friday January 19th 2009 the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced a Z$100 trillion note. That about sums it up, doesn't it? In fact the front page of Zimbabwe’s Herald newspaper from that day summarises the current situation here quite well. It headlines with the release of this monopoly money and has a side column insert advising readers what steps to follow if they believe they may have contracted cholera. An effectively placed ad I thought, considering the majority of people will either be reading the paper whilst visiting the loo or indeed substituting it for toilet roll. Oh, and the price of this newspaper? Z$15 billion.
I suggested at the end of my previous post that Robert Mugabe had left for Malaysia on a one-way ticket. Well he’s back and the rumours are as rife as ever. Evidently a meeting was called between Mugabe and various heads of regional nations to discuss the crisis here. Whatever they discussed over the weekend, and subsequently failed to agree on, Zimbabwe has to be near breaking point. Schools were meant to open last week after the summer break, but have remained closed across the country at the government’s insistence. If you believe the rubbish churned out by government mouthpieces such as The Herald this is mostly down to a problem with marking exams from the previous school term. In other words schools can’t open until results are finalised. What is actually happening is that teachers across Zimbabwe, a lot of who are responsible for marking, are refusing to accept salaries in Zimbabwe Dollars. It has been suggested that a foreign donor agency is offering to pay these salaries in preferred US Dollars, but agreeing to this would essentially be an acceptance by Zimbabwe’s government that things are not working the way they are. Private schools, attended in large numbers by children of ministers, already pay their teachers in US Dollars but are also prevented from opening because it would quite simply look bad.
The problem is much greater. Teachers are only one part of the public service masses that Zimbabwe’s rulers have to attend to, and quick. Nurses and the armed forces are in the same boat. The latter being a potential time bomb, for if the government were to start shelling out foreign currency salaries to teachers and not those with the guns, the guns could very well start turning inwards, if they haven’t already. I have heard several accounts of assassination attempts on senior ministers this past week. There is also the question of where all this foreign currency would come from. Zimbabwe is, after all, not officially a ‘Dollarised’ economy. It is illegal to trade broadly in US Dollars without permission from the US. This was pointed out recently by US President Barack Obama who questioned the legality of Zimbabwe’s administration charging retailers a US Dollar fee for the right to sell their goods in that currency. In Borrowdale Village, one of Harare’s most popular shopping areas, I was perusing various clothing stores only to find panic-stricken managers flitting from door to door trying to find out when the government inspectors searching for unlicensed US Dollar traders were due to visit. The only factor in their favour was the absence of electricity making it difficult to see clearly what currency they were trading in. Grocery shopping in total darkness has been another new experience for me this week. The Zimbawean First Lady Grace Mugabe didn’t have to worry about shopping in darkness recently. She was caught by a British Sunday Times photographer in Hong Kong reputedly spending US$90,000 on her husband’s credit card. The photographer claims he was assaulted by the woman as her security held him back. It apparently wasn’t so much the strength of her punches as the raking marks caused by her many gold rings that damaged the journalist’s face. How something like this is allowed to pass unchallenged is beyond comprehension.
Last Monday night I had dinner with friends, drinking several beers and as many glasses of red wine. Driving home under the influence of alcohol is an unfortunately familiar experience for most Hararians with a car. On my way back home, with the remainder of the six-pack I took for dinner on the passenger seat, I encountered the usual police block on the main road. They stopped me and, seeing the beers on my seat, asked if I “had anything for them”. Unconcerned with whether or not I had consumed too many myself they were only interested in some light refreshment to see them through the night shift. I could very easily have said no and I am sure they would have let me pass. But as much as to attract their attention away from the fact I had been drinking as for the sheer intrigue of whether they’d accept, I offered them a couple of cans. The man doing the questioning peered back past my vehicle to check the people behind weren’t watching, and then hurriedly agreed. I passed him two cans and he waved me on my way. I was bemused by this experience for a day, but the following evening the same officer stopped me and asked the same question. I enquired whether he remembered me from the night before and only when I reminded him of my canned donation did he recall the meeting. At that point I heard a muffled scream coming from the trees and grass beside their barricade. I asked him what it was about. His smiled vanished, “It is a ghost. You may go.”
‘Go’ is just what I am doing tomorrow. Not out of Zimbabwe, but to the west of the country to the border town of Kariba. This town sits on the hills overlooking the vast man-made Lake Kariba, or Kariba Dam. Built half a century ago on the Zambezi River that separates Zambia from Zimbabwe, the dam is a place of extreme natural beauty. Simply image search ‘Kariba sunset’ on your browser to get an idea of what I am talking about. It holds so many fond childhood memories for me and these four days ahead should provide much in the way of sun, fun and relaxation. Fifteen years ago the shores of the dam were swathed in wildlife; buffalo numbering into the many hundreds; elephants lumbering through the grass and shallows. Although still beautiful the lake has lost so much over recent years. One can only hope it will bounce back better than ever when the situation here turns in a positive direction. Much of Zimbabwe will such is the resilience of the land.
Harare is a shadow of its former self. It will take longer for this once majestic city to return to the glory of its physical past. Socially speaking, I hope the future is bright and not far off. Wherever I drive I am filled with nostalgia and warm reminders of my childhood. I visited my engaged friends the other day shortly before they returned to London, only to discover they were staying opposite the house of the robust girl I took as my date to that Grade 7 dance all those years ago. Now that I think about it, my vague memory of that particular evening is perhaps not the fondest of my youth. I recall part of the evening involved a game in which the boys had to carry their dates piggyback to the other side of the school hall in a race that would clearly favour the lithe, speedy and agile. Between my date and I we exhibited none of these characteristics, leaning more towards a combination of loathe, greedy and fragile. Still, we weren’t ones not to join in the fun. She hoisted me up onto her back (the reverse we agreed was never going to happen) and off we went. We came third.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Monday, 12 January 2009
Week 1 - Make a Plan
My last experience flying Air Zimbabwe was in December of 2007, when I was scheduled to fly on a Chinese made MA-60 from Harare to Victoria Falls. This “hop” should, in an ideal world, have taken around an hour. But factor in a missing pilot; a problem with the engine; an emergency landing due to an apparently unidentified flashing red light on the pilots’ dashboard; an eventual pilot swap; and a diversion to Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo; the “hop” very quickly began to feel like a marathon. Unsurprising, considering the aircraft’s less than auspicious credentials – it is one of only two MA-60s in service outside China with the other one also belonging to Air Zimbabwe as part of a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Yet despite this past experience, and despite having heard tales of passengers stranded for days at Gatwick when Air Zimbabwe failed to pay departure taxes, I decided to give the carrier one last chance, particularly as it was cheap.
And so I found myself on the evening of Saturday January 3rd sitting in a business class seat on an antiquated Boeing 767 gazing around at the ancient décor that looked only days away from becoming a display at an aviation museum. Despite my original budgetary constraints when booking this one-way economy ticket out of London, I grew more and more wary of the idea of flying cattle class on the airline most likely to actually have cattle down that end, and so I paid the relatively small upgrade fee for what turned out to be a little more leg room and a meal that looked as if it had been prepared not prefabricated. As I sat there watching the casual comings and goings of the disinterested Air Zimbabwe crew, I cast my mind over the weeks that lead up to that poignant final moment for me in England.
I spent my Christmas on an inflatable mattress under my sister’s Christmas tree in freezing Colchester. In 2007, Christmas Day in our family took on a whole new meaning when my nephew was born just as the Catherine Tate special started on BBC1. I spent that day alone making a beef Wellington, but ended up at the hospital in the evening to see the little guy come into the world. The irony was not lost on us a year later when, just after we had enjoyed another vastly improved Wellington as a family, my sister and brother-in-law took the decision to go the hospital to have the poor boy seen to. A year from the day he was born in a hospital, and on the day he should have been celebrating 365 days of life! He really wasn’t well over the festive period, and none of us slept much, but I’m glad to say he was his old smiley self the day after I left. I departed from Colchester sad and exhausted and headed to London for a one-night stopover, during which I was to attend a marvellous wedding of an old colleague and good mate. I drank far too much and still can’t decide if I really did sit between a copier salesman and an Interpol agent at dinner. Certainly two of the most interesting people I have met in a long time. The following day it was onto Horsham and the houses of some wonderful childhood friends. Indeed, my final night in the UK would turn out to be on one friend’s sofa bed. The business class seat I slouched in as I fondly recounted my final days in the Northern Hemisphere would turn out to be my seventh sleeping surface in twelve days.
I was snapped out of my daydream by the debate going on adjacent to the seat behind me. A crew member was declaring an elderly gentleman passenger unfit to fly on account of the fact that he was drooling, staring vacantly at the back of my headrest, and unresponsive to questions. How, I wondered, could anyone have let him fly alone? More to the point, why would anyone in that condition head for Zimbabwe of all places? It’s not exactly at the forefront of global medical expertise. All around me, there was a cross-section of the Zimbabwe population. There was the indifferent employee of the flailing airline, once considered a continental flagship, serving orange juice and peanuts with all the affection of a fly tipper. There was the Chinese lady travelling alone, taking care not to make eye contact with anyone, aware of the less than fond perception Zimbabweans have of her and her countrymen – an increasing and debatable presence in Zimbabwe as they take on more and more of the country’s development and business projects. There was the young affluent African couple at the front, both on first name basis with the crew. There was the middle-aged white couple making last minute farewell calls to offspring in London. This was Zimbabwe in a nutshell. And that is just what the aircraft felt like as it took off; a nutshell. There were horrific rumblings, vibrations and shudders. We were airborne and away. My last fleeting glance of the UK must have been Brighton, glowing and resplendent in the night, defiantly bright against the dark murkiness of the Channel and world beyond.
After ten hours and a book and a half later I arrived in the country of my birth. My immediate feeling was one of joy. We emerged from the flight into the early morning heat and humidity and my first thought was of never having to return to the cold of London. I would have pink, warm, blood-filled fingers for the foreseeable future, and that made me very happy. Negotiating customs and baggage claim was less of a pain than I expected and it wasn’t long before my father arrived, Bob Dylan blaring, to whisk me back to the tranquillity of the family home. It was Sunday and despite not having slept much at all for the previous two weeks I was energised and alert. My first twenty four hours in Zimbabwe was full of reminders of what I love so much about the place, and why I could never live here again. The sultry sunset of a thousand yellows and red that filtered through the msasa trees at the end of my first day was a bittersweet spectacle, for we had no mains electricity and the generator was in need of repair. This meant the impending darkness would only be broken by the sun’s return the following morning. Power cuts are an all too common occurrence. It was the same when I was living here, but are now an entirely different beast. They can last for weeks at a time. Mains water has not poured from the taps in the once affluent Northern Suburbs for going on two years. Is it any wonder then why, in the poorer areas, cholera has found a comfortable home? Refuse collection is a term I am certain some youngsters don’t even understand, it has been that long since it took place. Many households in one area of Harare deposit their rubbish bags outside the council offices. I went to photograph this sight one day only to discover that the piles of waste had been cleared away, suggesting the council are aware of their failings but like most government departments have no desire to correct them. It won’t be long before the stinking, steaming mass returns. I suppose at least something is covering the potholes. Roads once considered main national arteries down which vehicles would expect to travel, at high speed, towards major towns and borders have now dwindled to nothing more than scabs of tar and dirt. It is often necessary to grind down to walking speed just to safely traverse the largest of the holes. Vehicles lie broken down for days or weeks all over the city. Traffic lights are a non-entity, aside from the ones on Robert Mugabe’s route to work, a route that also enjoys the luxury of the country’s smoothest tar section.
Yet some people golf, dine out, go bowling, have barbecues (braais), go on fishing trips, and most importantly, smile through everything. All these activities and more can be paid for in US Dollars, or South African Rand. These are widely accepted currencies and in my first full week here I have not held a single Zimbabwe Dollar bill, except out of curiosity the other day when a friend handed me the largest over the dinner table. I can’t recall if it was a ten or hundred billion dollar note. Whatever it was, it is important to point out that this is where the currency is sitting today after six zeros were recently shaved off to try and curb inflation. There are a select few people here earning US Dollars, and for them and me Zimbabwe is incredibly cheap. But most people are not earning the greenback, and these make up the struggling majority. I could not help but stare in wonder as I walked through the now fully stocked supermarkets seeing bottles of Peroni ($1), large Cadbury’s chocolate bars (60c), bread rolls ($1 for six), fruit and vegetables picked a few hundred yards from the shelves for around 20c to 60c a piece. Petrol is 85c a litre. But don’t expect a receipt in US Dollars. And if something comes to $7 and you pay $10, don’t expect change. You can have a credit note. Dinner the other night at a well-known restaurant (doused in darkness halfway through our meal as their power went off) came to $30 a head for two courses and drinks. Strange to think that eating in the dark is a gimmick at one London restaurant. My mother and I were on our way one morning to collect a technician to fix our generator (collections have replaced callouts for a lot of businesses) and we became stranded at a petrol station for almost two hours with a broken ignition. The locksmith who fixed it took $25 off us, cash in hand and with no receipt. But where everything is sold for Dollars, the term to disguise the fact is Units. A round of golf will set you back 7 Units. I’ve played four rounds in eight days for less than it costs to play one round in England. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I am on holiday!
It has been a wonderful first week, seeing friends and places I have missed greatly. I have been to a couple of braais (the age-old way for friends and families to get together in this part of the world). I have had cause to celebrate as two of my closest friends became engaged. I have caught the sun, been swimming more than showering, walked barefooted without worrying about hypothermia, and I have spotted a vast number of my favourite birds roaming our garden – who can deny that the chime of a Heuglin’s Robin at dusk isn’t the greatest of evening sounds perhaps only rivalled by the hiss and pop of a bottle top somersaulting off the neck of a Castle Lager? But through all this I am always conscious of the underlying concerns in Zimbabwe. Businesses are barely staying afloat. Cholera is still a major presence. People in poorer areas and rural regions are starving. Despite all the gloom I cannot help but absorb the contagious optimism of the average Zimbabwean. I must have heard the phrase “we’ll make a plan” a dozen times since arriving, and that’s what people do. Whatever happens, whatever hardship they come across, Zimbabweans make a plan. I can already feel myself thinking what it would be like to come back here for good. I know I never will, but I’m thinking about it, and that’s out of sheer love for the place in which I grew up. Of course I’ll come to my senses when it’s time for me to move on to Australia in February, but what are senses for if you don’t test them? Is life in Zimbabwe the ultimate test on your senses? Is it the magic of the country and its people, combined with the excitement and adrenalin of everyday challenges that makes living here so alluring? The disentanglement from the status quo of a life we take for granted in a place like London? There are those who can leave Zimbabwe but won’t because of all this. Because, when it comes down to it and despite all the difficulties, life here for some is just too intoxicating. I can feel it now as I ramble on about it. But make no mistake whatsoever, there are those who cannot ever leave Zimbabwe; the starving, sick, beaten, victimised majority. Their only hope is of one man leaving, and I heard only yesterday that he had done just that. Rumours are the staple diet that feeds the ravenous optimism of Zimbabwe's people. Surely the most delicious of all is the suggestion Mugabe has left for his Malaysian bolthole never to return? I must have heard a dozen similar stories about the man who has destroyed this nation. But life goes on. It’s Monday and for many a return to work after the festive holiday. For all intents and purposes that is the one solitary victory Zimbabwe and its people have over a maniac like Mugabe, something he will never take away from them, their ability to carry on, as best they can, regardless.
And so I found myself on the evening of Saturday January 3rd sitting in a business class seat on an antiquated Boeing 767 gazing around at the ancient décor that looked only days away from becoming a display at an aviation museum. Despite my original budgetary constraints when booking this one-way economy ticket out of London, I grew more and more wary of the idea of flying cattle class on the airline most likely to actually have cattle down that end, and so I paid the relatively small upgrade fee for what turned out to be a little more leg room and a meal that looked as if it had been prepared not prefabricated. As I sat there watching the casual comings and goings of the disinterested Air Zimbabwe crew, I cast my mind over the weeks that lead up to that poignant final moment for me in England.
I spent my Christmas on an inflatable mattress under my sister’s Christmas tree in freezing Colchester. In 2007, Christmas Day in our family took on a whole new meaning when my nephew was born just as the Catherine Tate special started on BBC1. I spent that day alone making a beef Wellington, but ended up at the hospital in the evening to see the little guy come into the world. The irony was not lost on us a year later when, just after we had enjoyed another vastly improved Wellington as a family, my sister and brother-in-law took the decision to go the hospital to have the poor boy seen to. A year from the day he was born in a hospital, and on the day he should have been celebrating 365 days of life! He really wasn’t well over the festive period, and none of us slept much, but I’m glad to say he was his old smiley self the day after I left. I departed from Colchester sad and exhausted and headed to London for a one-night stopover, during which I was to attend a marvellous wedding of an old colleague and good mate. I drank far too much and still can’t decide if I really did sit between a copier salesman and an Interpol agent at dinner. Certainly two of the most interesting people I have met in a long time. The following day it was onto Horsham and the houses of some wonderful childhood friends. Indeed, my final night in the UK would turn out to be on one friend’s sofa bed. The business class seat I slouched in as I fondly recounted my final days in the Northern Hemisphere would turn out to be my seventh sleeping surface in twelve days.
I was snapped out of my daydream by the debate going on adjacent to the seat behind me. A crew member was declaring an elderly gentleman passenger unfit to fly on account of the fact that he was drooling, staring vacantly at the back of my headrest, and unresponsive to questions. How, I wondered, could anyone have let him fly alone? More to the point, why would anyone in that condition head for Zimbabwe of all places? It’s not exactly at the forefront of global medical expertise. All around me, there was a cross-section of the Zimbabwe population. There was the indifferent employee of the flailing airline, once considered a continental flagship, serving orange juice and peanuts with all the affection of a fly tipper. There was the Chinese lady travelling alone, taking care not to make eye contact with anyone, aware of the less than fond perception Zimbabweans have of her and her countrymen – an increasing and debatable presence in Zimbabwe as they take on more and more of the country’s development and business projects. There was the young affluent African couple at the front, both on first name basis with the crew. There was the middle-aged white couple making last minute farewell calls to offspring in London. This was Zimbabwe in a nutshell. And that is just what the aircraft felt like as it took off; a nutshell. There were horrific rumblings, vibrations and shudders. We were airborne and away. My last fleeting glance of the UK must have been Brighton, glowing and resplendent in the night, defiantly bright against the dark murkiness of the Channel and world beyond.
After ten hours and a book and a half later I arrived in the country of my birth. My immediate feeling was one of joy. We emerged from the flight into the early morning heat and humidity and my first thought was of never having to return to the cold of London. I would have pink, warm, blood-filled fingers for the foreseeable future, and that made me very happy. Negotiating customs and baggage claim was less of a pain than I expected and it wasn’t long before my father arrived, Bob Dylan blaring, to whisk me back to the tranquillity of the family home. It was Sunday and despite not having slept much at all for the previous two weeks I was energised and alert. My first twenty four hours in Zimbabwe was full of reminders of what I love so much about the place, and why I could never live here again. The sultry sunset of a thousand yellows and red that filtered through the msasa trees at the end of my first day was a bittersweet spectacle, for we had no mains electricity and the generator was in need of repair. This meant the impending darkness would only be broken by the sun’s return the following morning. Power cuts are an all too common occurrence. It was the same when I was living here, but are now an entirely different beast. They can last for weeks at a time. Mains water has not poured from the taps in the once affluent Northern Suburbs for going on two years. Is it any wonder then why, in the poorer areas, cholera has found a comfortable home? Refuse collection is a term I am certain some youngsters don’t even understand, it has been that long since it took place. Many households in one area of Harare deposit their rubbish bags outside the council offices. I went to photograph this sight one day only to discover that the piles of waste had been cleared away, suggesting the council are aware of their failings but like most government departments have no desire to correct them. It won’t be long before the stinking, steaming mass returns. I suppose at least something is covering the potholes. Roads once considered main national arteries down which vehicles would expect to travel, at high speed, towards major towns and borders have now dwindled to nothing more than scabs of tar and dirt. It is often necessary to grind down to walking speed just to safely traverse the largest of the holes. Vehicles lie broken down for days or weeks all over the city. Traffic lights are a non-entity, aside from the ones on Robert Mugabe’s route to work, a route that also enjoys the luxury of the country’s smoothest tar section.
Yet some people golf, dine out, go bowling, have barbecues (braais), go on fishing trips, and most importantly, smile through everything. All these activities and more can be paid for in US Dollars, or South African Rand. These are widely accepted currencies and in my first full week here I have not held a single Zimbabwe Dollar bill, except out of curiosity the other day when a friend handed me the largest over the dinner table. I can’t recall if it was a ten or hundred billion dollar note. Whatever it was, it is important to point out that this is where the currency is sitting today after six zeros were recently shaved off to try and curb inflation. There are a select few people here earning US Dollars, and for them and me Zimbabwe is incredibly cheap. But most people are not earning the greenback, and these make up the struggling majority. I could not help but stare in wonder as I walked through the now fully stocked supermarkets seeing bottles of Peroni ($1), large Cadbury’s chocolate bars (60c), bread rolls ($1 for six), fruit and vegetables picked a few hundred yards from the shelves for around 20c to 60c a piece. Petrol is 85c a litre. But don’t expect a receipt in US Dollars. And if something comes to $7 and you pay $10, don’t expect change. You can have a credit note. Dinner the other night at a well-known restaurant (doused in darkness halfway through our meal as their power went off) came to $30 a head for two courses and drinks. Strange to think that eating in the dark is a gimmick at one London restaurant. My mother and I were on our way one morning to collect a technician to fix our generator (collections have replaced callouts for a lot of businesses) and we became stranded at a petrol station for almost two hours with a broken ignition. The locksmith who fixed it took $25 off us, cash in hand and with no receipt. But where everything is sold for Dollars, the term to disguise the fact is Units. A round of golf will set you back 7 Units. I’ve played four rounds in eight days for less than it costs to play one round in England. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I am on holiday!
It has been a wonderful first week, seeing friends and places I have missed greatly. I have been to a couple of braais (the age-old way for friends and families to get together in this part of the world). I have had cause to celebrate as two of my closest friends became engaged. I have caught the sun, been swimming more than showering, walked barefooted without worrying about hypothermia, and I have spotted a vast number of my favourite birds roaming our garden – who can deny that the chime of a Heuglin’s Robin at dusk isn’t the greatest of evening sounds perhaps only rivalled by the hiss and pop of a bottle top somersaulting off the neck of a Castle Lager? But through all this I am always conscious of the underlying concerns in Zimbabwe. Businesses are barely staying afloat. Cholera is still a major presence. People in poorer areas and rural regions are starving. Despite all the gloom I cannot help but absorb the contagious optimism of the average Zimbabwean. I must have heard the phrase “we’ll make a plan” a dozen times since arriving, and that’s what people do. Whatever happens, whatever hardship they come across, Zimbabweans make a plan. I can already feel myself thinking what it would be like to come back here for good. I know I never will, but I’m thinking about it, and that’s out of sheer love for the place in which I grew up. Of course I’ll come to my senses when it’s time for me to move on to Australia in February, but what are senses for if you don’t test them? Is life in Zimbabwe the ultimate test on your senses? Is it the magic of the country and its people, combined with the excitement and adrenalin of everyday challenges that makes living here so alluring? The disentanglement from the status quo of a life we take for granted in a place like London? There are those who can leave Zimbabwe but won’t because of all this. Because, when it comes down to it and despite all the difficulties, life here for some is just too intoxicating. I can feel it now as I ramble on about it. But make no mistake whatsoever, there are those who cannot ever leave Zimbabwe; the starving, sick, beaten, victimised majority. Their only hope is of one man leaving, and I heard only yesterday that he had done just that. Rumours are the staple diet that feeds the ravenous optimism of Zimbabwe's people. Surely the most delicious of all is the suggestion Mugabe has left for his Malaysian bolthole never to return? I must have heard a dozen similar stories about the man who has destroyed this nation. But life goes on. It’s Monday and for many a return to work after the festive holiday. For all intents and purposes that is the one solitary victory Zimbabwe and its people have over a maniac like Mugabe, something he will never take away from them, their ability to carry on, as best they can, regardless.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
