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.