This is the story of encounters on a journey from north to south Zimbabwe, taken in the scorching October warmth after we are regularly wanting up for the slightest signal that rain could also be coming.
It’s very popular and dry and thus far there is no such thing as a signal of the towering purple clouds we all know we want earlier than the rains arrive. The robust winds of early summer season have come late this yr: sizzling whirlwinds leaving thick coatings of mud of their wake.
It was … a phenomenal big-sky day as we arrived at a tollgate on a freeway heading south – a type of days when the sky is so blue and the solar so shiny that it hurts your eyes and the horizon appears to go on endlessly.
For countless kilometres the view was of bleached yellow grass and small thorn bushes, with the occasional newly harvested wheat area being cleaned by girls with baggage or grazed by goats or cattle or monkeys, everybody choosing up the ears of wheat the harvester had dropped.
The Lean Season
The World Food Programme (WFP) calls this the Lean Season and it’s significantly apt at a time when our purchasing baggage get ever lighter as a result of there may be much less and fewer we are able to afford.
The price of primary items has risen by 493% in the previous yr, in response to the WFP.
Holding my debit card out for the teller at the tollgate, she says: “It’s up.”
And these two little phrases say all of it in Zimbabwe. Overnight the price of passing by way of the tollgate had gone up from ZW$1 000 to ZW$1 300 (round R56 to R73).
“Why has the price gone up?” I ask. She shrugs and raises her eyebrows, that little gesture talking volumes.
While she places my card by way of the machine I do the maths in my head: the tollgate is $1 300 however if you add the card cost, financial institution cost and tax, every tollgate really prices $1 446 (greater than R81) – everybody taking their lower of each greenback in your pocket.
Treacherous pursuits
Further alongside the street a bunch of younger males sporting miners’ hats, with pickaxes on their shoulders, are prepared for a day trying to find flecks of gold in the stony, purple holes which have been dug in every single place round right here.
With just a bit plastic shack, a pile of stones, and a home-made iron tripod holding a rope, they slide down into the darkness of those treacherous pits looking for gold.
We cease at a river and get out to look at the thick inexperienced carpet of weed on the water and a purple Jacaranda tree in the distance, however very quickly we aren’t alone.
A flowery automotive with darkish tinted home windows pulls up very shut and two younger males of their 30s get out, with very sensible garments and footwear, fashionable haircuts and massive gold watches, each carrying rucksacks. They head into the bush and there’s no doubt that they’re the gold consumers and we all know it’s time to go away, instantly.
This is the unlawful, casual financial system in Zimbabwe and the much less stated the higher – and the safer.
From despair to pleasure
Stopping for gasoline in a small city, I watch a person approaching automotive after automotive asking for meals.
As he’s turned away time and again, he holds his arms as much as the blue sky and shouts one thing inaudible.
He has a blue plastic mild on a stretch band throughout his brow and is sporting trousers too small and a shirt too huge.
When he will get to us my son offers him one thing and he’s so delighted that he shouts in pleasure they usually shake fingers vigorously.
My eyes sensible with tears watching them; Zimbabweans have the wonderful means to undergo a lot, lose a lot, undergo a lot and but nonetheless give and take happiness in the smallest and most sudden encounters.
Joy …
As we drive by way of the small city, a person carries a little bit purple cardboard field with the phrases ‘Joy in a Box’ printed on the takeaway meals carton.
This, in response to the billboard, is ‘The Licking Zone’, an advert for a fast-food chain retailer, simply the identify making you smile.
The humour of Zimbabweans by no means fails to please and to shock, and as we go the Shangani River I consider the story a buddy instructed me about leaving your hostile vanity behind if you enter Matabeleland.
The story goes that if you get to the Shangani River it’s best to cease, take a small leafy twig off a tree and use it to brush the chip off your shoulder earlier than you get to Bulawayo.
As Zimbabwe attracts ever nearer to elections, brushing chips off our shoulders and uniting for the frequent good is definitely extra essential than ever.
Copyright © Cathy Buckle
