Living on the frontline

Security means uncurling my toes....

2011-12-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

What does security mean to you? That was the question surrounding this year’s 16 days of activism theme. Militarism, conflict, state sponsored violence, political violence, were some of the sub-themes we campaigned on. We talked about the big stuff, the big news tickets of the moment. The news coming out of Syria continues to be unbearable. Libya is still on the boil. In the DR Congo, thousands are fleeing across the borders, fearing for their lives as the election results are about to be announced. In Burma, Hilary Clinton smiled for the cameras and got paly-paly with the generals, temporarily shorn of their uniforms for better picture quality. In various Northern capitals anti capitalist protestors were carted off the streets, sometimes violently. At COP17, things got ugly and civil society had to be shoved back into their small allotted space. The wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan rage on. None of these places is too far away or too foreign. I know women there. I have met them. I know their names. They are my friends. I worry about them. I text. I email. I skype them. Just to make sure they are ok. Being a global citizen means you curl your toes each time you watch the news.

The so called ‘security forces’ and law enforcement agencies continue to frighten me and other women out of our wits. In my home number two, the South African Police service decided that adopting militarized titles and ranks was the way to…..what? Instill discipline? Show seriousness? Give the service more gravitas? Induce fear? Each time I enter Rosebank police station to get my documents certified, I am greeted by a “colonel”, and sometimes a “lieutenant” looks over his shoulder. I clutch my bags in fear. I smile feebly and answer their questions with too many words, and run out as soon as I can. Thankfully I have never had to report a crime, or ask to be taken to a place of safety by these “soldiers”, because I just don’t know where they would take me! I don’t feel secure with a police man called “general”, no matter how much he smiles, or tries to convince me he is here for my protection.
In home number one, my state President goes by the grand title of, “Comrade Robert Mugabe, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, the First Secretary of ZANU PF and commander in chief of the armed forces”. This for a man with seven (well earned), University degrees! If he needed any accolades he has the BA, BA Hons, etc to pick from. Being told that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces is not meant to make me respect the man. It says, ‘Be very afraid. He has guns. Pointed at your head. One move we don’t like and we pull the triggerS”. I know who is in control. And if I forget I am reminded on the hour every hour by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
I curl my toes. I draw my knees together. That is the effect men in uniform have on me. The military industrial complex announces itself, advertises itself and reminds us ‘they’ are in control of our countries, our lives, our bodies.

But it is not only these visible manifestations of our militarized world that make me insecure. Going to the supermarket makes me frightened. I am scared to see the price of food. I worry about whether there will be enough month left at the end of the money. I am too scared to ask a woman with three children how she lives on a twenty dollars per month wage. Yesterday I took my son to a doctor and she asked for 50 dollars just to write a referral note to the radiographer. In the space of two weeks I have buried two women, both aged 44, both died from diseases that could have been easily managed. I don’t fear death. I fear an undignified and painfully unnecessary death, such as I have seen countless times around me.
Two days ago I met a beautiful young person who identifies themselves as trans-gender. I immediately started worrying about how she was going to get out of that hotel back to her home in the township. What hoops she would have to navigate to ensure her own safety. I keep hearing the hateful sermons preached at one of those funerals I went to, “these ngochani are an abomination! We must cast the devils out of them! If you are a ngochani come forward so we pray for you!” I keep curling my toes and drawing my knees up.
A lot can happen in 16 days. And it did! So we come to the end of this year’s 16 days of activism against gender based violence. It has been an amazing two decades of organizing by women, and a few good men, all over the world. To hear some talk today you would think they invented the campaign and made us women too while they were at it. Well let us not go there. I suppose we should just be happy that what started off as an idea, almost a pipe dream, with only 24 women, has grown to be one of the most well known global campaigns. Who says the feminist movement is small, insignificant and the changes it has brought can’t be “measured. If anybody had asked us on that bright summer day at Rutgers, what will success look like? How will you measure it? I don’t think we would have been able to provide an answer, let alone imagine that this is what the 16 days campaign would achieve. Hear yee, monitoring and evaluation zealots. This is what success looks like!
So what does security mean to me? It means uncurling my toes, unclenching my knuckles, free of fear - real or imagined, and living a life of dignity, experiencing sexual and other kinds of pleasure, and having the right to make choices.

What security means to me

2011-12-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

Great Britain, to itself. Blighty to the rest of us. A country that probably was once "great", and wanted everyone to know it, see it and feel it. Today, the signs of that greatness are dimming, except perhaps in the big statues that dot the city of London. Big, huge, grandiose statues, celebrating the (imperial) heroes of old.
In this Britain is not alone. All over the world, it seems, our city fathers, (good name that, city fathers, very appropriate for who I think has this mindset), think it is necessary to erect (another good word), these grandiose reminders of their nations' MILITARY greatness. Military/war heroes are immortalized in marble and other indestructible material, so that we remember them, we celebrate them. On a visit to Cambodia in July, I could not complete the obligatory many hours in Angkor Wat. Dozens of wall murals - which must have taken years to etch, reminded us of the many wars fought and presumably won.
In Rome, the military statues are a marvel. One can not help but be taken in by them. You can hear the chariots of the Emperors clop clopping through the cobbled street as you gaze up at the imposing things high above your head.
It is interesting isn't it? We with forked tongue speak about the evilness of wars, we decry the violence perpetrated on women and girls during these wars. Yet, everywhere around us, our countries' history is celebrated through military statues and displays celebrating the greatness of war.

Even more worrying is the fact that, to this day, visiting heads of state or dignitaries are welcomed by "a military guard of honour". I still do not understand what that is about. Well I do. The message to the visitor is; look how what a great nation we are, see our men in uniform, don't mess with us now, we are very capable of blowing you and yours to smitherins, better behave yourself and speak nice to us during this visit, because we are armed...to the teeth.
Is the display of military might the only way to welcome a visitor to your "home"? How about, just stopping at the garlands of flowers? Would that not be nice and civil enough? If we must parade anything for the visitor, how about our smartest and brightest young people, showing what a great new generation we have coming up? No guns, no goose-stepping, just a nice welcome.
And why bury people with a 21 gun salute? A gun salute? That is supposed to....what? Send the deceased in a blaze of military glory to their maker? Get ready you up there here he comes! Ka boom! Ka boom! Better be good to him or else...ka boom!

Security for me means not being reminded that the world is a giant militarized zone. It means not celebrating war and all that goes with it.
And it means not being greeted by reminders of imperialist wars - of any kind.

Security in an insecure world 2

2011-11-26T14:56:00.000-08:00

I don't know why it always happens to me. Maybe I smile too much? Maybe I am too nice? Maybe I just don't get the protocol right. But what is the protocol? I thought we were all supposed to treat one another with respect. Be kind. Be courteous. Be friendly. Just be human. Is that not the standard protocol?
It seems there is a different one for taxi drivers. No sooner had I fastened the seat belt than he mistook my thigh for the gear shift. I chose to be charitable. Shifted slightly to the right, out of arm's way. No. There the hand went again. This time it was accompanied by a wink and a smile. There was nowhere else to shift to. I can't sit in the back. I don't like looking like some corrupt government official, being driven to yet another shady meeting. Besides, I suffer from car sickness. Sitting in the helps! But the hand keeps following my thigh.

We chatted about the weather. The busy road. Exchanged notes about where we are from. He from Pakistan. He was just there on holiday. He asked me about the situation in my home country. We chatted about politics. About the world. I don't know how we veeered into sex? Somewhere between Heathrow and Walthamstow, he asked me, "So do you like......(moving his pelvis suggestively)?" I looked out into the London horizon. I kept a straight face. Kept my mouth shut. I jammed my MP3 into my ears, and put the volume as high as it could go.
We got to my destination. I thanked him. I grinned. I paid the full fare.
I am just too happy to see my friend, opening her front door.

Security in an insecure world

2011-11-25T04:29:00.000-08:00

Come with me on a journey, as we go through this year's 16 days of Activism against violence against women. Safety. Security. Peace. All very critical for every woman, everywhere in the world. Do I feel secure? Always? Do you feel secure? What does security mean for you? That is the question we have to grapple with in this year's theme.
As I start this journey. I am in Ottawa. Canada. Apparently one of the safest places in the world. I arrived here a week ago. Two little chatty questions and I was let through by immigration. They didn't even stamp my passport. Is that normal? I don't know. But it made feel happy and unhassled. Very much the opposite of what I am made to feel in airports - frisked and undressed, even if I keep my hat on. No marines loitering all over the place. No military dudes with guns watching as I picked my bag.
On departure from London, nobody went through my baggage, asking me dozen questions about why I was going to Ottawa. No zap-zap machines peeking into my brookies.
Except....the flight attendant kept referring to "the commander". Is that what pilots are called nowadays? The only meaning I know of that word is not synonymous with safety, and relaxed flights.

Across the bridge 2

2011-09-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

What exactly is one supposed to do when you are granted Permanent Residence status by another country? Do you send flowers and a note to the Minister of Home Affairs thanking her for her niceness and kindness? Do you tip the official who hands you the certificate with a lot of pomp and ceremony? How much is a decent “tip” for such a thing? Is it legal to tip or might it be picked up on the cctv cameras and you are accused of paying a bribe? And what are you supposed to do with the very glam looking residence certificate - printed on beautiful paper, complete with the country’s coat of arms? Do you frame it? Silver or gold? Where do you hang it, lounge or bedroom, next to your school certificates, or much closer to your children’s first photos? Or maybe you are supposed to carry it in your handbag? But it is too big, so can you fold it into your purse? Will the police want to see it when they stop you looking for “illegals”. More worryingly do you write to your country of citizenship to notify them? How does the letter read - dear Minister of Home Affairs? Or is that Foreign Affairs? Or is that the Registrar of births and deaths and all things in between? Then what else do you tell them? This is to inform you I now have another home, however please don’t take this the wrong way, I still love you, (I mean our country, not you, yourself), so please don’t revoke my citizenship.
This is my dilemma dear friends. I was finally granted permanent residency by the Government of South Africa. So let me be polite, thank you South Africa. Sadly I don’t know whose totem or clan praise poem I should recite, (on my knees?), since there are some 45 million of you. So a simple thank you will have to suffice. I am not being facetious. I am truly grateful. I have joined the ranks of the truly global citizens of the world, no longer defined, identified, and limited by one geographical boundary, which boundary my ancestors had nothing to do with. The other half of me that which I inherited from my mother’s people who came up North with the great leader Mzilikazi ka Mashobana is firmly formally recognized. I feel that I have finally broken that cage, that box, in which I was solely defined as a Karanga person, belonging only to my father’s side and never to my mother’s. As a feminist who has struggled for my right of CHOICE in many other areas of my life, this is one area that was left, and I celebrate my fulfilment of it. Having two homes means I have the choice to be in one or the other. I pick and choose how much I want to invest in each one - emotionally, financially and socially.
Being a resident of two countries is truly a privilege. It shouldn’t be like that. We talk about freedom of movement, the world being a global village, and our common humanity. Yet, each day, we put up the fences - literally and figuratively to separate us from one another. Hectares of papers, and millions of human hours are spent, tightening these fences, pushing one another out.
The privilege belongs to a select few. As single, black, African woman, I am fully aware of just how much of a mega privilege this is. My class status is what made this possible. Thousands of my fellow Zimbabweans are still stranded, they queue up for weeks on end, at Home Affairs offices looking for the right to stay and work here. Most of them have been here longer than I have. Some even qualify for citizenship given how long they have been here. But no, their papers are not in order. Their “stories” are not enough to qualify them for residence. I didn’t do anything special. I just happen to be in an economic and social bracket that made my application hassle free and more acceptable.

My friends and family are totally ecstatic on my behalf. I got flowers, chocolate, a bottle of wine, beautiful cards, e-cards, e-hugs. Several proposed a celebratory party. But I don’t feel like a party. Congratulations are not what I want to hear. For the last month, I have wept as I looked at this pretty certificate. I don’t feel ecstatic. Deep in my heart is sorrow and pain. I am happy I now have this choice. Believe me I am. I am deeply grateful to have this ability to traverse across two borders, and call both Zimbabwe and South Africa my homes. No two countries could make me happier. These two countries with their glorious histories of my ancestors and foremothers whose heroic struggles I cherish ever so.
Yet I am still deeply sad. I love the country of my birth. I will forever carry the green and gold passport of Zimbabwe to signify my real citizenship. It is the country that raised me and made me who I am today. Growing up, I never ever thought of leaving Zimbabwe, going somewhere else to study, to work or to live! Even as I got to know more and more countries, it always was the place to come back to. In the three years of my working, (not necessarily living) in South Africa, when Zimbabweans asked “how is South Africa?” I would reply, “how else can the land of others be?” It comes out with much deeper meaning in Shona or Ndebele and it’s hard to capture the nuance in English am afraid. As someone said it so beautifully, I worked and stayed in South Africa, but my heart and my head lived in Zimbabwe. I slept in Harare, but woke up in Johannesburg.
Seven years later, I deliberately applied for residence, and got it. I wanted it. In one sentence; the love of my life was no longer enough for me. I needed more. I needed other things, which she could not give me, or let me enjoy.
I feel rotten inside. I feel I have betrayed my country, slapped it in the face, thrown dirty water at it. This beautiful certificate is written proof of my betrayal and rejection of my Zimbabwe.
The residence permit couldn’t have come at a strange time, the very day I put in my resignation in my current job, and signed my new job offer! The new job will take me back to Zimbabwe, as an expatriate! Yes, I will be an expatriate in my own country of birth. What does that mean exactly? If war breaks out and I have to be “evacuated”, do I head to the South African embassy and leave my parents behind? What does that say about me? What kind of person do I become? Or when I am talking to my team mates do I say, “we Zimbabweans”, or I adopt the rather derogatory, “you people”? The books and academics say we all have multiple identities. How does one carry them all equally? How do I find the true me, in these many identities?
When I called my mum to tell her I was coming back home, she kept silent for a few minutes, and I know she was stifling her sobs. Why? She wanted to know. Why come back to Zimbabwe? To do what? Did I not know the elections are coming again soon? What about money? How would I make enough to survive, to look after her and my dad? She told me their medical bills had gone up. Loud hint - will you afford to keep up our insurance if you come back? She continued to scare me about the ever increasing power cuts, the water cuts, the scarcity of firewood.
This is what makes me deeply sad. When a mother would rather their child goes far away, than be close enough to share the love and care, what can one do besides weep for what was, could be, and should be? My parents are both in their late 70s. I want to be near them to fix their broken windows, take them to their doctors’ appointments and see them as often as possible. I am sure they want that too, but they are afraid. So they would rather I am away from the ‘troubles’. When a country begins to “sell” its own children, then we have to mourn. Deeply so.
So back to my earlier questions - how am I supposed to behave differently now that I am a permanent resident? Is there some South African rite of passage that I must go through to show I am HERE? I am too old for the reed dance, (which I would never have done anyway). Am I required to choose between Kaizer chiefs and Orlando pirates football clubs? I still don’t know the difference between them by the way. I already have a favourite radio station, Kaya fm, so I am ahead on that one. Ditto favourite newspapers, the Sunday Times and the Mail and Guardian. Should I do the dailies too? Do I use Zambuk instead of Vaseline on my lips? There are some things I won’t do though- rugby, cricket, and saying, “Jane, he is not here”.
For the next few weeks, I think I will carry around my framed residence certificate and show it to all those who used to treat me badly and tell me to go back home; the taxi drivers, that nasty woman in the snooty shoe shop in Hyde Park, the other one in Pick and Pay who throws my change at me when I don’t speak Sesotho, the bank teller who gets so weary when she has to deal with my special account, and oh yes, the really mean security guard in our building! I will shove my residence permit in their faces and say, see I am one of you now. This is my home too!

A real War Vet

2011-08-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

I only met General Solomon Mujuru, a.k.a Rex Nhongo just once. All I remember was that he looked very...ordinary. Just a normal human being. I remember very clearly that he stammered. Colin Firth in The King's Speech reminded me of him. I also remember that unlike other military and political types whose hands I have shaken, he did not give me the hibby-jibbies. No cold shudder went through my hand, no strangeness in his eyes. Just a very well bathed man in a nice suit.
It is no surprise to hear all the accolades pouring out about this hero of my country's liberation struggle. Growing up, "Mukoma Nhongo" was for many of my generation synonymous with the armed struggle against colonialism. A famous liberation war song went, "hona Mukoma Nhongo, bereka sabhu tiende chauya-chauya", (brother Nhongo take up your sub-machine gun let's go. What will be, will be). This was the only name some of us knew. It was as if he was the whole liberation army, all by himself, carrying that sub-machine gun. In my childish mind of course, a sub-machine gun sounded like a glamorous thing to carry on one's back. I had little idea of the gravity of the struggle and what it was like for the women and men actually fighting this war. My war. Our war.

Fast forward to the present day. Each year, when ZTV plays the footage of the struggle, it is Rex's picture chatting and laughing with his "boys" that keeps playing, over and over again. He keeps laughing. It is always hard to imagine that he went to war in his early 20s.
At University I shared desks with dozens of military people. I was to learn that it was thanks to Comrade Rex that many of them went back to school after independence. I learnt that he pushed them to get educated so that they could run a better army, or even get out of it if they so chose. The mark of a leader, always wanting the best for his/her team. No wonder we have one of the most educated armies this side of the Sahara.

Over the last few years his power and influence has acquired mythical proportions. Yet he held no official position, and neither did he ever speak to the media. He was there. But not there. He was talked about, and he didn't talk about himself. Unlike some of our so called "leaders" in present day Zimbabwe who have the habit of calling themselves "Honorable", or "Ambassador such and so". As one of my mentors, Gemma Mbaya, used to say, if you have to call yourself Honourable, rather than us honouring you, then there is something totally dishonourable about you!

To say my blood went cold, when I got the text message telling me about Comrade Rex's death and how he died, would be the understatement of the year. I froze. From fear. From pain. From sheer disbelief. Here was a man who survived the Smith regime's forces for so long,unable to save himself from a house fire? As my Kenyan friends would say, a whole General, burning to ash in a large house, all by himself. No alarm raised on time? Nothing? I am one of those who just doesn't believe this was a simple fire accident. We have seen too many of these accidents to know better.

I hold no brief for the man. But we all must hold a brief for one another as human beings. Nobody deserves to die in this way. A liberation war hero, a political opponent, the wife you no longer want. Noone. Even if it was an accident, nobody should die in this manner.

I fear for my country. I fear for all of us lesser mortals. If Comrade Rex could die in this manner, what about we of no consequence? As we would say back home, isu hedu vana kapuracha?

Thank you Comrade Rex-Solomon for the good fight you fought for me, for us. Thank you for being an exemplary leader. Above all, thank you for showing us that it is not too hard, to be just a normal human being.

Across the bridge 1

2011-07-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

I have filled seven sheets of paper. The other six are already too long. I have to trim this list down. Using what formula though? Everything looks very important. The purse will ultimately determine if any of this ever gets bought. I worry about how I am going to carry all this stuff across the bridge.
And so it came to pass. I got a new job back home in Zimbabwe. I leave my present one and my little nest in the Johannesburg sky, in three months’ time. I should be doing cartwheels. I should be planning farewell cocktails. Instead, I am stressing myself out with putting together what I now call the “Zimbabwe survival kit”. It is not supposed to be this hard. I do have a home in Harare to go back to. It was my city of choice when I first looked for a job, after University. My best friends are there. My family is in Zimbabwe - STILL, to use that strange word I always find weird when people ask, “Is your family STILL in Zim?” As if, what? They were supposed to have all upped and left, all 102 of us, moving to Johannesburg? Leaving their homes, lives, and other pursuits to go where? On whose wages? Let me not start on that one.....
I don’t really know my real “home” anymore. A lot has changed since 1999. I was not there when all the big political and economic upheavals happened. Each time I went back, and I did so religiously each Christmas, August school holiday and Independence days, I couldn’t relate to this new country. I also went back for all the family funerals. And there were so many I lost count. I became a visitor in my own country. I no longer belonged. When I finally put lodgers into my house, it was a sign that I could no longer keep up this illusion of “two homes”. I threw my hands in the air when I could not figure out who to call to fix a leaking pipe, and where to buy something as simple as bread. Over the last five years, when I went back, I stayed with my friend Nozipho. She became my mother, and I her little child. When I needed airtime, she would simply whip it out of her bag. I would express an interest in sweet potatoes and magically they would appear in front of me. When the power went off, I would sigh and lie back in her nice bed, knowing that soon, very soon, someone in her house would figure out how to cook the next meal, boil me some bath water, and even provide cold water to cool it down! I don’t think she will be driving from the Eastern end of the city across to my Western part, just to bring me bath water!
My friend Bella became my transport manager. Needed to get home-home to see my parents? Bells provided the car, the driver and the fuel. Need a one night hotel booking? Bells knew every bed and breakfast in town and I would zip in and zip out like a business executive. Our wonderful driver-tour-guide-handy man-reliable third hand Andrew knows where to find everything from tyres, to cheaper beef to hair salons that open on Sundays. Geri the doctor had to make house calls when I got the odd flu or needed some hard to get drugs.

When I visited any of my family, I was feted and spoilt. Nobody expressed any impatience with my stupid or strange questions; how much is bread? When will the electricity be back on? How do you get money these days? How much do we put in the Sunday collection plate? I was a visitor you see. I was sister/aunty/the child from Joburg, a whole planet away. I was smiled at and tolerated for my not being in the know. “Sister, this is how it is done in Zimbabwe now”, one of my brothers always chided me. That kept me mum for the rest of the fortnight. When I finished reading the books I had brought on holiday, and I got tired of bathing from a bucket, or the lack of internet access got to me, I simply changed my ticket and ran away.

I will no longer have this luxury. This is why I am putting together my ‘survival kit’. The big essentials I will need to cope in my now dysfunctional “home”. I have listed plastic buckets for storing water, a gas stove, long lasting lamps, matches, candles lots of candles. Someone says I need a bread maker - but who will be making the bread? Moir? This is stuff I never had, let alone knew where to buy. I have also been advised to buy a power generator, an invertor, a water tank. Eish! What size do I get? Where? I haven’t listed the groceries yet.
The political conversations, if one can call them that - are what I am particularly dreading. Over the years I had learnt to just listen, smile, and shake my head in a non-committal manner. Depending on where I found myself, it was along these lines; Tell us what Mbeki/Zuma are saying? What are they saying in South Africa? What will they do? The high expectations of what South African mediation was (and is still), supposed to deliver still baffles me. This very South African government which from where I have been sitting, lurches from one crisis to another of its own? When people asked me “what the South Africans are saying”, I wondered which ones they were expecting to hear from? The media here which if it devotes an inch to issues beyond national borders it is about an American celebrity or the Greek debt crisis? Or did they want to know what black South Africans in the townships think of Zimbabweans? Was May 2009 instructive enough?

In civil society, what I consider my real political turf, the conversations were along the lines of: Haa, Chipo? Don’t talk to her she is Central Intelligence that one! We don’t work with James anymore, he is very MDC-T. Ugh, what can you tell us about Stella? That stupid woman who is sleeping with all the men in MDC-M, and you know she is also sleeping with that guy in ZANUPF. So really she is ZANU PF”. All this would be said with such hyper-ventilation. So much venom. You had to jump backwards to avoid the inevitable spit that would follow. You had to take sides in these “conversations”. You had to declare your interest. I was scared into silence.
On more than one occasion, when the ‘conversations’ got so hard, I switched off, packed my little bags and feigned some important meeting I had to get back to Joburg’ for. I have avoided political debates in the Zimbabwean diaspora spaces because the debates were no longer debates. I refused to speak to the media because I did not want to be pigeon-holed. I chose instead to write. That way I could be in control of what I wanted to say, when to say it and to whom. I will need more than survival strategies for my return. I need re-engagement strategies. Who to engage with? How? I will need to think long and hard about that. For now, I will continue to write.
So since you asked. Am I excited about going back home? Umm, erm, ahhh, well, yes. Sort of. I am ecstatic in the morning and by nightfall I am in a complete state of panic. I do not know how to survive in the new look Zimbabwe. I have become used to an easy, on the tap lifestyle. For the last 12 years, I have slowly become removed from my rural credentials that I like parading around. At least in the rural village I knew where to find firewood, or clean water. It was a given that we went to bed at 7pm, because that was the life. I read books by candlelight because that is what we did. I do not know how to speak the political languages anymore. The shark infested political pool and discourse looks too murky to wade into. The social languages of getting by how you can and screw the next person, is one that will take me years to get used to.
Now where do I buy that good Indonesian coffee in bulk?

Liberia - Living on Hope

2011-07-10T05:36:00.000-07:00

I have an abiding fear of men in uniform. Unlike most women who (allegedly), swoon over them, I was raised to fear them and hate them. Confession – I did swoon over Colonel Qaddafi before he had the botox that went awry! So it didn’t matter how brightly or widely the tall and supposedly dashing military officer smiled at me as I arrived in Monrovia – I was ready to run back onto the ghastly Air Nigeria plane that had brought me from Accra. I quickly got used to soldiers all over the place. Driving up Tubman or down UN boulevard, across the city, and into the UNMIL HQ which we had to pass on our way to......anywhere it seemed.
The last time I had seen such a heavy military presence was in Goma, Eastern DRC. Just like in DRC the military seem to run the place. In Liberia UNMIL even has a radio station. If that is not running a country what is? In modern day speak we say these are peace-keeping forces, meant to instil a sense of security in the citizens, recovering from many years of conflict. But has anyone ever asked the said citizens whether in fact this is true? I grew up during Zimbabwe’s war of independence. The army and police were synonymous with violence, arbitrary arrests and rape of women. As we transitioned into independence, none of that changed much. I am from the Midlands province where mass atrocities were committed by armed forces straight after 1980. Fast forward to the 1990s and once again the army and police reverted to type. I don’t go anywhere near police stations unless it’s a matter of life and death. I stay away from soldiers. I sadly have a son in the military, and he knows to remove his uniform as soon as he enters my space.
I did not ask any of the Liberian women I met what they thought of their militarized country. My friend K, had already summarized it on the first day of my seven day visit; “Each day we ask ourselves am I dead or am I alive”. War is bad. It is terrible. I tweeted when my phone finally caught a wave. How profound EJ. As if anyone needed to be told. That is all I could say after driving down Monrovia’s city centre. War wounded buildings, all in various states of decay or reconstruction make what is supposed to be the capital city. K kept speaking in the past tense; this used to be the main pavilion where we used to have national events, this used to be a party headquarters, that used to be one of the best schools in Liberia, Ellen (H.E. the President of Liberia to us mere mortals), attended that school. That used to be Samuel Doe’s palace. I tried to imagine how beautiful it must all have been. The Doe palace is a sight to behold. It is quite ugly by any architectural standards. At least there is one monstrosity I don’t think anyone should try to revamp.
But where does one begin to make this right? A coat of paint, and a broom won’t fix the mess of war. Neither can it fix people’s bodies and souls. But Liberia is definitely getting “fixed”, in the nice sense of that word, in many respects. There is the church and religion trying to fix souls. There are more churches per square-mile than there are schools in Monrovia alone. I gave up counting on day two. The place is swarming with development and donor types of various shades. Together with UNMIL they run the place. The (extremely beautiful), sea side hotel we stayed in was full; The World Bank, US government, this Aid, more Aid, Save the world, International Rescue the suffering inc. We were all there. By day we were saving Liberia from...itself, poverty, whatever. At night we drove back to our air conditioned rooms, into safety of our Egyptian cotton sheets, shaking our heads. It depended of course on where you spent the day.
The city of Monrovia itself is like a metaphor for how Liberians are divided into “Congo” and “country”. The former are descendants of the ex-slaves who came on the ships from America. They see themselves and are still seen as the upper crust of society. The latter, are the indigenous peoples, seen as less refined, with ‘bush’ behaviour. I was told that although this was no longer as visible as it used to be, it still underlies a lot of the country’s politics and ever simmering conflicts. The organization I work for deals more with the “country” people, and that is where we went; poor urban slums, a very poor rural county just 45 minutes outside Monrovia. Here women queue at the few water points. It suddenly struck me one evening that there were no street lights in these parts. Dozens of women were flagging lifts in the dark. I worried for their safety. I also noticed there were no landline phone lines criss-crossing above our heads. Everyone relies on mobile phones. Coca-cola billboards have been edged out by those of mobile service providers.

I visited the part I mentally called the “Congo” on day 6. It is a different world that. Driving down UN Boulevard, you suddenly realize the air is getting fresher, you can hear the ocean, there are less people walking and more cars driving around. Then you enter this sweet smelling world of tall, well built, nicely painted buildings. The lights shine brightly from within. Even the people darting in and out of there are dressed well, women in make- up and high heels. The men are in dark Saville-Row suits. Everyone carries a cattle bell round their neck – an ID tag, the kind favoured by embassies and UN offices. We decided to lunch at a perch on Mamba point. The air kept getting fresher as we went up the stairs. From the bad service we got, it was clear that we were seen as too “country” for this fragrant hood. T-shirts with campaign slogans and having no cattle bell screamed “here comes the bush!”
I hadn’t quite internalized the phrase Americo-Liberian and what it signifies. The American influence is all over Monrovia and even the rural county we visited, (the word ‘county’ itself kept fascinating me). The first is in the Liberian-English accent. It is a cross between rural Georgia, urban Kentucky and a dash of Harlem. “Yuh weh hii?” the tailor asked me during a dress measuring session. For the life of me I had no idea what he was asking! He repeated, “yuh weh hii?” I shook my head in that enigmatic Indian shake, which can mean yes or no. K came to the rescue. I leave that to you translate!
It took me until the last day to finally understand why the “American flag” was fluttering in the wind all over the place. Driving past what used to be Samuel Doe’s palace there are big concrete road-blockers painted in red, blue and white. I kept wondering. I looked up at the flag, then across the street was a mobile phone shop – Lone Star. I looked up at another flag. And stupid me finally got it, this IS the Liberian flag! It is the American flag, with one exception – the number of stars. I am still in shock. Actually I am more in pain than shock. Why, to this day, has this been allowed to continue? What does this flag symbolize to the majority of the peoples of Liberia? There is no colour BLACK in that flag. Not even a small dot. Does this not bother the leaders and people of that nation? I can hear some of you grumbling in the background, fighting poverty and dealing with the post conflict situation is more important blah blah. Sorry folks, it does matter. If the flag of the USA was half black there would have been a huge outcry. If the Congolese flag was completely white it would have been discarded long ago.
Maybe it is the spirit of tolerance and what Rastafarians call ‘niceness’ that pervades Liberian society which explains all this. Another indicator of this niceness is the fact that all of Liberia’s dead and former heads of state have been accommodated on the national currency. All the way back to the ‘colonizers’ who came by ship, those deposed in coups, the coup leaders, everyone is on the dollar notes. At least if they couldn’t stay in State House they can stay on the money. In the rural county we visited, one of the oldest latifundistas is accommodated in an agricultural development project, together with all the landless peasants. Miss Molly as I secretly renamed her, is the epitome of Congoness, to coin a term. Her family and a few others own most of the land in the county. Everything about Miss Molly says; we are it. We are the upper crust. We are entitled to things. Everyone seemed to defer to her, wittingly or unwittingly. Maybe accommodating each other is what a country wracked by conflict needs. Long may that help fix the country.

For all its troubled history, its fractured communities, and the heavy burdens of reconstruction, (or mere construction – since there was never any in some places), I enjoyed being in Liberia. The food is a fabulously nice and hot! Even though my tummy fought vigorously against the spices, I just couldn’t stop chucking them in. The chicken, the fish, all came drenched in lots of spices- just the way I like them. If you are straight out of Gweru or Lusaka you are advised not to try the Liberian ‘fiery’ everything. My favourite, fried plantain was in abundance, so I gorged.
I drank proper Liberian coffee, something I had missed in both Nairobi and Accra – where you would think they serve their own coffee which they grow? No, they give you the cheap, by the packet, awfully dreadful instant Nescafe! I am yet to understand what that is about. The big downer though, was that the coffee nearly always came cold, (another American habit? Ugh!). And horror of horrors it came with sweetened condensed milk! Yikes. There is something I haven’t eaten since my grand pappy used to give it to us a bribe.
The highlight for me – Zimbabwe please take note – Monrovia alone has at least five FM radio stations. To top it off, there are some five independent newspapers. In the deep of the night, I channel hopped among the stations, playing fabulous music. The news coverage is extensive, Pan-African and global, South Africa please take note. To quote our driver cum tour guide, Moses; My sister, we may not have a lot in Liberia, and we might be suffering, but at least we are free to say what we want, to who we want, on anything we want! That is freedom. That is democracy. We might be scared that the war might come again, or that the elections might be violent. But we live on hope my sister. We have a lot of hope. Listen to what these young people are saying. We live on a lot of hope!
Indeed I shall “weh my hii” and go back to see more of Liberia. One day.

Nepal, land of the serene

2011-06-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

I don’t know who nicknamed our former Chief Executive “the Monk”. The first time I heard it I just thought it was such an apt name for a man whose face is always looking very serene, never looks agitated or fazed by anything, or betrays any emotion. Little did I know that most people look and behave like that in Nepal where he comes from! It hit me as I boarded Qatar airways on my way to Kathmandu from Doha. I was probably one of five women, and one of less than 12 non Nepalese on that flight – not counting the flight attendants.
I wondered why they announced boarding for that flight at least an hour and half ahead of slated departure time. I was soon to find out the reason. That flight is the equivalent of the “chicken bus” to Zimbabwe departing from Johannesburg’s park station. Some 250 men returning home, carry lots of “stuff”. The airline staff – migrant workers themselves – harassed these men no end. Packages were weighed and re-weighed. Solidarity groups were hastily formed, so that everyone could carry home everything they had bought. Nothing could be left at the boarding gate. I volunteered to carry on someone’s package, but I was given such a tongue lashing by a Kenyan “official”, I dropped it hastily. I was about to let rip some vile words, and then remembered the documentary I had watched about the justice system in the Emirates, so I scowled and walked away muttering to myself. The Nepali men all took it in their serene stride. Nobody cursed. Nobody shouted back at the flight officials.

I sat between Keshav and Raj, who were both returning home after five years’ absence. Keshav showed me pictures of his twin sons, who he had never seen. He had left his young new wife pregnant and gone in search of work in the sweat-pits of Doha. Raj was on his way to find a wife, get married, leave her pregnant – he told me with a wink, and return to his job, all in three weeks! I told them stories of Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa. By the end of the flight we had become kindred spirits, united by the bond of our dysfunctional countries.
I arrived in Kathmandu 20 hours after I had left home, tired but strangely energized. Must be the serenity vibes transmitted to me in that B seat. Going through customs and immigration was a breeze, with officials very happy to see someone from “Jimbabwe”. I had to remember not to laugh throughout my stay in Nepal. Whenever I needed a good laugh in the office I would ask the big boss to pronounce the name of my country or the name of the South African country director. Jimbabwe and Janele, would just kill me every time. I was to discover other little Nepalisms; for some inexplicable reason an extra S always finds its way into Nepa-nglish, as in “providing supports to partners”. Then there is the disappearing H, as in “socks” – instead of shocks, “soez”. In a little mountain hotel, on my third night I asked for the room service menu. This was an absolute delight. On the menu were two interesting items; Chicken domestic, and poise egg. We shall return to these delicious items later.

Nepal is an ancient country, whose history dates back many centuries. Never having been colonized by anyone, the country is...how do I put it, just itself. My history lessons failed me totally. The country was not at all what I had assumed. I had expected a smaller version of India. No it isn’t. First difference was the food. I had expected very spicy, oily and ghee heavy curries. Nepali food is what health fanatics live on; steamed rice, nicely cooked lentils, lots of steamed greens, and the tiniest portions of chicken or lamb. Even the rotis were made from healthy unrefined flour. I am afraid my non health conscious- carnivorous- Southern African- beef cattle farmers’ daughter’s palate was not impressed. By day two I was near starvation. I resorted to the only two items that could satisfy my cravings, fanta orange and white bread. There was no McDonalds or Pizza Inn to run to.
Travelling to Dolakha district in the NorthEast of the country, I kept wondering why there were so many flags fluttering in the wind. Every household we passed had a flag pole, and several colourful flags. I thought Nepalis must be a very patriotic people. When I eventually asked my colleagues, (I am always afraid to ask things, nay I am too stubborn to ask, always thinking that my Form 3 history lessons should have covered all this and I can’t betray my ignorance), I was told these were Buddhist prayer flags. Even though we had called our boss the monk I just hadn’t internalized monk of which religion. In Nepal Buddhism and Hinduism co-exist side by side. In some cases, I was informed, families practice both, Buddhism today, Hinduism tomorrow. I like with this way of practicing religion, not the kind where you feel it is this or nothing else, or where people kill one another or violate women’s rights supposedly on behalf of distant Gods. Although I was made to understand that the caste system, enshrined in Hinduism was still rampant and a huge problem in the country, I still felt a huge difference from what I had experienced in India where caste discrimination and negative attitudes hit you the minute you land. In India, blacks are regarded as untouchables, as I have discovered in my travels there. Shop keepers will not take money, or put goods directly in my hand. In some establishments I was not greeted back despite my cheerily acknowledging people. If I was a Dalit in Nepali Hinduism then they certainly have a good way of hiding it. Everyone was polite, gentle, and always wanted to talk to me. Some wanted to touch me – my hair and size 18 hips being the big attractions!

Speaking of touching, my daughter’s friend, Maia, a young South African who has been living in Kathmandu for the last five months and I reflected on how we felt very safe with Nepali men. We each felt that in Africa, Europe and the Americas, we were often treated like pieces of meat each time we came in contact with men, who behaved like dogs. From security guards, to newspaper vendors to colleagues in offices, we are often hit by the sexual vibes, undertones and direct harassment. Yet in Nepal we both felt safe. That Buddhist monkish thing again?
Because of its unique history, Nepal can be described as “untouched”. Yet there was another intriguing part of it that I was to discover, its flirtation with and love for the hippie and rock and roll! Saturday night found me sitting in a beautiful bar-restaurant with Maia and her Danish partner listening to ‘70s to 80s hard rock. Earlier in the day I had seen a poster advertising a Bryan Adams show. I had assumed that someone had stuck it atop the tallest building just for fun. Oh no! My lovely little hotel simply called Hotel Tibet – and run by Nepali-Tibetans cranked up the volume on Sunday morning when Van Halen’s Jump played. For the life of me I still cannot imagine these quiet sweet people actually throwing their hair back and yodelling “Jump! Yeah! Yeah! Jump!” But apparently Nepal was once the hippie and rockers’ destination of choice. According to the internet and Nepalis old enough to remember, hundreds of long haired, weed smoking westerners made their way to Nepal in the last century. Ostensibly to smoke, and go mountain climbing. Reminders of that era are still very visible. Dozens of shops and stalls in Thamel, the tourists’ favourite market in Kathmandu still sell some rather dodgy looking long skirts, bell-bottomed trousers and some seriously off season jackets and sweaters. And the long haired ones, sans ganja, are still to be found wandering all over Nepal. These days though they come dressed in funky parkas, designer climbing shoes and matching sun shades, complemented by Arnold Schwarzenegger muscled torsos. Every hotel I went to was full of them and they were dotted over every mountain track.
Travelling inside a mountainous country was a huge challenge for someone with bad vertigo. The roads were narrow and the terrain – hairy, to put it mildly. Competing for this narrow space with “kombi” drivers made it even more hairy. You know the type that hog the road, and have a “my car is bigger than yours” mentality. We were pushed to within inches of a precipice several times that I began to worry if I had signed the latest version of my will. In the rural areas I saw dozens of people, young, old, male and female riding on the roofs of people carriers. This did not deter the drivers though, they careened and zig-zagged through this terrain without a thought for those holding on for dear life.
When several people asked me how Nepal was, I had said something quite foolish like; It is India without the spices, its China without the billion, and its Tibet without the Dalai Lama. But actually, Nepal is just, itself. At the risk of stereotyping an entire nation, the people are indeed gentle like “the monk”, quietly laid back, and struggling to find its democratic feet in the 21st century. Just like most of us.
Back to that delightful menu. I didn’t have time to order the “poise egg”, but I thoroughly enjoyed the “chicken domestic”. A bottle of the best Bayerskloof red wine coming your way if you can tell me what those are!

Happy Birthday Mr President

2011-02-20T12:25:00.000-08:00

I am not Marilyn Monroe, so I can’t say it in that breathless tone of hers. Happy birthday, Comrade Mugabe. You have had one so many, it must be tiring now, no?
I turned 46 two weeks ago. I could hardly stay awake throughout the festivities of my little soiree. I amazed myself by staying awake till 2am. How do you do it? How do you manage to stay so……energetic? So alert?
I really want to know your secrets. But first I want to know the reasons.

At a mere 46 I feel tired. If anyone could give me a nice package which can send my 16 year old child to school I would simply take it and run to the nearest island. I love my life, my job, and all the travelling. But I find that I love myself more than all these things. I want to take care of ME! I want to sit in a nice chair and write. My blog. Letters to my friends. Letters to my children. I want to read nice books. Watch good fun movies. I just want to put my feet up. Heck! I am tired of running a three bed-roomed apartment, and five children. I have to keep a job so I can meet my obligations.

Why are you still working at 87? Don’t you just want to love yourself for a change? Take care of number one, you? Aren’t you exhausted? Surely you must be tempted to just take your little back pack and wave goodbye to running a country? When will you write your memoirs? You can do that. Plus you can wake up to the Herald at your door each day. Read all that interesting “news”, they publish. The very laden obituary pages should keep you entertained and happy when you see how young they seem to die these days, compared to yourself. When you are done, you can watch nice reruns of the armed struggle, the ones ZTV seems to have plenty of. If you don’t feel like those, you can watch reruns of Dallas, they stock those too. You will be spoilt for choice of reruns of films you can relate to. Whatever you do, don’t watch DSTV. Please sir. It will depress you no end. What with all your friends and presidential cohort in trouble. You really don’t want to see those silly Libyans calling for Gaddafi to step down. The rest of today’s television is pointless drivel, or naked girls your daughter Bona’s age. No, it is just too much. They say you like cricket. You can watch that to your heart’s content. I avoid most of what they call entertainment. I watch the history channel, football, and of course Al Jazeera. But as psychologists always tell us, television is not really good for relaxation. So stay away from it or watch very little.

When the eyes hurt, you can take a little walk around your neighbourhood, with an MP3 in your ears, like I do. Only yours will be filled with great revolutionary songs. Or when you get bored you can listen to any of our four radio stations. They are a great delight those. Every half hour your blood gets pumped up by rendition of a revolutionary advert or song. Don’t let your young son Chatunga convince you to get an I-pod. Useless things those, to people of a certain age. They don’t have FM radio. If Chatunga is like my son he will load it with hip hop from I-tunes. Not recommended. It all sounds the same after the first three songs.

Anyway, back to your secrets, how do you do it? My father, who is 78 can hardly remember the names of extended family members. Very frequently a relative will pass by and say, “how are you khulu?” And he will respond enthusiastically, “I am well mzukhulu how are you?” Only for him to ask one of us nearby, who the hell that was! How do you remember the names of everyone in the politburo? How do you tell Nick Clegg and David Cameron apart? I am not even half a century old but I struggle to remember the names of some of my work colleagues. Last week I wrote an email in Ndebele to one American and in Shona to a Greek colleague. How do you remember stuff? Is there medication for that? Do share it please.

As I grow older I am increasingly suffering from attention deficit disorder, blind spots, and selective hearing. Do you suffer the same? Would that be why you seem not to hear certain voices in the country? Or why you seem to have a blind spot to very poor people’s plight? Do you pay attention to all parts of the country and all your citizens the same? I am failing. I blank certain things out. Completely. Do send me your recipes for how you cope with these age ailments. Relying on those around me doesn’t help, because they seem to tell me only what they think or what they want. Don’t you sometimes have that feeling?

The day before my birthday I wanted to buy a cheaper facial brand to the one I had used for five years, which I must say did work wonders for me. It seems many people can’t work out how old I am by just looking at my buffed and cleansed face! That was never my intention. I only intended to keep my skin looking clean, and bright. So on this day last week the beautician suggested I use something called “Age-Defying”, something or other. I politely explained that I was happy with my age and did not want to defy gravity. She frowned in amazement, and shoved the brand into my basket. It really was half the price of my former brand, so I took it. Do you use the same age defying what not? I know you dye your hair pitch black. I have never understood that sort of thing, because it really does confuse matters. I don’t want to have a disconnection between my hair, face hands and age. They also say you eat very healthy food, and take lots of energy drinks? Good luck with all that. Each to their own, eh comrade?

So happy birthday once again, I don’t know why, or how you continue to do what you do. Enjoy your cake. Good luck with blowing that many candles. You will need it.
I will continue to write and enjoy myself. I love myself that much.

2010 in retrospect

2011-02-03T07:03:00.000-08:00

It really was a good year. Nobody died. Well, lots of people died. But I didn’t have to go home to bury anyone. This is how I measure goodness and badness in a year. My family and I were very happy and grateful for this rather long respite. My brother Bruce thinks that we are in for a bad year now. But we shall see.
You might find it odd that I am writing this piece in February. Technically that is when my year starts. I was born in Feb. January always passes in a blur anyway, fees to be paid, Christmas over-expenditure starring me in the face, performance evaluation, (work not sexual, but of that later), and just the hassle of trying to convince myself that it will be indeed a “happy new year”, as we all like to think at this time. February is a good time to reflect on the year that was.
The bad

Who can forget the haunting images of the Haitian earthquake which opened 2010? I had been to Haiti in September 2009, with my two colleagues, Ennie and Korto. One evening on the way back to our lovely hotel in Petionville, I thought – rather loudly – I hope this place never gets hit by an earthquake. Nobody said anything. Korto called me from Liberia as soon as she saw the news on television, “EJ your fear has come true, Port-Au-Prince has been hit by an earthquake”. It took me a few minutes to turn on the television. I thought of all the people I know there; Jean-Claude and his beautiful daughter named after the country, Marie-Ange, Myra, Marie-Andree, my colleagues in our office in Haiti. I even remembered the rude translator who had refused to translate what women in a village were telling us about sexual and domestic violence! I thought of the wonderful feminists whose offices I had visited, KayFamn, the feisty young woman in the Ministry of Women. The fabulous service staff at our hotel who took turns to give us delightful pancakes plus a nod and a wink each time. Oh Ayiti! I am going to go back one day. I just need the courage to face it.

The year closed on yet another sour note, the disputed elections in Ivory Coast. What more can one say to what has been so well chronicled and analyzed by more able people than me. Save to say, my heart broke, just seeing yet another beautiful African country held hostage to the whims of a few men. Ivory Coast is one of those countries that some of us counted as a possible place to go and live. Who doesn’t want to stay in a nice, clean, functioning, hip and happening place? Plus fashions to die for! Poof went that dream.

My country continued to limp along, still deeply wounded. No end in sight. Not that we know or agree on what a good “end” would be. The story has become more complex, opposition parties changing their constitutions so that their leaders can continue to stand. All parties have such internecine fights that, as Zexie Manatsa once sang, “vaparidzi vawanda hatichazivi wokutevera honai baba tadzungaira!” English translation, we have too many preachers we don’t know who to follow anymore. Occasionally I broke my own mantra, wake me up when it’s over, to read the papers, the online news, and even to participate in a little political palaver or two. But each time I came away more cynical, more disheartened. I reverted to my original state of non-engagement. It’s a coward’s way out. But I can only cope with limited amounts of idiocy and even more limited amounts of anger that follow. As my favorite (new obsession), singer, Beres Hammond asks in Weary Soldier, “As smart as we are, can we tell ourselves that we have really done our best? Give me one good reason why this war must carry on…”

Love from a safe distance

In one of my first blogs last year I said that I felt that something big was going to happen in 2010. I said I felt it in my bones. Two major things did happen. And it’s not just about the World Cup, of which I wrote several blogs last year, read them if you haven’t.
First, I finally, here goes, finally, I can’t even write it. I applied for Permanent Residence in South Africa. This dear friends, was one of the most painful things I have ever voluntarily done in my life, second only after choosing to walk away from a deliciously painful relationship many moons ago. Remind me to tell you about it someday when I am in a good head space. I finally had to accept the reality that I have kept an illusion in my heart about going back to a Zimbabwe that no longer exists. The Zimbabwe that I was born in, grew up in, where I was first loved (that story again), where I loved, no longer exists. This new country I can’t relate to. It always feels weird saying that. The Shurugwi of my idyllic childhood is now a ramshackle village wracked by poverty. The beautiful city of Harare where I set up home and shop for most of my adult life is a dysfunctional city running itself on auto pilot. My beautiful suburb of Westgate each time I go back, has growing heaps of uncollected rubbish right in front of my gate. I can not kid myself by saying that I was born kwaNhema with no electricity or running water therefore I can cope with the unscheduled cut offs of such essential services in the capital city. Not having google-chat on my mobile 24/7, and no access to AlJazeera for even three hours drives me to hysterics. I am an urbanized-mall crawling-news-entertainment-internet junkie. The three occasions I went home in the 18months preceding my unpatriotic decision, the penny finally dropped. I was kidding no-one. I love the convenience and simple pleasures of my neon lit life in Johannesburg. The deafening traffic outside my bedroom windows give me a little kick each morning, just a small reminder that I am in the middle of a functional city! I can sit for hours at Melrose Arch, watching the well heeled shopping, eating, drinking or just living out their lives in prayer to Mammon. I live for my sundowners with Nancy in our favorite bar, at the top of Southern Sun Hyde Park Hotel. Just looking across that beautiful landscape as the sun sets gives me a zing which lasts all week. The mojitos from there or from Doppio Zero at Rosebank carried me through many a dreary week in 2010. This is now my life. And I love it!

I stopped pretending that I will settle for less. So I applied for permanent residence. I am waiting for it to come out. I still wake up at night and hope that they lost my application. Sometimes I pray that I don’t get it. I want it. But I don’t want it. I feel as if I have let my country down. As if I have abandoned it. I continue to carry my green-mamba, my Zimbabwean passport, as proof of my citizenship. This I am not ready to let go of. Sometimes I take it out of its pouch just to check on it, to make sure that my passport is still valid and it’s safe.

Then came the second big thing. In November, I made a decision to leave my current job. I will be leaving at the end of August after 9 glorious years. And they have truly been glorious. Look out for the long letter that I will write all about my 9 years when the time comes. This is a great organization, full of passionate, committed people. It’s a fabulous employer, and seriously, the perks were wonderful. Where else can one “shop” from allover the world without ever leaving home? The shoes from Brazil, the cute bags from Vietnam, the amazing jeans made for my butt from New York! All of them landed on my desk. I am a moving United Nations. I have truly learnt what it means to be a global citizen, and it’s not just about the shopping. But after 9 years I feel it is time to move on. Some people are lifers. I don’t think I will ever be one in any relationship! I will be leaving this great organization absolutely proud of the magnificent achievements that my team led on women’s human rights. We put it on the organization’s map and if the new draft 5 year strategy is anything to go by, it will stay there for life…I lied that I wasn’t a lifer didn’t I?
I am even more proud to be handing over to a new generation of young feminists who joined my team during 2010. They are all smart, full of energy, seriously well read, (I can’t cope with the amount of literature they churn out and their levels of knowledge on everything!), and they are all stunningly beautiful. I know it’s considered sexist to talk about women’s looks, but I don’t think so. Give praise where it’s due. After all, these women shatter the myth of feminists as ugly and badly dressed! Yoh! Yoh! Yoh! This lot has style. I always see a lot of men we interact with trying to cope with each one of them’s beauty while at the same time trying to take in their seriously well thought thru feminist analysis of global politics. One has the most amazingly beautiful eyes, another flawless mocha looks plus a sexy French tinged but unplaceable accent and the other two’s gorgeous dreadlocks –The internal conflicts! I digress as always.

So to all the world’s young women who are always giving us old feminists lots of lip that we don’t want to let go and we don’t support them, there, I have done my duty to movement and globe. Can I get my gold star please?

Having made the decision to go, I don’t even know where I am going. I just know I am going. Somewhere. This too has been a difficult decision. I get mini panic attacks about how I am going to pay the blasted mortgage I went and got after the age of 40? How I will send my youngest son to Stanford, (if I keep saying it, it will happen right, Andile is going to Stanford, Andile is going to Stanford)? How will I sustain my parents’ medical aid?

Of all the weirdest answers I give myself or to anyone that dares ask, I say, Jesus will intervene! The fact that I haven’t spoken to he of the miracles for the last decade is taken into account of course. There is nothing like delusion to keep one in a good mood.
I am scared stiff. I don’t know how I will navigate my own way round the world. I don’t know if my new employers will allow me to have meetings in Doppio Zero? And I worry that my much cherished work-life balance will go out of the window if I work for some workaholic organization. But I have plenty of time to worry so I am not yet hypertensive. Worst case scenario I will simply up and go back to my parents, who I am sure will be glad to have me back, for a month or two, before their hypertensions start playing up.

The scary parts

My very good friend Shamim’s mother Fatima Meer passed away during the year. Shamim is a dear friend who I first met way back in 1990 when I first came to visit South Africa. We became fast friends. As I sat in Fatima’s lounge absorbed in the Islamic prayers and chants by the women around me on that sunny day, I marveled at the spirit, the patience and the love of women. The men could not concentrate on anything for more than five minutes. They came in, gave quick hugs, said few words, and quickly retreated. It was the women who stayed. I sat next to the famous and very, very stunningly beautiful Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, (my three hours of fame!). She gave a heartfelt and deeply moving eulogy to Fatima.

In August, my dear friend Nozipho’s dad suffered a serious heart attack and was hospitalized for weeks. I went to see him in Bulawayo and spent time with Nozi and her mum. I was so frightened. Thankfully daddy Dube has recovered and he is still with us. When I saw him in December we engaged in our serious political debates as always. Although I noticed he got tired after a short time, (he could normally go on for three or four hours, lecturing me about how my generation doesn’t fully appreciate the struggle for independence!).

Both Sham’s mum going and Nozi’s dad being seriously ill showed me how as we grow older we change roles with our parents. They are now the children, we are the parents. We take care of them. My mum whines when she wants a new hat, just like I used to whine when I wanted new shoes. My dad calls me all the way from Gweru to ask me some tiny thing about banking or his medical aid. Both of them now depend on one of my sons to send and read text messages. If Colin leaves the house they don’t know how to operate the television. I have always thought of my parents as immortal. Who hasn’t? That they will always be here, clever, solving my problems, dusting me up when I fall. I am scared of waking up one day without one or both of them. They are the true North on my compass and I don’t know how I will find my bearings. So I worry. Thankfully both of them are largely in good health. Long may it stay that way.

It was a good year…….

I have to keep saying it, it was a good year. In April I went on a 10 day visit to Brazil. I visited Recife in the North and various parts of Rio. I shopped for shoes till I was afraid that South African customs would throw me in prison for smuggling. I communed with my black sisters as we swapped stories of racism, sexism and huge inequalities.
In November, I went to the other end of the world, India. There I communed with my Dalit sisters and swapped stories of our different “tsunamis” in life. I had an equally great time and shopped for nice cotton and silver jewelry. My wonderful teammate Neelanjana had left us in October to go back to her home in Delhi, (the pain, the pain, I still can’t write about that!). She took us to the most fabulous linen shop and the best jeweler. And we had the most tasteful coffee that side of the Indian Ocean in a cute café. It was so funny to see and hear Neelanjana being….an Indian, in India. For the five years and some we worked together we had never been to India together, and I had never seen here in her natural lair so to say. I giggled and told her continuously how funny it was to see and hear her in this context. Don’t ask me what I mean. But even hearing her say, “chalo, chalo, tikke tikke”, (Ok I know that is not how its all spelt but hey that is how I hear it!), was hilarious. She was like a different person.

I spent close to a month in Kenya during the month of May. Now there is a story to be told. Here is a country fully in love with itself and it shows. Here is a country that has found its voice, its pride and restored itself to its former glory. Each day I had a choice of radio and television stations to tune into. I gobbled up the newspapers. The analysis. The political satire. I drank the best coffee on this side of the Indian Ocean at the famous Java cafes. I bought exciting jewelry from Kazuri. I engaged in deep political conversations with my friend Christine, her brother Tom, and the barman at Naro Moru lodge. There too we had a week long shared learning forum on women’s rights to land with my colleagues from all over the world. It was such a joy being in a functional black African country at ease with itself. Seeing black people talk to each other and to themselves with such pride and understanding. In August I stayed glued to my television watching them celebrate the adoption of their new constitution. For a more selfish reason I am happy to put Kenya back on my list of countries to run to should I need another refuge. Deep down I am jealous of what I experienced in Kenya. This could be us…I wrote to my friend Percy. This could be us.

Aches and pains

Way back when I lived in Shurugwi I hardly went to doctors, dentists or quacks. When I acquired these things called medical aid, read too much book and knew too much, I have discovered I have diseases whose names I can’t even pronounce. In one year alone, 2010, doctors told me I have; calcaneal spurs in both my feet, my degenerative muscle disease in my lower back is not slowing down, and I have low blood pressure! Wasn’t life simpler when we just knew…I was bewitched by Mai Xander next door? I am happy that what I have has a name, medications, plus means of managing. At times I feel like I am being very yuppie for acquiring such fancy diseases. Still, I am happy I am in good shape.

In February, I deluded myself into signing up for gym membership. Hmm, the less said here the better. I enjoyed the first three months. I had a cute personal trainer, Rodney – fancy Group A school graduate with the most hilarious Ndau accent heard anywhere outside Chipinge. His good looks were not enough to keep me interested though. I dropped out by July. I have firmly concluded that I do dislike gyms and their culture. Full stop. All that preening, my-ass is better than yours and ain’t I wonderful subtext just left me quite frazzled.

So I took up walking. Yes, walking, from my apartment, to the office, and back. Three times a week I do this now. And it’s not a bad route. Highly entertaining actually. I walk past groups of men and women who drink moonshine right behind the walls of a very “toff” preparatory school. Morning, noon and night they are there. On some occasions when I am feeling friendly, rather than listening to the Reggae on my MP3, I smile at these drunk men and their antics and we chat. Several of them say they want to marry me. I am waiting for them to turn black again (since they are now all orange or some reddish hue from drinking too much of the stuff). It’s actually quite sad to see human beings reduced to this condition.

The walking has done wonders for my achy muscles and feet. I have discovered these glorious shoes called Fit-flops! I can walk from here to Hyde Park (the Joburg one not the London one), in them. Johannesburg is a truly beautiful city, and walking around my neighborhood has given me glimpses of its beauty. Granted I still feel unsafe. But walking is truly a liberating experience in so many senses and I will keep at it. Best of all it is free!

Somewhere old somewhere new

In July I travelled back to Vienna for the world AIDS conference. I was invited as a plenary speaker. Everyone tells me I spoke well on VAW and HIV. I am not sure I will be doing another AIDS conference anytime soon. Because AIDS is an issue so close to my bone, I find it hard to talk, engage and listen in a dispassionate way. I find it extremely difficult to look at those figures on power point presentations without thinking of my siblings. I know I should see the importance of it all and be grateful for the scientific advances that have enabled many more of my family to survive beyond the 34 year life expectancy that had so become the norm. Yet, I just feel I want to be as far away as possible from AIDS conferences and all that goes with it, because I can’t relate all that to my life.

I said “back” to Vienna because of course it is the city where my friend Georgina died in such terrible circumstances two days before I was due to visit her in January 2009. It was a good thing this was in summer because I don’t think I would have coped being there in winter again, as I had done when we went to repatriate her body to Zimbabwe.
Vienna was lovely, bright. I spent time with another friend and ex colleague Srilata. Trust Sri to have already discovered the nooks and crannies of Vie. She took us to a party held in an old restored castle on the outskirts of Vie. I saw cakes I have never seen in my life! Pink ones, green ones, square ones, triangular ones. Sweet and sour ones. We did not stay long enough to eat the pig that was roasting on the spit. It looked like that piggy would be a-turning till the stars came out!

We also reconnected with the delightful Chetty, who now works at UNESCO in Paris. Five minutes in Chetty’s company is enough to put anyone with a sense of humor in a good mood. He told us hilarious stories about the snooty tomato sellers in Paris who correct his pronunciation, the equally snooty waiters who roll their ears when he gets the table, wine or food etiquette wrong. Note to self; send Andile to Paris in 2012.

Then there was Istanbul. Ah the land of the Sultans! In July I also went to an AWID forum preparatory committee meeting. Just getting the visa is a story that needs some documentation. Getting there was a real pleasure. The food was as wondrous as they always said it was. The sights and sounds are as grand as the books painted them.
Strangely I didn’t even buy a rug! I was too overwhelmed by such a wide variety that I didn’t know what was which. A trip to the Grand Bazaar yielded nothing because….too much choice. I walked right in and walked right out! I will be going back this year.

My pride and joy….my rhyme and song

My children continue to be my pride and joy, and as the song says, my rhyme and song. My eldest son’s daughter Ratidzo was a mini bride at Doris’ wedding. She still can’t get over herself I hear. She is now a talkative little Miss, with her own ideas about what she wants and how she wants it. Long may she stay that way. Go girl!

Colin started his BA in International Studies at the Midlands State University. I so enjoy our long conversations about politics, the economy and life in general. Finally a child after my own self! This one will go far. He came down to Johannesburg in December and was so taken by mall-hopping, (that might delay his journey to that “far”). Colin is now the eyes and ears of my parents, helping them navigate this strange new world. He is a loving, sensitive and patient soul, and knows how to manage the two of them gently but firmly. It’s so gratifying and so much fun to watch him with them.

Miss Lorraine finally got a work permit to remain in South Africa, after losing her job in August. She now has a job as a hostess, (no it’s not a sleazy joint, trust me), in a very famous restaurant. We shall visit her soon.

Levison is fleeting along in Durban. Let us just say I am glad he is alive. That he can look after himself. And he calls his grandparents each month. We lapsed Methodists know how to be grateful for small mercies.

Andile inched towards his final year of high school, passing all his Grade 11 subjects comfortably. He still hates Maths, (incurable family disease), but loves English, History and Dramatic Art. We are trying to encourage him to lower the bar on being the next Denzel Washington. Selfishly I need him to be a lawyer or famous journalist whose royalties will keep me in the manner and style I am entitled to! We shall see.

Dancing into the new year

What started as a good year, ended as a good year, Ivory Coast not withstanding. My daughter (don’t ask for the English explanations please), Doris got married on December 18, same day that her late elder sister Dorcas was born. She was so beautiful and graceful in her gown and our whole family was delighted to be in a joyous gathering for a change. We all put on our finest hats. If I haven’t sent you the photos with the hats let me know. On the 22nd of December, my sister Laiza (did I hear you ask sister, sister?), also got married in a fuchsia themed wedding. More hats.

We rounded up the year with the joint 40th birthday party for my sister Portia and my brother Fungwa, (ok stop asking or I will throw this computer at you). As we danced to Solomon Skuza’s very danceable song, ‘Banolila,” (me, my brothers and my son in law, a whole army general please note!), my heart was filled with joy and gratitude for a good year. A good life. A wonderful family. Relatively good health, (no menopause yet, still! Yeah!). Amazing friends, like you!

I want 2011 to be a good year. It has started really well. It will end well. I can feel it in my arthritic bones.

Why I am "de'friending" you

2011-01-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

Dear fr…..ahem, person,
Happy new year, happy birthday, anniversary, new job, new lover, divorce, new baby, new hairdo, and whatever other happy occasion will come your way this year and thereafter. I am doing this to save time, space, and the guilt – when you accuse me of having forgotten any such event in the course of the year.

Having been this nice, let me immediately say why I am writing this letter. I have decided to de-friend you from this day hence-forth. I am de-friending you on Facebook, Plaxo, Linkedin, skype, google-chat, yahoo chat, and of course my mobile phones. All three of them. You see dear person, the new year is a time to take stock of one’s life, set new goals, clean up one’s nooks and crannies, and generally move onto new and fresher things. At the beginning of each year, I clean out my cupboards, my wardrobe, my desk, my emails, and my files. But I have noticed that I have neglected one area – people. Relationships. These too need cleaning up, don’t you think? Now that I am done with cleaning all these other areas of my life, I am paying doing a people clean up exercise. There are various reasons that have led to this. Some of these might apply to you, while others you may not be aware of.
I really don’t know you really do I? When I happily accepted your “advances|” on facebook/plaxo etc, I was just too shy to say no. It didn’t seem right to reject you. Truth be told though, you don’t know me, and I don’t really know you. You can’t possibly be my friend when I have to keep reminding you how many children I have? And you can’t even remember any one of their names! There are five of them. If you just kept asking me about one of them, I would understand. But five? Nah! I on the other hand, don’t know a thing about you other than your name and the odd conference/gathering/once off event where we meet. Or I simply know that we work/ed in the same organization. That hardly makes you my friend does it? If it does I might as well befriend the guy who waters our plants each week, the regular DHL delivery man, and the cashier at my favourite coffee shop? I think I have much richer rapport with my hair dresser and my gynaecologist. The former has two children and her mother has diabetes, while the latter knows my entire biological make up and we have running jokes about our body parts. You, no, I don’t even know where you live.
Let’s just walk away now. At least nobody will be hurt. I am just one more name in your inbox and on your profile.

Then there is you, the one I was under the illusion I knew and liked. But over the last year, I found out I really don’t. First, there is the company that I see you keep; that reactionary politics, that homo-phobia, those misogynistic views – all paraded on public platforms. The less said here the better. Lets just say, I can’t afford to be seen in that company.

Then there is your own politics my, erm, friend; the same homophobia, the anti women, anti other human beings’ rights stuff you make little comments about via email, on skype, on text, and on those social networks. I shall none of it. Goodbye.

Then there is you, the religious zealot, who thinks you have been sent on a mission to save me, (not sure from what?), convert me, make me see what you call “the light”.
Let me break it down for you honey. I am over 40 going on half a century. I know where I am going, and what I believe. The only relationships I want to parade in public are sexual ones, strange as that might sound. My faith or lack thereof is a private matter. Jesus, Allah, Lord Shiva, the prophets and I go way back….sometimes earlier than when you were born my dear. I don’t want to be assailed by religious verses in my own space. I don’t want you to preach to me. Between my mum, my spiritual mentors (who don’t include you please note), and my Grade 2 teacher, (she is alive and sings beautifully), we have the whole faith thing covered. If I want to get some ‘ol’ time religion, I know exactly where to go and who to go to. It’s certainly not to facebook, outlook, or text messaging. I live in a secular world. Let me enjoy it please. Goodbye to you too.

I am tired of you, my soon to be ex-friend, trying to mobilize me to a “cause”. I am a cause! Plus I have enough causes that I actually work for day and night. Maybe you haven’t been politically active, so YOU need a cause? Good for you, and welcome to the world of human beings who care about others. Let me know if you need help identifying worthy causes as some of the ones you have been sending me are, eh…..suspect.

You are my relative, not my friend. We are simply related biologically, but we don’t have a relationship as such. Do you get the difference my relative? I am de-friending you too because other than our blood ties we haven’t got much in common. We hardly exchange more than two sentences at funerals and weddings. So I don’t see why I should keep you on my books. Sadly there is no chance of me deleting you from my life, or you deleting me. We just have to bear it and grin when our mothers ask, “how is your sister there in Johanazbeg”. We will say what we always say, |”ha she is ok”, meaning, you are alive and if you had died, then I would surely have been the one to repatriate your body home. You I will simply keep on the contact list stuck to my fridge. That way my children or the complex care taker can reach you should they need to. Off with your mug on my facebook list!

Finally there is you, my old friend. You were my friend in many senses for many years. I knew you from primary/high/work/socially/church/mosque or all of the above. We had something in common, once. But we have both moved on. We hardly communicate. Be honest when was the last time you called me on the phone? Sent me a note on my birthday? Do you even remember when it is? When did I last sit with you and laugh at a private joke we share? When we try to communicate, the conversations are strained. I don’t know half the folks you now call your friends, neither do you know mine. We give each other’s contacts to others who make better use of them than we each do. Let’s stop pretending. It’s not working anymore.

Happy everything once again and have a fantastic the rest of your life!

PS. Feel free to de-friend me too, in case you relate to what I said here...

Incredible India

2010-12-13T02:29:00.000-08:00

This blogging thing is not as easy as it sounds. One has to make time for it and I always find I have less hours in a day than I thought there were! Agh well. Enjoy this piece on my recent travel to India.

I worked myself up until I had an eczema outbreak on my forehead and chest. I was not looking forward to it. The last three times I had been to India I came back with some skin infection. And here was I getting myself sick before I even boarded the flight! The first time (2003 – Mumbai and Delhi), my 5 year old dreadlocks were infested with head lice and a fungus that the dermatologist simply ordered me to have a chis’kop (bald head)! The second time, (Bangalore - 2007), I sat in Dubai airport on my way back to Johannesburg, for five hours, scratching myself all over until a concerned observer pointed me to a chemist. I wrote a letter there and then to my Directors telling them I was not going back to India unless I was assured I would be put up in hotels where there were no goggas (creepy crawlies) of any kind. Of course I was dismissed as an upper caste Diva who just wasn’t suitable to work in an organization that supports poor people. I retorted that I had grown up in poverty and didn’t cherish being thrust back into it. I was ignored.

So here I was worried sick for my newly tended 3 year old dreadlocks. I was not fooled by the picture of my Delhi hotel which I found on the net. It all looked too swanky to be real. My organization of course doesn’t do swanky, ever, so this remained to be seen.
Travelling to Asia via Dubai has to be one of life’s little pleasures. Even in economy class, Emirates airlines are just absolutely amazing. Firstly they are always on time. And if they get delayed it’s never their fault, (no really, it’s true!). The seats in economy class are wide enough to fit people like me who normally struggle on other Asian airliners! The best part is the food and the movies. The first time I travelled on Emirates I kept skipping channels that I just never watched anything till we landed. I managed to catch up with all the current movies that I haven’t seen this year. New movies, not ten year old rehashes that a certain national carrier will show on the excruciating 18 hour voyage to New York.

Emirates serve real food, well cooked rice, (not some plasticky tasting half cooked substance on that alluded to national carrier), and really tasty curry dishes. On the Dubai-Delhi leg they had proper dhal and rotis! Talk about cultural sensitivity.
In between meals, one can get very tasty wraps with all kinds of fillings, plus so many drinks, little snacks, chocolate. Yes, unlike that carrier which only offers very dry biscuits, and some nameless yellow drink that tastes quite vile!

I arrived in Delhi 13 hours after leaving Joburg, in a very good mood. My cheerful mood continued as we disembarked into the brand spanking new Indira Ghandi International Airport. This was not the Delhi I remembered with a tiny little airport, characterized by pit latrines that left my jeans all wet when I tried to use one back in 2003. The new massive airport was completed in time for the Commonwealth Games of course. The arrivals hall is covered in a lush multi coloured carpet, (I worried about how they will keep it clean?). There are beautiful toilets where I could sit – yeah!

But some things don’t change so quickly. I could swear the same Dalit (previously known as “untouchable”) woman who I met inside the toilet is still there. Her face had been burnt, she told me back then, by an upper caste family when she went to fetch water from a water point that was reserved only for Brahmins. This woman literally “lives” in the toilet. She is paid a wage for cleaning the toilet, I assume. But she practically hangs around inside the toilet, hands you hand wipes, and for her pains gets some “tips” from toilet users. We greeted each other like long lost friends.

The division of Indian society into castes is something that I still can’t get my head around. Even having lived through and still experiencing racism in this part of the world, I still find myself completely defeated by the caste system. Not that the two systems are poles apart, but I still don’t even have the language to express how I feel each time. In 2003, I had come face to face with it, when the mother in law of one colleague whose home I visited, refused to serve me tea in her good china. She gave me the tin plate and tin cup reserved for the Dalits.
Maybe this is why on this trip I bonded so much with my fellow Dalits. On the third day of my visit I travelled to very remote villages in Tamil Nadu state to meet a Dalit movement which has been reclaiming its land taken by Brahmins in the 19th century. We swapped stories about land, what it means for women’s empowerment and what land rights struggles are going on in my region.
In Chennai city, I met a group of women who talked about life before the tsunami and after the tsunami. I told them about women’s experiences in my country before HIV and after HIV. “Every woman has their own tsunami”, one wise one reflected.

We talked about women’s stuff. Wherever I went, the women were completely fascinated by my dreadlocks, touching them, playing with their own hair wondering if they could “lock” it too. Everyone wanted a picture with my hair! We giggled about sex and sexuality. I was asked why I wore silver jewelry. As opposed to, I asked foolishly? Gold of course! All the women, regardless of where they were and their social circumstances were decked in gold; earrings, necklaces, one bangle amongst twenty plastic ones, nose rings. They all looked amazingly beautiful. I worried about how much they must have paid for it. But I fully understood, it doesn’t mean that if one is poor one must always look it. It was amazing how despite the differences, women’s experiences are similar, just a different geography and different nuances.

The biggest reason I keep going back to India has got to be the food. Indian food is the only one I can eat in its own country. Thai food is very overpowering in Thailand. And I was scared off Chinese food during the Beijing conference (1995), when I was asked to choose my own snake at the door of a very classy restaurant. I can eat Indian food five times a day. And I can eat everything that is put before me. It all tastes wonderful. It smells heavenly. Whether its “wej” or “non-wej”, (that’s veg or non-veg in Ind-lish), everything is just delish. I must confess though how ignorant I was about the sheer numbers of people in India who are vegetarian. I knew about the not eating beef part, but not vegetarians. Being the carnivore that I am, I was delightfully surprised to discover the very many ways in which one can cook vegetables. Of course they seem to have a lot more veggies over there not just the cabbage and carrots one tends to be stuck with in Southern Africa. The fruit on the sides of the road is big, juicy and not genetically modified. I threw the travel doctor’s advice out of the window and gorged.

I was struck by the abundance of food everywhere I went. Eating and or drinking is a constant exercise. Hardly would half an hour pass before I was offered chai, or biscuits, or juice, or chai, and more biscuits. These days I am a caffeine addict so I need strong coffee or cappuccino to get me going. Sorry wrong country I was told, we only have tea.
Strangely I had been in Brazil in April and I was in a tea phase, and I was told the same thing, wrong country, we don’t drink tea here. India has some of the best tea in the world. To enjoy it I soon learnt that I had to say, “tea please, and hot milk, separate- separate”. You have to say the separate twice, accompanied by that nice shake of the head, otherwise you will get very milky tea, with what must surely be a whole basin full of sugar! Even when I eventually got the coffee, I had to ask for separate-separate, so I could get the instant coffee, separate from the water, milk and the sugar and mix it myself. Not quite up to my Doppio Zero standard, but it served the purpose.

But even the best tasting food does get to you after a full week. So on day eight the sight of the big M on the side of the road elicited a huge yipeeee from my Brazilian colleague and I. Imagine our disappointment when we found out that donkeys would have to grow horns before even MacDonald’s could serve beef Macs in the heart of Hindu land, North India. Fair enough. We had to settle for Chicken Macs. Not the same thing.

That India is the new rising global power is visible everywhere. There is construction all over. Even at night, construction work goes on. From Delhi, to Bhopal to Chennai, the country is a giant work in progress. Roads, bridges, shopping malls, offices are going up. The hand of global capital hovers all around. So called international brand chain stores with their dime a dozen similar looking merchandise are taking over. Restaurant and hotel chains equally pollute the space. Young Indian yuppies dressed in the latest jeans under beautifully designed kurtas, sit with their laptops (made in India or China), in air conditioned shiny cafes, speaking like their “cousins” in South Africa in a mixture of Hindi or Tamil, and English.

India’s free media is a delight. Every night I went to bed in the wee hours hopping between channels. Such a pleasure to have so much choice – unlike my local so called cable where we are served warmed up movies and talk shows day after day. I even watched Bollywood movies in Hindi (I think it was Hindi) just for the fun of it. The most fascinating are the news channels. I enjoyed the fiery debates between very serious Marxists, and die hard neo-liberals. I was mesmerized by the quality of reporting and political analysis, from Obama’s visit to the unfolding land scandal in Maharashtra state.

As for my hotels and the goggas, well, this time it was different. I stayed in a two and half star lodge in Delhi and my bad back loved being on one of the firmest mattresses I have ever had. Bliss! In Chennai I was put up in a three and half star, with the whitest sheets that side of the Indian Ocean. This was the incredible India that they advertise on my small screen. I will be going back!

Songs for My Country 2

2010-09-11T11:29:00.001-07:00

“Lelilizwe khalila mali…hee khalila mali…Lelilizwe ligcwele olovha, hee ligcwele olovhola”. This country has no money, hee it has no money. This country is full of loafers/unemployed people, hee it is full of unemployed people”. Lovemore Majaivana was way ahead of his time when he sang this one in the early 1990s. He was wrong on one thing though, this country is awash with money. It is just that it is held by a tiny minority. A week into my holiday, and am exhausted from listening to stories of poverty. Out of guilt, empathy, or both, I just keep giving away cash. This one’s child needs school shoes if she is to go back to classes, that one needs $20 to get good medical treatment. By the end of my holiday, I start borrowing to survive in Zimbabwe myself!

Out of a sense of duty, I accompany my mother to church. Jesus and I have an on-off relationship. We are currently in an off phase. I don’t understand how with all the piety that fills this country he and his father can turn their backs on people like this. Why can’t they hear the Methodists lift the roof with hymn 191. I hope against hope that we will not sing this song today. But right on cue the voices go up, the wailing begins. Ulabantu bakho Nkosi, kuzozonk’izkhathi….You are with your people Lord, all the time. I can’t bear this. I stick an I-pod speaker into my good ear. It’s not my lucky day. I land on UB40, I am the one in ten number one on a list, I am the one in ten even though I don’t exist, nobody knows me but am always there, a statistic a reminder of a world that doesn’t care….
Has Jesus cared to look at all the beautiful churches that have been built in his honor in the last ten years in Zimbabwe? Beautiful, grand edifices, in the middle of townships and cities, fast deteriorating into shanty towns. The chandeliers in my mother’s church are fit for a diplomat’s residence. The congregation is in various states of need and want. I feel over-dressed.

My aunt’s congregation is building a pastor’s manse fit for a prince. The prosperity gospel types are a sight to behold. Just standing outside one is like being on the sidelines of the Oscars’ red carpet. Prayers seem to be answered on that side of town. In the poorest communities churches are under trees. No frills there. I don’t remember which verse says class division of this sort is ok. I should brush up on my psalms when Jesus and I are on again.
I hope against hope again that the preacher won’t ask us to “pray for our leaders”. First they have to define who they mean. Then they have to provide a rationale. My NGO proposal writing nonsense won’t wash here though. A rather over-dressed woman (thank God I have a partner in crime!), stands up to pray for the so called leaders. I don’t want to be part of it. This time I deliberately scroll through the I-pod.
We’ve been taken for granted much too long,
Building church and university,
Deceiving the people continually,
Tell the children the truth,
Tell the children the truth right now.
Bob Marley is most apt in times like these.

“Zimbabwe will never be a colony again,” they like to proclaim on big placards at Mugabe’s rallies and speak-a-thons. Whoever came up with that outdated slogan should be court marshaled by the generals. Everywhere I look my country has quickly, quietly and yet so visibly become one country or another’s colony. The mere fact that we no longer have a national currency is evidence enough. I do a double take when I see American dollar notes and South African rand in the Sunday collection plate. I am yet to be convinced that a US$2 is legal tender. I have never seen this note anywhere. Not even in America itself. Someone seems to have printed two tones of them and dumped them in Zimbabwe. There is a story there…..
It is so ironic that South Africans, particularly white business were so loud in their condemnation of Thabo Mbeki’s role in Zimbabwe. Yet they seem to be the clearest winners from our crisis. From the goods in the shops, to the best cars on the roads, Zimbabwe could very well be a province of South Africa. Bulawayo was long taken over, the rest of the country is following suit. Young men in Mr. Price jeans and thuggish beanie hats speak in Xhosarized Ndebele in Mpopoma township it’s not funny. My friend Sophie’s dad gives me bubble gum and potato crisps from his shop. The rather strange gum which oozes some yoghurt tasting liquid is from China. The chips are South African. Where is a nation going if it can’t even produce and sell its own sweets? Sweeties! Everything is over priced. A mere litre of Cape juice is US$5. Forget good quality, two-ply toilet paper.
A poorly made Zhingaz (as we call Chinese stuff in slang), polyester blouse will set you back US$40. I wonder how many months it will take a civil servant to save up for the skirt to go with said blouse.

Everybody keeps talking about how things have improved. At least things are full in the shops. I am outraged by the prices. There’s no consistency, I feel cheated most of the time. I eventually stop trying to understand this new economy. I ask friends and family to find me what I need. They know where to go and what a fair price is. I feel hopelessly incapacitated. This is my country for heaven’s sake! I was born here. I grew up here. I should find my own way around it. I am angry. “I can’t navigate myself around my own supposed home anymore”, I post my update on Facebook. Nobody “likes”.
Tell me what can you say?
Tell me who do you blame?
No matter what you say it never gets any better,
No matter what you do, we never see any change….

Phil Collins and I are on the same page. Maybe my eyes are clouded by Johannesburg pollution I can’t see this change they all talk about.

The government no longer controls what people read, watch or listen to. There is a silver lining there! Anyone who can afford to, work for it, or steal it, has a satellite dish to watch DSTV (cable). At the lower end of the spectrum everyone who has electricity has the little gadget for pirating South African television stations. Zimbabweans are up to speed with Generations, Isidingo, and the goings on in the South African body politic. An old portable radio is an asset if you want to hear unofficial Zimbabwean news. You catch the offshore radio stations on Short Wave, not on FM. My 75 year old uncle stumbles upon one such station and he is in news heaven. He can’t stop telling me about it.

“I only buy The Herald and Sunday Mail for the obituaries, and business tender opportunities”, a friend tells me. True the obituaries page in state controlled papers are a marvel. We get to know which of the dead people has five sisters all in London. Which of the late woman’s children are all in Canada and or Australia. Who said there was no glamour in death? A chance to show off your diaspora links.
The fictionalized accounts of political goings on are even more entertaining. But I can’t waste a good US dollar on such painful entertainment. I will save it for the toll-gates.
Zimbabwe is a little outpost for media products from across the border as well. The Sunday Times (SA), Mail and Guardian have Zimbabwean editions. I am happy people have alternatives to State controlled media. I worry about the long term consequences. Acquired tastes are hard to drop.
I am ecstatic when I finally lay my hands on the new independent daily, News-Day. I text Trevor Ncube, (the publisher), based in Johannesburg, “your newspaper and sweet potatoes are making my stay enjoyable”. Finally, a paper with an alternative and factual view. But the steady stream of bad news can be depressing. Senior officials paying themselves obscene salaries. Ministers buying yet more new fancy cars. Nothing gives a sense that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Or as someone said, to even tell us that we are indeed in a tunnel, and of what shape?

After two and half weeks I am constipated from all that starch. I am equally constipated from the litany of bad news. I miss my morning fix, Kaya FM and the very loud traffic outside my window on Corlett drive. Isn’t that bizarre? The former gives me a great laugh, the latter reminds me that I am living in a ‘happening’ country. I begin to miss having a proper bath, not splash my rather substantial self from a small bucket. I can’t get a handle on when electricity goes off and comes back on. I have become a big city rat. I want convenience.

I am happy to go back to Johannesburg. I am deeply sad to leave. I want to go. I want to stay. I don’t want to be in South Africa. I don’t want to be in Zimbabwe. If my relationship with God was in a good phase I could sing a hopeful hymn, or even talk to him. I turn to the next best thing I know. I chose Beres Hammond;

The sun, is gonna shine again
Nine out of ten
Remember,
It’s gonna shine again
Your day will come come
Don’t worry about the rocky road its gonna be
At the end of your tunnel
Is gonna be a light

I sure hope that light is not from an on-coming high speed train.

Songs for my country 1

2010-09-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

You can always tell the state Zimbabwe is in from the paper in public toilets and government offices. In December, when I was last here, it was coarse single ply dull beige. The kind that comes apart between your fingers before it even gets to do the job. This August, the public toilets in Harare international airport have a slighter softer pink, but still single ply. A slight improvement but no soap to wash your hands after. The diamond money clearly hasn’t trickled this far down then. “I am a-longing to see you I wanna know how you’ve been doing …..I am gonna catch this flight and when I get home I hope you will be smiling…” Freddie McGregor had sung in my ears, as I got ready to go home for my annual pilgrimage as I call it. So a lack of adequate ablutions is not going to dent my spirits.
August is a great time to be here. Schools are closed, the harvest is done, sweet-potatoes are three dollars for a substantial bucket. That is 3 genuine Obamas as we call the Green buck here, not the Zim dollar which of course no longer exists. It is spring time. Nothing beats the sunshine of a spring day in a Harare garden. It seeps into your bones. Thaws your soul, gives you hope even when there is nothing in the political realm to make you this optimistic about life. For a lazy-bone-sun-lizard like me, it is a good time to forget about the office.

Or maybe I am much more patriotic than I realize. August is Heroes’ Day month. Cynical as much as I try to be, those liberation war songs get to me all the time. “Taigara mumakomo tishingirira Zimbabwe". (We hid in the mountains, determined to free Zimbabwe). The tunes are danceable too. But it is not just music. It is my country’s history. When ZANU keeps reminding us of the 16 years of hard struggle, and you see the endless footage of the war, replayed, over and over again on ZTV, and repeated every half hour on ZBC radio stations, you have to be the most cynical idiot not to feel what it all meant and what it still means to whole generations of us who are still alive.

I love radio, and go to sleep with my MP3 plugged into my ears. I wake up on Heroes’ Day itself to loud commentary from Heroes’ Acre. My friend Nozipho has long left the house to go to the ceremony. Her uncle is one of our national heroes. Every year her family is picked up and taken by the state to breakfast, the ceremony, and then lunch afterwards. All the heroes’ families are given this treat. Thank God the electricity is on today. I curl up on Nozi’s sofa and watch the whole thing on television, from beginning to end. I steel myself to be cynical, I want to dismiss it all as ZANU PF propaganda. After all, Heroes’ Day used to be called Rhodes and Founders, after the big colonialist and his band of merry enslavers. But I can not be cynical. This is real. The commentators read us the histories of the women and men lying on that hill and what their contribution was; JZ Moyo, Albert Nxele, Ruth Chinamano, Herbert Chitepo, Leopold Takawira. I look at their families crowding around the graves, laying flowers, saying prayers. I suddenly find myself weeping. I text my friends Percy and Nyaradzo in Johannesburg; “This is just too painful. Where did it all go wrong? How did we betray all these people?” I ask rhetorically. Percy sends me a rather unsympathetic response, and Nyaradzo tells me she is on Plett Bay having such fun. I am now in a foetal position and howl even more. I console myself with Bunny Wailer;
You better stop this power struggle….it’s causing the nation too much trouble endangering lives of innocent ones…With all this knowledge and education we are in a sad situation…so you better stop this power struggle….”

Dreadful and yet insignificant as this sounds, the one thing that cheers me about Heroes’ Day is seeing Morgan Tsvangirai, Thokozani Khupe, and Arthur Mutambara being saluted by members of the armed forces. The cherry on top is seeing each one of them getting into their own Benz! If inclusive government is only measured by how included every political party is at the trough, I will hide my values under the pillow and cheer. For one day only.

We will, we will rule you

My cheering is short lived though. The day following Heroes is Defence Forces’ day.
We fast forward from the people’s revolution to the men in uniform’s moment to remind us they run and own this country, including us, what we think, hear, feel, and the minerals underground. There they are, goose-stepping just the way Caucescue and Kim Il Sung taught them. They are armed to the teeth. They flex their muscles and their arms, sending chills down the spines of citizens. The words of Chairman Mao, sung by the ZANLA choir over radio Mozambique suddenly ring in my ears, “Kune nzira dzemasoja dzekuzvibata nadzo….Tisave tinotora zvinhu zvemass yedu. Dzoserai zvinhu zvose zvatorwa kumuridzi….” (These are the ways we must conduct ourselves as good revolutionary soldiers. Don’t take things from the masses. Return anything you take to its rightful owners”. Yah right Chairman Mao, have you seen what this lot has been up to in the last 10 years? You think they remember any of your exhortions?

That this is a militarized state is consistently shoved in my face for the two weeks I am in Zimbabwe. State media refer to Mugabe His Excellency the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. We always knew that. We just need to be reminded about the militarization of our state, lest we forget who is in control.

There are eight roadblocks between Harare and Bulawayo. There is no consistent pattern nor ny reasonable explanation for the search and questioning at each one. At one, we (all three of us in the car), are ordered out of the car while they turn my rickety Mazda 323 inside out. At the next one, the policeman/soldier (same difference), demands identification documents, questions me earnestly about my seemingly too long South African work permit. Driving back towards Bulawayo in a friend’s fancier car, we are told that there is some document missing. We can all tell he wants a bribe since the policeman has decided we must be swimming in American dollars. Arguing with a fully armed, testosterone filled group of men is a no win situation. I have been away for too long though. When they say “make a plan” in Johannesburg or at Beitbridge border post I know exactly how much to take out. I can even haggle to get a good “deal”. I don’t know the code word or what the appropriate amount here is. A dollar? Twenty rands? Blasting the man’s ears off with Peter Tosh’s “ I am an honest man and I love honest people…” won’t help. From the look on our driver’s face and the shocked smile on the policeman’s I know I have over done it. I reason that I have increased his measly wages by 10%.

Even at the extortionate toll-gates, there are armed men sitting, watching from the sidelines. In case someone tries to drive off without paying, I am told. They will shoot to kill. Why doesn’t Zuma send General Bheki Cele up here on secondment? I hand over the dirtiest looking one dollar note from my little stash. At least there is evidence that these little dollars are being used to repair some roads where huge craters characterized our highways.

Zvakaoma

I am struck this time by the absence of political conversation. Everybody I meet and hang out with only wants to talk about the just ended football World Cup, family issues, or just pointless gossip. When I do ask the political questions, I get the very cryptic Zimbabwean response, zvakaoma. I love and hate that word in equal measure because it means and says so much, yet at the same time, it means or says absolutely nothing! You the listener have to divine what the speaker means; it is hard, it is unspeakable, where do I begin, it is too complicated, why do you have to ask a question like that as if you don’t know the answer? Shut up sweetie. Take your pick.

Besides the media and NGO types, most of the nation doesn’t hold its collective breadth, as the SADC heads of state summit in Windhoek rolls past. Meanwhile the constitutional road show seems to be chugging along with nary great excitement amongst normal folks who are too busy chasing that elusive dollar. It is the NGO types like me who want to talk about the mechanics of the sham exercise. But no substantive issues thank you, we are not Kenyans. What had I expected? Rip roaring debate? Over what? All the big political milestones have come and gone. None has delivered meaningful change.

I am not sure which song is the most apt for this phase Zimbabwe is going through. I can’t even think of any that comes close to describing this feeling, this state of nothingness. Not hopelessness. Nothingness. This is where that little cryptic word is useful, but used in a joke-sentence – zvakaoma sekupema mupositori. It is as hard as trying to perm the hair of a member of the |Apolostic sect, (who are normally clean shaven). But then again trust Zimbabwean humor, perming a mupositori is not that hard, you just wait for the hair to grow, and hope that someone; the policeman, the soldier, the politicians, don’t chop it off before you get to it with your perm lotion.
It’ll be a hell of a wait. There are many songs to sing while we wait. Bob Marley’s “Zimbabwe” will do for me. Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary…

And the Winners are......

2010-08-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

And so it came to pass, that two thousand and ten years after the death of the one called The Christ, a great football festival was held on the African continent. Such was the excitement, the fun, the hype, the euphoria- that it took a great many wise women (and a few slightly wise men), to fully document what had happened. However, womankind’s vocabulary was not enough to describe this historic event. Unfortunately many of the wise women suffered severe post festival depression that they were unable to put pen to paper. Some gave up writing altogether. Others just took to their duvets and never got up. Others were found wandering the streets calling, “I felt it! It was here! Where did it go?” A few others simply lost their powers of speech. Hence the story will take a long time to reconstruct.
That will be the story in one history book, fifty years from now. It will be an accurate description of some of us. It has been three weeks since the Cup went to Spain, and I have not had an ounce of energy to even write a post script of the Football World Cup 2010. I woke up on the 12th of July all excited and ready to face the day. Then it struck me around noon, that there was no reason I had actually got out of bed! Well, employment doesn’t really count in times like these. By 4 pm the depression was setting in. 8.30pm came. I sat comfortably in front of my tv. Nothing. I don’t even remember what was on whichever channel I landed on. Eventually I skipped through a news channel, following coverage of the Cup’s arrival in Spain. For three days, I channel hopped just to see the cup again and again, and the Spanish fans and their team. I watched reruns. Then it hit me finally. It was really all over. No more jaunts to Melrose Arch big screen. I tried to reconnect with my old favourite soapies. They felt so…..mundane. Desperate Housewives appear even more desperate. Scandal doesn’t feel so scandalous at all. As for Generations…the sooner that Generation leaves our screens the better. Don’t get me started on Ugly Betty, those teeth versus Ayew? Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

I am now in recovery. A trip to 30 degree temperature Vienna helped. Down here in Jozi the sun is shining again. Spring is in the air. I have discovered the joys of walking to and from my office ( I can’t explain to myself why I never did this for the last four years?), with wonderful reggae blasting in my ears. Things are looking up a bit. I have found my voice to finally do that post mortem of the coppa, and of course the prize giving. What is a competition without prize winners?
Let's get on with it then.

The ones I won’t miss

The English. What is there to say? I hear there is now a new phrase, “To Rooney”. This means failure to launch/perform. That is that on that lot.
The only thing remarkable about the Greeks, the Swiss, and the Italians is that ….there was nothing remarkable about them. I didn’t invent that, I got it from a description of Jozef Stalin by one of my favourite History authors. I don’t remember the name of one single Greek player. A Swiss one?
I insist that Algeria must decide to which continent it belongs. Till the day they stand on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and say “We are Africans”, I refuse to even consider them as such. They simply came and went. No comment.

I still don’t get Ronaldo. What the allure is. I didn’t see it. So I remain as underwhelmed as I always was by him and of course Portugal. Ditto Messi. I don’t think I remember him actually kicking the ball.

Drogba, oh, Drogba. Please do something about that hair. I just couldn’t get past it to watch the football skills. Ditto Cisse and Song. Please explain the blonde hair and beards to me? You all were the most unstylish, goodbye!

So much potential, just no delivery

I loved the Danes. I have always had a soft spot for the blue eyed blondes. All the Asian teams were just fantastic. Plucky. Spirited. What is another word to describe their determination against all odds? They were not smug (like the Brazilians who thought this was a walk in the park).

Slovenia and New Zealand had my sympathy vote. But no fire there.

Gone too soon…..

The Mexican fans were the highlight of the World Cup for me. I just couldn’t get enough of those sombreros and the fans’ fun loving spirit. Melrose Arch and its environs will never be the same without the red and green ponchos. We discovered the delightful young Dos Santos. To digress, I do think there is a secret to men who hold their hair with white Alice bands. Dos Santos and Forlan. Those bands worked like magic. All men please take note. Buy one if you can. Dos Santos gets the most promising-rising good-looker to watch award.

Ah the French. All that media hype aside, I felt robbed of those delectable French team boys, (they really are all Africans from our hood aren’t they)? I wanted to see Evra, Anelka, even Ribery. Now Thierry is off to America. America? To play a sport that one American told us is so low on their list of priorities it comes just below hide and seek? Eish!

My local hosts will lynch me for this, but the only one I will miss from Bafana is Khune. ‘nuff said.
They may not have been Indomitable after all, but Cameron still gets the award for sexiest uniform of the tournament. It’s just that colour they need to do something about, but style, sexiness, yes, those boys know how to dress to impress on the pitch.

“Naija” also Rooneyed too soon. No comment there.

My other discovery was Honduras. I will keep saying this – why didn’t someone tell me they had so many gorgeous black men in Honduras? Where have they been all along? You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw the whole team of real darkies! I shall watch them from now on.

The also rans

The cup winners themselves, yes but did they have to score only One Goal? 1 Goal was the name of a campaign it wasn’t a suggestion to score only one goal boys. It was hard to root for grown men in orange. Lord knows I tried dear Dutchmen but it was just too hard.
Beautiful footie dear Germany but do you all have to look so dour? Loosen up! Look like you are having fun. It helps. Learn from Chile.
USA – what did they play again? That beauty pageant sash themed uniform put me off on day one, there was no point watching them from then on.
Australia – stick to rugby. It is better for you and all of mankind, and womankind too. Football is just not for you.
Brazil, drop the smugness, it got you eliminated in such unstylish fashion.
Argentina, the touchy feely thing doesn’t quite work. Drop it, and the Godfather with the two watches.
Chile, better luck next time. Serbia, you will remember that win over Germany forever. Savour it.

And now the Winners…..
1. Most beautiful player- Ayew
2. Good looking and lots of potential – the Boateng brothers and Dos Santos (Mexico)
3. The player with “the most”…Alice band factored in – Forlan
4. The team with the most (sorry Africans you can nail me to the nearest lamp post), Uruguay. An entire good looking team. We will excuse the drab uniform.
5. Sexiest uniform – Cameroon
6. Sexiest coach – no prize awarded. The field was just so dire wasn't it? Where is Jose Mourinho when you need him?
7. Pluckiest team – Japan
8. The happiest, most colourful fans – Mexico
9. If only self belief and hope won World cups award – South Africa
10. The team forever in my heart and dreams….Ghana!

Till 2014 then. I don't know about you all but my bag is packed already.

Off the pitch

2010-06-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

The fun continues. And to think I almost missed this. A year ago, I had made up my mind that the FIFA world cup would be such a nuisance. That Johannesburg would be so full of people and terribly chaotic that it was better to go away. While I do love football, I still haven’t reconciled myself to going into a stadium to watch it since my footballer brother passed away in 1995. So I reasoned, why bother sticking around? Going as far away as possible from Johannesburg and South Africa felt like a good idea. My friend Nancy, bless her beautiful heart – convinced me otherwise. She painted such a glorious picture of how much fun it would be that I wouldn’t want to miss it. Truth be told, I half listened to her, and what stopped me from travelling is that I was broke, couldn’t get myself organized for a whole year, and eventually I just found myself here. Am I glad I stayed. Oh it has been just amazing.

The locals can smile….

Yes they can! I have discovered this in the last two weeks. Surly doormen at various establishments, who I always thought had no teeth, do have their mouths full of pearly whites. They can even say, “hello! Good morning! Welcome!” For the five years I have been in this country, I mostly encountered these grumpy (mostly men), who treated me like a nuisance. Now I get greeted, doors opened. I am invited to come inside.
The women (mostly), at till points at all my closest shops have discovered that I am a paying customer. I get greeted with smiles, and a nice “thank you!” when the transaction is done. I enter these shops at least once or twice a week. I should be on first name terms with Pinky, Palesa and Futhi at Woolies, Pick’n’pay and Clicks by now. But no, I was always treated like that pesky woman (and her clearly coconut son who doesn’t speak Sotho and Tswana). The most I ever got was to be “mummified”, coupled with a scowl. A little explanation; “mummy! Mama!” is what women of my age + race+ weight +perceived economic bracket, get called by pert little girls and boys in establishments. My (seriously empirical), research shows that this is not a term of respect, but rather a form of condescension and simply telling you that you are nobody in their wise opinion.

Respect at last – but only if you are carrying a foreign credit card

The most remarkable revolution has been amongst white (mostly), owners of establishments. Restaurant owners, boutique owners, hair dressers, masseuse, folks who never deigned to look in my direction or if they did, they would quickly summon Mamosebi the black cleaner from the back to come and ask me who (not what) I wanted. Poor Mamosebi would get a rude response in English from me, and Mrs. Snyman would start shouting at both of us for not being able to speak to each other. In some cases I would be followed around by said Mamosebi, or her front office colleague loudly indicating the prices of every item I touched, “one thousand rand! Oh that is very new stock, too much expensive ne?” I was worn down by this running commentary and left empty handed.
I am now a potential customer, These days I get shown around, escorted to my table. I even get waitrons fighting to serve me in restaurants where I used to be invisible. I am milking it for what it’s worth and making fun of some of these folks just for the heck of it.
Mrs S; Let me show you our new boots
Me: Great
Mrs S: Terrible weather we are having, pity it’s summer back home for you hey?
Me: Mmm, ummm
Mrs S: These look fabulous, great colour. You can always use them in winter back home?
Me: Mmm, ummm
Mrs S: Thembi bring the new scarves as well please
Thembi: Yes, I am sure she will love these
Mrs S: Oh eekslent! You will be snug as a bug
Me: Yes. Definitely
Thembi (to another sister standing by); Abantu be overseas laba baya shopa ne? (these people from overseas shop hey?
Mrs S: Great, so will you be paying by credit card or cash madam?
Me: Credit card thanks, here you go.
Mrs S: Wow, I have never seen one of these, but it should go through no problem
Thembi: That’s an interesting one. Overseas ones look different
Me: Mmm, yah…umm
Mrs S: Thank you so much ma’am have a lovely time in our country. Hope your country wins.
Me: (to Thembi and the other sister) Ngiyabonga. Lisale khahle!
Me: (to Mrs S), I am from Zimbabwe and I live just here in Illovo. Have a lovely day!

Not a moving ATM ….for now

Twice this world cup I have bumped into members of the police force. Those men of the thick blue line, who normally love to harass foreigners and ask for IDs. This as we know, as a way of making a rand, or a hundred. As I started fumbling in my handbag for my passport, which I knew wasn’t in there as I had just left it at some embassy for a visa, I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with wide smiles by the men in blue, as they simply sauntered past. The next lot I bumped into helpfully gave me directions as I was lost. “Enjoy the World Cup ma’am”, they waved me off with yet more smiles.
Ma’am! Yes that’s me.
I got the same smiles, efficient service, when I arrived at OR Tambo airport from Kenya. Surprise! I was asked how my “holiday” had been and bade, “a fantastic world cup in our wonderful country”. Our. Not his. Not my. Our.

The unifying powers of football

My heart has been warmed, in this dreadful cold, by the scenes of erm…brotherhood at the public viewing places I have been to. Blacks, whites, coloureds, locals, foreigners, have been hugging, physically embracing one another. A lot has been said, about the unifying powers of football, and South Africans have written about what this festival has done for them. For me as a foreigner living in this country, there has never been a time when I felt like I truly am welcome here like this week. But more importantly, this is the first time I have seen with my own eyes and heard South Africa talk about itself as being an African country, and publicly embracing its own Africanness. I have been physically folded into that embrace. I have seen black South Africans waving Nigerian flags. Nigerian!? That bogey country for all things terrible that have befallen this country? People I never expected suddenly know how to pronounce Cote d’ Ivoire, and wear T-shirts with Drogba’s name at the back. One white guy proudly walked around wearing a Ghanain wig, (or was it German? Those two’s colours are confusing). No matter, he wore it on the day Ghana was playing so I am happy to assume he was rooting for Ghana.
Seeing so many African singers at the opening concert and ceremony of the World Cup brought tears to my eyes. It is such a pity that nobody thought it appropriate to play Thabo Mbeki’s I am an African. The MTN advert with the African footballers just makes me want to weep. It is just a commercial, yet such a powerful symbol of a South African company identifying itself with the continent.
And Africa hasn’t disappointed. It has embraced South Africa back. Everyone I know has been rooting for Bafana Bafana. Even those of us for whom yellow was never our colour, made concessions! We went for the flags and hoisted them all over, polished up our knowledge of the Sotho bit of the national anthem, (we know the first bit), but drew the line at the last bit, sorry. The diski dance will definitely replace the wedding shuffle at many a party across the Limpopo.

All of this will change come July 11th. I hear rumblings of xenophobic attacks being planned in the townships. Some of my relatives have already been told to pack up and leave, before the end of the World Cup. I know I must make a copy of my passport and always move around with it. Mrs Snyman and other shop owners will count their windfalls and take long holidays in Mauritius. Lerato the bank teller and Moses the doorman will go back to their surly ways. But for now, I shall enjoy this mirage, of a rainbow continent.

On the Pitch

2010-06-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

What a week! What drama! What fun! What colour! And to think I almost missed this.
So here we are girls, (and fun loving boys), week one, and we are on a roll. The show got off to an R-Kelly start, and away we went.

Is there anyone on this giant planet who didn’t see the picture of the Portuguese contingent arriving in snazzy (but ill-fitting?)suits. That fashion seems to've passed me by, tight suits. I have received the picture almost 50 times.You can all stop sending it to me thanks. I told you I don’t like Christiano Ronaldo’s cockiness. I don’t care how much he is paid or how much was paid for him, (people who are paid for always end up in tears, ask umm….anyone who was the subject of a financial transaction, including lobola).

Everyone has played their first games now. We have already seen some second matches. So let us take stock of the moveable feast that has been before our eyes.

I love men in uniform

But it has to be of a particular kind. So far the best uniform I have seen is the Ausssie one. This is not a sympathy vote for their drubbing by Germany, the Australian uniform is MANLY. Dark colours. It says, "power!". Lovely matching dark socks. Even most of their boots were sedately coloured. This is how men’s uniforms should be, you know like the air force, or senior army generals'.

But of course the sexiest uniform still goes to…..Cameroon! Those boys have perfected the art of uniform design. Sleek, body hugging. Showing us those chisselled pecs. Samuel Eto’o and his boys look fabulous in those close to skimpy numbers. The only downer is the colour. Hayi, hayi, hayi, as we’d say in various Nguni languages. What’s with the bright colours? I know this has something to do with national flags and all that, but here is the thing. How is a man supposed to look sexy in a green top, red bottom, and horror of all horrors, yellow boots!! Yellow boots? In our old un-PC days we used to call such dressing, kupfeka semuNyasarand. I won’t translate that, just read the name of the country at the end.

Colour
Which brings up the question; what’s with these yellow, red and orange boots? Who makes them? Why? Is there a fear that the players won’t see each other if their boots are darker (manly) colours? Whose brilliant idea was it? I need an essay written on the subject. I do have a very fashion conscious son so I consider myself an expert on the subject of colours. When he was younger, yes, we bought colourful shoes, jackets, hats. Psychologists told us that these made children happy, cheerful, and made us the parents and complete strangers want to pick them up because they looked adorable. By the time he got to 12, we started toning down the colours. I know I am on shaky sexist ground here, but feminism taken completely into account, men should not wear red or yellow boots after a certain age. No. It is wrong.
Staying with colour, South Africa’s yellow, and Dutch orange, were the other colours I don’t think look so fetching on men with six packs, (never mind on women with two tummies). I don’t know who was scarier between the two. Maybe that is the idea, to dazzle the opposition with….colour? The brightness of these colours was magnified by the seas of supporters each of these teams had. From the shirts, to the wigs, (yes dear friends who are reading this from across the Indian ocean, WIGS). I am all for riotous colour and showing one’s national or continental colours. But flaming yellow and blinding orange wigs, also didn’t work very well, off the pitch. The alternative in SA was to don something with the whole full flag. As you all know, those of us who got our freedom after 1980 went a bit overboard when it came to designing flags. They are so “busy”, and such wikipedias of our countries’ symbols that one needs an entire seminar on them. Zimbabwe, South Africa. All those colours were just meant to be splashed on pieces of canvass, not draped on our bodies.

At the other end of the spectrum are the boring colours. Argentina, Uruguay, England. Plain boring. Nothing to write about there. The funniest is Uruguay’s Forlan, in his sky blues, complemented by the now famous Alice band around his hair. What’s the story there? My friend Alejandra who is Uruguayan tells me Forlan is a famous heartthrob, (see below). That Alice band shall be his undoing on the global stage am afraid. Even funnier are some local fans donning these boring colours on their heads. I saw a Zulu man with a blue and white wig. Eish. Let me keep quiet.

Both Koreas and the Japanese have all decided to stick with equally boring colours. Red looks good on demonstrators and socialist causes. Not on the football pitch.

Wrong competition?

I don’t get the American uniform. What’s with the sash running across the shirts? Is this a beauty pageant Obama’s men? Or did you rock up at the wrong competition?

What happened to the mini?

My big gripe with all the teams (Cameroon is slightly excused), is that they are wearing shorts that we call here Clam Diggers. Long shorts that cover everything. Everything. What’s with that? What happened to the mini? In the run up to this World Cup I was brushing up on my knowledge of all things football by watching grainy movies of games gone past. In almost all of them, until about the early 1990s, the boys wore nice, skimpy shorts! That was more like it. We could see these men’s beautifully sculpted legs. That is the point of us paying good money to watch men kicking a pig’s bladder around for 90 minutes. The scores are just the topping. We don’t want to see men in daytime pyjamas.

The men with the looks

And now to the important bit. Who are the cute ones? I am not going to talk about the old perennials. Let’s look at the, ahem, debutantes, if we can call them that. The ones those of us reared on English FA and UEFA are not used to seeing regularly on our small screens.
In our beauty pageant, week one has been won by Uruguay. How does a nation manage to field an entire team of good looking men? England and Germany please take note.
Itumeleng Khune of South Africa has been red carded so we won’t be seeing him again (soon). The child is cute. But that red uniform doesn’t go with his palor. A deep Portuguese green, or maroon would work beautifully.
Nigeria’s Odemwige is another beauty. He carries those hair plaits much better than other men – who really shouldn’t bother. If Nigeria doesn’t advance to the second round, that will be our major loss. Pity the green uniform, the Aussie navy would go very well with his tone.
Andrej Konac from Slovenia is my other new discovery. Darkish, in that attractive Mediterranean way. Mmm.
There is also a good looking one from DPRK, but I was too busy cheering them on, (I studied the Juche idea and am still getting over it). I will keep looking out for him.

The prettiest debutante so far is Mexico’s Dos Santos. Cuteness as cuteness. He just should remove the Alice band as well and let his hair down.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that none of my beautiful ones get knocked out in the first round. Otherwise the light will just go out of the World cup for me.

Happy viewing girls! And boys who know a good thing when they see it.

2010 is here!

2010-06-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

Before you think I have lost my marbles, I am not just talking about the year, 2010 AD. I am talking of THE 2010. Let me school you if you are uninitiated. 2010 here in Saath Efrika refers to the Soccer World Cup, which kicks off a week from today.
That is how everyone here talks about the footie-fest. About a year ago, I watched coverage of a strike by workers in an industry I can not recall. Several of the strikers kept threatening that if they didn't get their dues then "2010 will not come! We will stop this 2010! The government must ekt (act), now, or this 2010 is not going to happen!" For a few days after that I wandered about in a daze, seriously fearing the supernatural power of these folks to actually stop a whole year from "coming".
So here we are. The Brazilian World Cup has come to our African shores. Yes I just called it the Brazilian World Cup, because that is what the kids in Recife told me it is called. I met three groups of children and youths on my visit there in April. As soon as they heard I lived in South Africa the kids were ecstastic. Their teachers asked them if they knew what was happening in Afrique de Sud. "Yes, the Brazilian World Cup!", they chimed more than three times. I am with them on that one. Ooops. I am supposed to be non-aligned right?

2010 is finally so close. I can see it coming. I can feel it. I can touch it. I can taste it. The entire country is in a frenzy. Everywhere you look, it's all about the cup. We are drowning in cup fever. I have been calm these last six months. I even pretended it wasn't such a big deal. Yet here I am with my temperature rising as if I am on one of the teams. I can not help myself. I love soccer. Ever since my late brothers got me to watch matches every Sunday on tv, or in stadiums, that many decades ago, I have been hooked. This is one sport I actually follow and even understand. Well, except for that one offside rule that was introduced way after Jabu (the soccer star of my two brothers), hung up his boots and joined the angels.
I keep calling it the "new" offside rule and everyone born after 1975 pulls a face when I say it. As if to suggest I am one slice short of a sandwich. S'tru, there is a new offside rule, which I still don't get.

Back to the cup fever. It was only this week that it suddenly hit me, I am actually not prepared for this world cup. On Sunday I arrived back from a three week safari in Kenya. Driving down the R24 from ORT (I know it is disrespectful but ORT means Oral Rehydratation Therapy where I come from)...I mean the airport, not the sugar and salt solution...I was finally gripped by this fever in my bones. Dozens of flags are flying beautifully all the way down the road. I started counting how many I could recognize. Sad to say I only managed the African ones and the Union Jack. Bad bad Anglophile Miss EJ.
The flags look so beautiful. The last time I saw any such flag line up was at CHOGM in Harare, 1997. Before that, at the Non-Aligned Summit. The flags were often accompanied by photos of one male dictator or other. Thank Godness nobody saw it fit to hang those for the footie. It's all about the nations and their flags.
Speaking of flags, I must go out and buy one. Or 13? I don't really know whose flag I should be flying. With all due respect to my current hosts, mmm, erm....ja, well....The less said of that the better. It has nothing to do with the fact that my own country could only manage to play "bhora remapepa" versus Brazil in a friendly match this week. Bhora remapepa means literally playing with a ball made of waste paper. The kind we used to play in the townships and rural schools in my childhood. I am not jealous of South Africa's fortune and place in the cup. I just don't handle supporting underdogs very well. Put it down to my Aquarian-winonly-second place won't do-mentality.

I am in this dillema. The organisation I work for has some 13 countries represented in this World Cup! Yes 13, if I haven't forgotten anyone. How the hell am I supposed to choose? Let's see, I could just go by race first? But where does that put France and Brazil? I do love Michael Ballack, but not necessarily Germany. Pity he is not playing. So that's that on Germany then.
I could just go with the Africans. But there is still Brazil and France....Then there is the small matter of England. Like my cucumber sandwich loving President, I have a little soft spot for my former colonial masters. More like a sympathy twinge. All that "Rule Britannia rah rah, sun never sets on the Empire", yet not a cup in sight since I was born? If that doesn't elicit dollops of sympathy I don't know what will.
I also love the Italians. Simply because they are the only country that always gives me a multiple entry Schengen visa. I love their food, the way they speak in that sing song way. The way they get all heated up and extremely animated in discussions. I love their country. I love Rome, I love Milan. I just want to move there. So I support Italy.
The Danes are just sweet and beautifully blue eyed. My two close friends are married to the most wonderful Danish cooks who fuss over me when I visit. They cook, clean the house, mind the babies, and bring you a drink when you call loudly from the veranda. How dare one not support such dream men? If they lose, it is only because they are such gentle-men.

You realise I could go on and on in this vain and pretty soon, I will be supporting every team. I am a global citizen. I love all the countries where I work. Which is the state I am in. So I will go buy everyone's flag (when the prices come down, I really think it is abominable to sell flags at R100 surely).
By late June, I will start the process of elimination depending on various factors, (see below).

I realise I am a bit late getting into the cup spirit. It is too late for me to think of what to sell or how to make some quick dosh out of this whole enterprise. I kept prevaricating over putting my apartment on the market. I had these nightmares of some yobs breaking my lovely bed, (it is a lovely bed, made only for one purpose as Graham Greene would have described it). I feared that some drinkers would dump their beer glasses on my cheap wooden coffee table and leaves marks forever. So there went the rental option.
I could not think of selling any food. I am not the cooking type. I just eat.
I do live two minutes walk from Oxford Street. In Illovo. Could that still be an option? Maybe it is already too late. Where does one start? Do I set up a website? Put up a billboard on Corlett Drive? Will I be able to compete with the rest of the continent which I believe has moved here for the duration? Eish, I will just give up on trying to make any money. I don't think Fifa will licence me at this late stage anyway. I also hear that they are out of Female condoms in this country. Someone sent me a notice today advising all women coming for a spot of "work" to bring their own.

This weekend I am going shopping for my cup regalia. After the flags, come the clothing. Now there is more dillema. I am yet to see sexy t-shirts. I have never understood why t-shirt manufacturers just don't have a sense of style. I mean honestly which women do they expect to don those shapeless made-for men- soccer jerseys and Ts? They are just too ugly beyond words. I made the mistake of not buying the sexy types in Rio, (Ok I don't only support Brazil in case you are now getting that impression). The Brazilians really know how to make women's t-shirts. Even in my dowdy old NGO, they make such sexy t-shirts they make anti-poverty campaigns look fashionable. Women's t-shirts, especially ones made for adult women with two tummies like me, should be fitted at the top....widen towards the waist...and voila you got sexy! Not these long-one-shape-looks grungy-on every single wearer-and your two tummies- shall look like five- in this sack!
I don't do ugly. Not at this age.
The best little Ts I have seen so far, at my favourite chain store are for....Brazil! I am not making this up. These t-shirts are delightful. Black. Tiny colourful sequins making up the Brazilian logo. Shapely. How can one compare with the yellows, the reds, and the other gaudy colours on the market?

I will give the famous vuvuzela a miss. This is a weapon of tranquility destruction that I still don't get. Sepp Blatter, Danny Jordan and everyone else's too loud protestations aside, I dislike the vuvuzela. I stand to be lynched for saying this in public. Extremely loud noise just doesn't add value to the beautiful game. Sorry. Give me the stereotypical singing-gyrating African any day of the week and I am game. That vuvu-thing, no thanks.
Ditto the face paint. What is the point of going out into the world with all that gunk on one's visage? The whole point of turning up at any stadium - unless one's brother/lover/friend is playing is to see and be seen. Yes well, and to cheer. You can't do it in style with your national flag painted on your face. Unless of course you have issues with your own visage, in which case you are forgiven for wanting to hide it in black, green and red.

Which is where my problem has been in the run up to this 2010. Very little media has been speaking to me as a female soccer fan. From the testesterone filled advertisements featuring yesterday's players, to the endless Fifa-rization of the entire country (with Sepp Blatter as the main act), very little has said to me as a woman, "we want you to enjoy this too". The same on radio or in newspapers. It is all about and for men. Occasionally there is the odd advert making fun of big women, (this in a country where the average dress size across the colour lines is 18-20), playing some grotesque imitation of soccer. Quite deplorable I must say.

Until suddenly, a sliver of light appeared from the North - this month's issue of Vanity Fair! Yeah Goddesses! Where have you been? Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Is all I can say. Just the cover alone makes me so glad to be here to witness this world Cup!
Down here in the girls' locker room the excitment and the fever over the world cup is all about the nice legs that will be on display for an entire month. Those legs. Those muscles. Those little shorts. Ah, such titillating delights. Finally we girls get to gawk at this veritable flesh market - for a change. Just for one month alone, it shall all be on display. And we love it.
The competition is not about who plays the best footie, that is the side show. I am running my own parallel competition, and for this I won't need a Fifa licence. I just need a following. So here we are dear friends. It is time to select;
1. The sexiest coach - without Jose Mourinho and all those fuddy duddies to choose from eish!
2. The sexiest player - (no cockiness allowed, that rules out Christiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney sorry).
3. The team with the sexiest uniform; tight fitting, titillating shorts, you know, not prison garb long white ones plus ugly socks ala Malawian team at AFCON.
4. Drama Queeen of the tournament, (Drogba is a contender already).
5. The best looking team; including grooming (no bad hair ala Drogba please), sexy smiles, seriously good looks, great pairs of legs, sexy uniform. The whole package.

I am taking leave from June 11th. I have front row seats - in my lounge, at the Wanderers Club where I am a member across the road, Melrose Arch mall giant screen in the piazza, Sandton Square giant screen. I will wander to the public parks on some days.
May the most gorgeous men win!

To my son on your 16th Birthday

2010-05-04T03:17:00.000-07:00

My little man. Today you are 16. It feels just like yesterday when you were this little bundle in my arms, and I didn't know what to do with you. Nobody had quite warned me what to expect. Every other mother made it look so easy. So effortless. "Congratulations! He is soooo cute! Oh, you are so lucky!" They all said. I was not too sure about that. They call babies "bundles of joy". That is in English of course. I don't know what the Shona or Ndebele equivalent is. The closest it gets is "Chipo chakabva kuna Mwari", a gift from God. I could write a whole thesis on that whole theory. I have always called you my gift from the mushroom.

There is a story we read in Grade 4, about a couple who did not have a child and for years they prayed for one. Finally someone advised them to offer prayers to a giant mushroom, who was known to bring luck. The mushroom gave them the baby, but on one condition, they never made the baby cry, upset, or unhappy. They were told if they did this, the child would vanish and come back to the mushroom. The happy couple promised to do what they were told and got their baby. A few years later the child started behaving like all children, and poof! The child went back to the mushroom.
I still haven't worked out what the moral of that story was. But each time you wailed so loudly, refused to eat anything that was coloured yellow or orange, (you still refuse to drink orange juice or eat mangoes to this day), I felt like that couple. Not that I had asked any mushroom for you. You just sort of happened, and I made the choice to have you. It was a choice.

I am the last born child of my mother, so I had never been made to look after any other babies. I wailed with you. I was totally helpless, not knowing who to hand you over to, or what to give you. Thank God for my wonderful late housekeepeer - the ever efficient Lucy. Now there was the gift from the Gods. She knew exactly what to do with you. Here was a born mother - and I don't mean that in that condescending madame/maid way. She was the genuine item. Her joy was your joy. Your pain was hers. I happily handed you over and cowered in the corner, watching this woman and you create a bond. I became a spectator in your upbringing. For the first eight years of your life Lucy became the mother that I wasn't, or that I could ever hope to be.
That is a story for another book.
Save to say, always remember Lucy and what she meant to you. You were too young to appreciate it then. I am telling you now so you know. So that when you lie on your psychologist's chair sometime from now, you can blame it all on the fact that you had another mother who wasn't me! You can tell the therapist that I was just one of those women who didn't fit into that mould they write about in books, or that they write "mothering" books for. I never read one. Not a single one to this day. Because no book could ever prepare me, or anyone else for that matter. I still believe there is no formula. No theory to raising children. There are no books written for women like me, who love their children, but love them in a very different way to what they tell us. That is why you are in a boarding school, four hours away from where I am. I love being with you at certain moments but not 24/7. I am not one of those women who get "fulfilled" by baking scones for the bake sale, making you a witch costume, or fetching and carrying you from every basketball game.
I will give both my kidneys for you if I ever have to. But I want you to be your own person. To navigate yourself around the world. I want you to become a global citizen, who can chose to live, love, work, enjoy any part of this beautiful world. To see what I haven't seen. To have a network that spans places I have never heard of.

Now that you are at an age where I can have adult conversations with you, let me use this day and this space to tell you what I wish for you. At 16 you can now drive a car or a scooter, (in Zimbabwe that is). Learn how to drive. Don't be like me who is too scared to reverse. I can go forward or sideways. Just don't expect me to go backwards. They tell me it is something embedded in my psychology. But being the villager that I am, I haven't laid me down on a therapist's chair to explore that. Drive yourself around. It gives you freedom, and will give you the licence to explore the world slowly. I can not wait for the day we buy you a car, (with your money honey, not mine), and we take a drive round the SADC region.

16 is the age to explore sexually. You are lucky you are a boy. Yes let's not forget that bit. If you were a girl there would be now talk of you getting married, in some societies you would be given in marriage to some old geyser. That is why I do the work that I do my son. To fight for the rights of girls your age to be free like you are, too choose. To love who they want, when they want. I hope you join me in this fight one day. You are starting to think about sex. Make wise choices. Sadly for you, the word sex is immediately followed by HIV & AIDS. Don't forget you live in a region where this is the topic uppermost in our minds and our lives. You have seen for yourself the huge damage it has done to our family. But it need not be like that. Sex is also about pleasure, joy, fun.
You are still at that age where you don't quite know your own sexuality. At the moment you are totally convinced that you are heterosexual. You are sometimes so homophobic it is not funny! I fully understand. So don't worry there is plenty time to find out. Whatever you are, I will always love you. Be prepared to also change your views about others' sexuality. Don't be a cave-man. I hope I have raised you to recognize that every human being has rights and that it is your responsibility to fight for those rights, and let everyone enjoy their rights. Bigotry, hate, and stereotyping have no place in the society you live in.

Just your having a penis brings with it so much power, privilege, and opens up quite a large number of doors. Coupled with this, the education you are getting, in one of the most privileged schools in this country and beyond, will add to that power and privilege. I so enjoy the confidence that you seem to acquire each and every day you are at St. Andrew's. I have told all my friends how literally you came back from your very first term of Grade 8 and you were walking like you had six balls! I always wondered where that came from when I saw my friends like Brian who walk like that. Chest in the air. Head held up high. Speaking your mind. Asking questions. Looking everyone in the eye. I chuckle each time you have conversations with my friends, you speak like an adult to people in public places, and insist on your rights when you think they are violated. I hope you keep that confidence and that self assuredness. You will need it wherever you go.

The trick though my son, is not to be arrogant. Don't confuse confidence with arrogance. The other trick is how you use your power and privilege of being an educated man. Will you use ito oppress others? To look down upon those who have less than you? Women? Those who are materially deprived? Those who haven't been where you have been? Let me warn you now before you get lost. Don't grow up to be like many privileged men who; have no sense of how much power they wield in such negative ways that they actually curse you if they are ever challenged. Speak so loudly and so abrasively to those with less power as to simply shut them up. Think that women are their possessions. Behave as if everyone should get out of their way because they are lesser beings. It is a good thing to be educated, smart, knowledgeable, and of course to be a man. But use what you have wisely, and justly. It is after all ....a gift from the mushroom....

You must have srong values. Positive values. I will not impose mine on you, but let me suggest some important things; Always hold your family close. In Western society, I am the closest family you have. But you know that is not the case. You were born into my wise, wonderfully huge family. Each one of them has been there for you and me. I hope you will be there for them too. Have friends. Good friends that make you laugh, cry, and share with. Build deep lasting relationships. Be loyal to your friends and family. But not blindly so. Always respect others, elders and peers alike. They will respect you too.

Chose those things that matter. Don't fret about those that don't. Here I worry about the messages you get from TV, movies, and the all too ubiquitous American culture that your generation imbibes by the gallon. You have only been to America once and saw for yourself that not everyone lives in those "cribs" you see on Entertainment tv! Niether does everyone carry that much gold on their teeth or around their necks. As I always tell you, those with real money don't invest it in their teeth or around their necks. Not everyone with a huge car is happy, nor is that huge car even paid for! Money is important, it will buy you all kinds of comforts. But it won't buy you a meaningful life. You will have to define for yourself what that meaningful life is. I will not do it for you.

Read my son. Please read! Anything. Something. Please read. It will widen your horizons. Sadly watching tv, or the internet will never equal reading a good book, a good journal. Be literate. Choose what to watch on tv. Listen to radio. It is sometimes more powerful. Watch good movies with a story. Which will teach you something important. Read newspapers. Know what is happening in the world. There is nothing as embarrasing as asking on facebook, "what is happening in Sudan?" Or, "Who is "Yoweri Museveni?" Hai, no my son. If only for the sake of not embarrasing me, please be up to speed with current affairs.

Travel. Even if it is to East London. It is amazing what you discover about the world, or even about yourself. That is why I dragged you all the way to Vietnam three years ago. I was so proud of you, standing in that sun, with those hundreds of people to see the body of Uncle Ho Chi Minh. You even bought Uncle Ho's bust, t-shit and a poster. You even all about him. I will continue to drag you to more places if I can afford it, because I would like you to know history, so you can understand the present. I don't want you to be ignorant about the past. Travelling will give you empathy, understanding, and connections with other human beings. And of course it is great fun.

Know the history of our beautiful country, and its present politics. You are a citizen. You have not grown up in the country of your birth, but that is the only country that you currently call HOME. Until you chose another home, you owe it to yourself to know what you can about it. Be interested in it.

You are also resident in this great and interesting country, South Africa. It is your present home, (in smaller letters of course). You and this country's freedom were born in the same year. I don't know if you will eventually chose this one as your HOME. For now, enjoy it. Love it. Savour what is has given you. Be interested in where it is going, because you are here.

Someone once said the world is run by those who participate. Join something. Participate in something meaningful. A sporting team. A social club. A debating society. Join a cause. Everyone is always asking you to join one on Facebook I am sure. Find one or two. That is the art of citizenship. If you are just floating about, and letting others define how your world should be, you might as well be dead. Don't float. Anchor yourself. Care about something. Be involved.

I know I am not always the perfect mother. Nor do we always agre on everything. In fact as you grow older we fight a lot about many things you and I. I am not a man, so sometimes I don't know how to deal with your masculinity. But you are my son. I know you will not be so angry with me as to go back to the mushroom. I want what is best for you. I have seen enough harm done to this world by men (and women), who only care about themselves. That is why my fights with you are nearly always about values. About what is important in life rather than what will pass like the proverbial morning dew.

We don't have some rite of passage ritual in my culture, so we will celebrate your birthday when you come on holiday. We will do something fun together. I am still looking for some male role models for you. They will help you deal with all that testeterone, and show you the manly ropes. But as you can imagine that is not as easy as it might look. I have set the bar very high, because I would like to find you men who can teach you to be a loving, caring, sharing, and yet strong man.

For today, I will give you the gift of music. I want you to listen to that wonderful song by Phil Collins called Father to Son. Listen to those words, and call the song Mother to Son.

Somewhere down the road you are gonna find a place,
It seems so far but it never is,
And you won't need to stay,
But you might lose your strength on the way
Sometimes you may feel you are the only one,
Coz all the things you thought were safe...oh now they are gone.
But you won't be alone,
Because I will be here to carry you along
Watching you till all the work is done

If you heart is beating fast then you know she is right
If you don't know what to say well that's alright
Don't know what to do
Remember she is just as scared as you
Don't be shy, even when it hurts to say
Remember, you are gonna get hurt some day anyway
You must lift your head,
Keept it there,
Remember what I said,
I will always be with you don't forget
Just look over your shoulder I will be there

Welcome to a new phase of life my child.

My pet peeves 1

2010-04-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

Life is such fun. It really is. But there are those terrible little niggly things that just make you say "ugggh"!!!!! Aren't there? Those seemingly unimportant yet huge things that just send you into a tail spin and your blood pressure shoots up. If you are one of those people who read self help manuals and want to tell me, "no EJ, you must not bother about those little things, there is more to life than honking combi drivers. Be calm. Breathe in...." You are one of my pet peeves! Yes, you really are. Every human being should get riled up by some tiny thing. Mosquitoes rile you. Hands up if you don't get up as soon as you hear that little zzzzing...zzzing round and round your head, down the other end of the room, Zzzing close to your leg! See what I mean?
Getting riled up is a sign that you are still alive and well. That you still have a heart in there and it can pump faster than it should. So there. Admit it, we all have pet peeves. Here are my top ones, for today. There are dozens more where these came from.
1. People who read too many self help manuals and even sound like one. Live your life. There is no manual for EVERYTHING. If God wanted us to have manuals she would have ensured we are all born clutching one.
2. Dirty toilets. Especially on long haul flights. Or in public places. You wait in that long line to get into a loo, your bladder is bursting. One opens up, but it just had to be the dirty one! You just have to be the person faced with this empty but dirty loo. You give the dude/woman who just walked out your dirtiest look. But she says, oh, sorry, I found it like that. I just did my thing standing up. Yeah right....
3. The wobbly trolley. All I want is to do my grocery shopping. I get the trolley. It just has to be the one with wobbly wheels. I only discover this when it's half full, and I am way down the supermarket. Too late to go back and get a good one - especially in those hypermarkets where the trolleys are kept outside. Why oh why!
4. Hair dressers with no hair. It might appear fashionable, but surely the whole point of being a hairdresser is to show us how to dress our hair. Yours included. How are we to know if you do indeed know how to dress hair if you yourself have none?
5. Manicurists with dirty nails and chipped nail varnish. Same as the hair dresser. Does the word "role model" exist in your vocab? If I am to entrust my nails to you I must be assured that they are in safe.....hands, no?
6. Men in (white) socks and sandals. This seems to be a Zimbabwean men's specialty. I know it came with Rhodesia, but now that "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again", to quote the War-vets, should this sloppy dressing be continued? If you are hot, then show us you are hot by wearing sandals. You can't be hot and cold. Sweet and sour is only for Chinese food honey.
7. Loud men. So crass. So unattractive. Especially in public places e.g. restaurants. Or on your mobile phone. Nobody wants to know that you have "yaaah, that five thousand rands in the headboard drawer on the left. Yes, take that one. Eehh, give it to Mai Senzeni, pulazi (pluus), the other 10 thou in the wardrobe. Yes...haaa very very good!" Ditto the loud man in office meetings, workshops. If you can't impress us by the sheer depth of your ideas, don't shout. Volume isn't intellect.
8. I do so dislike text messaging language. This one just drives me up the wall. There is now something called Predictive text. On a good phone, (please buy Sony Ericsson, it finishes spelling the words for you!), predictive text will save you from repetitive strain syndrome. Why send me such a message, "Luv u. Lts go awt 2mo". If you can expend your energy typing the word AWT, why not just type OUT, like a normal civilised human being. LUV? It just doesn't cut it for me. Either you LOVE me, or please just don't say it like that. It takes away the sweetness. And my peeve has nothing to do with age. I can't stand teens or adults who send me such messages or who send them to each other. Oh and in case you didn't know, once you use certain words repetitively - in whatever language, on your beautiful Sony Ericsson, it will get saved on your phone memory. Voila, you can spell KWAKANAKA in full!
9. People who call someone their half brother, half sister, step-daughter.... I know it comes from some Western cultures, but when darkies say it, eek, it just becomes something else. Either they are your sister or your brother. Full stop. If you didn't want to marry their parent, knowing they already had a child then why did you bother? Who do you want to know that that child is not yours but your hubby/wife's etc? What value does that add to anything? Does that mean you love them half? Or hey are a step removed from you then? Half and half is only for American milk methinks. Not humans.
10. Reply All. The reply function is always earlier/closer than Reply all on most computers. Why reply All, particularly when you don't know the ALL? Does everyone really need to know that, "Alice, I haven't seen you for a while girl. I met your son who looks fab". This in response to a group email telling everyone about the forthcoming African Union Summit. Really my dear.
11. Bankless banking. I love technology. But there is a limit. I want to see my banker at least once a month. I want to shake her hand. I want to be assured that she is a good egg, who will not run away with my small savings. I don't want to talk to the faceless call center worker in Bangalore, when I call my bank in Sandton.
12. Uninformed shop-keepers. It doesn't matter that we now politely call them shop assistants/sales consultants/merchandising technicians. They are still shopkeepers. Why keep shop when you don't know what is in the shop or what isn't? I particularly can't stand the ones in record shops who tell me they have never heard of Gregory Isaacs. Or the ones in book shops who have do not know that Barbara Kingsolver has a new book out. So what is the point of your presence in a record shop? Adding to the ambience of the place?

These are my top dozen for today. What are your pet peeves?

The joys of internet dating

2010-03-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

I am on leave this week. I just want to chill, enjoy the sunshine, eat lots of Easter eggs, and hot-cross buns. So I am going to write about something totally frivolous! Internet dating. Well, it is not actually as frivolous come to think of it. This is serious business. For starters it is not exactly cheap. At some R350 a month or even more, depending on the site, that is quite a lot to fork out. That is not peanuts by my standards. Then there are the hours you spend on the internet itself, (more money to the service providers), plus your own time. The latter can add up to quite a lot of person hours, just creating your profile alone. That killer profile that is supposed to get the whole world of possible dates impressed.
That is such hard work I can tell you.

As indicated in my 45th birthday blog, internet dating is now the new way of dating, since men in my age, social class, and reproductive stage cohort are now hard to find on the street - so to speak. It sounds almost like a cliche, but it's true. Men in my cohort, (all the above taken into account), are either looking for 14to 25 year olds, or are already married and all they want is a side salad, or heaven forbid they are actually very single, have always been single, so you are bound to wonder what the heck is wrong with them?

Thanks to technology one can now meet a man who is in Mexico, Bahrain, or even (the latest one), Tuvalu, (where is Tuvalu? I am not being silly, I have no idea where Tuvalu is so I have to look it up on a map soon). Gone are the days when we just had to make do with the MuZezuru in the flat opposite yours, or the very boring guy in the admin. department whose sexuality you can't quite determine. On the net, you are supplied with a vast menu. Lots of embillishments of courseon their profiles, but you get the whole toot. You know how old he is, they are not shy to actually tell you how old they are. It is true then that the older men get the more they actually feel they are much more desirable than they were in their 20s. I am amazed at the honesty. But I shouldn't be. Take Toby, his profile says he is 66. He is a handsome widower, who is looking for a woman (aged 25-45), for a serious relationship. He promises lots of fun, lots of travel, fine dining, and the best things that money can buy.I have seen loads of men over 65 or 70 as well. There is no sell by date where dudes are concerned, the older the better. I still remain fascinated by the age group of women the older guys seem to want. The younger the better seems to be the maxim. Inside every man is a Hugh Heffner waiting to pop out?

Some take this honesty thing a little further. Rod, or Hot Rod as he nicknames himself, all of 58 years of age, tells us that he is "happily married", but he is looking for a woman "full of life, to share life's great joyful moments with".
What am I to decipher from Hot Rod? That his wife has lost her interest in life? What would that be about? Has she perhaps become menopausal and therefore struggles to enjoy endless bouts of sex? Or that she has cancer? We will never know. Hot Rod, remains sizzling on the web. There are many more Hot Rods. They even tell me how many children they have. What their wives do/don't do. I guess it is the same as in real life really. So the fact that they put it out in cyberspace should not come as a shock. It is still amazing though to see them advertise their "availability" like that. Maybe their wives don't know how to access the internet, and or neither does anyone remotely connected to them.

Some of the profiles are quite amusing. Almost all the men I have met seem to be "athletic, sporty, enjoy hiking, the out-doors, gym, very fit". They are also very accomplished, as Jane Austen would say, they like classical music, reading, going to the theatre, and art. Wow! Mr Darcy lives! In Cyberland! So if these 59 and 76 year olds are so sporty, who then is dying of heart attacks and makes up the frightening global statistics of male mortality? By sporty do they mean rooting for Man-U on Saturday afternoons in front of their giant flat screens? I can do that, and in fact I do do that without fail each weekend, but I call myself a couch potato, and I don't go anywhere near stadiums. I support Liverpool, just for the record, not Man-U. I also support Jose Mourinho, not the team he coaches, just him, the man looks soooooooooooooo FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINEEE. So how do I put that on my profile in a way the guys would understand? I also find it hard to picture any of these very high income earners, very acccomplished men hiking up churu chomumunda maVaShine, (that means the small ant hill in my late grand aunty VaShine's maize field). By athletic I am pretty certain they mean their late blooming libido which is now out of control because of Viagra!

As for the love of the arts, mmm, let's see. Classical music? That is meant to be the height of sophistication is it? My repertoire in that department is rather limited. Actually more like zilch. Theatre? Do they mean ala Market Theatre kind? That I can relate to definitely. My son is studying dramatic arts and I love what we used to call "kuekita!" (Acting, not performing, that is new fancy language for the arts pages of the Mail and Guardian). I did my fair share of school plays from the nativity play, (ask my mum I was always Mary, I was never one of the little lambs in the manger, or goodness me, Joseph's donkey!), to the Merchant of Venice in Grade Six, (I was Shylock!), to Horatio, much later in life. I can relate to that. But then I don't think men of that age will be impressed to know that I played Shylock and Horatio because none of the boys in my class cut the mustard. Totally so not the kind of woman they envisage massaging their feet when the arthritis sets in.

The reading bit is fantastic if its true! There are men after my own heart! I can live with anyone of them from Jesus in Bolivia, to Dave in Randburg. Oh, come! Oh come! I mean that literally boys. We can spend all our days, and nights turning the pages. But wait, what would we be reading? That is what I want to know. It doesn't say on their profiles and there is no room to explain what kind of "literature" my suitors like. With one or two I can see they do read good serious literature. Useful stuff that actually teaches them something. The rest I am not convinced. Surely if they were serious readers why, oh why would they be such bad spellers! That is the bane of my internet dating. I know, Jesus and Rahman can not be expected to have perfect Anglaise given where they are coming from. But am sorry, if one is serious, then they owe it themselves, if not to me, to at least do a simple spell check. Surely every computer comes with a spell checker? There is just no excuse, and it is totally insufferable, (is that the right spelling? My excuse is that I can't find the spell checking device on this blogspot. Someone please help!). Eagerly seeking a mate as I am, I just can not bear the bad speller, the bad grammar man. No, somethings are just too important to ignore.
"Why are you QUITE?" asked Paul. "I am waiting for your respond", quoth Sipho.
"You are a very nice looking women. I am a one women kind of guy", bragged Thabo.
Ok you get where this is going. I should not be mean about my current hosts, but really, they are the pits! Woman, women, quite, borrow me your pen. The list is endless. I can not cope with this bad grammar and spelling. I just can't If I dated them for real I would end up taking my red pen and consistently editing them as they spoke. Bantu education or not, bad English is a date killer.

I shall stick to the Sultan over in Bahrain. At least he impresses me with his bling in cyberspace. There is also always Jose the poetic one. I forgive him the grammatical errors, he is after all a sexy Latina. "I am truly loving you. When will you meeting me my love. My angel. My mouth is wait your sweeet kiss. My body is paining your soft touch. Fly, fly, for me here in Buenos Aires".
I could happily produce sextuplets for this man. If only I still had a uterus. Put up your photo on your profile Jose, I will fly for you in Buenos Aires. I have the wings.

21 March

2010-03-22T06:30:00.000-07:00

The weather was exactly the same as it was today. It was 10 years ago. Not very cold. Not very hot. It kept threatening to rain. Then by 11am it started raining. A blinding torrent that just went on and on for a few hours. I was cold. I could not get out of bed. Just like I couldn't today. My feet felt like lead. My head felt like someone else's log. Thankfully it was South Africa's human rights day. So I could sleep all day if I wanted. Hunger pangs finally pushed me out of bed though.
As we ate brunch, my aunt Phiso, my brother Derek and I, the phone rang. A loud piercing ring, as if it needed to ring louder that day. Nobody stood to pick it up. We were all too scared to pick it up. We all knew what that call was announcing. I looked at the clock on the wall, as my aunt rose to get the call. It was already after 12 noon. I could still catch the evening flight to Harare, then my brother Bruce would drive us to Bulawayo. I stood up, and walked past my crying aunt who wanted to hand me the phone. I went into the kitchen, washed my hands, wiped them nicely and even rubbed some nice lotion as if I was getting ready to go on a date.
My aunt kept holding out the phone. I took it from her. My mum was on the phone, wailing so badly she didn't need to say anything. I don't think she ever said anything. I don't remember if she did. I calmly said, "It's ok mum. We knew this day was coming. What can we do? We did what we could. That is how life is. I will try to get on a plane tonight. I will see you later ok? Don't cry now. I am coming".
As if I was the one who would come and wake my brother Happiness up from the dead, and make my mother happy again. Make us all happy. Like the short-cut for his name. Happy, we called my second elder brother.

It was a good name, Happy. For that was how he always was. Our parents were very optimistic. They had given us all very similar....happy....names. Gloria. Jabulani (which means be happy or rejoice), Happiness, Gladys...Everjoice....They must have been on a high for many decades. A high which vanished as the decade from 1990 wore on, losing their children, one after the other. Still it was a lovely touch. We all had names that must have made them very happy, positive, and glad to have us. That was as life should be. Bright and full of promise, possibilities. Happiness.

I don't remember what Happy was like as a child because we didn't grow up together. He was living with (my cousin in English), Bruce's mum and dad. Bruce and I lived in the village with our grandparents and my mum.
The few occassions that I saw him at Christmas, Easter, or some family gathering, I just remember that he was always laughing, a loud racuous laugh that always reverbarated throughout the house, or vlei, or wherever we were.
I knew him more when he became an adult.
He still had the booming laugh. Made louder by drinking. He could laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Much to my grandmother's annoyance. She didn't think it appropriate for anyone to laugh like that. At every function, or holiday Happy would get thoroughly sozzled. And laugh. And laugh. Then he would fall asleep in the middle of an argument or conversation. Snore very loudly. Completely lights out.
Then suddenly he would wake up, as if he had been with us all along and ask, "saka mati toita sei?" (So what are we going to do?). We would all laugh, and laugh.
In 1993 he fell dead asleep in the middle of an argument about how to conduct our eldest sister Gloria's funeral. We argued and debated. Happy continued to snore. Strangely he continued to perch very comfortably on an upturned crate of coca-cola.
No rocking, no falling face down into the fire. No. Just snored in a perfectly upright position.Then calm as an April afternoon, he opened his eyes. Yawned loudly. Stretched himself and announced, "yes, definitely we just go to Doves Morgan tomorrow morning, have the service at the chapel there and bury her soon after. I don't think anyone disagrees with that, do they?" He stood up, dusted off his Pierre Cardin pants and strolled off in search of a beer.

Ah the designer clothes! That was another of Happy's trademarks. Any day of the week. Anywhere he was, my brother loved GOOOD clothes. We almost killed each other over who would inherit his beautiful shirts, trousers, shoes, jackets. I went to see him in Mater Dei hospital in February, before he died. As soon as he saw me he asked if I had a car. He told (told, not asked), me to go to his house and fetch half a dozen items of clothing. Each by its designer name. The man was not about to lie about in striped hospital jammies.
During the December holidays, he came home for Christmas. His last. Everyone of my mum's neighbours and church members who came to visit would come in, as they normally do, nicely and meekly. Looking very sad and sympathetic. They would shake everyone's hand and sit down. Then they would ask, looking around in wonder, "ko vakadii vagwere?" (How is the one who is unwell?). Their eyes darting around the whole family, wondering which one of us could possibly be ill. Happy would be sitting up, in his most beautiful clothes (and socks!)! So they could not imagine that this designer clad man was in any way ill. He would laugh and put them out of their discomfort, "hee hee, it's me! Ah, you saw the nice and clean clothes and wondered eh? Ah I am very sick. Very sick".

Happy passed away on the 21st of March, 2000. He was only 40. On a day just like this. South Africa's Human rights Day. How ironic. Or apt. Depending on how you see it. My brother like many of his generation, died of AIDS related complications. This was the year 2000. Access to treatment was not as easy as it has now become in Zimbabwe and in many parts of the world. The cheapest triple therapy at that time was close to R2 000 a month. A small fortune for any of us by any standards, nobody in the extended family could afford to sustain this expense for however long. We tried all options, it just looked and sounded grim. The public health system could not provide anything other than cotrimoxazole. Happy's medical aid could only pay for hospital stay, (private no less), and the same cotri, but not sustained triple therapy. We simply watched our brother die. The right to health-care a distant dream, a wish.

By the year 2000 my family had become experts at this watching and burying business. We even got on first name terms with the undertakers. Between 1993 and 2000 we had buried at least 8 members of the extended family. You would think that made the subsequent deaths easier, understandable. But nothing ever does. Each time it is different. Harder than the last time. Much more painful. That is why my legs felt like lead this morning. That is why the blog never got finished on the same day. So you are getting it on the 22nd.

Am glad I waited though. Because there is something to celebrate as well, and so besides remembering my brother on this day, I will remember that this is the day the (modest), healthcare reforms were passed in the United States!
I feel like a kindred soul to the American people, (the ones denied the right to health care that is, not the other lot!). Access to decent, affordable, nay, FREE healthcare, is a right billions of people do not have. In this sub-region, this has been made stark by the HIV & AIDS epidemic. The simple fact that millions of people died because they could not afford life saving drugs is a tragedy of mega proportions. Young, energetic, people, the future of our families and generations. It sounds so tiring saying it over and over again. In the United States, the seeming land of plenty, millions do not have access to health care. Most of them are poor black people. What I find unfathomable is how others, with money, privileges and access to healthcare which they take for granted, do not think that the right to health care is a universal one. They think it is theirs only because, they are the ones who "who work hard and deserve it" (their words). Like the rest of humanity doesn't? Modest as the changes in America today are, it is something to celebrate, and not take for granted.

In Zimbabwe and many other countries in the SADC region, access to free, or very cheap anti-retroviral therapy is now much much better than it was 10 years ago. It is now common to hear people on public transport in Gweru say, "Ah ari right sterek, ari pa-chirongwa"...(she is ok, she is now on the program! Meaning, anti retroviral program).The changes have not just come about though. Civil society movements, women and men living with HIV fought for the right to free anti-retrovirals. I am glad I have been on that front-line. In my own small way.

If only my brothers and sister had had accesss to treatment. If only our government/s hadn't waited so long. If only. My brother would be teaching my teenage son a thing or two about high fashion today.

RIP vaMawarire. May the angels enjoy those dazzling clothes and that great laugh.

We wuz there!

2010-03-11T10:31:00.000-08:00

Beijing. Or as it is pronounced back home, Bhezhing! We wuz there. September 1995. It was a beautiful summer. It rained endlessly some days. But mostly it was nice and sunny. For more than two weeks, thousands of women filled the streets of that populous nation. You would think we would have been invisible. Yet how could big women like some of us not be visible? Everywhere we went, we caused a stir. Some of the women and dozens of children, (plus a few boldly lascivious men), came up to touch our hair. Our beautifully, braided, plaited, curled, straightened, dreadlocked, African hair. Some went further, feeling our bodies. They were fascinated by our ample butts. Little kids dug their curious fingers just to make sure the butts were real. Were they soft? Hard? Mushy? They giggled with delight when we shrieked in horror, or anger, or just scaring them away. Clearly they had never seen such. And in such large numbers too.
The taxi drivers jostled to take us to our various destinations. We were a curiousity. I could imagine the stories told back home to fellow drinkers, wives, nay the whole village/compound, "I touched one. She felt so soft. I swear she was THIS HUGE! And that hair, it was done in very complicated plaits like? Or was it for real? I don't know. It was very....different. I wish I had a camera. I swear, it looked like she was carrying tiny little snakes all over her head...like this...and that going like that...". Trying on clothes in the markets was a giggle fest for Chinese women and ourselves. "ha ha madam, no, no, madam, not size, not size you. Not size you, please madam..stop! Stop! Arms flying about, horror, hands acrosss shocked mouths that I thought I could even fit in those seemingly voluminous dressing gown. I gave up after a while. The women happy that no stitches had been ripped, they would give me little silk scarves to placate me. Giggle. Giggle.

The whole country must have dined on stories of these colourfully wonderful women from all over the world who had taken over the city of Beijing for the 4th world conference on women. I can happily say, to paraphrase that stuff which we used to write on tree trunks, "we wuz there". It was an amazing experience. That would be the understatement of the century. Amazing just doesn't begin to describe how it was. In Shona we say, being told how it was is like having somoeone describe something that is on your back, (note this saying was crafted in the days before mirrors so take that into context), i.e. something that you can't possibly see or imagine.
Any women's rights activist worth her salt had to be in Beijing. Pretenders too. Curious on-lookers. Plus the development tourists.
Just as curious as the Chinese were about us, we were curious about China. My friend Lisa's mum arrived in Beijing from Santa Fe, and immediately declared in her gruffy American accent, "this is what in the United States they call a foreign country!"
For a start Chinese food didn't taste like....Chinese food! Years later I have learnt that the so called Chinese food we eat outside of China, or Thai out of Thailand is made for Anglo-Saxon palates, and is not the real deal. After a week, my friend Nomsa and I started craving fast food, chips, chicken, beef. We happily found what was probably then the only MacDonalds'. The next day we jumped for joy when we happened upon Hard Rock cafe. We even bought the t-shirts emblazoned Hard-Rock Cafe Beijing.I just couldn't take chances with all those snakes in cages in front of fine restaurants. I was not an adventurous eater. Eating something with yellow plain curry used to be my idea of high risk.

We even took the time out to go pay homage to the body of Chairman Mao. Silly us, nobody had warned us that this is not a feat to be attempted on a Saturday. Nor had we read the literature. By the time we made it to the square, (9.30 am and this was the crack of dawn for Nomsa and I), the line of visitors was snaking round three or four blocks. We gave up instantly. Getting a taxi back to our hotel was another nightmare. Taxi drivers had been given their proper drill on how to handle these foreign visitors. After answering half a dozen questions from a rather important marshall of sorts with a walkie talkie, we were shoved into a taxi and the driver was told to take us straight to our hotel. Reqeusts to be dropped off at the silk market were met with a deaf stare from the driver, who suddenly lost his ability to communicate in English. The whoe city was teeming with intelligence officers it was like being on the set of a spy thriller. I caught one reading through my notebooks in my room. At breakfast or lunch they came ever so close to collect your plate, lingered just a little bit longer, just to catch some more of that "plot" on sexual and reproductive rights. Talk about power and control.

We were not in Beijing for the sights though. We were there to get a new international consensus, a program of action for women's human rights world wide. And we got it. Signed, sealed delivered, the famous Beijing declaration and platform for action. Some of us had worked for this since the early 90s, through the many other UN conferences preceding Beijing; Vienna, Copenhagen, Cairo, Dakar. To look back it sounds rather stupid that the women's movements were mobilized under a very simple slogan, Women's rights are human rights. Well aren't they? I hear my 25 year old daughter ask? Aren't women just human like everyone else so what is special about women's rights being human rights?
To think that 15 years ago, not every government in the world thought that women's rights were human rights sounds unbelieveable today. But it wasn't. Even today, the practice is still very much the opposite. Women are still not regarded as human beings in their own right in many families, communities, countries, etc in the world today. I always tell how in my father's language (Shona), you will hear someone say, "toda vanhu chaivo", i.e. we want real people, people. In my mother's language, Ndebele, they will say, "sitsho abantu khanye, khanye, abantu abazwayo, haikona abafazi". Bad translation - real feeling and thinking persons not women! You can still hear that in 2010. This very 21st century.

But I digress. We got the Beijing platform for action. It was not just the document that we came away with. We came away with dignity, pride, and as we say in my language (you have by now figured the languages my parents and I speak are different right?), with our chests in the air. There is no translation for that. Beijing became a synonymn for something powerful, something to be feared. It became a swear word for bad women like me. Women who knew their place in society and were going to occupy it with no qualms at all. In popular parlance though Beijing was something/someone real men and "good women" must stay away from. In meetings, churches, workshops, public transport, on the radio and tv talk shows we were publicly castigaed as "vakadzi veBeijing". The women of Beijing is a bad literal translation.

In 1999 I met a cute young Zimbabwean boy and started dating him in Johannesburg.
The fellow liked me a great deal and started introducing me to his friends. One fine Saturday afternoon as we drove down Jan Smuts Avenue with one such friend, me sitting in the back, the two of them in front, the friend asked, "you keep calling your girlfriend EJ what is her real name?" "Ah sorry, its Everjoice" boyfriend declared very proudly with a wink at me in the rear view mirror. The friend who was driving suddenly screeched the car to a stomach churning halt. Looked back at me with his bloodshot hungover eyes, and screamed, "Everjoice, Everjoice Win? That Everjoice? The Beijing woman?"
My poor IT expert lad, who I eventually gathered did not read current affairs and could not tell his Beijing from Biarritz asked in a puzzled tone, "Beijing woman? What is that? What does it mean?". The friend started up the car, shaking his head, worried, upset. Needless to say after this, where the hare went is where the dog went too. Mr IT vanished into the bowels of Egoli. His loss.

Older men were no exception. My father, to this day, when he and I quarell over some thing, (normally power and control in the family), he will glare at me and say, "remember this is my house. My family. This is not Beijing". This is meant to silence me instantly. In mixed organisations, when men want to silence a woman who is speaking her mind or questioning something, calling her a "Beijing" is meant to be the highest form of insult. Enough to silence a scaredy cat forever.

I will forever remember the Beijing process...not conference, process, as that which awakaned me to the diversity of women. We landed in Beijing in all our diversities.For me personally the learning was what we would call Fast Track - in Zimbabwe. I had been born and raised to think there was only one type of woman in the world. Heterosexual, married, divorced, widowed, single, but invariably with children. Reproduction the final badge of belonging. It was through the 1990s that I came to meet and know lesbian women, (I am still "discovering" others, trans, bi, inter....I am a Methodist villager, please understand), many of whom have become great friends and co-Beijingers. I will never forget the furore that was raised back in Zimbabwe by media reports that "lesbians will also be in Beijing". This was just before Mugabe made his dreadful comment about homosexual men being worse than dogs (this was to come in 1997 at the Zimbabwe International Book-fair, and of that lots later in another blog).
The media head honchos were incensed. So were some of the "nice and decent" women who worked in NGOs as well these media houses. One was dispatched by our public broadcaster to specifically take pictures of this abberation. On the first day of the NGO forum she came rushing at me breathlesslelly, "so are they here? Those lesbians? Have they arrived? Have you seen them? But you people how could you allow them to come here?" She fired dozens of questions, her lovely big eyes bigger than ever.
All I managed to say was, "I haven't seen a crate being off-loaded from any of the airlines marked LESBIANS. But as soon as I see it being off-loaded I will come find you".
The said woman has since become a journalist with an international broadcaster and lives in the United States. It was some of these hated women who have been the staunchest human rights defenders and who supported those fighting oppression in Zimbabwe, including defending the rights of journalists like hereself. I wonder if her views have changed since? Maybe I will ask. Heteronormativity is a huge mountain to climb, (there is a new word for you. We say learning does not end).

To think that barely 15 years ago, violence against women was not recognized as a human rights issue somehow feels so unthinkable today. In Vienna 1993, at the World conference on human rights where women's movements put the issue on the conference agenda and got it squarely in the declaration some African governments could barely conceal their anger that we had brought this issue to as one put it, "an important and serious meeting of governments, not a family gathering". A Minister from Uganda tried to make jokes about it to my colleague Florence, but deep down he was enraged. You have to say this in your best Ugandan English for full effect.
"Now you, you Mrs Florence (put the L), are you people mad? Mad? You people. You want the UN to discuss how and when I beat one of my wives? If I slap her, she must run to the police? And to the UN? To say the honourable so and so beat me? And then?
This is not serious business for governments surely? Please you women. Let us enjoy our lives. Don't spoil things for us. Go home now".
The fellow was laughing, but quite seriously glowering at us. Threatening in his tone even.
But there the language was adopted in the Vienna Declaration and in Beijing too! I should find that Minister one of these days to check how his blood pressure is doing.
15 years later, at least a dozen countries on the continent of Africa have at least one piece of legislation on violence against women. Some have two or three. Millions of women have been educated about these laws by women's organisations, (remember the Musasa project's one hour domestic violence program presented by the fanstastic Rudo Kwaramba on ZTV anyone?). Ah the Beijing women not only came back from China with a piece of paper, they invaded living rooms. At prime time too. Squirm, squirm.

I am so happy to claim my little badge of honour as a Beijing woman, (my dislike of cheap easily torn Chinese goods flooding markets in Southern Africa and putting millions of factory women workers out of jobs not withstanding). The Beijing conference was not just a big conference. It was a watershed. It was that moment where one says I felt and SAW the earth move. For real, not the other times we fake it. The many jibes and nasty name calling aimed at those of us who went and or subscribed to Beijing, are a sign of our success, as so many feminists have declared. The attempts to scare others, women, men and girls, from us, by this name calling have not been largely successful. Young women like my daughter who was recently sexually harassed in the hotel she works have Beijing to thank for giving them a language in which to describe what happened, why it is wrong, and it is Beijing that in many cases gave them laws and policies that they can wave in front of the harassers' noses and demand redress.

It was the processes around Beijing that showed the world there was something a global feminist movement. A movement with a voice, power, with leaders, with resources, and networks. It was we the women of Beijing who got all the sticks and stones thrown at us, but who have remained a resource for other women, with our organisations, our shelters for abused women, our legal advice centers, our research centers, we have put other women in decicion making positions. Ordinarily it is the women who believe in what Beijing means who are simple friends, neighbours, and co-workers at the other end of the phone line/email/fence/who can support other women when they want to claim their rights.

Today as I walk around anywhere in the world, I do so with great pride and as we say in Shona, Nemutsindo...I have no idea how to translate that, something like, the earth shakes. Not due to my plus size, but due to the fact that I am, and therefore I can. Beijing gave me that mutsindo and I carry myself with equal erm, weight..

The last two weeks, I was at the UN Commission on The Status of Women meeting in New York, seeking to re-live the spirit of Beijing 1995. It was rather difficult to do that in freezing temperatures that enveloped the city of New York as we arrived for the NGO forum. Heavy snow fell on the night of February 25th and by the 26th the city and its environs were snowed under. It took me an hour and a half to land, 2 hours to get my luggage out, and another hour and half to get from JFK to New Jersey. It was truly hard to re-live the moment and muster the excitement.

After a few mugs of coffee and the famous New York bagels though we thawed and got going. Just seeing all those women I have journeyed with since that time was enough to lift my flagging spirits. We reminisced about those glorious 1990s. What the series of UN conferences had meant. Not just as meetings, but as spaces to connect, energize one another, find one another in all our finest diversities, and most importantly lay claim to our space on this planet. Some of us are older, wiser, grayer, but hands down, we all looked fabulous! We have become better dressers and make up artists as we grow wiser.
As more women came into New York so did the temperatures rise and the sun peeked through for our benefit. It was wonderful to see lots and lots of young(ish), looking women, clearly better dressed than us all old foggies put together (who said feminism isn't sexy)? They were excited, energetic, with serious attitude, impatient at the slow pace of registration at the UN, kicking up snow dust. They spoke very loudly too about their impatience at the pace of fundamental transformation in the world. The revolution is very safe hands with this group in charge. What with their blogs, their tweeting, and face-booking, ah, a far cry from those days of snail mail, and sending packages by courier to only one office in Cameroon where everyone had to collect from. Or waiting till you met someone who knew someone who could carry their ticket to Gabon. This is a new world.

The diversities got more diverse by 2010. A young sex worker from Uganda (I promised I have nothing against Ugandans!),shocked her Minister who had declared there were no sex workers in Uganda walking the streets and they arrest them. She stood up. Impeccably dressed. Not a hair out of place, and declared "Minister I am so happy to meet you here at the United Nations. But we must talk when we are back home". If the earth could open up..?
The woman had come with a whole group of organised sex workers from many parts of the continent.
As for those lesbians the journalist wanted to see in Beijing, she would have been spoilt for choice. All kinds of sexualities were there. Everywhere.
Education has a lot to learn, goes that old saying.

As to the contents of the Beijing plus 15 meeting let me leave that for another day. For now, I am just so glad to say, We wuz there in 1995. We wuz there again in 2010. And by Jane or Jove, we shall still be there when the 5th World Conference rolls into town. It better be Beijing in summer again, please,just for good measure, and to irritate those who haven't gotten the message.If you are a woman of whatever variety, and missed 1995, help me in campaigning for Beijing Cut 2. This is my new project. Only one condition, you have to believe deep down in your heart that ALL women are entitled to enjoyment of their human rights. And be prepared to fight for that.

sorry I am late!

2010-02-27T08:42:00.000-08:00

I am a day late! But promise not to be a dollar short! New post coming this weekend. Watch out for it.

Unpacking my suitcase

2010-02-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

I have carried this packed suitcase around for five years. More accurately, 10, if we count from 1999.
Every night I would re-pack it again. The next day, I would pick it up. Ready to leave. Each day was the same. I scoured the websites for news. The good news. I developed the habit of sleeping with both my mobile phones on, fully charged, and next to my head on the pillow. Every little "ting-ting" woke me up. I cursed loudly when the stupid adverts came through from the service provider. Every call home, from friends, I listened intently for that encouragement. I wanted to hear them say, please come now. Everything is great. It will be wonderful if you came back. I lengthened the calls, just in case they would say it. Telkom made a small fortune off me.

Today was the day. Tomorrow I would just pick up this suitcase and head for the airport. I carried the suitcase with me on all my travels. Guatemala was a nightmare since I could not roam on my South African mobile for an entire week. Drat! I worried myself sick when I went to visit project areas where there was no network. I was convinced I would miss that vital sms. That all important call. Still I wait.

I have lived in this holding pattern since 1999, the first time I left my home in Harare, Zimbabwe, to come and work in Johannesburg. At the end of my two year contract I strangely accepted another job in the UK. After six months, I fled back home. In 2004 I moved back to South Africa, where I had vowed - rather too loudly to anyone who cared to listen - that I would never ever return. At that time, I rationalized it to myself - and also to those who wondered why I was going back again; oh it was different this time. I was only going so that my son could get everything he needed. You know kids. They just want too much stuff which is no longer available here in Zim. Oh its really because my new employers have moved to Johannesburg. So technically I was being "forced" to move. I really didn't want to. Well, the internet connectivity was much better, and air travel much more direct rather than hop skipping and jumping from Bangkok to Harare via Joburg.
Mmm, I really didn't see myself staying there, no. Not really. I was just here for the job. Give me my Harare any time. On and on I went.

I willed myself to dislike this country, its people, and everything about it. That was easy enough to do. I just rode on the wave of negativity that I found in abundance. Crime! Corruption! Bad governance! The ruling party is just just like our ZANU PF! I wallowed in all of it and comfortably wrapped myself in this blanket of anger and gloom. This was familiar territory. After all, I am from a country where unhappiness is dyed in your wool.

Everything irritated me. Everyone. And they just couldn't get anything right. The locals spoke too loudly, hai! The taxis were a bloody nuisance, with their loud music, their ceaseless tooting for customers outside MY window! My window - which faces Corlett Drive, a busy highway. The doctors here just didn't "see" well enough. I went back to see my Dr. Audrey when I went home. The hairdressers just couldn't twist my locks properly. I needed my Phineas, dirty little salon towels and all. He is my perfect Phineas. Don't speak of the banks, the post offices, the plumbers, the tailors, the whole lot of them!

The food in the restaurants was just too..bland. And badly cooked. Ugh, they need to get lessons from my 40 Cork Road on how to make a decent vegetable lasagne. As for the cocktails? Yikes, my daughter should run courses for these bar men. The security guards just irritated me. No good reason, I just got irritated by them. Looking all happy and yapping loudly to each other as if they have no care in the world.
I turned into a Rhodesian and muttered through clenched teeth - these people!

I developed a routine - home, office, mall, home, office, mall. My little triangular existence. I only went to church three or four times and stopped. The preacher was too slow. The choir too old. The rituals too white and boring. This was not the Methodist church of vaJevo and Bishop Mukandi. Sundays are for sleeping till mid day. If I wanted to watch a movie, I would catch it on my long haul flights. I made sure I went on interesting routes for this purpose. It took a lot of effort to get me into a local cinema.
I discovered there was a beautiful public park down the road from my flat after three years. I never went that way. Too scary. On foot? Besides, what was there to see? Just more locals and their dogs? The sun could shine all it wanted, I just wasn't going to go out and enjoy it. Or see it. Not here. I would only soak it up on my mum's lawn in Gweru.
The gym is also down the road. I hated the whole concept of gyms anyway, I told myself. All that showing off and seeing to be seen. I was not one of those types. Even two articles in magazine echoed my exact sentiments. The gym was just another social place. And I was not here to be social.

I was only here on a temporary work permit. Everything about my life had to also say, "temporary". Three years ago I was offered the opportunity to buy property. I just took it because..well...it just sounded too easy, a nice thing to do. Not that I wanted to do it, mind. I did not want to look like I actually "lived" here. When immigration officers asked me where I was arriving from - it didn't matter whether I was telling the one in Portuguese speaking Brazil, or the bemused one in India, I would launch into a rather agrressive explanation; I work in South Africa. I don't LIVE LIVE there. You undersand? I live in Zimbabwe. That is my country. That is my home. I am going back there. Anytime now. So I am not "from" South Africa. I am from Zimbabwe. I have nothing to do with South Africa. Once I was told to take a seat and wait on the side at Rome's airport because my story sounded too complicated and fishy. I fumed at these idiotic officers who just didn't get it.
I launched into the same long explanations to complete strangers who tried to make conversation. Being a black Zimbawean with a history of migrant labour in my blood, this sounded like an important concept to explain to people. There is a difference beween home-home, and house. Home-home is kumusha, ekhaya, like in Shurugwi, my village, where my grandparents are buried. That is where I grew up telling people I was "from". Then there is home-house. The one in town. Where you just stay, but you don't actually "live", because nobody is technically from a town.
Sounded like a similar thing in this context. I work-stay in Joburg. But I live-live in Zimbabwe. How difficult was that to understand?

Everything in my flat screamed "temp", transit lounge, waiting room. I could not buy those lovely coffee mugs because, I would only need them for my real coffeee drinking when I went back to my real home. Those chairs would be great - yes, in that year when I go back. Oh the lovely pictures I saw in the gallery, I could just picture them on my proper walls back home. I made lists of what to get when the time came.

Every little chink I got, I skipped into Zim. To see my family and real friends. I didn't want to make any here. My son was shipped back home every school holiday. I would arrive all excited and full of energy. I wanted to see everyone, everything, do all the nice things I wasn't doing in Joburg. I called everyone as soon I touched down, as I waited for my luggage - let's have lunch, let's have breakfast tomorrow, what about a braai? I kept a little temple in my house, ready for my arrival. Nobody could stay there. It was my space which I wanted to find exactly as I had left it. I kept a car ready for my arrival, all year round.
I went on binges, eating everything I didn't allow myself to enjoy away from home. Even the air smelled different and the sun shined brighter because - this was home.

I finally put down the suitcase in January. I have been unpacking it, bit by bit, and I am still in the process. Last Christmas I finally realised that my family and friends get exhausted by my excitement when I visited Zim. They all have full lives that they live when I am not there and they are not going to stop and entertainm me. I realised that I could no longer understand half the conversations that people who live in Zimbabwe have. I can interject here and there. But it is no longer my conversation, and I don't own it the same way they do. Sometimes I can not relate to the jokes, or the "language" they speak. It feels like another country. Which is what it is. Still my country of birth, but not mine in the same sense anymore. I am learning to let it go.

I still love my country. But I also love where I am now. I am learning to love it each day. I have opened myself up to loving South Africa, my not so new home, it's people, and it's sunshine.
I have also come to realise that I can love both countries. This is not a monogamous sexual relationship. I have already imbibed the spirit of my host President! Liking where I am does not make me dislike my home. I feared that liking South Africa would make me unpatriotic. When I came back to Joburg after Christmas, I was so happy to be back I worried about this new feeling. I texted a few friends and got back some wisecracks. These friends saved me from this painful space that I had entered.

Once I started unpacking this suitcase that I have carried around in my head, I have been amazed at the beauty all around me, and the amazing people around me. There's the very friendly Sunday newspaper vendor at the traffick light outside my window. The security guards in my office building and apartment complex. The beggars who fight for prime time spots at the same traffick light in Shona and Zulu who have become my buddies. I take long walks in the park near my apartment and happily declare, "oh I feel so refreshed", just like a proper yuppie. This is me the villager come to town, enjoying walking as if I never walked 5 kilometres to and from Nhema School St Francis Mission in Nhema!
They have amazingly fresh food at the Woolies down the road as well. I walk there and chat to the staff. I buy the washed salad, the ready to eat meals, and the ice cream is to die from. The little pleasures of life suddenly feel more pleasureable because I want to enjoy them.

My friend Nancy has been my saving grace. She zoomed into town a year ago and my life has not been the same since. Well for a start she has a car. So off we zip to drink coffeee, see that person, and that one. We sit in the sun on Sundays and read the papers. We follow it like giant lizards...from brunch through to sundowners, then its back HOME to sleep.
I even enjoy local football on tv, ok, one day at a time, I haven't reached the going to a stadium part. I still haven't figured out which team has more Zimbabweans so I can support it! I even follow one soapie. I love the radio stations, the opennesss, the democracy (and its not a cliche). I even called into a talk show recently and gave an opinion. It felt good. I so enjoy the politics. I can watch, listen, laugh, get all heated up as if I have a stake in this country.

I love my country of Citizenship. It will always be home-home. It will always be my first love. My family is there. My BEST friends are there. I invested all my youth in that country, and I am emotionally invested in it. My ashes will be scattered there when I die, (family take note). I still carry my green mamba with great pride (apparently that is what my national passport is called in ex-Zimbabwean white circles). I haven't quite gotten round to applying for permaent residence because it feels too, permanent. I still listen to the news about my country. I feel deep pain every time I hear something terrible that has happened. But I have had to learn that I can not be in this permanent holding pad anymore. I have a life to live. I have children to imbue with a sense of optimism and joy for life. I can't keep doing this to them anymore. They need to make their own choices about where they want to live, and what they will call home. I was holding them in the same holding pad.

For anyone struggling with being away from home, I highly recommend reading Children of the Revolution by Denaw Mengestu. It will change your life.

I don't know when or if I will be going back to live-live in Zimbabwe.
For now, I have almost finished unpacking the suitcase. I will enjoy this space and all its wierdness. Cocktails anyone?

My cup runneth over

2010-02-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

Forty five. 45. Or more accurately, 45!!!! I have always had a thing about numbers that are multiples of 5. In primary school, I rejoiced when counting out loudly and increased the volume when I got to them. So one more time - FOoooortyyyy FIVE!!!!
That is how old I am today. I am suitably middle aged. As the born agains would chant - it is good to be here! It is a wonderful place to be.

Let's start though with the the bad bits of becoming middle aged. As far as my children are concerned I literally have one foot in the grave. "When you were younger.....? In the old days how did you....? I don't really expect you to understand mum because you are....?" So begin some of the choice things my almost 16 year old son says to me increasingly. In their eyes I belong to the museum. A relic. If I wiggle my butt to hip hop I get dirty looks as if to say, "please honey don't embarass us, you don't even know who the singer is". True at some level though. I can't be expected to surely distinguish between bad music, and bad music. Gone are the days when music was deeply meaningful and artists were just people. Mmm yes, those were the days.

It is the same out on the streets. Here in South Africa total strangers refer to me as "mummy", or "mama". I am told that is supposed to be a mark of respect. A honorific like "madame". Well if that is the spirit how come my white friends are never referrred to in this way? Worse, one of my exes had saved my number on his mobile phone as Mummy 2! As you can guess there was a mummy 1! Yikes! How and why we both got "mummified" in this way I don't know. I am just happy to be a mummy to my little brood thanks, and not the entire universe. What happened to "sisi", or the generic, "aunty". I can live with that. Mummy?

As I walk around in the malls (a modern form of entertainment which I can now thankfully participate in with great gusto and frequent regularity,thanks to the generosity of credit givers), I have learnt that when I see a guy walking towards me with a big smile, he is not actually smilling at me. He will be smiling at the little nymphette behind me. All of 13 or 12 years of age. Internet dating sites are even worse. Yes I have taken to trawling those too - the quest for the frog heats up at this age - men my age are looking for toddlers. They even have the audacity to put that on their profiles. Isn't there some sort of international covenant we can craft against this at the United Nations? "I am a laid back lad, easy going dude, looking for fun in the sun, romance and good times. Preferred women of of all races aged 18 to 25. James 52.East London". Eeek.

I guess I could pass myself off as a nymphette. My face is what George Bernard Shaw would have described as "aged anywhere between 18 and 50". The joy of wrinkle free melanin enriched skin. With a little help from a great French cosmetic house with the white and red brand. Trust me it works girls. I have also been blessed with breasts that doesn't sag. Well of course with a little help from Bravissimo. If you don't believe me ask my friends Revai and Priscilla. We all swear by that bra maker. Among us we shall keep Bravissimo in business for a very long time. Chest out, shoulders back, foundation garments on, little smudge of war paint, I am good to go. I can give that James a great time any day of the week.

Unfortunately the other bits of my anatomy aren't quite behaving themselves anymore. There is the middle age spread which in my case has just completely gone out of control. Even the foundation garments aren't sufficient to contain it. It's like flour to which too much yeast has been added, spilling all over the place like that.
I had a waistline once. I swear. It was down there somewhere.
Speaking of down there, nobody told me it turns into a silver lawn? One day there was just one, pretty soon the entire village was silver. I am too native to go back for Brazillian wax. Twice was enough. This was in the days of he who called me "mummy 2". As Prince Charles once said, The things we do for England! Ei?

I get this sense that half of my brain is gone. Some days I can not remember where I am and why. Just this morning I woke up freezing cold, and I thought climate change had really hit Southern Africa. It took me 30 minutes to remember I am in a hotel room in London.
The older I get, the more cynical I have become. That goes with a crisis of faith. My poor mother doesn't know where she went wrong with me. I grew up a decent Methodist. I could sing the whole hymn book with eyes closed. If you know the Methodist hymn book (the Shona one), you will know this is no mean feat. I knew my Corinthians from my vaEfeso, (Ephesians to you Anglicized lot). I did my good works and God was in my life. I don't know what to believe in anymore and where this God is these days, ref. Haiti and my country falling apart at the seams.

But today I want to celebrate this wonderful milestone in my life. I live in a region where women's life expectancy is down to 36 years. I have lost numerous relatives and three siblings, all of whom passed away before they turned 42. It is a great tragedy when turning 45 is a huge deal, as my birthday today is. I don't take for granted reaching this milestone. I am deeply grateful to that higher power, wherever she maybe. As Oliver Mtukudzi sings, "hauzi huchenjeri kusara takararama", (it is not because we are clever that we are still alive). I am sure there is a greater purpose in HER plans for me.

It is absolutely wonderful to be this age, wobbbly bits and all. For a start I can declare that I have arrived. At so many little bus stops and I am still going. I am now officially allowed to be a cantankerous old woman. I can say anything. To anyone. And get away with it. I can blame it on menopause. Or whoever gets offended can dismiss me as past it anyway. Whichever way, who cares I get away with it.
I can stridently insist on my rights (and more). As a woman this is not to be scoffed at. With age come all kinds of privileges. All I need to do is to look daggers at someone that I want to fight with. Keep looking. Hard. Shake my silver locks. Then let out a loud sigh, and hint, just hint that this might be followed by a shrill protest/demand. Quick as a wink, I get what I want. I don't need to bang tables anymore. I just stare you down.
My children know when I just look at them like that, they better behave/change/give up that seat for me/do what I said.
As for the men, ah well that's a walk in park. Arms across cleavage. Head to the side. Slight shake of the silvery locks. Toothpaste smile. Yes mummy!

As I turned 42 I noticed that a lot of the angst I had in my life was slowly ebbing away. Body issues. Fears about everything from floods to ...well everything really. By last Christmas it was all gone. Vanished. I can't even remember why I ever had this much angst. Things that seemed to matter when I was 30 suddenly don't seem to matter anymore. Like reading and responding to every email. What to wear or not to wear. I suddenly feel like I have so much time, and so many possibilities to do a whole lot of things, from what to buy, to what to wear, just sitting and reading, eventually doing some work. I don't feel like I have to prove anything to anyone anymore. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, owned the factory, sold it to the next loser.

Speaking of factories, the biggest liberation came when I got rid of excess baggage three years ago. Excess baggage a.k.a the uterus. I love what it gave me, but it just had to go. No point lugging around something excess to requirements. And even if someone paid me, I would not buy it back. Ever. It is wonderful to finally feel I am a person, and not my uterus. I am no longer defined by it. Nor do I need to plan my life and travels around its moods. All that seemingly trite stuff older women say about being in touch with their own bodies at this age is all TRUE. As the little slogan on my favourite jammies says, I know what I want, and where to get it.

I am grateful to be in this place today. Not this freezing city, please! But this middle age. I feel as if my life has just begun. I am privileged to have lived through so many historical moments. In my own small way, I am glad I have contributed a few things to other people's lives in this world. I am privileged to have been part of feminist groups and social justice struggles. I have not just been a fly on the wall of humanity. I have been living on the frontline/s. Roll on 90!

My cup runneth over.

Remembering Bob

2010-02-04T10:50:00.000-08:00

No, that other one isn't dead! Yet. But if he does die I will write a blog remembering what he meant to me. There is a story there...

I am not a morning person. Come to think of it I am not any time of day person either. It takes me a good 45 minutes to get myself out of bed. When I am in my flat in Johannesburg, or my home in Harare, I put out one hand. Slowly. The other one remains where it is. Too cold. Too numb. Too exciting. Hey this is not that sort of blog.

I reach out under my pillow. Yes I am one of those strange people who goes to bed with my mobile phones and radio remote control under my pillow. I flick the cd player on. I crank up the volume, " I want to disturb my neighbours, blow them to full watts.....". As I do this, I look up across the wall. My eyes light fully open now. They alight on his beautiful photo on that postcard I bought in a dingy shop in Brighton. He looked so handsome. Smiling that gorgeous half smile. Dreadlocks beautifully swept to one side. I put up the volume some more. Thank God I am right on a busy road, the neighbours have never complained about it. Or maybe they just think I am up to my "darkie" ways, I will never find out. "Love to see when you are moving to rhythm. I love to see when you are dancing from within. It gives great joy to see such sweet togetherness. ..These are the days when we tread through Bablylon...Jump, jump, jump, Nyabhingi....!"

At this point, I get out of bed, and try to do this jumping bit. Trust me, its quite a sight. My day is set up. From this moment on I am ready to face the world.

I love Bob Marley's music. I have all his cds. Even the old original versions of the Wailers' songs. It is the closest I have ever got to being a fanatic about anything. My late brother Jabulani, who was a music and soccer fanatic introduced me to reggae and Bob. I was very young then, and I had no idea what the music was about. I could not understand half the lyrics either. This was in the days before cds, internet lyrics, and those now ubiquitous cd. sleeves where its all there.

In those days we kept song books. These were little hard covered note-books where you wrote down the lyrics of your favourite songs. If you had a boyfriend, he would write one for you. I got one when I was in Form 2, full of saccharine songs like "you to me are everything the sweetest song that I could sing oh baby". The very nice, but really boring boy had no idea that this was not my music. I wanted to understand what "bredren, I'n' I" meant, and who "Jah" was.

All I knew was that this was important music. When Bob Marley played, my brother went into a kind of trance. He would sit on his bed, or on the floor and pay serious attention, imitating the Jamaican patois to the best of his ShonDebele abilities. This was different from how he would respond to Black Sabbath, or Led Zeppelin. This was different. This was music for the soul. I got hooked. The first vinyl record I ever owned, was Bob Marley's Coming in from the Cold, which I won in a competition on Zimbabwe's Radio 2. I still have that LP - as we called them.

The day Bob Marley died, I was so devastated. It was the first time in my life I understood what death meant. My brother Admire had died in 1976, but I was too young then to understand what it meant. It all felt like an unreal dream. When Jabu and I met during my school holidays after Bob's passing we listened to his music the whole week. Every day. Into the wee hours of the morning. And we wept as if our mother had left us.

Tomorrow marks what would have been Bob Marley's 65th birthday. I am sitting in this place where I hardly know what the social scene is like. My friend Percy who should know where they have a Bob Marley memorial night says he is off to relax in some mountains. I don't know why someone born in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe wants to see more mountains. Methinks he has been hanging out with too many white people, " We had a fantastic time in the quiet mountains....it was sooooo peaceful...." Mountains? Where there're centipedes and other goggas? But I digress.

If I was in Zimbabwe, (the hankering after my home, again), I know I would go to Harare gardens and dance all day on Saturday with "vana dread". We would skank, scream, and toast to Marley's wonderful life. But more importantly, we would listen to his music and FEEL what it means to many people throughout the world. I will not let the day pass quietly though. The party has already began. Since this morning, I have been playing Bob's music non stop.

Now that I finally understand the lyrics, (thanks to the sleeves and the internet), I can fully appreciate what he was talking about. It doesn't surprise me that every time I travel to any part of the world, and visit very poor neighbourhoods, the only music I hear on the radios, in the community halls, or on the public buses is Marley's. Because my hair is dreadlocked, I get greeted as, "eh Bob Marley!". In Ghana last May, the young men in the street markets kept referring to me as "Ras!", and I would get that fist bump handshake, then happily, I got a discount on whatever I wanted to buy. In Sierra Leone, one guy kept following me playing his Rastaman live up! I didn't feel threatened. Eventually he came close enough and we listened to his radio together. He was very excited to hear me sing the lyrics perfectly.

In Haiti, (oh Haiti!), last September, Marley's music played loudly in so many places.

In many Asian countries people in remote villages are very fascinated by my dreadlocks. They can't understand how the twisting is done and if it can be undone. So in my effort to explain the difference between locks, extensions, and braids, I keep saying, "my hair is my natural hair...you know...like Bob Marley?" Suddenly their eyes will light up, they will mimick a singer, and we know we are communicating. Not just about the hair.

And since I am sitting in this country where sex and the sexual life of a big man is in the news, I have to reflect too on my hero's sex life. Like many men of his kind; famous, powerful, popular, he just seemed to not know where to "put it". And he did put it in too many places. Children everywhere. That is the bit I struggle with. But that is the subject of another blog.

Tomorrow, I will have a one woman celebration of Bob Marley's life. I will put on my rasta cap and groovy colourful dress which my friends Nyaradzo and Trevor brought me from Jamaica. I will get up to my favourite song, based on the speech by Haile Selassie, (before he lost direction), "WAR". I have re-written the lyrics to suit my struggle as a woman.

Until the philosophy which holds one sex superior, and another inferior,is finally, and permanently discredited, and abandoned....

Until the shape of a person's genitals is of no more significance, than the colour of their eyes,

Mi say War....yeah....

Until that day, the dream of lasting peace...world citizenship,

And until that day,
The African continent
Will not know peace,
We African women will fight - we find it necessary -
And we know we shall win
As we are confident
In the victory

Of good over evil -
Good over evil, yeah!
Good over evil -
Good over evil, yeah!

Living on the frontline2

2010-01-28T11:03:00.000-08:00

Several people have asked me; so what is this blog about? Why a blog? Who am I hoping will read it?
My one new year's resolution is very simple - WRITE! I love writing. But I never have enough time to actually write. Actually that is not true. I always find excuses not to write. I am too tired. I am too hot. Too cold. I will write tomorrow when I am sitting more comfortably. There is not enough light in this room. I have so much work to do. Who will read this? Will the editors like it?
How will this play out on the net? Back home in Zim? So I censor myself. I write one paragraph and delete half of it. By the next morning I don't want to look at my laptop again.
By last December I had 19 pieces in all states of incompleteness. Some are two sentences. One is a whole 9 pages.
So this year, I shall write. Because I love to. I want.
This blog is for me. First. I am talking to myself. I believe this is an affliction that is common among people of my ilk - middle aged semi-retired-bored-looking for new lease of life types. Or maybe its the brimming full of ideas but nowhere to take them bit. Whatever it is, I want to write so I don't talk to myself loudly along Corlett Drive.

I have "so much things to say...so much things to say", as Bob Marley sang so beautifully. About my personal experiences in this life. There is a new experience each day. I am living on the frontline of LIFE itself. I am not a silent fly on the wall. I am here. I see. I feel. I think. I do.

Iwill write about my family. Or more accurately, what is left of it. Since 1993, I have lived on the frontline of HIV & AIDS. They are both still here. Wreaking havoc in our lives and bodies. As a woman, I have a particular experience. I have been promising myself that I will write a book about it. Maybe these can become the first chapters of that book. We shall see. But it's not doom and doom in my also ever expanding crazy extended family. I have raised the most wonderful children - even if I say so myself. I have loving, wierd, sometimes a pain in the wrong end of the body- cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters, each a book in her/himself. I love them. They are my life's frontline and keep going. I will write about them and to them.

I am living in hugely fascinating country. For the last six years I have lived with one foot raised to leave. But I am here. This country is a story a day. I have a front row seat in its wierd and whackiness. I want to write about that.

My own country which I have been under the illusion that I will be going back to tomorrow, next week, next month...Sigh...is yet another front. My head is there. But my body is here in Johannesburg. My head will think, feel, see. And my hands write.

I have a wonderful job (yes really, even though I moan about it sometimes, it's a wonderful job, in a great organisation, with amazing people!). The job takes me to all kinds of interesting places. From China to Haiti. From Mozambique to Sierra Leone. I meet very interesting people. I eat strange and wonderful food. I will tell those stories.

And where would I be without my friends. They are shield, my front liner-cavalry in this sometimes dreadful world. They make it worth getting up in the morning. There are the loves and the heartbreaks. These will get a blog or seven!

So what is this frontline? It's everywhere and it's somewhere. There are many front-lines.
It's my life. My space. My perspectives.
I am happy to share this frontline with you.

2010!

2010-01-21T05:29:00.000-08:00

It's finally here. The year that is synonymous with something marvelous ....which is going to happen. I live in a country where the year means a lot; "2010 is coming! We are waiting for 2010! Will you be in Joburg in 2010?" I heard a lot of it last year. One woman even said, "hee, if this 2010 doesn't come, there will be trouble". As if the year itself was not going to dawn, or God was going to order it cancelled.
I dont know why I am feeling excited about it myself. Its as if something big and important is going to happen. Fifa World cup aside - am so looking fwd to seeing those gorgeous and not gorgeous men on my soon to be bought giant screen tv. Yet, that can't be all. I don't know what's coming. Or what I want to come. But whatever it is, I am waiting for it with open arms, and other parts of my anatomy if need be.
I am excited. I am so calm its unbelievable. Its like I am on some kind of tranquilizer. This is me for heaven's sake. End of last year I was stressed out I was ready to collapse and scream at the world. Suddenly, I am calm as, the little stream in my home village. I turn 45 next month. I don't know why 45 feels so - ominous? Important? Exciting. But it's the one birthday I am so looking fwd to for the firs time in my life. Even 40 didn't feel this interesting.
My son turns 16 in May. He will be able to drive me around after that - yeah!
My mum turns 75 in December. That's totally exciting.

Roll on 2010. Bengikulindile!