Face of Zimbabwe: 2009

A friend of mine attacked the start of the new year with gusto. He went to a New Year’s party where he did his level best to get as drunk as he possibly could. When I saw him the next day, he had a hangover of note. “I believe”, he declared, “that all Zimbabweans should get the worst hangover they possibly can on New Year’s eve; that way they start the year feeling sicker than the sickest of dogs and then they can try and tell themselves that things can only get better in 2009.”

His Zimbo humour did make me laugh, but apart from that moment of mirth there is very little else that I find amusing about the start of the New Year in Zimbabwe.

My ‘Face of 2009′ is already burned in my mind and the year has barely begun. It comes to me via an experience of a relative of mine, which he had while driving on an isolated stretch of road between two towns.

He said he saw a child standing in the middle of nowhere crying its heart out by the side of the road, trying to wave down cars. An adult sat crumpled in the dirt next to her.

When he stopped, he learned that the child was with her grandmother, and that the grandmother was very very sick. The small girl had been trying to help her Gogo to find a way to get to a clinic or hospital and they had walked through the bush for miles. When they reached the road, Gogo’s legs gave out, and she could not find the strength to stand up again and the child was too small to help her stand and keep going. All she could do was sob, and try and wave down someone who would stop and help her.

My relative helped Gogo into the car and drove her and her grandchild to the nearest hospital. He said they had a long way to go and Gogo was silent all the way, very ill and every last bit of strength drained from her just trying to reach the road. The little girl, he said, sobbed the whole way there. He said she was crying in grief and fear, but that she also kept thanking him, her gratitude that he had stopped at all was heartbreaking.

He left them at the nearest clinic in the care of doctors and nurses who probably don’t have the medicines they need to help Gogo, and I fear she will probably die. ‘Happy New Year’ to that tiny little girl? I think not.

There is no amount of alcohol on the world that can give me a hangover headache that is strong enough to match the twisting pain I get in my heart and stomach when I think about that little girl. Unlike a hangover, this pain will not pass and I can’t tell myself that when it has gone that 2009 can only get better. I know that there will be more of the same.

I state the obvious when I say that in this millenium, in 2009, a small child of primary school age should not be staggering through the bush in the middle of nowhere, entirely responsible for taking her dying Gogo to hospital. She should not be crying by the side of the road begging cars to stop and help her. Of course she should not. All reasonable people would agree with that but no one can reasonably find a way forward. The bottom line is that the problem this child had – her Gogo dying and needing care – was her problem alone.

Another friend of mine recently travelled through the rural areas, visiting quite a few remote places. She said that she only saw the very elderly and the very young, that all the ages in between were missing. We speculated that those of working ages – the mothers and fathers, the strongest – had either left for South Africa to try and support their families, or that they had died from AIDS related illnesses.

All reasonable people reasonably argue that the solution to Zimbabwe’s problems rests with Zimbabweans – it is us who must ‘do something’. I wish those reasonable people would report that to that small child and her grandmother, who represent thousands more small children and their grandmothers in the rural areas, because that is one tidbit of information that I don’t have the heart to convey. When you face a nation that is starving, desperately scrounging for survival, old and frail or very young, sick with cholera and HIV/AIDS, I can’t help wondering if that thesis is as reasonable as it seems at face value, or whether its just the world passing the buck.

For me, my New Year blog begins with a public confession and a promise.

My public confession is that I am sick to the back teeth of this struggle. I am so tired of it, and I want to give up and let my life move on. I want my head to be filled with different thoughts other than ‘what can I do, what can I do….’

My promise is to a child I have never met: I promise before God that I will not give up, I promise to keep going. I wish this promise meant something to this child, but the truth is it doesn’t even scratch the surface of a grief she has that runs so deep it will forever define her life as an adult.

This entry was posted by Hope on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 11:34 am. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.