Disconnected
A day before Christmas I wondered how many friends at our table would leave during 2009. I learned during the meal that two more friends would be leaving Zimbabwe in February - their tickets booked and suitcases standing waiting to be packed.
In addition to this, a third person at our table recounted stories of many varied adventures around Zimbabwe in the last few months: camping, fishing, short breaks in almost defunct resorts. “I’m trying to do as much as I can before it all comes to an end”, he declared. This makes me think he is also about to leave and that his adventures are a desperate effort to stock-pile memories. I wanted to tell him he was wasting his time: when he is long gone, the memories he is building now will never protect him from the pain of the memories he built as child in this country. There’s nothing he can do but steel himself to confront the loss of what he is leaving when he goes. There is no buffer from that.
But maybe I’m wrong: maybe he is just adventure-seeking and spending his money before inflation erodes his value. I hope so because he’s a good man.
Apart from these personal tidbits of information, there isn’t much more that I can tell you - the ‘festive’ season has been bizarre. Life shut down.
At the Christmas dinner table there was almost no talk of politics. I mentioned Jestina Mukoko to the person sitting to my right, and was stunned when she asked ‘Who is she?’ How can a Zimbabwean not know, I wondered? Turns out that this person doesn’t have DSTV and also has no access to email or the internet. I am reminded again that a Zimbabwean can very easily ‘not know’ a lot.
I had a taste of that odd silence myself over the past couple weeks. The rain knocked out my internet connection for most of the holiday period and there is little to no chance of ‘techie’ back-up to fix it during this time of the year. Town was dead-quiet even on the last days before Christmas, and when we ventured in shortly after Christmas it was just as quiet. Without town, the internet or email, it was as if I’d stepped into a twilight zone. I do have DSTV, but with the horror in Gaza dominating the news, followed by terrible firework accidents in nightclubs in Thailand, who knows what is happening in my country - my country being the land beyond the edges of the fence circling our yard. Crazy not to know what’s going on in your own homeland, but also very easy to be uninformed.
What can I tell you instead?
We had steady rain for days. The lawn is thick and lush and green and the mozzies are loving it. As wonderful as it is to have rain in this drought-prone region, I can’t help wondering at how it may be exacerbating the cholera crisis.
I spent several days sitting in an armchair, glad of the imposed break, the disconnection, wallowing in doing nothing but watch birds in the garden chasing flying-ants that naively came out with the rain.
I woke up on one of those mornings with a power-cut. The silence seemed clearer and sharper than ever before. I had nowhere to go, and nothing I could do, and I’d read all the books I had borrowed and had nothing left to read. So I lay there and listened to the morning bird-chorus and someone’s child shouting at its sibling next-door.
It’s not difficult, in this context, to pretend that everything is OK or to fantasise about a future when all our Sundays could be just like this.
But I know the peace is deceptive and I know that the tranquility is an illusion. Beyond the green grass and steady rain and birds chasing flying-ants in the garden, my fellow citizens are starving and falling ill every day. There is no break from the simple fact that as beautiful as this place is even in its most ordinary moments, life in Zimbabwe is also relentlessly bitter and vicious and cruel. It is this reality that makes small moments of beauty and ignorance from truth that much more precious.
It’s Monday tomorrow, and the first week of work begins. Our spluttering economy has needs the tiny handful in the formal sector to get up and start once again to do all they can to kickstart it for the new year. What a joke. The illusion of tranquility ends and I have no doubt that reality will bite hard.
January 4th, 2009 15:05
A strange Christmas, indeed. Be reassured that even though your fellow Zimbabwean at the dinner table may not have heard of Jestina Mukoko, many people elsewhere now certainly do.
The Sunday Independent is reporting (via Australia’s ABC news - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/04/2458828.htm) that she may be being poisoned, as well as tortured, in Chikurubi Prison.
I’ve tried calling the number for Chikurubi Prison without success (++ 263 4 496555), but on one occasion the number was busy so presumably there are people there to answer it - so others might try this number and urge that she and other detainees be properly treated.
Incidentally, I will e-mail ABC News and take them to task for their headline labelling Mukoko as “Zimbabwe Mugabe Plotter” - sloppy journalism.
January 4th, 2009 18:44
The courage and patience so manifest by all Zimbabweans during Zimbabwe’s political nightmare demands the greatest admiration and respect.
Zimbabwe is now in my view well into the end game and level heads are now really needed more than ever before. It it is understandable for one to become distracted by the throes of a dying regime. I hope that sight is not lost for a truly democratic and equitable future for a truly great and beautiful country
January 5th, 2009 12:04
At 11:50 am Monday, Harare time, I was surprised, after a number of attempts, to get through to the Chikurubi Prison number (++ 263 4 496 555). A female voice answered the phone, and when I asked to speak to the senior officer, she fetched a colleague who would not give his name. I gave my name and told him that I was an Australian citizen, who, like many others around the world, was extremely concerned about reports that Jestina Mukoko and other political detainees were being mistreated at Chikurubi. I urged that they all be treated properly and fairly. I requested that he pass on my message (which he laboriously wrote down) to other officers at Chikurubi, and to let them know that people around the world are watching events at Chikurubi prison very closely. I then thanked him for his time. It’s impossible to know if this will make the slightest difference - I trust and hope that it at least puts one member of the Chikurubi staff on notice that what happens there is under close scrutiny.
Also, I’m pleased to say that the ABC corrected their misleading headline (see previous comment).