from the news: personal experience

GREAT!!!! ... Comment from The Mail & Guardian (SA), 1 October

Going home

Everjoice Win

Going home … going home … am a-going home … The lovely words of Aaron Neville’s song ring in my head for a whole fortnight before my three-week vacation in Zimbabwe. Each day I wake up and pump up the volume. I am so excited, I can’t wait. I haven’t been home for more than five months. This is long overdue. August is vacation time for me and my son. It also is time to renew insurances, annual medical check-ups and, of course, sweet potato time. I love that stuff. I could live on sweet potatoes for the rest of my life. And, believe me, they don’t grow them that sweet anywhere else. I have not been home for so long - it’s the first time I have stayed away that long, partly out of fear of what I will find and partly denial. I cannot face the dreadful realities that have become the story of my country. The constant text messages from home don’t help; the place sounds as if it will fall apart at any moment.

The one thing that sustains me as I work outside Zimbabwe is the belief that I will always go back home. I still hold on to the illusion that my son will go to the same university I went to, because I don’t trust anybody else’s education system. And yet the bad news from across the Limpopo has been too much to bear. "Will you be okay? Have you bought enough supplies? Can we help with anything?", empathetic office colleagues ask in the weeks prior to my departure. I am angry. Why am I being asked these questions? Where do they think I am going? Darfur? Iraq? I am reminded of how I reacted when I met women from Nigeria during Abacha’s time or women from Palestine. When I met Rana from Palestine, with a lovely hair-do and manicured nails, I asked her if she really lived "there". I had to be reminded that life goes on - births, deaths, weddings, falling in love, parties - in the middle of all the atrocities. Zimbabwe is no different.

As I step off the plane and into the arrivals galley I could kiss the ground - pity the formerly blue carpet is now a rather squalid grey. The immigration officials chat to me and laugh as I "manage my passport", telling them where to stamp, so they do not fill the pages. Getting a new passport is not easy, don’t they know? "Ha sister," the officer says, laughing. "Those of you coming from the diaspora can buy these things. Only US$200 these days." The customs officer waves us through. Too bored? Too tired to search us as they normally do when they see large pieces of luggage? We get out swiftly and in minutes my brother is driving us into the city. Harare is not called the sunshine city for nothing. It is a beautiful spring afternoon. The sun shines brightly in the blue sky. Not too hot. A gentle breeze is blowing. I am overwhelmed. I feel intensely happy as the sun sinks into my bones. I lower my window with no fear of a gun being levelled at my head at the traffic lights. Even my son sticks his hand out of the window to catch the breeze. We haven’t done this in a long time. Not in Johannesburg. The streets of Harare are clean. Too "clean", I notice, in that there are few people about. The street vendors were "cleaned" out by operation Murambatsvina a year ago. While some brave ones have ventured back, it is a hazardous business. I notice there are few cars on the road. The fuel crisis is biting. But I am too happy now to worry about it. I just want to enjoy being home.

I wake up on my first morning to another beautiful day. The house is eerily quiet. No radio. No television. Not even the boys on their PlayStation. I realise the electricity is off. My friend Nozipho tells me it will be on again about 2pm. It is Sunday. That’s the schedule in her neighbourhood. I soon learn that in the leafy suburbs there is a regular schedule for power cuts and occasionally for water cuts too. So you can schedule your life -- when to do the laundry, when to iron, what time to start cooking ... By the end of the first week I have the schedules worked out. I know whose house to go to for breakfast, whose for lunch and when to recharge my cellphone. But things are not so easy in the non-leafy, high-density townships, where the power goes off at any time. Perhaps the thinking is that poor people are too poor to need regular schedules.

But there are some things you can’t schedule, like the ever-present funerals, mostly the result of HIV and Aids. How do you conduct a wake by candlelight? How do you feed the mourners in the dark? We soon find out. My friend’s dad passes away in Bulawayo. The power goes off in the middle of his wake. Dozens of candles hardly make a difference in the pitch darkness. The women - always the women - struggle to heat water, cook and feed the large crowd. They manage. At yet another funeral in a less well-heeled township, things don’t go so well. The candles run out after midnight. The firewood runs out after one meal. No one has fuel to go on a quest for these essentials. The mourners go hungry. Many leave. By the time the burial is over there are barely 30 people left. We drive into Mkoba township in Gweru on a dark evening when the power is off. The entire place, 20 villages in total, is in darkness. Thick smoke hangs in the air. I am worried about women’s and girls’ safety and security. Several scurry hurriedly to get home from work, the market, shops, church. I am scared to ask if the statistics for violence against women have gone up.

On day two I experience cut-off number two. Water. I am shown the dozens of buckets, containers, pots, plastic bins -- anything that can hold water. Every household I visit is the same. You keep storing the stuff, just in case. Unlike electricity the schedules for water cut-offs are less regular in every area. But things are worse in the high-density areas. It is much worse in Bulawayo, where cut-offs last anything from one to seven days. No one has that many containers. Once again I see crowds of women and girls around the few boreholes or water points. There is an almost festive atmosphere as they converge there. They laugh, talk, joke and wait. Sometimes the water comes out quickly, but often it’s a slow trickle. The lines move slowly. Nerves get frayed. Pushing and shoving starts and pandemonium breaks out. Local youths come to "restore order", abusing women in the process. Meanwhile, back home the children wait, home-based care patients fret and husbands get angry.

Women’s and girls’ lives have gone backwards in time. The development that seemed within reach by 2015 is a distant, hollow hope. If it’s not a water queue, it’s the search for firewood. Countless hours are spent searching or collecting something. In Glen View a group of young women says it takes them up to three hours to walk to a farm to search for firewood, another three to collect and cut it down and another three to walk back. Meanwhile, other domestic and economic activities must wait. What time do they have to go to school? Learn new skills? Earn an income? Or do anything else in this hunter-gatherer context? We are back to the rural way of life, but without the necessary tools and changes in other circumstances to make this manageable.

I have been home for a week and I haven’t eaten beef. I am beginning to have withdrawal symptoms. There is lots of expensive chicken. As a visitor I have been fed plenty. I can’t face another drumstick. The government deregistered all abbatoirs, so there’s no beef anywhere. I call a friend in the president’s office. He is one of the new farmers. A very productive one. I ask if he has beef. No beef, he says, just more chicken or he can do mutton. I opt for mutton. Sadly, the president of Equatorial Guinea is coming to town, so I never see the mutton. On our way to Gweru we drive into Kadoma Ranch Motel, hoping to buy a burger. I ask for a menu. "You want to see a menu, mother? What do you want to see on a menu?" the waiter asks me, with his arms akimbo and a sneer on his lips. I lose my temper. I want the menu. Isn’t this a hotel?

to be continued...