zimbabwe, will you miss me?

The night, close-up and purpled, hot like a British summer day and just as lazy.  We drive from the farm – eight of us in a pick-up, 2 up front, 3 in the back and 3 in the boot.  In our headlights the road is shiny and dimpled like a cheese grater, not even 4x4 disguises the potholes, our heads jarred by bumps while they bob to music thundering its way out of the dashboard.  But not even raging RnB can drown out the reminiscing of 2 pairs of sisters; 2 nieces, 2 aunties; 2 generations reunited on their way to meet the newest generation, a baby girl.  The blaring music seems to retreat behind their engrossed conversation cracked by laughter and the sucking of teeth:  Memories pouring from minds, painted against the purple sky and golden throbbing land of night-time Zimbabwe. 

In the headlights the dark is golden and deep, more absorbing than any I’ve ever seen.  Power cuts mean no street lights or house-light; bonfires by the road lick light onto cooking and drinking silhouettes – outlines given sudden detail as our headlights chase past, chiselling out glimpses of children and adults laughing and leaning and walking.  Somehow under the conversation and music and growling engine, the click-clickety-clicking of crickets everywhere folded into the unnoticed creeping of all things so green and so, so fertile.  Zimbabwes great god-blessed gift of growth, envied since the West happened upon her.  Covered over with factories and roads to take this gift away by truck, train, ship and plane:  For 20 years this greatness has grown back unfettered, grasses knot upon empty colonial architecture, roots raise up the roads like knuckles, rocks punch the streets and signs and Cocacola billboards; Western empires cracked and punctured by abundant growth.   And this growth supports the fall of another Empire; a whole nation buys and sells produce of the land to live a good life even with no electricity, and even as money halves in value every day while prices double and triple without limit.  60 million dollars for a loaf of bread, but price is irrelevant when the shops are all but empty, the cash-point queues circle two blocks and the banks money is gambled by Government.  Other countries would have run into famine or civil-war, but not Zimbabwe.  Her people will not settle for poverty nor resort to rebellion.  The poorest people, living in cracked-wide-open concrete boxes, do not neglect their appearance, education or family.  Zimbabwe is a land of entrepreneurs - a Zimbabween can sell anything, turn a profit from any situation.  The nation does not fail, not because of good Government, but because of good people; a people who prove that tyranny can be overcome by ingenuity, enterprise can sustain an utterly unnoticed nation.   

I close my eyes against the rushing cool through the open window, on impulse my mind places me back in winter-England, I smile as I realise all those things that I don’t have to do or face or think or carry - another reason Zimbabween’s succeed; no need to plan each minute, here in Africa minutes smudge into hours and days that need not be filled with anything other than the basic things of life.  Yes necessities and liberties are scarce, but never family and sharing. 

The wind stops, we have stopped.  Dead ahead a giant steel gate.  No power means I jump out to push it scratchingly aside.  As the truck passes I raise my face to strain the gate shut, I see the stars.  Living in an English city you forget to look up at night, there is nothing but urban-orange mist – a bland and blind night sky. 

The stars here shine like lightening, each one seems to touch the ground.  Things to be guided by, unsuffocated by streetlamps and TV-lit living-rooms.  Orion is directly overhead.  I flip-flop my way to the house the truck obscures.  Inside is a family gathered around a baby.  Candles stroke the auntie who strokes the baby, all surround her and pass what I assume are the usual comments, in Shona.  Baby is passed from auntie to auntie, to uncle to son, to son to sister to sister.  An auntie approaches baby again and pauses to present a gift; a ceremony is begun with traditional and ancient song a button on a string is presented.  Without translation its meaning is clear – all faces lean in to clap with cupped hands as the button is awkwardly fastened around her wrist – as the button is sealed, her name is sealed, a baby is welcomed.  Uncle and I share a bottle of whiskey and talk for the first time in depth of family and life.   

Golden green morning, air like laundry from the tumble dryer, scents layered like colours; silver sweet smell of moving things – of people and of animals only ever seen in Zoos, of flowing cars and the shadows of rocks and walls set slowly rolling; the purple lulling smell of the soil, of things planted, things growing and things dug up.  So hot so early in the day.  So into the pool to a beer and breakfast, then I flip-flop to the truck.  The roads run straight through rocks and fields, a reddened vista broken by people walking and walking and walking, of children walking, the elderly walking, people carrying anything, everything on their backs and heads.  And cars and trucks filled to the brim with faces.  Everyone on a day-long exodus just to buy a meal or visit family.  Roads straight to the horizon, as if dropped from the sky, mottled with holes and the stumps of lamp-posts, pylons and signs for Cocacola, every 30 minutes or so Police check-points, every 30 paces are vegetables piled, grown and sold by the side of the road by people who seem to work and live always by the road surrounded by a hundred square miles of fields and sunshine, and smiling, laughing, playing children.  In Zimbabwe a poor life can be a rich life.  And its cities are not the grey rush of individuals in crowds, the city flows with people who notice each other, who talk and walk leisurely and expressively with all the glamour of any other city in any other country but none of the pretence.   

I miss you.  I miss the decadence of vast spaces and time unhurried.  In Zimbabwe I was not made to feel like a foreigner, I wish the same could be said of a foreigner here.  I miss the bright-silver-sun, stains of rust-red soil on my shoes, vegetables that taste like sweets.  I miss your warm smile, your familiar heart.  You invited me to slow down and breathe, to appreciate so many things I had forgotten even mattered.  And now I’m in England, everyday I want to go back ‘home’.