Christmas in Zimbabwe
Christmas in Zimbabwe is the time of soft sweet litchis,
plums, mangoes and peaches. It's the time to eat small, sweet purple grapes
straight from the vines and to take turns with the birds for pawpaws and figs.
It's the time when its hazardous to sit, stand or put anything under avocado
trees as the high up, unreachable fruits ripen and crash to the ground at the
most unexpected times.
Christmas in Zimbabwe means towering purple rain clouds,
sausage flies and flying ants. It means rhino beetles and chongololos, large
spiders and even larger snakes. Christmas is that alluring time when flashes of
red, crimson and scarlet tempt you into the ever thickening bush to discover
wild and beautiful flame lilies? It's the time of year for mahobohobo fruits:
sweet, juicy and oh so more-ish and for mushrooms of all shapes and sizes - so
tempting to pick but so lethal to eat.
Christmas in Zimbabwe is that first green maize cob
scalding hot from the
pot: soft, tender and sweet leaving butter running down
your fingers and dripping onto your chin. For some it is chicken and rice, for
others turkey and ham and everywhere meat sizzles on braai fires.
Christmas in Zimbabwe means reunion. It's the time of
year when everyone's on the move. Transport is a nightmare, lifts are like gold
and everyone is weighed down with bus bags and bulging luggage. The roads are
chaotic, buses and kombis overloaded and impromptu police road blocks appear
every ten to fifteen kilometres. The queues outside the passport offices and
the borders grow longer while the bribes get bigger to match people's
desperation.
Instead of more people staffing home affairs and
immigration offices there are less and the looks on people's faces change from
anger and despair to disgust and resignation. Zimbabwe's new tradition, thanks
to a decade of political and economic mayhem, is the great, international,
annual migration to reunite with families scattered all over the globe. To the
disapora and from the diaspora hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans try to get
together and be normal families, just for a few weeks.
Christmas in Zimbabwe means school leavers. A couple of
hundred thousand O and A level students pour out onto the roads, waiting for
results, drinking too much, playing head banging music and all the while
knowing that there is almost no chance they will find a job in a country where
unemployment hovers around 90%. Those that can will have no choice but to join
the estimated three and a half million other Zimbabweans living and working
outside the country. Those that can't will set up roadside stalls under trees,
wheel and deal, sell airtime, become cross border traders and spend their days
looking for ways to use the education their parents struggled so hard to get
them.
Christmas for MP's in Zimbabwe this year is the car loans
of
US$30,000 that were given to each legislator which have
been written off by the Treasury at a cost of US$9 million. And on the other
hand, for the vast majority of us, Christmas 2012 is a time when the shops are
full but the pockets empty as we juggle the bills, chase every dollar and
wonder if, by this time next year, our country will have finally become the new
Zimbabwe we so desperately need and want.
To all Zimbabweans and our friends, wherever you are in
the world, happy holidays, joyous reunions and thanks for reading and
supporting my writing and books for another year.
Comments
Post a Comment