david's trials & tribulations of life

I get my boxer shorts ironed. Yes. My underwear. Pressed. Creased. Call it what you may. One of the perks of leading an expat life; in this case, in Zimbabwe. Don't get me wrong; I don't instruct our maid to press my underwear every morning. In actual fact I have told her innumerable times to NOT iron my underwear! But clearly this is quite a trivial nuisance that I have learnt to live with (as hard as it was...!). Like many such nuisances in Zimbabwe, we have become immune and in some cases oblivious to them. But every once in a while we catch ourselves grumbling about the generator not turning on automatically or the fact our maid ALWAYS switches wall sockets off so we think our phones are charging but they are not. Or when we get back from a night out and our nanny Loveness who has been babysitting for the past 6hrs (for a total of $14) stays 30mins to an hour longer in the house finishing that Nigerian soap opera she's been watching all night! BUT then we remind oursel...

Nineteen years ago I had the wonderful pleasure of visiting Zimbabwe with a great group of friends from Edinburgh University. We raised funds on the streets of Edinburgh and then flew out to Zimbabwe via Jo'burg. Our goal: to support the building of an agroforestry training center in Guruve, Zimbabwe. Well, last year Jillian, Liati, Lucia and I accompanied our friend Nigel to Guruve in search of some well-known marimba maker. I took advantage to seek out the training center we had built all those years ago, and to my complete and utter surprise I found it; and found it without needing to ask! It was still standing, albeit with a broken window or two; but it was empty, locked up and seemingly non-functional. Unfortunately that's a sign of the times all over rural Zimbabwe, as the economy is starting to take a nosedive since the last general election did not usher in a new and golden era for Zimbabwe (as many had high hopes for before). The hopeful days/years since the 2008/09 ...