GodKnows I Love Zimbabwe!

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 ourselves that we are soooo fortunate to actually have a generator (needed for about as much as 20hrs of the day at worst, or an hour at a minimum); to actually have help, and help that not only can we trust with our children, but is 1/15 of the cost of what we would pay a nanny in the US for example! And the cherry on top? She's called Loveness! Ah, names in Zimbabwe. An endless source of fascination. 

When I travelled by third-class train from Johannesburg, South Africa to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe almost 20 years ago I met a lovely Zimbabwean family with what I thought at the time were the best names ever: Moses, Prudence and Courage. But the last 2.5 years in Zimbabwe have opened my eyes to some corkers! There's Psychology. Yes, a first name. Psychology Maziwisa for example, is a lawyer, politician and spokesman/spin-doctor for the ruling ZANU PF party. Then there are Lovemores... Lovemore Moyo, par example, another politician but this time for the opposing MDC-T party, and the former Speaker of the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe. Speaking of Moyos, there was also a Freedom Moyo who used to be Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation's Current Affairs Manager, but unfortunately, like many in Zimbabwe, he died in a car accident a couple of years ago....  Then there is Givemore and Luckmore, and even Talkmore, Kissmore and Nomore! We sometimes go to a small game park just on the outskirts of Harare. And every time we get to the gate Punish is always at hand to lift the boom and let us in. His parents must not have loved him so much.... But Honestly... what a name. I mean, what a name Honestly is! Cue Honestly Thabani Ndlovu: colleague of a friend of mine with a french scientific research NGO here in Harare. Oh, and a few months ago Anyway the plumber came to fix a septic tank issue. His colleague was Innocent, by name not by virtue. 


They say that the overriding feeling, special occasion or event surrounding the child's birth governs the first name of a newborn in Zimbabwe. But what does that say about Punish, Tragedy, Kufa (means 'dead' in Shona), or Tichafa ('going to die'!)?! Clearly the guy called Museum I met the other day must have been born in... a... Museum... or more likely his parents really enjoy museums...God only knows. Another stellar one actually! Godknows. Very common first name. Less common but no less entertaining is the name of Ati's tennis teacher (and our next door neighbor's gardener; not one in the same): Liberty. He must be about 34 years of age...1980 being the year Zimbabwe gained independence from England after a bloody Liberation War. But I cannot finish this little name verbosity without mentioning our former cook Fungai's sisters names. She was the eldest of four. After her was Noworries, then came Noquestion, followed by Nomore! No need for an explanation there...

Actually, I HAVE to share with you the names of babies born in local clinics and hospitals around Zimbabwe after the 2008 disputed "harmonized" elections, when the Government of National Unity was cobbled together.!!

Runoff Moyo

Candidate Pote


Rigging Hamadziripi


Electoral Commission Ndlovu


Foreign Observer Chimunda


Neck Toneck Nyamadzawo


Heavyweight Utaunashe


Percentage Ndlondlo


Released Results Matongo


Meticulous Verification Chinengundu


Free & Fair Pazvakawambwa (Twins)


Rerun Mombeshora


Rural Stronghold Khaliyathi


Polling Station Nhamoinesu


Ballotbox & Ballotpaper Kunonga (Twins)


Harmonised Chitanda

"Free and Fair! Dinner's ready!" "Ballotbox, why did you push Ballotpaper down?" 

"Rerun, can you run that by me again?" Hee, hee. Priceless!! But let me go back to the issue of road accidents. 

Ati once asked me why there were so many accidents on the road here in Zimbabwe. The conversation went something like this, "well son, people drive very badly here in Harare because the driving tests are a farce. Plus there are many potholes meaning people swerve all over the place to avoid them. And there are also few sidewalks/pavements meaning people walk on the side of the road. Not to mention that at night there are no streetlights, and so the bad drivers cannot see the potholes nor the people walking in the dark on the side of the road. AND people do not have the money necessary to get their cars maintained on a regular basis and so axles give way, wheels fall off, brakes malfunction, and headlights don't work. And with no headlights said bad drivers don't see the potholes or the people or goats crossing the road or walking on the side of said road. AND combi bus drivers drive like maniacs stopping and starting wherever they please with no warning. And, more often than not, robots (oh, yes, you might know them as traffic lights!) malfunction or are just plain off because there is no ZESA (electricity) and so crossroads are a liability. And many people don't actually have drivers licenses or paid someone a small bribe to get one with minimal learning. AND police put up check points/roadblocks all over the city and arterial roads out on the 'highways' causing mayhem. AND often times the road accidents aren't actually 'accidents' but rather sinister well-orchestrated plots to do away with political enemies. AND... son? Ati? Wake up!" Not much of a conversation... But honestly (oh Honestly. What a name; a corker!), the streets of Harare and the roads of Zimbabwe are truly deteriorating. People will actually voluntarily go out into the streets and fix the potholes with whatever rubble, dirt, soil, bricks they can find in hopes someone will throw them a dollar as they speed passed for the service. A crying shame.  

So with that as a backdrop you would be surprised to hear that Harare, Zimbabwe hosted the 2013 Miss World Heritage pageant. Actually, I am sure most of you will be surprised there IS such a thing as a Miss World Heritage pageant! We all were here. But let's try to get passed that. To me a pageant is something of a luxury; an event clad with lots of pomp and circumstance as well as opulence. Think Royal Albert Hall in London, Seychelles, Sun City in S Africa, Bali, etc. Well, how about the Harry Margolis Hall in the Sharon High School (yes, a Jewish school) in a leafy suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe?! I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when I heard that.

And those were my exact sentiments when four hours (yes, FOUR hours) into the show I could not see the end growing any nearer. Oh, at this point I should mention that I somehow wound up being Miss Ecuador's interpreter. But what I didn't know, and the organizers failed to mention (or think about it) was that the Q&A segment wasn't until the VERY END of the show after MIDNIGHT! I was also asked to interpret for the Italian Miss World Heritage, but given she didn't speak or understand almost any spanish OR english, it made it very tricky to say the least. Lets just say I witnessed some teary behind-the-scenes moments of joy, sadness and disappointment.... I felt partly responsible. Anyhow, it was a surreal experience to say the least, compounded by the fact that just that very morning I was driving round and round in circles and figure of eights in the high density suburb of Chitungwiza administering questionnaires on Rainwater Harvesting Tanks for a water, sanitation and health evaluation I was working on. Talk about extremes....

Funny thing as it was just me and a Zimbabwean colleague of mine going around a high-density suburb called Epworth surveying protected wells (see right). Nevertheless, the police would not allow us to undertake our very menial and trivial work (e.g. one of the questions asks if they have had diarrhea in the last week... clearly not threatening national security...) without a police escort; and not one but TWO police escorts packed into the back of our tiny rental car. As if to justify their presence they were telling us about the dangers of a particularly nefarious area of Epworth called New Gada (shona meaning "free rider" or "sitting wherever one wishes"), and how even the police do not enter the very informal settlement area without guns. But then they decided to take a lunch break, leaving us to enter New Gada alone, and unarmed...! We managed to get in and out unscathed; quite uneventful really. 

On the flip side, a few months ago we had been in another high-density suburb of Harare called Mabvuku-Tafara administering surveys/questionnaires. And in the space of a half hour an old man attempted to sell me diamonds, trying to convince me they were not blood diamonds from Marange diamond fields... while another respondent to our questionnaire was being extremely nice to me, only to be told later that she was a 'lady of the night'... so offered diamonds and sex, all in one afternoons-worth of work! What a blingful life I lead...

We are now in the home stretch of our stay here and will be packing up house and home to move back to Washington DC in July of this year. We will be leaving with many mixed emotions. Undoubtedly I will put fingers to keyboard (aka pen to paper) and write one or two more times before then though. Paz