Zimbabwe, It’s You I Adore
On a recent trip to India, it finally dawned on me. I love Zimbabwe. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say I love the seesaw economy, the shoddy politics, the hypocrisy and the corruption that comes along with the nation. I simply hold an undying love for the place of my birth and its diverse people.
What is it about India that made me realise this, you might ask. Visiting the sacred temples and sampling the aromatic food was breath-taking. And losing myself within the crowds of anonymous people released me from all of the responsibility I have to shoulder in my ‘real’ existence everyday. But ultimately, I could not really turn to any one of those well-meaning people and look at any of them with a twinge of painful familiarity and say, “We’ve come a long way.”
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Every country, and every state of prosperity, is founded upon people overcoming struggle and upheaval. In that regard, we are all the same. But for me, Zimbabweans have faced a senseless form of strife and compromise that very few people would ever want to experience.
Like genocide and other wars, our struggle has been premised upon human greed. Less subtle than blood sprayed upon walls, or limbs strewn across streets, our war has been the fight to retain what our oppressors would like us to lose – our dignity.
Who would blame us if we were bitter people? We have seen our country, once bright like a precious gem, dull out to worthless grime very few people would like to touch. We have had disease, dejection and desolation all thrust upon us by the failure of our leaders to look out for our interests. So who would blame us, too, if we despised them?
But it’s the resilient giving spirit of Zimbabweans that fills me with wonderment. It’s the way the security guard at the offices where I work will always show up for duty, even if the rest of the security company is on a pay strike. Why? Because he would rather retain his virtue than wallow in his sorrows. It is my friend, Aunty Majecha, a woman left severely crippled by polio as a child, who stalks at her street corner daily to sell vegetables and sweets to passers by. “I don’t`need to be a burden to other people who are also suffering,” she will say to me, expressively with her gnarled hands and muffled voice.
It’s how we can laugh at our new trillion dollar bank notes as we ride home in an overcrowded bus, knowing that our destinations are just as different as the fates that await each of us. And yet, we are all still able to offload our various burdens and indulge ourselves in the most priceless of all gifts – laughter.
It’s living in the now, knowing that tomorrow could either be for the worse or the better, but hardly ever the same as today.
In India, there are surely people who, too, endure much. But I can’t look at them in the same knowing way that I do with people in Zimbabwe and speak the words that colour our onward struggle and triumph, “We indeed have come along way.”
Image credit: ctsnow via Flickr, under a Creative Commons license.
