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Quote
“At this level of pressure, if you are not self-confident, if you don’t believe in your work, you are a step down. If you are a leader and you can influence people’s attitudes and you want people to follow you up and be as strong as you are, you must be strong.” – José Mourinho
Escaping cholera in Chitungwiza
AMID THE SEVERE cholera outbreak, I visited my cousin late last month in the sprawling high-density suburb of Chitungwiza, thirty kilometres out of Harare. Even though I had been taking precautions to avoid cholera, I badly wanted to see my cousin and so I brushed aside the increased risk of being exposed to the disease.
Zimbabwe’s recent cholera outbreak is the worst in the country’s history. It has claimed nearly 2500 lives and affected over 30,000 people. To make matters worse, the government of Zimbabwe has described the outbreak as a “genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British.” It has done little to ensure an effective response to the disease and has covered up the extent of the epidemic.
I found myself skipping over the raw sewage flowing in a trench outside my cousin’s house, amid a stench that filled the atmosphere. I wasn’t really surprised by the flow of sewage – after all, to get to my cousin’s house I had skipped over many other streams of thick grey water – and no one else seemed to care about the sewage as they went about their daily business. In Chitungwiza, as in many other parts of Zimbabwe, the sewerage and water supply systems have collapsed, putting the entire population at risk of cholera. Uncollected garbage has become the norm and people have taken to using makeshift dumping sites. Read the rest of this entry »
Quote of the Day
Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.
- Martha Beck, O Magazine, Growing Wings, January 2004
The lights of my life
Every year, when Christmas time comes, the Harare City Council puts up multicoloured lights in First Street, the city’s main road. The lights glow brilliantly like rainbow colours in the dark.
When the lights went up in late November, I was busy running around the city in search of my baby son Tadana’s three-month immunisation jab. As I criss-crossed the city and passed through First Street, I couldn’t help but think that the Christmas lights were a big, tasteless joke given the circumstances in Zimbabwe.
Every day, early in the morning till late into the night, hordes of men and women huddled beneath the lights, waiting and hoping like little Godots to get at their hard-earned cash locked up in banks. Money was in short supply, and once you managed to withdraw some cash it flew away with the wind because of unquantifiable inflation. Perhaps as a sign of their dejection, the people would leave loads of trash below the Christmas lights, turning Harare’s main street into a mess.
I don’t think many of the people waiting in bank queues that stretched like garden worms around the city gave much thought to the Christmas lights. I am sure, for many long-suffering Zimbabweans, the idea of Christmas faded into nothingness under the daily pressure to satisfy temporal necessities.
Anyway, as the Christmas lights blinked away, my wife Michelle and I took baby Tadana to a local clinic, about 3km from where we live. We were shocked to find that were no nurses except for an old lady at the front desk. She informed us that the clinic had no stock of vaccines, and that we had to make our own plan to get baby Tadana vaccinated.
I knew that this meant Michelle and I had to run like dogs until the vaccines were found. Thoroughly dumbfounded, we went home splitting our heads on what to do next. We thought of travelling to South Africa, Botswana or Zambia to find the vaccines but we had no cash.
But as they say in Zimbabwe, you have to make a plan, and then shift it to the left and the right and squeeze it until it is bone dry to make the impossible work. Michelle summoned the mother inside herself and spent one morning at work calling her friends with babies.
Luckily, she was given the names of paediatricians who are filling in the gap left by a public health system that has failed to deliver services to its own people. We contacted one of the paediatricians and for US$2 we managed to get baby Tadana his jab.
I couldn’t help but think about what is happening to millions of children in Zimbabwe born in our season of despair, particularly in the rural areas. Unlike baby Tadana, many children in my country are not receiving essential vaccinations because of the collapse of the public health system.
It’s like a whirlwind that will undoubtedly explode in the coming years: we will surely witness a rise in children’s diseases in my country, and my spirit stings with pain at the thought.
Soon after baby Tadana received his jab, which made him bawl madly, we took him on his longest journey in the human world — to Mutare, approximately 265km from Harare. It’s Zimbabwe’s third largest city, located in the eastern highlands and notorious for the nouveau riche flaunting loads of cash made from blood diamonds.
In recent years, thousands and thousands of Zimbabweans have flocked to Chiadzwa, a rural compound a few kilometres outside Mutare, to try their luck at searching for diamonds. The blood diamonds have made many people in the country get rich quickly while many others have lost their lives.
We arrived in Mutare at night after driving non-stop for nearly three hours. From the top of Christmas Pass, which provides a panoramic view of the city, Mutare’s multicoloured lights look like a splatter of Christmas crackers in the dark.
Michelle, Tadana and I were in Mutare for a clean-up campaign to sweep trash off the city’s streets with a group of young people who live in the city, as part of the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence. The young people were members of Youth Initiative for Democracy in Zimbabwe, a youth organisation committed to a free, democratic and just Zimbabwe.
Michelle asked me to join so that I would look after baby Tadana while she coordinated the clean-up activities. As I carried him around Mutare city centre, I was amazed at the many stares that came our way from both men and women.
There is a general stereotype that African men should not be seen in public carrying tiny babies. It is regarded as a European thing for an African man to carry a baby. I guess the stereotype is that men are just supposed to provide the baby’s material needs while the emotional, soft, lovey-dovey stuff should be solely the domain of women.
Whatever the case, carrying Tadana around gave me the closest sensation to being pregnant that I think I could ever muster. To my satisfaction, Tadana never cried. The way I see it, men need to claim the space of fatherhood and show warmth, love and affection to their children.
When Tadana was born three months ago, I could never have predicted the script that has played out so far. The journey from the pregnancy through to the birth and first earthly months of baby Tadana has been mercurial, jagged, rolling and full of new things that I daresay my creative imagination could never conjecture.
In sum, it’s been a journey with all sorts of unpredictable twists and turns, much like my home country’s political and socioeconomic landscape.
As we drove up towards Christmas Pass, on our way back to Harare after being in Mutare for 24 hours, baby Tadana began babbling many sounds more than he has done in the past. On our parenthood journey, Michelle and I eagerly look forward to the day when baby Tadana will speak his first actual words.
But we make it a point to thoroughly cherish and embrace each moment with our little bundle of joy. All said, when next Christmas comes, baby Tadana will surely have much to talk about.
Transmitting Light Through Our Actions
“There are two ways to spread light; to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.” - Edith Wharton
Are you a candle or a mirror? Most people are somewhere in the middle. This quote reminds us of the importance of our actions. The example you set (as a mirror) is a way of sharing how you feel based on your behaviors. Gossiping, complaining, and being pessimistic shows those in your life that you are unhappy and feeling low. The same is true for the opposite behaviors. Positive, affirming comments transmit to the world that you are happy, friendly, and optimistic. What is your mirror reflecting? Let your actions reflect your true beliefs and values
Baby love in the time of cholera
Amid a horrific outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe, my baby son Tadana’s first genuine smile marked a major turning point and came as a welcome reward after the sleepless nights and erratic days we experienced during his first weeks. If I had it in my power I would keep those winning, toothless grins coming all day.
I confess: never in my life did I expect to celebrate my baby’s first smile in a time of cholera. But living in Zimbabwe today, anything goes — nothing is impossible in the country of my birth.
In the past when Tadana smiled, my wife Michelle and I were quick to ululate and exchange notes and comments on their quality and meaning. However, we soon discovered that it was not baby smiles, just Tadana exercising his facial muscles.
But at 10 weeks old Tadana transmuted into a social butterfly; he broke out of his cocoon, so to speak, and began beaming toothless baby smiles that sent waves of love into our life.
While we were wallowing under the glow of Tadana’s smiles, which were as bright as an ancient African sun, our jagged senses were brought back to Zimbabwe’s harsh reality by the cholera outbreak.
The outbreak, of epidemic levels and one of the worst in Zimbabwe’s history, exploded across Harare and other parts of the country and quickly became a major topic of conversation.
So as Tadana showered Michelle and me with his first social smiles, the threat of cholera zinged in our heads like an old greenfly.
Tap water in Harare started to produce black, flaky substances and foamed when brought to boil, increasing our fears of the killer pathogen. But through it all, Tadana smiled innocently and gave us hope and the strength to cope.
Even before Tadana was born, we knew about the bad quality of our water supply. We knew, for example, that because of the prevailing difficult socio-economic circumstances in Zimbabwe, little chlorine was being applied to treat our water.
As a result, Michelle and I made a bold decision to give Tadana bottled water only. I know that for many Zimbabwean parents with newborns the idea of buying bottled water in a place of multi-billion percent inflation is a luxury they can’t afford. So they have little choice but to give their babies tap water.
Michelle and I drink boiled tap water and the constant threat of cholera has made us extra careful about the source of our household food. But Tadana smiles through it all and becomes more responsive to our presence.
Because he can now turn his head at an angle, he makes an effort to aim wide smiles at anyone within his vicinity and then gurgles to catch attention. Other times he will wait for you to smile before beaming back an enthusiastic response. Tadana’s body, legs and arms wriggle about and take part in the smiling act.
Thus amid horror stories of people dying of cholera at poorly manned public health institutions, every time I get home Tadana’s rhythmic grins are like music that soothe my soul of the manifold happenings in our bedlam called Zimbabwe.
One evening after work I got home feeling tired and frustrated from running about the city in search of a quick US dollar deal, but when I held Tadana in my arms and he gave me his classic grin, I felt a sense of warm, if momentary, relief.
I was immediately transported into a metaphysical zone where Tadana and I connected and spoke to each other in muted tones about dreams of a new Zimbabwe that is bold enough to take care of its own sons and daughters.
Each time I embrace Tadana, it’s difficult for me to push thoughts about my country into the far recesses of the collective national mentality where I believe that owing to the junk that now exists there, cholera pathogens can certainly find room to grow, fester and take away the lives of our people.
Every day I say a prayer on behalf of all the children of Zimbabwe living in conditions overflowing with garbage and raw sewage all because of a collective failure of leadership.
While our politicians wine and dine under soft lights and engage in endless chatter in five-star hotels, Michelle and I, like many other Zimbabwean parents, strive by God’s grace to raise a new generation of Zimbabweans that hopefully will not repeat the multitude of errors of our present corruption.
And, of course, the first genuine smiles that Tadana has been dishing out like confetti have been but one of the most heartwarming milestones in our parenthood journey thus far.
Quote of the Day
Often the voice of conscience whispers / Often we silence it / Always we have to pay.
~ Cletus Nelson Nwadike, Nigerian poet
