Zimbabweans make world go round

IT IS often said that you can’t get anything past a Zimbabwean. We have seen and done it all. If you have been to hell and back, there is hardly a scheme one has not attempted to join or a venture one has not been involved in.

You name it, we have been there. In fact it rings true that we can beat the Nigerians at their own game, though we still have one handicap in the stakes: we are too educated, at least we believe we are.

Years of colonial education, for all its faults and the much lauded post independence experience, with its purported pluses, turned us subservient. A Zimbabwean will not revolt because he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. That is the job for the uneducated, we think.

Civilised people sit down and talk things over, if you get my point. In West Africa, for instance, one bad move and the machetes are out. The wars there are so bloody it’s scary. No wonder those places are in a sorry state, in a violent sort of way.

If you talked about Africa, it’s about hunger, famine, wars and disease and Zimbabwe happened to be outside that equation. At least until the time of the big freeze, we never imagined that we would join the rest of Africa in the tubes.

We used to scoff at the Zambians for instance. A trip across to Livingstone in 1985 was a shock for me then. There were pot holes and vendors all over the place.

“Wait until you really experience this thing called independence,” was the ominous warning I got from a Zambian friend. No we know!

Zimbabweans have for decades imitated the European to the extent that we have outdone them in some respects. This is why it is not very difficult for us to adjust to that culture when we go there.

I am reminded of how a Ghanaian colleague was so terrified to go out into the streets of Stockholm, Sweden, without my company. He stuck to me like a tick much to the extent that I literally lost my liberty. It was like walking an overgrown kid around the city.

Our attachment to European culture must have lulled us into a sense of false security. We thought we were invincible. Times were so good to the extent that we became increasingly oblivious to the fact that we were living on borrowed time.

The foundation built by the previous regime was bound to give in sooner or later. Then the inevitable collapse began, the signs being subtle at first, the momentum picking up in the nineties.

Some who had a hunch about what was coming, like the ‘Rhodies’ before them, bailed ship. The resilient and (how I hate the word) patriotic among us stuck it out with much regret.

My friends remember me for the expression: “I will be the last man to get out after turning off the lights, and locking the gates at the border.” The more cynical said that the country had deteriorated so much that the best that could be done to it was to turn it into one big game reserve.

But the experience of the spectacular collapse of the Zimbabwean economy beats any education you can get from any university on earth. I bet there are publishers out there who are eager to get accounts of the Zimbabwean Experience into print. The world wants to know how we survived the worst economy in living memory.

The experience was indeed unforgettable, but it has produced a peculiar breed of Zimbabwean. After a decade of being unwittingly turned into a tribe of hunter gatherers, we have realised that one cannot take anything for granted.

Unlike other societies, there is very little that the government can provide in any quantity except grief. We have take the meaning of the expression self reliance to another level. No opportunity goes to waste and there is nothing one can do to keep their head above the water that is seen as embarrassing.

I have sold tomatoes, milk, ice cream, pirated music CDs and at one time contemplated narcotics! I was nearly taken in for dealing in foreign currency and I can proudly announce to the world that I participated in the purely Zimbabwean phenomenon called “burning money”.

Everyone and his mother was doing it! It was one good way of laundering our totally useless currency without using it as ballast or an alternative for firewood. Those with cheque books did a roaring trade, and bank tellers became tycoons overnight.

As with the dubious scheme that involved money in Zimbabwe, some chef was smiling all the way to a Swiss bank at the top of the pyramid. Who does not know that the so called ‘world bank’ was fuelled by some very big fish? The women we saw on the street were victims as the rest of us were. They tell a very sad story nowadays as they regret not having invested the easy pickings they were blowing away at all-night parties that became the rage in Bulawayo in 2007 and 2008. Some even slunk back to the communal areas to lick their wounds.

We leant our lesson very well. Scattered in all four corners of the globe, Zimbabweans are performing miracles wherever they are. Everywhere you go, you find Zimbabweans excelling in whatever they are doing from rocket science to mowing the lawn.

What we touch turns to sold, though we also have opened ourselves to the most insidious forms of exploitation. Because we work harder than everyone else and commendably too, we are victims of xenophobia and petty jealousy.

The reality is that if God wills Zimbabwe’s troubles to go away, and we are all able to go back home to friends and family, some economies I know will surely collapse. I dare pray for that day not so much to cause a global economic catastrophe, but to get all Zimbabweans where they all belong — back home.
Oh how I wish, I wish, my dream would come true. But then, it’s only a dream.

Money talks, shit walks

I needed quotations for IT equipment and at the first shop I visited in Botswana, the lady behind the counter said she could only help me after lunch. She looked busy, but I doubt if what she was doing was worth the 12,000 pula I wanted to spend in her shop. She just couldn’t be bothered.

The next shop I went to seemed more receptive but a sense of urgency was non-existent. I was asked to come back later and when I did, the story was that the person who worked on quotations was caught up in a queue at the local hospital. I don’t know whether telling me that the person was at the hospital was an attempt to draw sympathy as an excuse for not performing. The fact is that they had wasted my time.

What was lost on these two suppliers, or their employees, is that businesses that take forever to make decisions lose money. People who can spot opportunities and act on them within minutes take the cake. This is just an example of the laid back attitude one often encounters here in Botswana.