Adventures in the ‘Land full of Honey and Milk’
When I was in primary school, at around 6 years of age, I joined the percussion band. No, I didn't play the drums, the tambourine nor any other sophisticated instrument. I played the wood scraper block, dear reader, and I scraped that piece of wood with pride! Anyway, for our first performance, we did a number that went like this:
"My lovely country is Zimbabwe
Beautiful land of mine, pilgrim's pride.
Moving from Gazaland, to Great Lake Kariba (scrape, scrape)
From Zambezi to Limpopo (long scrape)
You see big rivers, you see tall mountains
Animals and many trees (scrape, scrape, scrape)
My lovely country is Zimbabwe
Land full of honey and milk everywhere..."
Please don't ask me why I still remember the words and where I had to come in to scrape, all two decades later (but if you butter me up, I might be convinced to sing it out loud for you). Anyway, this blog isn't about my stint as a Wood Scraper(er?) in a percussion band. My post is around that ironic line, "land full of honey and milk everywhere". So, let's dive in.
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July 2021, somewhere in Zimbabwe
I don’t know what’s more pitiful, the current state of affairs or the pathetic idiots who purport the mad man’s agenda at the expense of their own livelihood in the name of patriotism. Sad.
While I sat in motorcade-induced traffic, I was amused to witness a bald man wearing overalls come out of his Toyota Markii (never seen one of those before), open the boot of his car and grab a sugarcane. He carefully split it using his knee, walked back into his car while System Tazvida's “isu vana vacho torarama neiko” played full blast. I found it both ironic and sad because if you pay attention to the lyrics, they speak of the children of the deceased ending up with nothing while the deceased's relatives fight over everything, much like what was happening in Zimbabwe. The sad part was finding irony and humour while stuck in traffic caused by said “relatives of the deceased”. Isu vana veZimbabwe torarama neiko? I was running so late, and there was nothing I could do about it. When you’re driving in Zimbabwe you have to give yourself at least an hour and half, in case you get stuck in traffic because of the pom-pom brigade (a.k.a motorcade).
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Towards Warren Park, two pedestrians walk across the road very slowly. They are convinced that they will make it across before a car hits them, at an area where the speed limit was 100kmh. At the very last minute, they make a run for it as they realise they’ve narrowly missed meeting their Maker. I smile in amusement as I realise for the umpteenth time how people in Zimbabwe must have a secret death wish. I’d already calmed down from my previous anger as I was stuck in a boiling hot car in traffic caused by the motorcade, when a huge Ford Ranger decided to cut me off on the road without indicating, nearly causing an accident between myself and two lorries that were ahead of me. I had barely recovered from my previous incident with another massive car whose driver I unfortunately yelled at before discovering that the car belonged to a government official - but at that point I thought to myself if they were to stop the car and challenge me I was very much happy to go to court because they were in the wrong. Then I quickly remembered this is the same country in which somebody gets arrested for wearing a placard that says “no to corruption”, and quickly stepped on it, saved by my face mask (yes, we had to wear face masks in our own damn cars while driving, even if alone.) As someone with no desire to stay in this country any longer than I had to, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself until I was safely out of reach, at least for a while.
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We raced down Samora Machel Avenue and stopped at red traffic lights where two very drunk and/or high teenagers were taunting a truck driver in front of us. When I say "teenagers", I don't mean 19 year olds. I mean 13-14 year olds who've barely hit puberty. I intuitively pressed the button to lock my car doors, even though I’d already locked them before. One can never be too secure. They jumped to the back of the truck and started bouncing on it, chanting “haisi mota yevanhu iyi imota yemhuka - this isn’t a car for humans, but for animals”. I prayed deep inside that the traffic lights would change quickly so we could drive off. The older one, who looked more drunk and had a few scars on his face that could have told a thousand stories, came over to my car and started taunting my mum who was sitting on my passenger seat. I told her to relax. She went to lock her side of the door and I told her not to make any movements as I’d already locked the doors. The older boy laughed and said to his younger, shorter friend, “hona, karikuedza kukiya door but katadza - look, she's trying to lock the door but she can't”, then he burst out laughing. I was terrified, but I kept a cool face, calculating my escape route should they try to smash the car window. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in Harare, but I wasn’t about to become a statistic. Thank God, the traffic lights immediately changed to green and I sped off, praying they wouldn’t latch onto the car. They nearly damaged the side view mirror on the passenger side, but I left so fast they couldn’t have. As I drove off, everyone in the car was silently reflecting (or at least I’d like to believe that that’s what was happening), and I felt really sad for those kids. The odds were against them, and I couldn’t imagine the sort of future they were going to have in a country like this, where everything has been run down and the less privileged youth have little to no fighting chance. I was heartbroken.
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Two kids, barely 10 years old, watched intently as the mechanic fixed the tyre. When he was done, the children followed behind, eagerly watching to see him place the tyre back into its nook. It was a weekday during the school term, and these children belonged in a traditional classroom, not a mechanic's makeshift front yard garage. As I drove back home on the potholed road, swerving from left to right like we used to do on that mobile phone obstacle game 'Bumper Cars', I couldn't help feeling sad. When I was their age, I was in school, learning. Things weren't perfect back then (I once had to get sheltered from a tear gas bomb thrown into our school when I was 6, but that's a story for another day), but things have become considerably worse, especially for the underprivileged. Spending time with some of my more financially privileged acquaintances made my blood boil as I saw the evident disparity between the haves and the have nots, and I was particularly upset by the nonchalance with which they carried on living their lives, considering that some of them were also supporting the same system that's crippling the majority. But who could blame them? Would I behave any differently were I in their position, or is it more obvious to me because my situation is different? "Land full of honey and milk" seems to only apply to a 'lucky' few, and the melody of that song in our high-pitched primary school voices ringing in my head now seems like a taunt.