Firstly, thank you so much for all your advice and words of support on my previous post - I found them very emotional to read, and I feel very lucky to have such a wonderful group of people to consult and connect with. So thank you (and I'll reply to all comments individually as soon as I can). Secondly, thank you so much for all your questions! I've been thinking about the answers for a while, and I decided to devote a whole post to trying to give you some idea of what Zimbabwe was like, as a few of you asked about that, and it's a big subject. I would love to show you photos from those days, but we had to leave a lot behind when we left, and those we have aren't in digital form. I mostly just have baby pictures, so in lieu of anything more interesting, I've scattered some photos of me as a Very Small Person throughout the post as what will hopefully be comic relief.
Vali asked about my life in Zimbabwe, and whether I'm ever going to move back.
Both these questions are always really hard to answer (which is the sign of a very good question, Vali!). I guess the book I wrote last year really is a long-winded attempt to describe what it was like growing up in Zimbabwe. I think it is difficult to summarise life in Zimbabwe because, to me, that life was normal and everything else is exotic. I tend to describe it to people in terms of contrast. For example: I miss the colour! I really do. When we came to New Zealand, everything looked grey and washed out, as if a photo had been left out in the sun and rain until it was so faded you could hardly make out the details. Even the sky was washed-out. It was the colour of old denim, while the Zimbabwean sky is hot, bright blue, like the blue you get right in the centre of a candle flame. And the people were grey and washed-out too … everyone seemed to be in denim and black and grey and brown, there were no colours. And everyone was so quiet. It got better, however. After a while I could appreciate the more delicate beauty of a New Zealand sky. And I also appreciate the fact that no animal, insect, bird or snake in New Zealand is likely to kill me except in a deeply ironic turn of circumstance. Even though I like not having to deal with snakes, giant spiders or killer bees anymore, I kind of miss them. There’s an edginess to life in Zimbabwe, a sense that everything could shift and change overnight, so you never feel complacent or settled. The danger gives everything sharper edges, focuses you on what is important. Here in New Zealand, and I would imagine it is similar in other developed nations, it is easier to become complacent and to imagine that things are controllable, that you have some sort of a handle on existence. In Zimbabwe, it was harder to believe that.
Miss Lady Finger asked about my childhood there. It was a barefoot one, with plenty of freedom, lots of cuts and bruises, and very little television. I was very lucky - it was a great place in which to grow up. I was a tomboy when I was younger, as well - in fact, until I was about fourteen - and I spent a lot of time climbing trees and then reading in them for hours. I wrote this little stream-of-consciousness a while ago, thinking about my childhood in Zim:
"Even though I have not started school yet, I am very busy during the day. These are good games to play in the garden: spotting an ant lion’s tiny burrow in the red soil, and mimicking the footsteps of an ant with a slender twig. Watching the ant lion emerge in an avalanche of dust, pounce on the stick, then disappear beneath the surface, disappointed. Finding a chameleon on a branch and letting it walk along your hand, feeling its scaly feet loop and scrape along your fingers like Velcro. Spending half an hour with a sharp rock and a concrete slab trying to break open a macadamia nut. Catching black beetles and keeping them in an old ice-cream tub with some grass and a bottle-cap of water.
“Be careful,” my Mum is always saying.
I know that we are not really welcome here. There are too many things that can kill you: snakes, leopards, hippos, hyenas, charging elephants, spiders. There is potential death or pain in every step. Even the plants are out to get us. There is a plant in our garden that oozes milk when you break it, and is Deadly Poisonous, Mum says. There is also one called Morning Glory that will make you go mad if you eat it, and one covered in tiny yellow fibres of spines that will stick under your skin forever if you touch them. Walking barefoot, I have grown hard and crusty soles on my feet to protect against acacia thorns lurking on the ground, or those tiny plants with white spiky flowers that grow on the lawn. Every expedition outside is accompanied by insect repellent, sunscreen, a hat and calamine lotion. Every activity is dogged by unseen dangers. Mum is eternally dabbing things on me, pulling out splinters or bee stings and slapping on plasters. A day does not pass without a cut or bruise.
Mum irons everything we wash, including underwear, sheets and pillowcases. You have to iron everything because of the putzi flies. I have never seen any, but I have heard the horror stories. Mum has told me that they live in cloth, and then burrow into your skin and lay eggs under it. When the eggs hatch, dozens of putzi flies crawl out of your skin and fly away. It is a disgusting but fascinating idea, and I would quite like to see it in action.
Going to bed at night is also fraught with danger. All the windows have burglar bars, and all the doors have padlocks. We have to check all of them are closed and locked before going to sleep, and then set the alarm. The night presses against the windows and tries to find a chink, but it cannot get in. I have a night-light; a little china castle with two china mice standing outside. It keeps the night back behind the windows, where it belongs."
I don't know if I will ever go back. In some ways I would like to, but I know that the place in which I grew up no longer exists. There are lots of good memories from there, but there are an awful lot of bad memories, too, and they are more recent. Also, I'm not entirely sure that I wouldn't be arrested when I arrived (long story). So I guess the answer is that I don't know if I will ever go back. I do, however, hope that there will be an end to the troubles there in my lifetime, whether I'm there to experience it or not. I can describe this feeling pretty well by quoting from Sam's speech at the end of The Two Towers.
"It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they are. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why."
I have posted a short story I wrote in 2003 based on our final days in Zimbabwe, in case you are interested. It's a bit long to incorporate in the body of this post, so here it is. If there are any specific questions relating to Zimbabwe that you would like to ask, leave them in the comments and I'll do my best!
