Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

KNEELING IN THE DUST !

Dear Family and Friends,

Coming into Zimbabwe by road from South Africa is an experience not to be missed - for all the right and all the wrong reasons!

As you approach Musina, the last South African town before the border with Zimbabwe, you are struck with a feeling of being in a place of great majesty and ancient history. Giant Baobab trees stand dramatically in the dry, scratchy scrub land. It's hard to take in their massive and strangely upside down appearance. They are leafless as summer approaches and you are left wondering if some great hand from above pulled them up and then plunged them head first back into the hard African ground. In Musina town itself, on a dusty roadside, a glorious blaze of pink flowers crowd the swollen, grey stems of a Sabi Star shrub. Their pink-ness seems ironic and out of place amidst the dust and the heat and this, together with the Baobabs, sets the scene for the approaching insanity that has become life in Zimbabwe.

Musina town is crowded with Zimbabwean vehicles. Cars, trucks and minibuses are filled to overflowing with food and household goods. The images remind you of the place you are going to: the land of nothing. There are piles of bread crammed against car windows, huge blocks of toilet paper stuffed onto roof racks; women with 10 kilo bags of flour, sugar and mealie meal on their heads; gaudy carrier bags bursting at the seams filled with all the essentials of every day - essentials robbed us by economic collapse due to gross mismanagement and leadership incompetence.

The border control entry point at Beitbridge is Zimbabwe at its worst: a grim nightmare and disgraceful window into our country. The officials are sour, surly and downright rude. You stagger from one filthy counter to the next with no volunteered information on what to do, where to go and which bits of paper need stamps on. There are more touts, con men and wheeler dealers than you can cope with and they operate openly, brazenly and untouched, in full view of police, security guards and officials. For American dollars or South African Rand they force their way to the front of the one and only counter for returning residents and there they get your papers stamped, pay your road access tax, your Bridge toll fees or your customs duties. Appealing to the man with the legend: "Modern Security" enscribed on his navy uniform incurs a disgusting display of rudeness, temper and heavy handed physical pushing, not of the bad guys but of innocent members of the public. Question Mr Modern Security and he rubs his thumb against his fingers indicating clearly that if you want help you must pay. If you don't pay the bribes you wait, and wait, and wait. I was 12th in line but was there three and half hours.

Once back in Zimbabwe you plummet from 1st world to 4th in less than 10 minutes. Fuel stations are dry, food shops are empty, mobile phones have no signal. Women wash clothes and naked children bathe in the pools of the Bubye River and one lady dressed all in white kneels in the dust, her hands clasped in prayer, under a leafless thorn tree in the middle of nowhere. Donkey drawn carts become more commonplace than cars, goats dawdle across the road, fences along the highway are gone and its not worth your mental or physical health to look for or use a public toilet. Huge farms stand empty and derelict, fields unploughed, no sign of preparation for the season now just weeks away.

As night draws in you pass towns and cities engulfed in the darkness of power cuts and an uncountable number of road blocks loom out of the blackness, manned by Policemen who look younger than my teenage son. Its hard to believe that Zimbabwe is in the same place in time as the rest of the world. Perhaps not for much longer is our fervent hope.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Copyright cathy buckle 9th August 2008.
www.cathybuckle.com .