Cathy Buckle's Letter from Zimbabwe !

Dust and rust !

Saturday 2nd May 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

This month's municipal accounts are the first printed bills we've had from the local council for eight months. The accounts were hand delivered, door to door, post box to post box in residential suburbs. This, believe it or not, is cause for comment!

When a neighbour told me to look in my post box, I laughed and said that was a waste of time because nothing has gone into my home post box for nearly a year. The Post Office don't deliver any letters anymore - who knows why. The bank's have long since given up sending out statements to their customers and other street delivered items like electricity, telephone and municipal accounts have fallen by the wayside in Zimbabwe's collapse. It's been so long since anything's gone into my post box that I had to use a stick to clear a way through the spiders webs and had to manoeuvre my hand carefully underneath a hanging hornets' nest. There, lying in the dust and rust was my municipal bill. A couple of hornets flew out and the nest shivered in warning and alarm as I carefully lifted out the piece of paper. No envelope, not stapled closed, not even folded discreetly, the municipal bill may as well as have stayed where it was for the information it contained.

"All charges are in US Dollars and you are expected to pay on time to avoid inconveniences," it said. The bill itemized municipal charges and included a Fire Levy. This was cause for much heated conversation in the street. "A Fire Levy," people said, "for what?". The last time a house burned down in our neighbourhood the fire engine didn't come, apparently because it was picking up sick people.
Another item on the bill causing rage is that of Public Street Lighting. For three years the street lights in our neighbourhood haven't worked so you can cross that charge off, everyone is saying. Then there's the one that makes us all furious: Refuse Removal. It's been over a year since our garbage has been collected. We burn what we can, because we have no choice, we bury what we can and we accumulate what's left. Piles of trash lie under trees, on roadsides and dumped on any vacant piece of land.

Water charges on the municipal account are cause for disgust and contempt by residents. As I write this letter we are going into our fourth day without water - not a drop anywhere in the whole town and none are spared, not schools, hospitals, old age homes, industry or residences. The absence of water for days at a time is just one of our nightmares and does not address the issue of raw sewage flowing into the dam our water is being drawn from. Not to mention the levy for the pipeline from the new dam that we've been paying for years and yet not a drop does it deliver, in fact the pipe is not yet even laid in the trench dug for it.

Needless to say, no one is paying the ludicrous amounts being charged by the municipality. Charges so high that they amount to three quarters of a civil servants entire monthly wage. Everyone is paying something but only a small token. We have been paying in US dollars for electricity, telephones and municipal services for three months and now its time to receive service.

The new sentiment sweeping over Zimbabwe, at all levels, is: You deliver, we pay. You fix, we pay. You maintain, we pay.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

Just out of reach !

Sunday 17th August 2008.

Dear Family and Friends,

The will of the people. It is impossible to believe that 140 days after Zimbabwe voted for an MDC Parliament and an MDC President the will of the people has yet to be accepted or implemented. After nearly five months we remain locked in a truly horrible state without sworn in legislators, without a parliament and without legitimacy. Everything around us is falling apart so fast now and yet the people and party in power for the last twenty eight years simply refuse to go.

The electricity is now off more than on - in my area its only been on twice during daytime working hours in the last week. Urban water supply seems to have virtually collapsed and in my home area taps are dry for at least 20 hours a day. Massive environmental devastation is being done as people have no choice but to cut trees down for fuel wood. Shops remain barren of virtually all goods and banks have become nightmare places where hundreds of people queue for hours at a time to withdraw the maximum daily allowance which is now handed out as a small bag of coins. At some banks the situation is so bad that the doors stay closed and locked all the time and people are only allowed to enter in small batches.

Much as the old leadership would have us believe, we are not a country at war, no one is trying to invade us or take us over and the future is waiting, just out of our reach. It is very hard, however, to stay sane, healthy and focussed on the Zimbabwe that the majority voted for on the 29th March 2008.

One afternoon this week I went with a friend to a small environmental education centre and game park at a local school and the magnificence of the Zimbabwean bush helped revive flagging spirits. The Msasa trees are coming into new leaf and putting on a spectacular display of copper, caramel, burgundy, port and hot red. The wild oranges are starting to turn yellow and they hang heavily from branches of leafless trees. On rocks and kopjes there are unexpected and vivid scatterings of lime green and bright orange lichen. In between trees and rocks, superbly camouflaged, there were giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and impala. This small environmental education centre, a vision from the past, giving knowledge and understanding to our children in such troubled times and promising hope for the future of our beleaguered, broken Zimbabwe.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

Against all the odds.

Saturday 15th September 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Day after day Zimbabwe is on fire. Smoke rises in almost every direction, the wind carries trails of black debris and every evening the sky is smudged with ash. Night after night there is a great orange glow on the horizon and long after the moon and stars are overhead the fires continue to burn unchecked and out of control.

Out on an early morning errand this week I stopped as a Slender Mongoose ran out into the road. We stared at each other for a minute or two and it was a breathtaking sight. The dawn sun highlighted the depth of colour of his rich chestnut fur. The little mammal stood quite still on the tarmac, his black-tipped tail lifted slighted, ready to run. Then as suddenly as it had appeared, the mongoose was gone - running off into the only patch of unburnt vegetation still left in the nearby grassland. This little African mammal, once a common sight but now rarely seen, is surviving against all odds.

About two hundred metres along the road I passed two men who were carrying sickles and had catapults hanging round their necks. They were accompanied by a pack of hunting dogs who trotted all around them. The intention of their outing was obvious - the sickles to cut grass used to lay lines of fires, the catapults to kill birds, the dogs to catch mice and other small animals that flee from the flames. In an hour or two these men will destroy huge swathes of vegetation, remove essential habitat for birds and mammals and from the devastation will perhaps get enough meat for one meal. Their activities go unchecked and when they've had enough the men and their dogs head home leaving the fires to burn themselves out, sometimes many kilometres away.

Arriving at my destination I sat across the desk from a smartly dressed woman in her office. As I conducted my business we asked the questions all Zimbabweans are asking each other: have you got water today? Is your electricity on this morning? Have you managed to find bread? All the answers to all the questions were the same from both of us: no! We agreed that things were now 'very hard' in Zimbabwe but to an outsider this would undoubtedly be the understatement of all time. We have got up to find no water in the tap to drink, to bathe or to wash our clothes; we've got no electricity to cook food and no bread, cereal or milk to give to our families for breakfast. Despite it all and against all odds, Zimbabweans are still carrying on: clean, polite, hardworking, dedicated - a credit to a country so close to the edge.

At the end of three days of sixteen hour power cuts this week I finally heard the news that has given Zimbabwe such a lift. Against all the odds and with nothing in their favour, Zimbabwe beat Australia in the 20/20 cricket world cup. Patriotism burns strong, very strong, in our hearts and gives belief that against all odds, we will emerge from these darkest of days.

Until next week, thanks for reading,
love cathy.