It will be strange to go out there with Georginah no longer there. I met with her nephew Misheck yesterday and it seems they are getting by, just. His mother, Georginah's sister now does the farming on Georginah's land but because of this years drought and burnt out irrigation pumps the harvest was dismal. Misheck has one more year of university after he finishes his internship in September and I think he is the families hope for the future. The mining company that he is doing his internship with have promised him two years of employment after he finishes and he says that often South African companies pick them up after that. He is a good boy, no drinking or smoking and very bright so I hope that we can continue to help him until he gets to the point where he can look after his family.
The situation here is a few notches worse than the last time I was here and everyone tells me that it has been sliding fast since the election. Even so money is obviously being spent on many new shiny police vehicles and there is now a small army of bicycle policeman around the city and from what I hear they are quite busy enforcing the law. Meanwhile there is no sugar or cooking oil in the stores and the only mealie meal is the expensive brand which costs $40,000.00 for 10kg, many people are going without.
I changed some USD for $17,000.00 - $1USD the other day and yesterday it was up to 20,000.00- 1 compared to the bank rate of 6200-1.
I visited Nalikuleni and Dumisani at the art gallery yesterday, they are the artists that do the colograph & lithograph prints.  They are so nice and so portable that I bought twenty from each of them and they are going to make me a bunch of cards as well, the cards will go quicker than the prints so perhaps I can get somemore business for them. I am not buying any carvings in Zimbabwe this time as it is nearly impossible to get anything out of the country and I have no intention of forking over $600.00USD in bribes to customs officials this time. So I will buy small things like the prints that I can carry with me into Zambia without being noticed. There is also a young man, Jonathon, at the gallery who does paintings, he was still in school last time I was here but he has finished now and has his own studio space at the gallery, he has had no formal training but apprenticed with one of the other artists at the gallery and does wonderful paintings. Both of Jonathons parents are very ill and I assume that they are probaly dying of AIDS so he is looking after them. I will meet him tomorrow morning and definitely want to buy some of his paintings.
It is hard to get my head around not being flat out buying but I think I will get busy being a "tourist in town" so that if I do bring a group here in the fall I can recommend some things like the museum that I have never visited in all these years of coming here. The leg work towards a tour might end up all being a waste of time depending on how much worse the situation becomes by fall but I guess I will go through the motions anyway and hope for the best.
The man who now owns the lodge where I'm staying is organizing a private car hire for me and says he can find me the fuel also so once I get the kids medicals underway I want to go up to Binga on Lake Kariba and kick back in the hot springs for a few days. I will organize a few days stay and activities up there for a tentative tour.
I need to bring the kids to Bulawayo for blood, urine, and x-rays on Wednesday and then we have to wait a week for the results before the rest of the medical can be done. Nothing is simple here.
For now that is about it but I will write again after I've been out to Thembanani and Nyamandlovu.
Hope everyone is well there.
Margorie
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
June 5, 2005
I just returned from Mashava where my helpers here work. They have an old house rented down there which they use as their soapstone finishing and packing workshop. I got the pickup on Friday at noon but then ended up running around doing both depositing some money into Hanga textiles account and also sending them a couple post dated cheques by courier. On Friday by the time I did banking and then delivered Mavis, and Lungile (Cirira's husband) to Etembane market it was already about 2:30 in the afternoon and I still had to go to C.'s house in Lobengula and help him load all of the furniture which we hauled done to Mashava to his mothers house. There is no end to the uses for a pickup truck when one is available to you. We ended up there in the dark but with the lack of fuel in the country the traffic is extremely light so not as dangerous to drive at night as it used to be. The fuel situation is becoming worse by the day, hard to believe that is possible but apparently it is.
The cleansing continues, I don't think that anyone can really figure out why, some say it is retribution but they are now starting on people who have traditionally voted Zanu PF so it is really hard to figure out what they are trying to do. I read in today's "Standard" that they had destroyed all of the homes and tuck shops on a cooperative that was formed on some farm land in 2000 and they plan on moving to the farms next so who really knows where it is going, unless he just wants to push people to the point of revolt so that he can try out his new weaponry, who knows but people are so discouraged.
I have not been in any of the areas where the cleansing has taking place during a cleansing but I saw plenty of the remaining carnage on Friday when I drove from the downtown area out to Entembane market, I would love to take photos but it is just too risky. Everyone is a potential informer these days with the government offering cash regards for information so even if the many police didn't see you someone else might so no photos.
It was nice to see what C and N (my helpers here) are doing down there for Chris, it is an asbestos mining area and there is alot of soapstone around there too so alot of carvers living and working around Mashava. Also, C's parents, younger siblings, and grandparents live about 20km from Mashava so we went there for a feed of sadza and home grown chicken. It is a pretty area with low mountains and open valleys for farming, not the greatest soil but not the worst I've seen here either. They have only been there for three years so they have fairly new roundaval huts and plans for a five room house by the end of the year. They are very nice people and were of course thrilled to meet me. If this country doesn't implode at any minute it would be a nice place to take the tourists for a short "home stay".
I am planning on leaving Tuesday night on the train for Vic Falls, it will be unbelievably slow but will probably get there. I have alot of running around finishing up details tomorrow and Tuesday morning.
There is a planned "stay away" for Thurs & Friday so who knows perhaps all hell will break loose, part of me would like to see what happens but it probably wouldn't be wise.
Margorie
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
June 7, 2005
I telephoned C this morning to see how things were going in Mashava, I guess the police were going house to house yesterday but didn't get as far as theirs yet but they were expecting them today. This cleansing seems to have no rhyme or reason, if it was only to try and put a stop to black market dealers then why would they bulldoze a primary school in Hatcliffe, Harare?
If it was retribution against people who voted for the opposition then why clear off people living on farms where they were relocated by the government themselves? And if it was to get rid of illegal traders then why trash and burn vegetables vendors who have paid their rent to the city councils for years and until now have been considered legal? It is nothing but pure insanity and impossible to figure out their motives. Some people say they want to drive the poorest people from the cities back to the rural areas where they have traditionally held alot of control but if that is the case it just may backfire on them, if these people are driven back to their rural areas it is unlikely that they will have anything positive to say to their rural family and friends about a government which has unleashed this kind of terror on them so with any luck it will wake a few of the rural folks up to what this government is all about.
It is hard to think about anything other than politics and the situation here which grows worse by the day, at least at the farm you can try and forget it for awhile but here in the city it is in your face all of the time, no avoiding it.
I am feeling apprehensive about the border crossing out of here, they are tightening the borders beyond belief and I am liable to get alot of harassment about the goods that I will be carrying. The white woman from a craft shop (where I get the trade bead bracelets) told me I should wait ten days until things cool down again but I'm already at least ten days behind schedule and if I wait any longer I will never get the buying done in Zambia and Malawi
I still have the telephone number for the taxi driver who took me across the border last time so I will try and phone him today and see what the situation is like, he made sure that they didn't look in the trunk of the car last time so hopefully I can manage it that way again.
Otherwise nothing new just a city full of people feeling nervous about the upcoming stay away on Thursday and Friday, nobody at my lodge knew about it until I showed them the paper I'd bought and I must say it got quite a reaction, I think they will stay at home and hide in their houses those days!
Don't worry about me, its not like I'm staying in the thick of it and my worry is for the people here not for me.
Margorie
Livingstone, Zambia
June 11, 2005
I arrived in Livingstone Zambia about an hour ago without too much trouble at the Zimbabwean border. I woke up about 6:30 this morning and started to repack my three big duffle bags (one of them my big hockey bag). I tried to put the art as much out of site as I possibly could with clothing especially bra's, panties, etc on the tops of the bags. It is the oldest trick in the world but still seems to work as they are reluctanct to start rooting around in a white woman's undies! Ha Ha on them! I also had a Zimbabwean receipt book with me so I wrote up a receipt for the things I had bought just in case they wanted proof of purchase; I had thought ahead to have it stamped for me by one of the artists at the gallery in Bulawayo so then I just filled it in and signed it Gilbert Sibanda (the co-op member from Thembanani who aggravated me the most in 98). They did end up having a bit of a look in the bags but not too extensively since I had so much I think the young man was too lazy to go through everything piece by piece. He also finally asked for the receipt but only looked at it briefly and that was that.
Zambia seems sooo nice after the struggle to do anything in Zimbabwe. There is fuel in the stations, bread in the bakeries, and all the other amenities that one expects in a normally functioning economy. Since it is Saturday I think that I will just hang out at Jolly Boys Backpackers until Monday. They have a pool and deck chairs and although I don't usually enjoy staying in backpacker places with all the kids young enough to be my own, all on the "Lonely Planet" trail, it will be alright to just relax and not worry about how to change money without getting arrested or whether or not somebody is taking too much of an interest in why you're still around, and what you're doing.
I'm planning on going into Botswana and might try and visit Chobe National Park and the Okovango Delta with this "tour" idea in mind.
I'm rather behind schedule but I don't think that it will take too long to get some buying done and after Zimbabwe it will seem easy.
Margorie
Zambia, June22
I found Joseph, a young man who Tamara Knutson (used to work in Zambia) gave me as a contact at Livingstone Falls market. He seems to be an honest decent guy, works with fifteen others, half of them family and the rest all men from his village of Mukuni. I went out to the village with him two days ago and had the tour around of the carvers, school,clinic, etc.
Also met his Mom who was so shy but pleased to meet me, she cooked us up a lunch of nsima and relish mixed with groundnuts, very good.
So yesterday I started the buying. In this area there is so much beautiful teak and ironwood. A lot of the usual elephants, hippos, etc but I needed that sort of thing anyway since I didn't get any of it in Zimbabwe. The prices are higher than in Zim but for such nice hardwood I can't expect to pay less so I do feel comfortable that they are getting a fair price and so am I. It will be the airfreight that kills us but unless I can do a container out of here it just wouldn't be possible as you could wait months to get a consolidation.
The man who runs Fawlty Towers knows a carpenter that I can get to build some smallish strong crates so probably tomorrow I'll get on to that.
I'm off to the village with Joseph again today but after today most of the buying will be finished.
I met a man at Fawlty Towers who is working on a volunteer project in a nearby village. He's helping the people start a small business to have tourists in very small groups come and stay/experience village life. I will go out there when I'm done the buying. Maybe I've found an alternative to doing that kind of thing in Zimbabwe. This would be a good place to do it as there are so many other tourist things to do as well.
I miss Zimbabwe, don't hear the news here and haven't tried to find it, just too depressing anyway.
Margorie
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