African Laughter (33 page)

‘Sometimes I can’t believe I am doing this work,’ says Talent. ‘I can’t believe I am alive. When I was in the bush, I often could not believe the War would end, and I would live an ordinary life.’

But it seems the War has never really left her: she has terrible headaches and sometimes cannot move for days.

Listening to Talent was like sitting with my brother talking about war.

A war ends, you bury the dead, you look after the cripples–but everywhere among ordinary people is this army whose wounds don’t show: the numbed, or the brutalized, or those who can never, not really, believe in the innocence of life, of living; or those who will for ever be slowed by grief.

Meanwhile rumours enliven the train: the trouble is the brakes, the engine has broken down, rain has flooded the track. Puddles lie everywhere, and the sky is full of lively clouds, blue appearing only intermittently.

The train moved forward, stopped. Round about Gweru it summoned enough energy for a short move forward of a mile or so, then another, stopping in between like a wounded centipede.

People left the train and strolled about or sat on the embankment, Chris among them, first in ones and twos, then in groups, then it seemed everyone on the train was out there. It looked like a picnic, but without food. The scene reminded me of what I had been told of the old days–in this case before I was born, up to about the time of the First World War, when the train running north to Sinoia (Chinhoyi) would stop long enough for a man to leap down and shoot a duiker, a bush buck, a koodoo, if game appeared near the railway line. The meat was distributed among the passengers. When the booty was a lion the sportsman was given time to get the skin off. If in a good mood, the engine driver might halt long enough for everyone to have a picnic.

When our train gathered enough energy for a short move forward, it summoned the wanderers with short nagging snorts, and everyone ran back to it. Soon, when we stopped, people lugging suitcases ran to the road, hoping for a lift. But there were dozens of them, and hardly any cars, and these days people don’t easily give lifts.

During one long wait two white youths from first class sat by themselves under a tree watching the lively scenes they could not allow themselves to be part of.

Round about midday the train stood idling near a village. People ran in crowds to buy soft drinks, biscuits. While they streamed one way, a small half-naked black boy ran from his hut where his mother stood watching him. He carried a plastic container, and jumped up into the train to fill it from the train’s water taps. Having drained one container, he ran through the train, stopping at one tap after another. Meanwhile his mother waved her arms and shouted, afraid he would be whirled away from her. But soon he proudly went back, with his container filled.

The train stood quietly puffing. What was to stop us being here all day…another night…for ever? Time was behaving as it does when there seems no reason why a long wait should ever end. No, much better not to look at our watches, for by now not one but two groups of women were in the Bulawayo office wondering where we were.

There appeared two white officials with the look of those volunteering for martyrdom. They stopped in every compartment doorway: their task was to defuse aggression. When we asked what could conceivably be holding up this train, they said there was an electrical fault in the signalling system, because of the heavy rain. At every set of points the driver had to wait for written permission to proceed. ‘It is in your own best interests,’ they insisted, in the self-righteous and threatening manner of officials at bay. Shrieks of laughter accompanied them all down the train, like a bush fire behind an arsonist. What written instructions? From whom? Was a man running from the next station with a written message in a cleft stick from some punctilious station master who had looked in an instruction book under the section, ‘What to do in the event of rain fusing the signalling system’? Had the radio not been invented yet? Nor the telephone? No one believed in this nonsense, probably invented by the officials who, said Talent, were obviously pretty stupid.

Soon the train that had left Bulawayo that morning for Harare stopped alongside us. The windows were full of jolly faces, offering us sweets, biscuits, Fanta, even sadza. ‘Shame, better go back to Harare and try again tomorrow.’ In no time our despondent populations had cheered up and began laughing and joking back. At about two our train suddenly shot forward and soon the thorn trees and acacias of Matabeleland appeared. Trumpeting gently we arrived in Bulawayo station nine hours late. The exuberant noisy crowd poured out of the train and on to the Bulawayo platform, once proud of being the longest in the world. (It used to add a few feet to itself every time it was outdone by a platform in the Andes or Cincinnati or somewhere.) Among them pushed the young mother with all her small children in her arms. The women looked like butterflies. The cotton industry in Zimbabwe flourishes, cotton is the second crop, after tobacco, and somewhere there is a designer who fills the shop shelves and covers the women with brilliant swirling patterns that look wonderful on dark skins. At the exit I stopped, for I had heard a voice from the past. A fat bad-tempered white man was using it on a small crowd of patient blacks–the hectoring, bullying voice that…‘But why,’ I demanded, ‘is that man allowed to talk like that now?’ For I realized. I had not heard that voice, not once, since I had arrived in Zimbabwe. ‘Can’t you see he is a South African?’ said Talent. Then I did see: the characteristic belly-forward, chin-out stance which goes with the voice. But why? Was this a religious group? What was a group of black South Africans with their minder doing here? But it was a mystery that had to remain one, because we were hurrying to see if the women were still waiting.

Embassies had been sent to the station at half-hour intervals all day. They sent commiserations and good wishes. They would be waiting for us next morning.

Grey’s Inn Hotel has a sign showing sprightly coach horses, Dickensian–oh, lost England!, lamented no less in unexpected parts of Africa than in England itself. Inside, this amiable hostelry is far from English. But perhaps, so I am beginning to think, this explosive, irreverent, witty, selfish society does resemble eighteenth-century England? But then surely England is more like eighteenth-century England with every up and down of the national mood? You walk along a London street and look at the youngsters–for more and more London seems a young town. If you are wise you hold tight to your handbag because of pickpockets. Cocky, jolly, full of self-conscious style, with a swagger to the hips and a set to the shoulders that says, You can’t put anything past me! These attractive barbarians, full of relishing word-play–based on quips and slogans from television–do not resemble anything that was in these same streets when I came to London after the War. A dreary self-regarding respectability was more like it, to match the dreary unpainted streets and the last days of rationing.

The hotel is old-fashioned, with an atmosphere that tells you it has been enjoying itself for decades. I hope that does not mean it is due for demolition. My bedroom is large and has four beds: a family room for a society that prides itself on having plenty of children. The others have large rooms too.

In the heart of this hotel is a patio, or court, part-covered, furnished with umbrellas for the sun. But the sky is grey: the long cold spell hasn’t given up yet. For a couple of hours we sit at a table that expands as people join us, friends and their friends, relations, aides and admirers acquired on previous visits of the Team. The courtyard is crammed. More blacks than whites, and many mixed groups. I know that while I have to note this, because of the past, everyone here has long ago got used to the easy mix of races. In fact a young woman–Persian by origin–tells me her generation are surprised at the racism of their elders. It is in this hotel, a local politician, in opposition to Mugabe’s government, holds court most evenings. People come to listen to him. He is famous for saying everything he thinks: in the years before the Unity Accord that was certainly a brave thing. But this is Matabeleland, I am reminded, this is the home of
The Bulawayo Chronicle
, the newspaper never afraid to challenge the government on corruption and inefficiency. People are proud that the only newspaper ‘everyone’ reads is in Bulawayo.

What I remember is that Bulawayo and Salisbury were always in competition. Salisbury said Bulawayo was commercial, crude, lacking in the graces. Bulawayo said Salisbury was boring, and ‘civil service’, respectable, snobby. Now Bulawayo is saying Harare is full of Chefs getting rich and the smell of bad money. Harare says Bulawayo is a backwater. To the outsider both cities seem to fizz with energy and interest.

Again and again people say how lucky I am to come to Matabeleland now. Everyone here is happy. First, because of the Unity Accord, and because Joshua Nkomo, their man, is an important man in government. Then, the drought is over, and last year was a good season and this year, too, it is raining well. If I had visited before the Unity Accord everyone would have been despondent and suspicious, people were afraid, and then it seemed the long drought would go on for ever.

Cathie tells me: ‘The Communal Areas where we will be in the next few days are poor, the poorest anywhere. Forget the money-fed areas around Harare. Yet people are full of energy, full of spirit, that’s what’s so marvellous. These women…it’s the women…they won’t let anything get them down. You’d think they have it so bad the guts would be knocked out of them. Don’t you believe it.’

In this court, and later around the table at supper, and, for that matter, anywhere where people talk, the same subjects come back and back. It is women everywhere in what is called the Third World who are changing things. If you want to get things moving, go to the women, say Aid workers who have been in a half a dozen countries. Sometimes you have to go along with what seems to be the infrastructure–men in power; but really, it is the woman. Why is it that poor women everywhere are taking hold of their lives like this? asks someone. No one replies:
Why
questions are not as interesting as the facts, as reports on
how
things are being done.

They talk about Aid, Aid money, exactly in the same way as the people on the verandahs talk. With regret. With bitterness. With accusation…

The worst thing is that so much of the Aid money was wasted. This was partly because of all those fine words at Liberation: people believed that the fine words were the same as getting things done. Now when the government has a Party rally few people attend: it is a sign of maturity, and let’s hope Mugabe realizes that. There was a big rally here last month, and when the government spokesman–she was a woman–talked, the crowd did not respond. But when a local Chief got up to speak everyone went wild. Yes, the old Chiefs are back. Mugabe needs their support and he has returned them their courts: they can try local cases. But of course they want everything back: they want the power to allocate land.

Countries dishing out all that Aid money have got wary: their fingers have been burned too often. But it was their own fault. They handed out money to anyone and anything before making sure there was an infrastructure to build on…and a lot of the Aid money was stolen.

I hear another version of the ‘what is the most dangerous job’ joke: distribute Aid money–you’ll get away with ten years if you’re lucky.

But have people actually been imprisoned? Well, not many.

Back comes that question: how is it so many get away with it,
expect
to get away with it? Everywhere people have helped themselves as openly as if they were taking honey out of an old tree in the bush. Aid money has founded the fortunes of many a Chef.

Yet there is always another set of initials, signifying another fund, agency, organization, in arcane conversations impossible for a newcomer to crack. ‘If we can get X of XY to fund KA and BC then the IWP will come in and underwrite CBD and WSP.’

A well-known East African, once Minister of Economics, says he thinks Aid money is the worst thing that ever happened to Zimbabwe. (I have to emphasize that he is black, otherwise, ‘Well, he would wouldn’t he?’) ‘Mugabe should have insisted on pulling up the country by its bootstraps. The infrastructure was all there. Now the automatic response to any problem is, “Give us some Aid money”. All right, it would have taken longer. Aid organizations have turned the African nations into a pack of beggars.’ Or, a newspaper editor talks–black: ‘Aid hasn’t done us any good. Look what happened in the Second World War when imports stopped: secondary industry developed, Rhodesia became self-supporting. Then Sanctions: they were very good for this country, the same thing happened. Though of course it isn’t fashionable to say so.’

Another friend, South African (black), says the most disgusting thing he has ever seen was Nyerere on the television, ‘smiling like a dear sweet little angel’, waving in Aid money with both hands. ‘Send it along, send it along,’ he cried.

I have tried these ideas on various groups of people during this trip, but the response is, ‘That’s all very well if you haven’t seen the poverty for yourself.’ I haven’t the heart to say anything of the sort to these people here, so optimistic, so confident. The Book Team uses Aid money. It has also refused Aid money, when an organization has tried to lay down the law, exert political control. ‘They fly in from somewhere–Canada, America, Denmark, Germany–they talk to some bureaucrat in a Harare office, then they say, we’ll give you money if you do this or that. If we’re lucky they’ll take a trip to a Communal Area for a couple of hours before they rush back to Harare.’ The books the Team are producing are expensive, though not in labour, which is mostly voluntary. Eventually there will be six, each in the main six languages. It will take another six years to complete the project. If Zimbabwe changes as much in the coming six years as it has in the past six, then the books will have to change too.

‘Why, do you think Zimbabwe has changed?’ I am asked, by people impatient for utopia.