Christmas in Zim

We had a day of exploring, a Sunday drive. Typically for us, it was ad hoc, the idea not even discussed until eleven.

We took the kids to the lion and cheetah park just outside of Harare – a mini drive-through safari. We saw lions, several kinds of antelope, zebra, wildebeest, a spotted hyena, baboons, an ostrich, a peacock, and a 306-year-old tortoise. No cheetah seen, but there were two lion cubs that were very cute. However, at the walk around bit, a chain-link fence isn’t much when a full grown lion leaps at your kid. It’s disconcerting to say the least the way the lions only have eyes for the children.

Then there was Snake World where they (I opted out) saw some local highlights: a puff adder, some cobras, a black mamba, a crocodile, but no python (shucks). The nearby Lake Chivero wasn’t much to see during an afternoon shower. According to Lonely Planet, it is “all the rage for Harare day-trippers who love to fish, boat, party and organize lakeshore braais” (aka bbqs). Hopefully there’ll be more to tell about that place another day. The dirt roads around the lake turned to red clay puddles that D enjoyed splashing through in his new (to him) Land Cruiser.

We finally ended up eating dinner in an English pub back in Harare full of Zimbabweans watching Aston Villa play Arsenal. David nailed it when he said: back in the States you don’t often see a pub full of black people cheering a soccer match. There were other moments like that today of feeling – whoa, we are not in Amman any more. This is Africa: driving along in a 4x4, looking at the green rolling hills dotted with red rock boulders, conical thatch roof houses, women walking along with babies tied to their backs and bundles balanced on their heads, African music on the radio.

Granted, there is also the sound of rats racing across the attic floor above our heads in the early hours of the morning. And there was a smallish one doing laps in the pool the morning after Christmas day. (We didn’t tell our friends who brought their daughter over later to swim in the pool.) There are other living things that share our space: flies, spiders, mosquitoes, fleas from the dog that Rob and Nadia have left behind until they can ship him to Amman (thanks!).

At about 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, I thought…man, I better come up with a plan for Christmas! It has been so busy with the move and trying to find our way around, and also to meet with people here. We moved into the house on Monday the 21st, got our shipment from Amman that day (a miracle, expensive, but miraculous nonetheless), and spent the next days unpacking and filling in gaps where we could. There were power outages those first days for about 48 hours…and we don’t have water when there’s no power. We do have a generator, but running it all day isn’t feasible since it uses so much fuel… So much to figure out here! ( …including driving a stick-shift from the right side of the car, avoiding getting eaten by mosquitoes at night, finding a place to get an internet connection, figuring out when the holidays are…oh, so you get the next 5 days off, ok…)

Very unfortunately, I lost the battery charger for the camera on our move, and we have not been able to find a store that sells a replacement here. Needless to say, I’ve been suffering. No photos of the kids this Christmas!

Fortunately, nice people have been helping us out. Just about every night, we have been invited over to someone’s house for dinner or a party or poker or whatever. And even though we literally have zero appliances or furniture in our house [we did bring a coffee maker and toaster (smart) but no vacuum cleaner, washing machine or dryer, dishwasher…we acquired 4 mattresses that are on the floor, 3 pillows, and a few bar stools that came with the house, and that’s it…linens arrived with the shipment, as well as some kitchen things], we do have a very worn rattan set that was left behind: 2 chairs, 2 loveseats and a coffee table that are on the outside patio which is well-shaded (though not fully protected from fleas since that’s where the dog sleeps at night since we kicked him out of the house.) So, twice people have brought their kids over here. Other than the rat infested pool and the flea infested furniture (I am exaggerating a little), we also have a tree swing to offer which is amazing (if not exactly checked for safety), a trampoline, and a couple of swing sets, one of which has a dinosaur the kids can climb on and open and close its mouth with a lever. We brought most of our toys from Amman, too, so the kids can play in their carpeted playroom with those things and their few new xmas things. Also, beer and wine is not only plentiful here; it’s cheap.

So to be a bit more specific on the friends front: there’s Clementina, her husband Olivier, and their son Sebastian who is now a tough little 2 ½ year old; Keith (MC’s global agriculture specialist) who’s staying here for a month with his wife Donata and their 5-year-old daughter Alegra; Veena and Olga who are MC staff who D worked with in Sudan and who are now the Deputy Country Director and Finance Manager, respectively, for MC Zim; and there are the others who have been introduced to us. Clem and Olivier hosted a Christmas party for 15 which included the braai, swimming, and a gift exchange (to which I contributed the “Chinese” twist concept) and lots of drinking. I also made a peach cobbler (my first, I think) which was edible.

So back to Christmas Eve…while David was sleeping off his afternoon beers (he had been hosting while I was shopping), I picked a potted plant (a bit ant-infested I discovered later), to decorate with tinsel I had brought with me from Amman that was left over from Falastin’s going away party. I put it on the coffee table and skirted it with a red headscarf Miles had worn for Halloween, and after a few rounds of Oh, Christmas Plant with the kids and some discussion of how Santa would use his magic to travel all over the world that night, we were set. To make the night just a bit more special, we started the Star Wars trilogy, which we continued for the next two nights. (Other than “the force,” some interesting depictions of aliens, and inspiring special affects, it really is just about blowing things up, I was a little disappointed, as an adult, to discover. And, yes, it is a bit scary for a 3-year-old, even a hardened one like Eliza.) DVDs can be watched on the laptop or if we hook up the projector, on the painted brick wall of our bedroom as we cuddle on our mattress on the floor.

The children enjoyed their paltry gifts...we'd been giving them one here and there during this not-so-easy transition period to help soften their experience. But they weren't phased at all by the smaller pile of presents or lack of snow/tree, etc. They are thankfully still too young, or else just getting used to this crazy uncertain life.