A funny thing about Zimbabweans

Zimbabweans, and I guess I'm talking mainly about the whites here, let their children walk around everywhere with their shoes off. Have I mentioned this before? I mean, I'm from the South, but rules (laws?) about wearing shoes in restaurants and stores and such are pretty well enforced...or rather, there seems to be a general consensus that it's a good thing to wear shoes.

But here you will see moms taking their kids grocery shopping in proper grocery stores with no shoes on (gross!). Or in the nicest neighborhood steakhouse, you will see families having Sunday lunch, and the kids will be walking around in the restaurant...in and out of parking lot, back yard playground and bathrooms!...with no shoes on! (Double gross!)

It never ceases to amaze me.

Another funny thing about Zimbabweans is that pretty much all the kids wear uniforms to school, and in the case of big high school boys, they are still wearing what amounts to a short-sleeve button down, with a tie!, tucked into a pair of elastic-waist cotton shorts made from the same material as the shirt, and I'm talking above the knees shorts, knee socks the color of the shirt and shorts pulled up to the knees (always!), and brown or black leather shoes. And kids put up with it! Can you imagine anything more humiliating for a strapping 16-year-old young man than to wear that? Girls have sensible, cute little dresses, but the boys look like total idiots.

And what's even a little sad is that a lot of grown men continue to dress that way. Having been in Muslim countries for 5 years before coming here, I still cannot get used to seeing a man in a pair of short-shorts...at work! Even shopping, I'll just see a grown man out of the corner of my eye, his big belly almost completely concealing what is probably his old school boy shorts. It's too much!!

But it's just the way things are here.

random man at work lunch... You should have seen the other guy.

Quick Lesson in Dialect

Being in a country of native English speakers, I've been surprised that I can't understand the locals probably 20% of the time. In other places we've lived, I communicated with people in English which was their second or third language, so the vocabulary and pronunciation was pretty standardized. But here, especially the "whites" speak fast and furiously with their own terms and phrases and their own (to me) funny dialect. (I still can't get used to that distinction -whites - but saying Rodesians or expats or European-Zimbabweans is even less acceptable here since they ARE adamant about being Zimbabwean and African.) It sounds closer to South African or even Australian English than one of England's dialects...as far as I can tell. (Zimbabweans who are from Shona or Ndeble tribes usually speak those languages as their first language and are fluent in English on top of that.)

I'm at the gym, where I get my best internet connection. The instructor teaching the class is providing me with a helpful pronunication guide:

• Leg = Layg
• Bench = Beench
• Guys = Gahys
• Hands = Hends
• Quicker = Quickuh, Over = Ovuh, There = Theyuh
• Nearly = Nehly
• Dance = Dahnce
• World = Wuld
• (my favorites) Weather = Waythah, Pleasure = Playzhah

Resilience

Today at the gym I go to regularly, there was a small gathering ‘round the corner bar to say good-bye to an employee. The gym is one room - there’s an exercise floor lined with mirrors on one end, weights in the middle, and the bar in the corner where tea, nutty muffins, salads and sandwiches are sold. Listening to the good-bye speech of the owner (who looks a lot like my sister-in-law Tracy), I started to get tears in my eyes even though I hardly know the woman leaving. She’s moving to Australia so her children will earn residency and be able to attend college there. There’s no quality university in the country, so most college-age kids leave. It’s likely it will be a permanent move for this family that has lived for generations in Zimbabwe. These kinds of moves are typical and have been especially prevalent during the last ten years or so when economic and political uncertainty has been so overwhelming.

There are a lot more white Zimbos in Harare than I expected. It's something I haven't experienced before: a significant population of white people in Africa who call it their home (unless Lebanese in Sierra Leone count). I can’t count the number of people I’ve met who were kicked off their farms and who now are reinventing their lives. When a farm was taken over, it was often at gunpoint, and families lost a lot: their possessions, their house, their livelihood, and all the land they’d developed and invested in over the years. As I get to know people, I feel how they have been through something traumatic and have reached deeper into themselves. They're extremely hardy, but you can see the toll the stress has taken. And still they're extremely positive and warm and have a stellar sense of humor.

As usual, my vague expectations of a new country have been scrambled somewhat. I didn’t come here expecting to have a very sympathetic view of the white Zimbabwean farmers. But of course, people are people wherever you go. It’s easy to feel sympathetic when you meet lovely genuine people, and then you see how they've suffered. It’s all very humbling.... my moving-around-life…. What do I know of suffering and survival? How easy has my life been? How lucky am I?