Zimbabwe: First Impressions

I had finished my first round of golf at the Hillside Golf Club in Mutare and had gone up onto a deck that overlooks the first tee and ninth green to get some water and a sandwich. The day was dry and hot, around 30C, humidity like that of a desert. I'd worn a scarf around my neck to protect it from UV.

The course was parched. The rainy season hadn't yet begun, and, because there is no irrigation system for the fairways, they were brown and dusty. The course, though, in spite of the dried up grass, was an excellent British layout that was built more than a hundred years ago. It places a premium on accuracy off the tee. A stray ball ends up in the bush and lost. (Zimbos find golf balls and sell them back to golfers.)

I sat down at a picnic table next to a table of locals, all white and drinking beers. Black locals were at other tables.

One man, N., turned to me and asked how I'd played. Not well, I said, but it was my first time. He asked me where I was from, and I said, "I'm American."

"I can tell," he said.

"I might be Canadian."

"There's a difference," he said. 

He was perhaps 175 centimeters tall, fairly thin, but with a slight belly hanging over his belt. His brown hair was bleached from the sun. His face was hardened and wrinkled, red on the crowns of his cheeks, either from drinking or the sun. I couldn't tell. We were near the same age. He was born in 1953; I was born in 1952.

We shook hands and introduced ourselves. He was born in Zim, knew the language, Shona.

He was smoking a cigarette. One thing that had surprised me about Zim was how few smokers there are. I rarely saw someone smoking in public. And cigarettes, I noticed, are relatively cheap, only about eight bond, or less than fifty cents, for a pack. Tobacco is one of the country's few cash crops.

Maybe the waitress came out from the dining room next. I can't remember the sequence of what happened after N. and I introduced ourselves, only that the club did not serve sandwiches, just steaks, fish n chips, kebabos, and a stew. At four in the afternoon, coming in out of the sun, none of them were appealing. I settled for water and an energy bar that I had brought along.

N. asked me what I thought of Zim, a question that I had become used to. I said, "Though the news about Zim is always negative, the inflation, the petrol queues, the political opposition protesting against the current government, things seem so normal."

"Things got bad when the land reform policy started," he said. "Before that, when there was a pothole in a street, if someone called the local government to repair it, it was repaired." 

He smoked his cigarette. "Now? The country has gone to bloody hell."

I didn't say anything. What could I say? I wasn't facing many of the hardships that the Zimbos faced. I was privileged, and I knew I was.

N. said, "I'm not a racist, but . . ."

He then let loose with a racist monologue about why the country'seconomy was in the shape it was, and the blame, to his way of thinking, rested firmly on the black Zimbos, who were not capable of governing themselves or running businesses.

What had impressed me the most about my short stay in Zim was the people, many of whom didn't know how they were going to make it from one day to the next. Every time I went into a grocery store, someone asked me if I had any cash. Cash, the Zim bond note, is tight. ATMs have none. They're only good for checking one's bank balance. But even that can be done on a smart phone. So ATMs are more like decoration than anything functional.

I recall that one man in a pressed yellow shirt, wearing a tie, very professional and dignified, had asked me for cash once in Pick n Pay, a grocery store. Despair showed in his eyes. I said I didn't have any cash, that I was paying with eco-cash, using my phone. He, like others who had asked me for cash, would pay for my groceries, and I, in return, would pay them cash.

There was a tear on the right shoulder of his pressed yellow shirt. He had stitched the tear back together. This was the state of how so many Zimbos lived: by stitching things back together, making due with what they had.

I don't know if I stayed long enough for N. to finish his monologue on why Zim was in the condition it was. But I was uncomfortable listening to him. Maybe I should have called him out on what he was saying. That is my weakness: not being confrontational. It's how black Zims are. They remind me of the Japanese, seeking harmony with others, not being at all assertive and argumentative.

A few minutes later I was talking with K., the manager of the club. He had caddied for professional golfers, notably Nick Price, a Zimbabwean who was inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame. K. had traveled to Europe, the U.S., and even China, to caddie in professional tournaments.

He, too, asked me about what I thought of Zim. I told him what I had said to N., and he gave me a brief history of the people, how they had always been peaceful, non-confrontational, that before white settlers had showed up had, when other tribes raided them, taken to the hills, hiding in caves, rather than to fight.

"They're too passive," K. said. "They're easily taken advantage of."

This was an observation that many of the guards on the campus at Africa University had as well about themselves. Zimbos just wake up the next morning and carry on , valuing harmony and peacefulness over revolution.