Grace Mutandwa

Two Philips Groaning

Monday morning. It’s been a weekend of doughnuts and I’m drinking too much again. A can of Namibian beer seems easier and tastier than water flavoured with the sulphuric tang of purification tablets. In Zimbabwe, alcoholism is a prophylactic for cholera. Not surprisingly after my excess, a certain tightness of my bowel suggests that I’d better visit the loo. But that’s not a pleasant prospect.

For some reason Harare’s  powers that be cut off the British Embassy’s water supply in December. It’s not clear if this was another sign of Zim’s water system failure or a protest at our policy of saying that Mr Mugabe’s government is not altogether the best thing since sliced bread. Now Harare’s water ain’t great for drinking, fortified as it is by large amounts of the charmingly named but deadly Vibrio cholera bacterium. But I do still find it helpful for flushing toilets and miss it now it’s gone. So my toiletry routine has taken on a semi-African form. I fill a bucket from a butt and carry it down the corridor, spilling a little to present a banana-skin-type walkway to my colleagues.

I should study Zimbie women, some of whom carry water buckets (not to mention tree trunks) on their heads with no spillage and a greater impression of grace than I offer at 8am on Monday, groaning as I heave my sloshing load of toxicity along. We’ll skip the next part of the story; suffice to say that I empty my bucket.  I try to shake off some of the associated effects by washing my hands using a ‘water-free purification liquid.’ This stuff smells like something a mortician would use, but succeeds only in making me feel like a dirty person with clean hands.

So that’s Monday in Harare. But this being Zimbabwe there’s always somebody a thousand times worse off than me. Today it’s Philip (another Philip), an Embassy security guard, who I find folded on his chair, in tears and groaning as if his chest is about to burst. He has just heard that his sister died in Mutare on Saturday. These are Philip’s problems in order of significance.  His beloved sister, a 35 year old mother of two, is dead.   Nobody knows what she died of. Philip worries she caught cholera which means his whole family is at risk.      

He wants to pay for her funeral, but has nothing like enough money.  His family needs to offer a minimal meal of sadza and relish at the wake, but does not have much of either.  He wants to attend the funeral but, again, has no money.  He is supposed to be working all week. Despite the coarsening effect of three years in Zimbabwe, I recognise Philip’s suffering to be infinitely greater than mine. I help as I can; knowing as I do that nothing can mend Philip’s broken heart or rescue his broken family from danger. Nor is there much prospect of anything mending his broken country anytime soon. 

Posted at 16:17 19 January 2009 by Philip Barclay  |  Comments[5]