Overwhelmed by the endless stories of violence all around us, I’ve had the line of a Train song in my head:

I need to know that things are gonna look up
Cause I feel us drowning in a sea spilled from a cup

But a beautifully supportive quotation sent in from a friend today lifted my spirits a bit. It’s from Dr James Orbinski’s recently published book An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-First Century. Orbinski is a Canadian doctor who remained in Rwanda through the genocide, working for MSF, when most other aid workers fled. Trying to explain his actions, he writes:

There are moments in a particular story where I knew that my fear overwhelmed everything else, and there are other moments where the implications of not acting or speaking overwhelmed my fear….What I’ve experienced is that I can’t know the future. I can’t know if anything that I do will change what happens tomorrow. I can’t know with certainty, but what I do know is if I do nothing, nothing will change.

Nelson Mandela’s birthday is at least a month away yet there has been so much fuss around it already, since March if memory serves me right. Some big bash where international musicians will perform is being planned, there is a campaign of sending him a text message and the proceeds go to charity or something like that blah blah. I like him a lot too, but I don’t want to talk about his birthday. I want to talk about what Christopher Hitchens unpacks as to why Mandela hasn’t spoken out against Mugabe. Anybody else notice? Such a deafening silence from Madiba, with all due respect. Not that it would make much of a difference, but if all the other elders are busy issuing statements and what not . . . They have even signed a petition that wouldn’t have been too bad even with a halfhearted signature from this great man everybody loves. Bev, Madiba one guy you forgot to mention who is also present at the party. How the hell does anybody have a party when their neighbor’s house is on fire? Well, those are probably just petty nigglings, just a wonder that’s all. We are all different.

Hitchens mentions that:

“I recently had the chance to speak to George Bizos, the heroic South African attorney who was Mandela’s lawyer in the bad old days and who more recently has also represented Morgan Tsvangirai, the much-persecuted leader of the Zimbabwean opposition. Why, I asked him, was his old comrade apparently toeing the scandalous line taken by President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress? Bizos gave me one answer that made me wince­that Mandela is now a very old man and another that made me wince again: that his doctors have advised him to avoid anything stressful. One has a bit more respect for the old lion than to imagine that he doesn’t know what’s happening in next-door Zimbabwe or to believe that he doesn’t understand what a huge difference the smallest word from him would make. It will be something of a tragedy if he ends his career on a note of such squalid compromise… It is the silence of Mandela, much more than anything else that bruises the soul. It appears to make a mockery of all the brave talk about international standards for human rights, about the need for internationalist solidarity and the brotherhood of man, and all that. There is perhaps only one person in the world who symbolizes that spirit, and he has chosen to betray it. Or is it possible, before the grisly travesty of the runoff of June 27, that the old lion will summon one last powerful growl?”

How about that? The guy is probably just avoiding stress. One would think he’d share this invaluable advice with his colleague right next door.

My boss and I were discussing the other day, how or what the idea is behind beating someone into (supposed) submission? How and why is it, that somebody can be motivated and paid to kill fellow citizens, yet remain no better off or even close to the chefs whose interests they serve? What makes anybody think that by burning my house, beating a piece of my buttock off or taking me to a reorientation base or even killing me, will make me vote for them? Doesn’t it just make sense that I’d be more bound to actually vote against you for beating me? Then a different school of thought is of the opinion that it actually works. Get beaten so bad and you wont want to risk that happening to you again. I don’t know. But what I do know is, from what she wrote in an email, a friend of mine is simply going to vote ZANU because:

I’m so scared sha, but sekuru for sure wont step down easily you think we gonna have war that’s what I’m afraid of the most. I didn’t come this far to die in war or to have my life turned upside down. I want my children to see what a beautiful country we have. I think for now all we have to do is pray and right now I’d rather Zanu won for the sake of peace and no war…

A lot of people are taking the old man’s threats seriously, and I don’t blame them, knowing what he’s capable of doing. Recently, he promised war if he lost the run-off. He didn’t mince words when he said, “We fought for this country, and a lot of blood was shed. We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint fight with a gun?” The warning came a day after he declared: “We are ready to go to war.”

Look at zanupf’s ‘promotional’ materials for the run-off.
Notice they’ve dumped the grimacing, threatening Mugabe.
In its stead are colourful, smiling images,
Even the co-opting of Makoni’s cheerful yellow background.

Gone the threat of ‘fist of fury’.
Now replaced with real beatings, coersion and crippling encounters.

These colourful ambassadors of zanupf.
First clean in white t-shirts, smiling Mugabe on the front,
Our proud colours on the scarves around their heads.
Now wielding sticks and chains in hosepipe.
Now blood spattered from their labour.

We are clear,
Who you are,
Is not a future we can afford.

I will vote. Against this.

Reading the book, American Protest Literature, a chapter entitled Poetry Is Not a Luxury, in which the writing of Audre Lorde is examined, got me thinking about a recent poem by John Eppel. Audre Lorde suggested that “the question of social protest and art is inseparable.” Lorde’s work involved “the transformation of silence into language and action,” realising that “if I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it.” To her, poetry was not a luxury.

With this in mind I share John Eppel’s evocative poem, Broke-Buttock Blues where he shares the reality of political violence in Zimbabwe.

Broke-Buttock Blues

They beat me with branches wrapped up in barb-wire,
they beat me with branches wrapped up in barb-wire;
my baby she crying, her face is on fire.

They say you are sell-out, you vote Tsvangirai,
they say you are sell-out, you vote Tsvangirai;
my baby, she dying, please God, tell me why?

They beat first my head then my back then my bums,
they beat first my head then my back then my bums;
they laugh and they say is like playing the drums.

I beg them for water, they say go ask Blair,
I beg them for water, they say go ask Blair.
Please, put out the fire in Mucheche’s hair?

My bottom is broken, can not sit or stand,
my bottom is broken, can not sit or stand;
Mucheche can’t breathe with her mouth in the sand.

They burned all our mealies, our chickens, our dog,
they burned all our mealies, our chickens, our dog;
my uncle, they hit him to death with a log.

For hours they beat me, for hours I cry,
for hours they beat me, for hours I cry;
please God, save my baby, do not let her die?

When they leave, like a tortoise I crawl very slow,
when they leave, like a tortoise I crawl very slow;
but my baby stopped crying a long time ago,
mwana wangu stopped crying a long time ago.

The other day, Bev mentioned the pit outside our office. She was right. It’s been there forever. Sometime last year in October or November or so, before the rains, there was a leak in the underground piping. There was no water coming from the taps in the building – but plenty of water coming out of the ground onto the street. Eventually, the City of Harare people came to fix it. They dug up the sidewalk to get to the problem spot. They fixed the piping, but they left behind a gaping hole which eventually became a rubbish pit in the middle of the sidewalk which everyone walked around.

On Sunday, fed up, I filled in the pit. And in so doing, I was reminded of a lot of important lessons.

Timing: I deliberately tackled the pit on a Sunday when the shopping centre would be less full. In part, I wanted fewer people around to disturb with the dust and noise. But also, I wanted fewer people staring at me or wondering what I was doing.

Plan your approach: Whilst I knew Sundays would be quieter, I’d forgotten about the Scud Factor – the people who were out and about were either already drunk or well on their way there. (“Scud” is Zimbabwean slang for Chibuku – opaque beer – called this because the brown plastic containers it is sold in look a bit like scud missiles) When I first arrived on the scene, a clump of men all holding their scuds was in the midst of a heated debate right in front of the pit. I lurked about for a bit, window shopping the empty shelves of the pharmacy, until they dispersed. Once I was mid-task, I knew I could handle anyone who approached me. But I didn’t want to have to explain what I was setting off to do before I started.

Use the right tools for the job: Even though I’d walked past the pit at least 200 times, I never did a very thorough reconnaissance of it. The dirt from the pit was littered with rubble, stones, and old blasted bits of sidewalk. It had survived the entire rainy season, and had been baking under the sun for months. Much more than the spade I brought, a pick would have been a better idea.

Be comfortable with the tools you use: But the pick, which I lifted in the garage at home before I headed for the pit, was much heavier than the spade I ended up using. If the site of the crazy white girl chipping away at a crusted mound of dirt was entertaining, the site of me straining to lift the pick onto it would have been sheer hilarity. My spade might have taken a while. But at least it wasn’t more than I could handle. Besides. Not having a pick gave a lot of passers-by the opportunity to give me some advice: “Use a pick,” rather than having to offer to help.

Pace yourself: The pit was buffered by two mounds of dirt – one much larger than the other. I tackled the larger one first, planning the psychology of reward in advance. Halfway through the larger mound, I stopped for a cool drink at the garage. And was pleasantly surprised when the garage attendants said how pleased and grateful they were that I was filling in the pit. They didn’t offer to help, but the lemonade was gorgeously cold. And their support was welcome.

Know when to say no . . . : A handful of the shopping centre “regulars” – like the Buddie card vendors and the flower sellers came to offer to help me out – for a fee. I struggled to articulate this to them, but I didn’t want to pay someone to fill in the pit. By renting offices in the shopping centre, we already pay the City of Harare to maintain the roads and sidewalks. They should come and fix it – surely that’s what our rates and city levies should pay for. But, since they weren’t coming, I was fixing it myself. I didn’t mind doing it myself – but I didn’t want to pay someone else to do what we are already paying the city to do.

. . . And when to say yes: As I was finishing off the larger mound, my hands started to blister. I was beginning to despair about having the strength for the smaller mound when two men stopped to chat with me. And what they started off the conversation with caught my attention. “You know,” they said, “you’re doing a really good thing here. We also have walked past this pit day after day and never done anything about it. You’re doing something about it. Thank you.” Like others had, they told me I should be using a pick. I just laughed and shrugged and said yeah, I know. Then the older one asked to have a quick go. He smiled and held out his hand for the shovel. He just wanted to do a bit, he said, to make his contribution. He and the other man, who turned out to be his son, tackled the smaller mound with speed and brute strength. They’d hacked through it and piled the rubble into the pit in under 20 minutes. As they turned to go I said I was embarrassed to think how long it had taken me to get through the first half. They said they knew – they’d walked past me hours ago when I had only just begun.

Sometimes things get worse before they get better: Pit filling is harder than it looks. Even once we’d gotten all the dirt and rubble from both mounds into the pit, there was still a massive gap between the top of the pit and the level of the sidewalk. As the father and son team walked off, I had a small leak. I’ve made the problem worse than it was before, I thought to myself. At least before you could see from afar that something was amiss and you knew to walk around the pit. Now it looks like it’s sidewalk as usual, right up until you plunge into this gaping hole in the earth. I had visions of some pensioner breaking her ankle walking to the bank. And it would be All My Fault.

Creative problem solving: I saw my neighbourhood with fresh eyes when I was looking for something to fill in the gap. Suddenly the rubble piled up outside a nearby house wasn’t waste from rebuilding a wall – it was a treasure trove of bricks, slate and panels to pile into the pit, fill in the space a bit, and build bridges of stones. It took three trips filling the boot of my tiny car, but eventually the pit was more full than less.

It’s not a perfect job, by any stretch of the imagination. But at least it’s a start. If nothing else, filling in the pit gave me a sense of Doing Something. It didn’t free the WOZA women or stop the violence. But it was my own very small act of defiance. My own mini-revolt against the fatigue and hopelessness that plagues us, a resistance to the “what can I do” helplessness that the machinery of this regime so often makes us feel.

And. Just maybe. It makes the tiniest bit of difference. If nothing else, it was bloody hard work. And as my best friend reminded me the other day: If we are to be visited by angels we will have to call them down with sweat and strain.

A local NGO based in Harare is taking on the subject of Sex. Here’s some information, and a call for participation in their new project.

Have you ever felt so awkward asking your doctor about sex that you found yourself using all sorts of euphemisms and left the poor practitioner confused? Does the mention of the word “sex” make you want to run for cover or sizzle in anticipation? International Video Fair (IVF) will be exploring these and other questions in its Sex In the City documentary and is calling for men and women aged between 22 and 60 years to be participants. Whether you are worldly wise, old, young, religious, non-religious, an activist, not an activist, well known or “ordinary”, come and help unearth what the city of Harare really thinks about sex.

IVF, a non-profit regional organisation that uses mobile cinema and video as tools for social transformation, invites you to take part in stimulating discussions on what people think and do when it comes to sex and sexuality. These hot topics will be explored and recorded in an exciting, innovative way over 3-5 days in a great location in/around Harare. Transport to and from the location will be provided and participants will have to commit to the full 3-5 filming days, inclusive of nights. All meals and accommodation will be provided and a participants’ fee is included. Participants will be required to sign release forms for the documentary film, which will be screened locally and regionally.

IVF operates in Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The organisation’s vision is a Southern Africa where communities are able to access and impart to others, information and knowledge that can enhance social transformation. Sex In the City is an IVF project and conducted as part of the Zimbabwe Film Practitioners Joint Programme funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Harare. For more details, telephone IVF on 04-790515 / 797285 or click here for an email address. All applications must be received by Monday 30 June 2008.