Instead of relying on inspirational quotes from famous people someone I know gets her friends and guests to give her their quotations sharing their view of the world. Then she puts them up on her fridge. She sent me a long list of quotes yesterday, together with this story she’d heard:

A friend visiting from Australia came to see me after Christmas. She told me how the family bought the Christmas hams; and this provides a brilliant example of just how creative we have become in Zimbabwe, and what constitutes ‘normal’ financial transactions. They transferred £ from a UK account to Mukuru.com, where it was used to purchase fuel coupons. The family collected these at an office in Harare and proceeded to Colcom, where the coupons were translated into ‘units of pig’. They bought their hams, and at the check out, the teller informed them of the amount and that Colcom owed them change. However, as there was a shortage of Zimbabwe notes and no small denomination US$ notes, the teller instead offered them two pork sausages! (In ‘normal’ countries, suggesting change in pork sausages would result in calls for men in white coats).

I’ve just come back from a visit to Dr Paul, my dentist. Thankfully this morning there was power so I didn’t have to worry about any drilling being interrupted. After my injection I lay back and gazed at a big tiger fish mounted on his wall, its teeth bared to the world. Unlike me the creature has (had) a fine set of pearlies. To make conversation (I like to get on the right side of a dentist) I asked Dr Paul how long it had taken to land the fish seeing as it looked like quite a big buggar. He snorted and and said 10 minutes. On my way back to the office I saw Zimbabweans waiting in queues in TM supermarket clutching US$1 notes. And I saw Zimbabwean bank notes, or bearer cheques, whatever you want to call them, floating in dirty puddles outside Barclays Bank. Too useless to use.

For the past few weeks it has been impossible to buy air time for cell phones
- Christmas without communication due to some incomprehensible banking/foreign currency/political manoeuvre

So the new queue to get air time for cell phones in January was enthusiastically long
with everyone waving the ‘now legal tender’ – US$ notes – to activate connections.
We smile at one another in hopeful expectation
One young man gives us a rundown on the names and lives of all the Presidents and Generals pictured on the US$ notes
‘I am a history scholar’ he says
the queue nod encouragingly
Another explains that today our dollar has reached a new low
(1 to the power of 19, I think)
‘that many! for one US$!- imagine what the equivalent value to 100 US$ looks like’
we chuckle together at the unfathomable quality of it all

A tired and gentle voice of the teller breaks through our exchange
‘We do not accept crumpled or creased notes’
(pointing at a hand written sign stuck to the wall)
we all look from the sign to our pictures of Presidents
with creased and crumpled faces
Franklin and Grant and Lincoln
our path to freedom
old and used
and disallowed

‘well’, the woman behind me explains
‘all that is needed is a quick dip in Sta-soft*
and a warm iron – just like new’

‘Sta-soft?’
the two young men look at one another
here, finally, is something they didn’t know

* Sta-soft is a fabric softener

Whilst the MDC continue to dilly dally about What To Do, Geoff Nyarota has come up with a plan of action. And I reckon it’s not half bad:

Mugabe has neither respect nor faith in Tsvangirai. I suspect that feeling is mutual between the two. If Tsvangirai thinks he can return from self-imposed exile to sit down with the very man he fled from and negotiate genuine strategies to bring our nation back on track, then he may not be as astute a politician as his followers have assumed. He has the greatest error of the Late Dr Joshua Nkomo, the Unity Agreement, to draw salutary lessons from.

1. The MDC should, without qualm, opt out of the proposed GNU.
2. Zimbabweans, not just the MDC, should come up with a Plan B.
3. The cornerstone of Plan B would be a new initiative that seeks to unite the people of Zimbabwe as one progressive force fighting dictatorship.
4. The GNU should be replaced by a transitional arrangement with neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai as leader.
5. A transitional leader would be identified and appointed. There is certainly no shortage of patriotic Zimbabweans of good stature and excellent credentials. For example, the name of Wilson Sandura, recently lauded for his many good qualities, immediately comes to mind. If Mugabe could emerge from the bush to take over at State House, I personally don’t see why any other citizen with a reasonable academic background, an understanding of affairs of state and a heart in the right place cannot run Zimbabwe, especially if they have the ability to build a team of appropriately qualified and experienced people around them. There is an abundance of such people both in Zimbabwe and in the Diaspora.
6. Meanwhile the current crop of political leaders, particularly those whose political stature is now tainted by their recent performance will be prevailed upon to swallow their misplaced pride and throw in their lot with the rest.
7. The transitional arrangement would lead to new elections supervised by the United Nations and observed by who ever wishes to – the more the better. They will bring in much needed foreign currency, in any case.
8. These will be free and fair elections. Even Arthur Mutambara, if he still wishes and if he plays his cards well, can become the next President of ZImbabwe, not merely Deputy Prime Minister through the back door, as he is currently and impatiently trying to do.
9. Above all, Zimbabweans wherever they are, must declare a commitment to the transitional arrangement. Let us all join hands, whether we are Shona or Ndebele, white or black, Zanu-PF or MDC to work in unity to liberate ourselves from the yoke of colon..sorry… post colonial oppression, injustice and humiliation. Mugabe has partly survived by driving a wedge between Shona and Ndebele and another between white and black.
10. Once we have achieved our new independence let a referendum be held so that Zimbabweans can decide whether they want to pardon Mugabe for his many sins or to prosecute him.
11. The international community would support this whole process with clean hands as it were. Some African leaders believe the West has become part of the problem of Zimbabwe through their alleged tendency to prescribe the course of political events in Zimbabwe. By their very attitude and actions or lack thereof, the African leaders have themselves also become part of the problem of Zimbabwe.
12. We need the support of the outside world as we strive as a nation to polish our tarnished jewel, Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans where ever they are and what ever they are doing are a people who do not know what tomorrow holds for them.

You do not know whether to wake up expecting a heavy military and police presence in all the streets of Harare and all other major towns, or to wake up to the information that a mother and her two-year-old son have been abducted.

You are not sure of whether your colleague, church mate or neighbour will be alive tomorrow due to cholera, starvation or some such evil that might easily befall them over night.

In Zimbabwe you wake up not knowing whether there will be power, water to drink or food to eat. You just wake up because it is dawn but you have no plans for tomorrow! What kind of a life is that?

In Zimbabwe we wait and we do not know whether schools, colleges and universities will open this year. We also do not know whether teachers, lecturers and all workers will go back to work so that the education system can function. My friend awaits her son’s Grade 7 and her daughter’s O level results not knowing whether they will ever get their results and will those results be theirs or someone else’s? We wait anxiously, hoping against hope that one day she will have those results.

Others decided to leave Zimbabwe and look for a better life but no sooner had they left did they find that they are also in limbo in South Africa not knowing whether they will be able to get any legal papers or not. The situation is not any better in the UK. While the UK government has said it will stop deporting Zimbabweans for the time being, those applying for asylum cannot work and they wait in limbo not knowing what will happen to their future. Whether they will get their papers or not. What does tomorrow hold for them?

And the families that are left behind. They all wait for either their mum or dad to come back or to take them and start a new life in any country where one or both their parents would have managed to settle down. So where ever they are, generally Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, are in a limbo waiting for the time when they will be able to freely come back home.

The question is when will this be? Some are really desperate to come back home but at the moment they cannot dare think of it and all they can do is hope.

So how long do we have to wait in limbo before we get respite? Zimbabweans have hope but you also say for how long are we going to keep on hoping because to cap it all, politically we are in a paralysis, making us all comatose.

The other day a friend asked what I knew about the recent elections in Ghana.   Happens often, because I’ve lived in one African country, people think this translates into knowledge about the entire continent.   I told my friend I knew nothing about the elections in Ghana, but commented knowing nothing was potentially a good sign.  Means that the elections didn’t make major headlines.  Wasn’t like in Zimbabwe where CNN and BBC provided around the clock coverage including frequent conversations with Bright Matonga who always had something so outlandish to say that it became entertaining. And the New York Times had above the fold cover stories day after day. Not even knowing an election happened in Ghana probably means it went off peacefully, or at least not unpeacefully enough to make the news.

This got me thinking about how the news is oriented toward reporting on the ills of the world.  The crisis’s, violence, devastation, deaths, scandals, suffering, bombs, murders, angst, corruption, and on it goes.  This is what makes the headlines. The happy stuff is rarely in the headlines.  Zimbabwe is a good example.  All the average consumer of news sees are stories about what a mess things are in Zimbabwe.

I have a folder of 516 ZWNEWS’ dating from late 2006 to the present.  When I did a word search for violence, 324 of the ZWNEWS daily email newsletters had at least one article where the word violence was used.  With arrested the total was 348, death 243, and beaten 192.  A word search on celebration came out to 49. And likely that word was used to describe Mugabe’s lavish birthdays.  Hardly shocking that news out of Zimbabwe is harsh, not celebratory; and I’m not meaning to diminish the importance of covering these realities. Being a reader of harsh news, however, drums up a range of emotions, one of which is empathy for the real people in each of the stories and empathy about the broader context in which they live.

It’s curious the concept of empathy.  To feel it means you are a caring and compassionate person.  You recognize the brave ways people fight against insurmountable odds.  But I wonder too when feeling empathy dangerously limits the power to feel things which are peacefully pure and good.  I started thinking about people I admire.  As the list grew, I was having a hard time identifying admiration that didn’t also involve empathy.  Try it.  Make a list of who you admire and I bet at least half the people on the list you admire because you empathize with their struggle and what they are fighting for.  Can’t help but imagine a better world, one where admiration does not necessarily also involve empathy.