This morning I heard a woman shout

I’ve broken a nail, can I come in?

Luckily she wasn’t hollering through our window because I wouldn’t have known what to do with her except offer her a strong cup of tea maybe. Her panicked shriek was directed at Cleopatra’s Beauty Parlour next door to us which hadn’t yet opened so the emergency nail repair had to wait. Cleaopatra’s offer the Rage of the U.S.A. – wafer thin nails but extra strong. Clearly not strong enough.

On the subject of beauty parlours – during the Christmas break I went up to Chimanimani to see some friends. In the village I took this snap and no, I didn’t go in to have my nails done.

I don’t think anyone can say that Zimbabwe is awash in any kind of Christmas joviality.

Shop owners in our local shopping center – Newlands, in Harare – have made only the smallest effort at marking the festive season. Alberto, the shopping center’s resident hairdresser has had some sign writing done on his windows. There’s a caricature of him with a happy, smiling, and very round face. But in reality he’s more of a scowl these days. Truth be told everyone is pretty scratchy with each other on account of the levels of stress people are enduring related to hyper inflation, the mind numbing prices of basic commodities (as well as the mind numbing stupidity of various politicians) and the pathetic salaries that people are earning. Can you imagine junior army officers earning Z$27 000 a month? That’s about 9 packets of cat food to give you some perspective.

Meanwhile to make a small buck the vendors either hawk a variety of Christmas fruit like watermelons, mangoes and litchis or dubious looking boxes of Christmas lights.

Lately I’ve been mulling what a heterosexist world we live in. I had a small confidence crisis the other day after I realised that a book that I lent a young guy who I’ve just met has a high content of gay sex in it. But then I thought well just about everything I read is resoundingly heterosexual and I’m not (generally) offended. So what’s the Big Deal?

After my encounter with the National Endowment of Democracy and experiencing discrimination regarding the lack of support for partners of same-sex couples I decided to write to Yale University to make sure that their support of “families” for their World Fellows Programme is inclusive of relationships that don’t fit the heterosexist model. Believe it or not, they couldn’t immediately answer my question – and we look to the so-called first world as being “progressive”! Meanwhile South Africa has put many countries to shame by making sure that gay and lesbian people’s rights are protected when it comes to marriage and civil unions.

What else?

I’ve been reading so much good stuff lately. For example, Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War by Anthony Shadid. In one section he discusses how fabulous Baghdad was in the 1970′s with a bustling libertine nightlife. Back then apparently “Cairo wrote, Beirut published and Baghdad read”. I wonder what’s left for Iraqis to read these days apart from American propaganda?

I’ve got this friend in the US who keeps me supplied with lots and lots of different things to read, including torn out pages from newspapers. On one of these pages I happened to see a small article on “ladies blog for activism”. Why the use of the word “lady” I’m not too sure but anyway . . . apparently in Blogging Feminism:(Web)sites of Resistance, top bloggers Jessica Valenti (of feminist.com), Michelle Riblett and Lauren Spees (of Hollaback, Boston and New York’s website against street harassment), and Liza Sabater (of the politically charged Culture Kitchen) got together for an evening discussion on how feminists are using the Internet.

By the way, I love Hollaback’s slogan

If you can’t slap ‘em, snap ‘em!

I’m thinking of setting up a similar web site which will feature photographs of Zimbabwean men who whip their willies out to take a piss no matter where they are. Some even have the gall to make conversation with you, dick in hand, as you pass by.

And then I’ve relished The NewStatesmen from front to back, and back again. In fact the back page features a column by comedian Shazia Mirza who recounts a bit of this and that of life in London. Her opening paragraph on one of England’s hottest topics of the moment – burqas – gets my vote as one of the funniest of 2006:

A Muslim woman knocked on my door last night. I didn’t open the door – I just talked through the letter box to see how she likes it

Women’sNet in South Africa recently published a booklet called “I have listened, I have heard”: digital stories for transformation. The booklet also comes with a CD. The digital stories on this CD were developed by two groups of South African women – lesbian women facing discrimination and violence, and women who experienced domestic violence.

Women’sNet held two workshops, of four days each, at the end of which participants had developed their own digital ‘movies’, using their own words, narration, pictures and text. Computers and software, scanners, digital cameras and audio recorders were used to build the movies.

The stories demonstrate the impact of violence on women’s lives. They also show the intersection of gender and other forms of exclusion or discrimination – such as sexual orientation, poverty and HIV/AIDS. The story tellers also celebrate their survival, their relationships and their perseverance.

Make sure to get a copy of this booklet and the CD to help you in your human rights, women’s rights and gender education and training programmes. For more information contact Women’sNet

Back in January 2005 our electronic activism campaign featured MISA’s Advocacy Campaign Model as a tool to help us in our advocacy and organizing work.

Just lately in Zimbabwe we’ve seen a couple of events and campaigns launched in what appears to be a haphazard manner without due consideration to the many elements that go into making protests and campaigns successful.

I’m not too sure what you think, but 50 women turning out for a protest in downtown Harare doesn’t give me much confidence that the organizers did their best to reach out and communicate with their constituencies and in so doing build as much support as possible. Take a look at this report which comments on the recent WiPSU protest.

And then there’s been the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. I got an email recently from the Save Zimbabwe Campaign Task Force with the title line “Save Zimbabwe in Five Minutes”. If only it were that easy! The Save Zimbabwe Campaign emailed a flyer asking Zimbabweans to make a noise during lunchtime – either hoot your horn, whistle, clap your hands, bang pots and so on.

VOA’s Studio 7 reported on the dismal uptake of this campaign, saying

The less-than-impressive results of protests called in the past two weeks by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, a coalition of civic organizations and opposition parties have raised doubts as to the effectiveness of the ad hoc opposition organization.

It leaves me wondering how well the Save Zimbabwe Campaign Task Force communicated, lobbied and encouraged participation in the lunch time make a noise protests. It has shades of hastily pulled together stayaways, which always flop because the organizers just don’t get the fact that you can’t snap your fingers, or send out a few flyers and emails and expect your idea to take flight.

More worrying of course is the intimation that

Differences of opinion over the strategy had emerged within the organizational membership of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign (Studio 7′s report)

Wouldn’t it be great if civil society could agree on something, anything? Even a lunchtime “make a noise” campaign!

Another aspect worth commenting on is the language used in the resistance movement in Zimbabwe. The Save Zimbabwe Campaign should know that we don’t want to “cry” for freedom, we want to SHOUT for it. Nor is our noise a symbol of our “distress” it is a symbol of our DEFIANCE.

Again, we make available online the Advocacy Campaign Model which should be used as an integral tool when organizing events and campaigns.

Please click here.

A South African company has launched a new type of condom that you can put on – real quick. It’s called Pronto! Apparently they are easy to use once you get the hang of it. Some text on the Pronto web site reads

Initially it will require a bit of concentration, but take it slowly in the first few times and the process will soon come naturally. You may want to test one on a broomstick or a water bottle first, ‘to get the hang of it’.

Or of course you could do a self-drive kinda thing and test one on yourself whilst masturbating . . . not sure why they don’t suggest that.

My favourite part of the Pronto web site is the “adverts” section where they have a couple of video demos by Jacob and Manto. Amusing and worth a watch.

In order to curb the theft and trafficking of stolen vehicles the Government of Zimbabwe directed that all Zimbabwean car owners change their old registration (number) plates to new digitised ones. Having just returned after 6 hours of administration and queuing to get my new number plates I’m sitting here thinking its no wonder Zimbabwe and other African countries are going backwards faster than forwards. The guy next to me smiled benignly and said, “You just have to be patient”. The trouble is we Zimbabweans are just too patient, which is why we’re stuck with an entrenched president and the highest rate of inflation in the world.

So my day included a long and dusty queue out at Southerton Police Station where I had to move my car onto a traffic island for a while to “queue more safely”. Then I was shunted between Rooms 2, 4 and 3 – in that order. I left my Hivos pen made of recycled car parts in the hands of the last official who was taking longer to tick his boxes because his ballpoint kept on bombing out. Then onto Rowan Martin Building where I sat on a hard bench for several hours shunting slowly to the front whilst wondering what to do with the brazen queue jumpers: attack them with the old metal number plates I was clutching, or ignore them.

Light relief came in the form of Norman the Municipal Policeman who intermittently marshalled the people gathered and grumpy on the bench. At one point he stared at me intently and asked me whether I use Bubble Bath. I was momentarily taken aback, say 5 seconds – this is Zimbabwe after all and anything goes – and said yes, thinking that he was going to ask me for a recommendation for what to buy his wife for Christmas. Instead he said he’d be right back and disappeared into a back room only to emerge a short while later clutching a 2-litre bottle of Fern Bubble Bath imported from Botswana. Unfortunately it looked more like dishwashing liquid than anything else.

Norman said that he was travelling to Francistown tomorrow night to pick up some more stuff to sell: fish, tinned beetroot and of course bubble bath because, “you know how things are here, we can’t survive like this, we have to do other things”.

Then another guy asked me if I had any cars to sell, even non-runners. I said nope but the one I’m driving will shortly be a non-runner. This of course was some light flirtation (on his part) because he soon moved on from cars to wanting my telephone number. Rather give me yours I said, being bold. So now I’ve got a yellowed piece of stationery – a Gross Mass Certificate from the Ministry of Transport – in my pocket, with Norman’s phone number on it.

As well as – you guessed it: Romeo’s.