It is now very common to see families functioning without full-time maids. Fewer and fewer people can afford to pay a maid for a month’s work, with the trend now being that a maid comes in once or twice a week to help with the bigger jobs. In addition to this, few mothers (the custodians of the home and family life) can afford not to work, so as to take care of their homes and families. Despite all this, the dishes still need to be done, laundry washed and ironed and houses swept and dusted. So, with mum and dad working, no maid, and young children at crèche and school, who is doing all this work? Who is taking care of the home?

Mum, of course! It’s what mum’s do of course, and they’re so great at it! She is the first to get up, preparing everyone for their day (ironing, cooking breakfast, bathing kids, packing school lunches), and cleaning up after them along the way, before they all, (including Mum), set off for work or school.

After a long hard day in the office (just like dad), mum gets home, and begins her “evening shift” at home. Whatever she has not done in the wee hours of the morning, will be waiting for her, when she gets home. Again, she gets everyone settled in for the night (bathing kids, preparing supper, supervising homework and play). All the while, dad is either out, having a beer or seven, or in front of the TV with the day’s paper.

After supper, mum carries the dirty dishes to kitchen sink and washes them, so that at least she can wake up to a clean kitchen at 5am the next morning. You’d think that once the dishes are done and the kids are in bed, her day is done. Oh no, it is quite the contrary, mum must now go out to washing line and bring in the laundry she did before sunrise that morning, and begin to iron it. Maybe, she’ll set herself up in front of the TV, so she can be entertained while she irons. From time to time, she has to switch off the iron in order to go and check on the sleeping children and refill Dad’s water glass, or get him another beer.

With the ironing Mum can now relax. But not before she has soaked the kids’ uniforms so that they are easier to wash in the morning. Finally, she can rest! But can she really rest, with this nagging feeling in the back of her mind that she has forgotten to do something? “Oh, well, whatever it is, I’ll do it in the morning.” Mum’s off to bed, to join Dad who’s already been there for a while, (he went straight to bed when he got back from socialising at the bar).

Bathed and thoroughly exhausted, she climbs into bed. He turns over and reaches for her. He’s in the mood tonight. He tells her how beautiful she looks. She rolls her eyes. “I look haggard,” she thinks. “Like I’ve worked three jobs today. And in 6 hours and 23 minutes, I have to do it all again. And he picks this moment to be in the mood! He’s got to be kidding!”

I know several women who have days like this most of their lives. They toil at work and home, putting everyone’s needs before their own. How can it be expected that she should cope with this much work in a day, especially when her husband is so tired and needs a break after a day in the office? These grossly unequal work contributions in the home, (especially where there is no hired help), no doubt lead to burnout, resentment and other issues that can lead to the degeneration of relationships.

A neighbour, a young doctor stationed at one of the government hospitals here, lost laptops and mobile phones to some daring house breakers last month. Naturally, he rushed to the police to make a report. The cops “sprang” into action, and a few days later, they visited the burgled home with the “suspect” but found no one. Another few days later, a friend of mine who knew one of the investigating officers asked him if the good doctor had recovered the stolen stuff. “We did, but the doctor did not,” came the reply. And I imagine it was said with a knowing wink. Turns out the burglars had struck some illegal deal with the cops, and my friend suspects the cops “pocketed” the stolen property! So much for hunting the bad guys. The doctor keeps making endless trips to the police station to check on “progress” and each time they tell him they are still investigating. So much for law enforcement hey?

Not that we care anymore, since it seems he was killed in Sirte, 20 October 2011.

But for a while, (I have just been for a 6 weeks holiday) Zimbabwe was top of the list for him to flee to. Like the tyrant Mengistu before (who I think still lives in my Ward)!

However, in order to be safe, Gaddafi would have to know he was not jumping into the fire (from the frying pan). He would not want to do a Charles Taylor – fleeing his war crimes and taking refuge in Nigeria, which country promised him safety for the rest of his life. But then, two years later, bundled him off to the Hague, where he now sits in prison (although I assume it is better than being hauled from a concrete pipe, beaten and then shot to death).

So why didn’t Gaddafi snivel into Zimbabwe? He had the money, the local contact, bunkers to use?

He did not come here, or attempt to, because, (like all tyrants) he needed to avoid democracy. And he can see that democracy is coming back to Zimbabwe. And even the local tyrants are going to suffer from it in the next two years.

Willows require still pools,
girls, silver-backed mirrors,
priests, the cross of Jesus.

Only jacarandas
can take their reflection
from the dull sky of tarmac.

Time tips
flooding the world with light
within a week the canopy will close around us
as the dry dusty world draws close her new green cloak

Large portions of the garden are now monitored by Heuglin robins
who perch above our heads and rattle warningly
shepherding their new fledglings out of reach

The paradise fly catchers  arrived two weeks ago and we have already begun to find their nests
housing tiny sitting females – beaks in the air
The couple who had their nestlings snatched by goshawks last year are also back
they sit in a considering way over the old nest
‘is it worth patching up? – perhaps if we put in a new carpet’
do they remember their loss at the gut wrenching level that we do
or is it just a new season?
a new present in the spiraling of time?

Two  White-faced owls
perch fluffily on the fig branch outside the a-frame
watching for food…

I finally worked out where the black and yellow caterpillars come from
(the ones that utterly devastate the calendula crop within days)
the eggs are neatly inserted in the flower buds
and the minute larva hatch into a container of golden petals

as I watch, a wasp lands on one of these gold-eaters
and strikes with a deadly sting
and as it slowly writhes its last moments on the planet
the wasp busily severs off one end
to take this newly killed morsel back to its young

and I – who was about to get rid of all the buds-with-holes to protect the calendulas
am challenged to see the world through another lens

Life cycles at every level

The barbet argues ferociously with the Honey guide
who is trying to lay her egg in the barbets hard won nesting-hole
3 new species of cuckoo have moved into the garden
each one of them with a plan to drop their eggs into the nest of some unwilling surrogate parent

A trillion tadpoles have hatched in the pond
will they all hatch into a trillion croaking frogs?
what act of nature will limit their population?
the pond skimmer slowly sucks the juices from a drowned moth
and the spider who has diligently spun webs overhead
now winds the latest prey in its threads

the guppies have had baby guppies
are they eating enough mosquito larvae to limit this seasons swarms?
are their enough mosquitoes to keep them all fed?

it is that same old matter of survival

but at a distance – this beautiful system shifts a gear into new and abundant life
against the back ground of flaming bougainvillea and purple jacaranda
is a pattern of colour and shape and flower and insect
difficult in detail
unraveling in beauty.

I found it interesting that the super-rich Virgin guy, Richard Branson, has been mentioned as having been part of plans to “retire” our dear old man, and it perhaps shows how desperate the world has been over the years to literally save Zimbabwe from sure doom because of the continued and unsustainable stewardship of someone stuck in time warp. The Virgin guy has dismissed reports that he offered Mugabe USD10 million as part of a sweetener to guarantee his quiet and exit and obviously bloodless power transfer. The Virgin guy says that’s fiction that he never authored and in any case that would be too little a sum. Obviously he has deep pockets, or else he fells Mugabe is worth more than that. Yet like some of the Zanu PF wiki dicks who wanted to see their life-long benefactor leave office reportedly said, Africa’s last King of Nationalism was not likely to take the money and run. It is rather morbidly refreshing that they see old man in that light: he ain’t for sale! Remembering of course that even the UN did dangle back in 2000 what was noted in news reports as a “lucrative exit package.”  He is still around ain’t he? One writer helpfully offered: “An exit strategy for Mugabe is widely believed to be the only answer to Zimbabwe’s political crisis, as it is Mugabe’s presence in the government that is the key stumbling block to progress.”

Now, the same wiki dicks feted by imperialists and lost their heads in the process obviously are for sale, having entered Faustian pacts long ago, and will welcome any largess never mind their indefatigable looting streak since independence came to these shores. We all know their appetite for all things tagged “filthy lucre” resembles that of a sumo wrestler, yet they just can’t seem to get enough, and we just have to point to the find of the century in Mutare. Yet we already know these are the same people named in the looting of the DRC, the national purse, the land what with multiple farm ownership, Willowgate, you name it. Still they are mighty insatiable. If it was libido, these many straws – or strokes – would have broken their backs! It is therefore obvious to me that the same people now falling over each other blaspheming as they use Biblical metaphors and allegories to lionise their supposed benefactor were [are still are in the secrecy of their foolish hearts] in fact cursing the old man saying: dai ndiri ini ndaitora chibhanzi [if it were me, I would have taken the money and ran like the wind]. Wick dicks. Leak, leak.