The big-headed doctors have us in a spin;
Etching venom into the soul with each manic application of their instruments.
It’s for our own good, the medicated airwaves they prescribe.
We’re told it’ll help us see better if we don’t question what we see.
Just take it all in, swallow it all up.
But doctors of untruths – your opium makes me sick!

There have been too many injections, both intoxicating and toxic;
Administered under the guise of reforming the land.
We’ve been fed countless conspiracy pills, doses illegally sanctioned.
And we have taken up your calls to vote for and to sign against.
Like fools, we’ve believed in our rights and diesel pouring out of rocks.
But doctors of untruths – real skeletons will be exhumed!

My dog urinates on my car tyres, claiming it as his own.
So too do they mark  title on us.
Their tall tales imprinted on our sight, jingles ringing in our ears, wounds tattooed in our hearts.
They even have their grip on our nuts and we’ve accepted without resistance.
Is there any dispute?  We must be their people.
But doctors of untruths – no one owns fate, you cannot rig destiny!

Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life, your pain
would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your
heart, even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the
physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink
his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears.

~ Khalil Gibran

I find myself in the prime of life, although sometimes it’s hard to tell – tending to corpulence, sporting a pimple or three (are you still supposed to get those after puberty?), every day governed by routine (it would take a task force and organization on an epic scale to introduce any semblance of spontaneity to my life! Which kind of defeats the point.), the monotony of cooking dinner EVERY night. This is the prime of life?

Well, you’ll just have to imagine it.  Try harder.  Add Bridget Jones knickers. There you go!  But apparently, strictly statistically speaking, I am at my sexual peak (so there!).

I catch myself paraphrasing my parents, especially with my kids, “finish your vegetables, there are children starving in Ethiopia.” Or, “I can give you something to cry about.” In conversations with teenagers and young adults I inevitably end up using sentences that include “when we were your age.” I see them rolling their eyes, muttering something about having to walk to school and no mobile phones and 25 cents could buy you a coke AND crisps, and we didn’t have a TV, and rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.

I realize I am uncool and my kids think I am ancient (well, they are both under 6 years old – EVERYBODY is ancient.  My only comfort.), and if I were to go to a nightclub, most people there would be thinking something along the lines of mutton and lamb.  On the other hand, I bring the average age down to 50 at the local bingo or quiz night – and I have to listen to the oldies “whenwe” chatter as punishment (and to polish my own). One of these days we will compare stories on who had the tougher childhood!

Under pressure from my daughter to perform in the “mom’s race” at her school this Saturday, I have considered training (for a very brief moment). Suffice to say, I didn’t win last year much to her disappointment. I thought I would give the “winning isn’t everything, it’s how you play the game…” speech – apparently that speech is for losers – of which I was one … but let’s not dwell on it. We’ll see how I fare this weekend.  At least she can collect some “whenwe” memories of her own … tortuous recollections of mom blundering over the finish line fourth – one up on last year.

I am ever hopeful!

I was sitting in the car park at work yesterday morning listening to Where do I begin and waiting for my hiccups to stop. Although I had to hold my breath in anticipation of hitting uncountable and 9 potholes on my way to work it didn’t help in getting rid of my hiccups. So whilst I was waiting for them to Be Gone I was reflecting on the headlines in The Sunday Mail.

These included the very convenient exhumation of bodies from massacres during the Rhodesian war. Hey, go figure, we are even More Unpopular and we don’t have the Land Card any more and the Anti-Sanctions Petition is like really hard work to get going, so maybe its a good time to dig up some remains and work them politically. Of course now we have the MDC playing tit for tat with corpses saying that if ZPF want to revisit the nastiness of the Whites, then lets revisit the nastiness of the perpetrators of Gukurahundi.

That’s politics for you.

And then the Sunday Mail has this really big photo of some White farmer type signing the Anti-Sanctions Petition, whoop, whoop … is that the 27th signature that they’ve got?

Meanwhile last Saturday I got a text message from Econet apologising for postponing the draw for prizes that they were going to have that day in Harare Gardens. I wondered whether the Hand of Chihuri was involved. I mean, let’s face it, an Econet draw to win a car and some other stuff is certainly more likely to bring in the crowds than a ZPF or MDC rally and maybe that is dangerous – you know people gathering in large numbers and all that.

Seems to me that just now there’s going to be a limit set on how many people can walk down First Street at any given time just in case they come over all Egyptian.

The first time I realised that my hair was not my own was when I was twelve. The school holidays were a week away and as such, my very conservative headmistress relaxed the school rules on hair. All my friends arrived for the last week of school with long braids or relaxed hair. Being a conformist then, I wanted straight hair too. But my father, being of the Bob Marley ‘black and proud’ generation forbade it. My pouting, pleas and final resort to the blackmail of crying did nothing to move him.

‘You are an African princess’ he said, ‘you must be proud of who and what you are.’ I wasn’t comforted.

Regardless of geographical location or history all women of African descent have at one time or another succumbed to the notion that good hair is long and straight. Quoted in a New York Times article on the good hair debate Associate professor of Black Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Ingrid Banks said:

“For black women, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, if you’ve got straight hair you’re pegged as selling out. If you don’t straighten your hair, you’re seen as not practicing appropriate grooming practices.”

That our hair is a political statement, and that in its natural state it is not considered desirable is probably one of the few things that we all have in common. So we struggle with extensions and weaves, hot combs and relaxers, in a never-ending battle to be seen as beautiful. The multitude of women on the streets of Harare with an imitation of Rihanna’s straight asymmetric-cut weave is proof of that.

It seems that beauty, as defined by the cosmetic companies that services the industry, has everything to do with being less black. Even here in Zimbabwe, amid indigenisation and empowerment, black women do not feel beautiful without some enhancement that takes away something of what makes them African. And through all of that not once have we stopped to ask ourselves “what is beautiful for me?”

“Will someone please find a wife for our PM“, screamed a recent headline in the nation’s leading family weekly newspaper.  I asked myself why the PM’s love life warranted placement on the front page ahead of stories about the appalling state of the public health care system, blatant corruption by state officials at every level, even our untold suffering under illegal sanctions.  However, because the senior writer was clearly desperate to show that it was in the nation’s best interest that the PM settles down to conventional family life, I gave the issue some consideration.

I think the state should sponsor the running of a Zimbabwean version of The Bachelor.  The PM’s situation is of national concern so requires national intervention!  Think about it.  We have all the right ingredients to produce an impressive adaptation of this reality show.

1.    We have a very eligible bachelor in the PM, and like other Bachelors from the show, what he lacks in looks he more than makes up for in his sizeable means.

2.    It is clear that physical appearance is about the only criterion used to select The Bachelor’s potential soul mates.  Our country has innumerable good-looking women so bringing together 25 for our PM to choose from should be pretty easy.  (Have you seen the beauties that are Zanu Pf Harare Province Models?)  Of course, all the ladies must be 100% local and must have high standards of cleanliness.  We are, after all, a nation renowned for valuing all things indigenous and for rejecting filth and squalor.

3.    Spectacular dates set in wonderful places are a distinct feature of the popular TV show and our local version shall not disappoint.  With many exquisite properties across the land now in the hands of the majority, the new owners will happily lease them out for our production.  Thus, with great sites for the dream dates, the PM can then court his bevy of beauties at braais, galas and rallies, hosted in scenic places, countrywide.

4.    The TV series always includes fantasy dates where The Bachelor takes each finalist separately to one of two exotic locations.  I’m sure our friends around the world would only be too glad to facilitate a tour of Pyongyang, a relaxing retreat in Malabo or a shopping trip to sunny Baghdad.

And as the process progresses, the PM will remorsefully distribute red roses (or maybe red cards, computers or farms), eliminating one broken hearted bachelorette after the other.  But in the end, just like in the reality show, The Bachelor will find true and everlasting love and he’ll seal his commitment with a dazzling diamond – a Chiadzwa stone, perhaps.

Then Zimbabwe can get on with addressing its other problems.