Life lessons from a failed state
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.