Over the weekend I was in town going around hardware shops looking for price quotations for building materials. I was looking for plumbing material, which Chitungwiza Town Council failed to provide me. After visiting the Chitungwiza Town Council offices on several occasions asking them come and connect water and waste disposal pipes at my place, I was finally told to buy my own pipes and pay the connection fee.

So I went around several hardware shops asking for price quotations in town. The most surprising thing was that, of the three shops I visited they had already adjusted prices for all the products on shelves in anticipation of the pay increase which civil servants had been promised. The previous day I had checked prices for the material I wanted to buy so there I was arguing with the shop assistant over the prices. So I moved to the next shop and it was the same story. Since it a was a Saturday I had paid little attention to the news headlines in daily papers only to be reminded by the shop assistant that the story of civil servants pay increase was the headline of the day. This got me interested so I rushed to grab one of the daily papers and it was on the front page “Civil servants get salary increment”. The interest I had about the article quickly faded just a few lines into the story when I read that government’s pay increase will give a $31 rise in the basic salary of the lowest-earning employee.

The culture of adjusting prices and overcharging, which was heavily experienced during the Zimbabwe dollar era, is still part of some unscrupulous business people in this country. But this time I guess the timing to make a killing was wrong because its only $31.

Upenyu’s writing resonates with many folks, and it is disturbing that such attitudes exhibited by the cop she mentions can still be found in the “locations,” many years into the age of enlightenment. A guy “grows up in the hood,” goes to varsity, and the chaps treat him as one they cannot “hang with” no more. A friend said it is important  for him  that “even though” he is pursuing an MA abroad, he can still come to the “hood” and hang out with the fellas and pass a calabash of opaque beer just like they did back in the day. It is important because it tells him that he has not changed. Obviously this self-consciousness is also for the benefit of childhood chums who have this thing in their heads and would not expect him to hang out with them simply because he has been out there getting an education. That’s how it is in the “locations,” “elokitshini,” kumarokesheni” as Winky D puts it.

That education makes you interpret “reality” – constructed or otherwise – differently is obvious despite of course there being some who think not, yet there are chaps who think because you do not see and interpret the universe through their lenses you are therefore placing yourself on a higher intellectual plane. Come to Bulawayo and just try and respond in English to a cop who addresses you in Shona! He expects you to understand him but not him you, and will tell you to your face “saka ndimi makafunda” (so you are the educated type!). I heard over the weekend a pirate taxi driver say to some student teachers from Hillside Teachers College: “phela abantu bengafunda bayahlupha” (educated people are troublesome) after they had asked him to drop them off near the college gate but claimed they did not have extra money (ZAR5) to pay for this convenience. It reminded me of the good old days in Zimbabwe when teachers were respected as part of the “educated middle class” but have over the years seen the profession being ridiculed because of poor salaries and working conditions.

Yet there are many more others who impose “erudition” on you. A few years ago, a friend’s wife asked me to tutor her on some subject I had no clue about, and her reasoning was that since I was at varsity therefore I had the knowledge therefore was supposed to assist her, thus went the logic. And yes she did not take kindly to my claims that I had no clue about what she was talking about: “if it was some salad chick you would have assisted her” – her exact words. And these are the folks who will be quick to remind you that you belong in the rut along with them so don’t imagine you are a better person because you went to varsity! Of course you wonder where the heck that is coming from? And that’s not to say anything about my wife who over the years had to deal with the whole neighbourhood as folks sought to be tutored on one subject or another, and woe betide her for claiming commitment to other issues. Why? Because she was at varsity! That’s just how folks view life, and that is where resentment of “privilege” and “education” is found in very generous servings. Like Upenyu says, you are expected to apologise even if you do not know what exactly you are apologising for.

Another friend who earned his PhD last year said to me he had learned to do things differently when we scoured the CBD looking for a decent joint where we could sit and catch up over a few beers. It was no longer about just seeing the neon lights of a pub and getting in, but being careful about the places one patronises. Thing is, he would be expected to hang around the corner with his old neighbourhood buddies, but you also have to imagine the conversation. He bought himself a decent home, and said to me, “when people see me walking and commuting, they will ‘say look at him, what did he bring from the Diaspora’!” He, like many returning or visiting from the Diaspora, would be expected to be driving and buying copious amounts of beer for old mates who still hang around the local “bottle store” waiting for anyone to buy them anything from a cigarette to beer, and hell, pilfer change from the money you give them to buy another round of beer!

That’s what we found older chaps doing back then when a childhood friend visited from Wenela or Goli, and they obviously left something for their younger brothers to emulate. Ah, this Diaspora and education thing, you have to be in the township streets to feel the pulse. It  is here where throwing in a few English words in the conversation is met with disgust because, as some put it, you are flaunting your education, you think you are smarter than everybody!

Perhaps Upenyu ought to say, “sorry, I’m not apologising!”

The Graduation Ceremony of students who got scholarships in the US under the US Student Achievers Program (USAP) was held yesterday. This event was a true personification of Ambassadors Ray’s latest book title, ‘Where you come from matters less than where you’re going”. It is true in the sense that students are academically talented with most of them being head boys and head girls in their former schools, but face financial challenges in furthering their education.  Some have lost both parents, others are heads of their own households and three of them are physically disabled. Despite such backgrounds USAP has afforded them the opportunity to study at top US colleges and universities including Harvard. This resembles the title of the Ambassador’s book; in that one day you may be somewhere great and tell a different story altogether.

The event was graced by the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai and Ambassador Charles Ray. The PM encouraged the students to exhibit the Zimbabwean characteristics of ‘hospitality and hard work’ and to return home. In that same vein the Ambassador urged the students to return to Zimbabwe with these words, “And do return. Zimbabwe needs you and your talent, your open minds and your news ideas, to realise its potential”.

It is interesting that only a few weeks ago, the government was being extolled by some incorrigibly optimistic watchers of the Zimbabwean crisis for “opening” up media space by licensing new publications and also calling for applications from prospective broadcasters. Media reform is one of the sticking points of the GPA and the GNU that it birthed, and one has to imagine the reluctance of the former ruling party to give in to the demands of its sleeping partners based, of course, on its own historic knowledge of how these “tools” were used in the hands of the “white enemy” back then.

Yet there is something about some “analysts” here who are always quick to see reforms in the making each time the unflinching Zanu PF lifts its finger to scratch itself. They imagine the party is about to move the mountain of political, economic, media or whatever reform demanded by progressive forces and other people of goodwill. Yet here we are this week being told yet again that some scribes from the alternative media have once again been made very reluctant guests of the police. The latest arrest of these journalists coincided with Webster Shamu telling a gathering of SADC journos that there are scribes who continue to do the bidding of Western and other forces, a line favoured by oligarchs when referencing the private media.

That Shamu does not raise a finger – even to scratch his head – about these continued arrests tells some he could well be colluding with the police, after all, the cops have publicly avowed their allegiance to his party! How else would “ordinary” Zimbabweans read into it? Is not ours a land filled with political conspiracies? You hear it in kombis, pubs and yes, newsrooms! One just has to listen to ZBC bulletins and the unstinting dressing down of Biti and Tsvangirai to get the gist of how the Minister of Journalists favours his own. Thus it is that it is apparent that anyone dreaming of reforms of any sort in this country as long as Zanu PF lives is surely indulging in an exercise that will only give birth to ulcers and migraines.

A few days ago I was stopped at a police roadblock on my way home. While the officer was writing my ticket, he commented,

‘Ah sisi munogona kunosa.’ (not a nice way of saying you speak Shona with an accent)

Then he proceeded to try and get my phone number.

I have never been black enough. When I was very young my family conducted a roora ceremony for my aunt and we all moved kumusha for a week. Not having any other girls my age to play with, and having been shooed away from the cooking fire whenever the older women wanted to talk about men too many times to keep trying, I spent much of my time indoors reading. One day my older cousin recited Roses are red, violets are blue, you brother and me are black, but what are you?’

It was over twenty years ago, and I was half way through primary school at the time, but it was cruel.

I’ve never really liked that cousin since then.

When I first returned from the Diaspora, relatives would ask my mother if I still spoke Shona and observed our traditions. The implication being that I was no longer one of them.

‘Handiye apfugama achimuoberayi zakanaka?’ (Isn’t she the one who knelt and greeted you properly?) My mother would reply.

Later, I dated a man whose mother objected to our relationship because I was too privileged to be a ‘good African woman’. Her assumption was that because I had grown up kuma ‘dale-dale’, had attended private school, and lived outside Zimbabwe briefly, I was too ‘sala’ to qualify as such. Once in a heated conversation she asked him

‘Kamusalad kako kanombogona kubika sadza here?’ (Does your salad girlfriend even know how to cook sadza?)

I am not alone, there a few born-frees out there who grew up much the same way I did. Criticisms of the born-free generation are not all equal. For those who grew up in the middle class, and are perceived to have been granted access to privilege and lost their culture and language in the process, it holds a particular disdain. There are times when we are faced with the difficult choice of either embracing our otherness, or apologizing for the way we were raised.

I don’t believe in apologizing for the way my parents raised me. Especially to anyone who’s view of tradition, culture and history is narrowly defined in terms of where in Harare I grew up, how I speak Shona, and whether I cook or eat sadza. There is more to us than that, and it’s a shame that those who are loudest in defining our cultural identity believe that those things constitute the totality of who we are.  I think that is a very simple minded reduction of a complex culture, and a language that is steeped in a rich history. What I, and others like me, are judged for is not our acculturation, but rather that person’s lack of access to privilege.

Just wondering about Harare’s very weird business zoning laws. Remember back in the day when you had to be in a designated business area if you wanted to operate a business? No more. Imagine the poor suckers who own a house next to Paula’s Place, the re visioned Caiscais Restaurant. Paula’s is situated next to residential properties on Samora Machel Avenue in Eastlea. Don’t know about you but I wouldn’t relish living next door to a restaurant that’s going to have countless cars coming and going, the noise of happy go lucky patrons and the smell and sizzle of countless peri peri chickens on the grill. Isn’t it time that the City of Harare showed some sense when it comes to issuing (if they actually do) permits to businesses operating in residential areas? It’s an indictment on how many people don’t want to go into our city centre anymore. That’s where many of our restaurants used to be.