On a recent visit to my grandmother’s rural home, I remarked to my uncle how sad it is that when I have children of my own, all of their grandparents will be city-dwelling creatures who won’t boast scenic views of misted mountain ranges, free-roaming cattle and grass-thatched rondawels.

“Ah, but you can’t be sure of that yet,” he quipped. “You could get married to a man whose parents live in the rural areas and who loves to go and see them often.”

I am not too sure whether the grimace I felt growing within, after that statement was made, actually seeped through my flesh and crept all the way up to my face. Marry a man whose parents live where and who loves to do what?!

Now, I know those types well – the urban dwellers whose lungs can’t take the smell of diesel and industrialisation for any protracted amount of time, and who must therefore drive off to the ‘roots’ (that’s Zimbabwean slang for one’s rural home) at any opportunity. Public holidays, Christmas, Easter, annual leave – name the calendar dates and these men are on their merry way.

I have absolutely no problem with this whatsoever. Showing love and appreciation for where you come from is a sign of humility and respect. So bravo to all of those who have embraced their heritage.

But please don’t expect me to be the first to be kitted out in faithful pursuit at the suggestion of each and every road trip to see my in-laws and their string of relatives.

Let’s go through the reasons why.

It isn’t just rural folk who want to see what mettle a mroora (daughter-in-law) is made of. But they make the greatest demands on you to find out whether you really were worth all those cows given away as your bride price.

They want to know if you can cook, clean and do every other wifely task they know of from their own mental handbooks.

And note, cooking here is not for some previously planned dinner party of eight guests who all get place names. In this instance, it’s more like cooking for the whole village – aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, brothers of aunts of great uncles and any other relation you can think of!

Oh, and I neglect to mention that this is cooking by fire.

In a drum.

With a big old log for you to stir the pap around with as it gurgles and threatens to erupt all over your face.

I laugh at the thought of my even attempting such feats of heroism.

Ah, and then there’s the small matter of plucking feathers from newly deceased chickens which, in their final moments, you watched coursing about the yard headless and bloody.

I have to pass on that one too because I have real issues with cooking or eating something that I have seen living.

Call me crazy, but I grow attached to livestock. I watch and learn their different characters and even give them names and nationalities. In fact, in just this last visit to my grandmother I reincarnated one of her hens as a moody painter called Pierrick cocking his head to and fro (in the previous life the hen was male!) and fixing his eyes on angular shapes and edgy colours.

So don’t think for one moment that I could ever partake of the cooking and eating of Pierrick and others of his kith and kin.

Fetching water from a well kilometres away and then balancing a full bucket over my head? And actually walking with it?

Pass again.

But my personal favourite is getting all of this done before the first cock crows and with the whispers behind my aching back about when exactly it is that I will show my fertility by falling pregnant.

Did I just chuckle out loud? I am not so sure because no one else is in the room.

The chuckle, whether audible or otherwise, is induced by the fact that I am involved in a well-documented unshakeable romance with my pillows. So much so is sleep the glory of my life that I have since forfeited the spectacle of picturesque sunrises for it.

I will forfeit a whole lot more, even at the risk of being called a salad. In Zimbabwe, people who are considered to be ‘raw’ in a cultural sense, are derisively referred to as salads – no particular type of salad, just anything that’s made up of raw ingredients.

Oh, and who really understands the idea of getting married and enjoying your spouse’s company for a few years before birthing a brood of noisy rugrats? Just you wait more than a year and listen as everyone speculates that you are barren and that you need that special healing that the pastor who lives on a distant mountain top gives.

I am in no way making light of rural life. Rural communities have their own systems, proud rituals and traditions. And these are what keep them functional.

But I am at an age where I can be honest with myself.

I will never be a size 10. I will not be a fashion designer when I grow up. And I will not be the typical traditional wife.

My way of life is a fusion of things – an acculturation of different ways and beliefs about how I feel that I can most benefit the various structures within society, including family.

I am not a domestic goddess. I can be competent at house work, but nothing more. And whoever I marry, if I marry, has to understand that.

So no eyes gawking at me and vetting my competencies, thank you! The rustic life wasn’t made for some.

And for this narration of my reservations, call me a salad if you want. In fact, call me a Waldorf salad. At least I can munch away at bits of apples and nuts while you chew over my audacity.

Bon appetite!

Pina colada and berry flavoured vaginal lubricant.

Green apple-scented condoms.

These are just but a few of the enticements featured at the Condom Project stall at this year’s  18th International AIDS Conference, which opened on Sunday. The organisation, which is part of the larger Condomise Campaign, boasts a stall with an array of colourful condoms, genital lubricants and other aids which the general public are free to sample and taste.

But amid the kaleidoscope colours of sensuality and allure, the female condom still looks unappealing in its white, pink and blue packaging.

As Joy Lynn Alegarres, the Director of Global Operations for the Condom Project, explains, the FC2 female condom, the only condom currently approved for  global use, is undergoing a rebranding (through partners such as UNFPA)and will soon reflect the identity of the various countries where women use it.

“In Bali, the packaging is now pink with a flower on it,” explains Alegarres.

As Maya Gokul of South Africa observes, the female condom is available in over 120 countries of the world and has passed tests of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

And it can be sexy.

“Since the inner ring is detachable, it is exciting for guys,” adds Gokul. “When the penis bumps against that inner ring it is very sensual.”

She also added that a male partner can use the inner ring to arouse the woman through playing with her clitoris prior to putting the condom on.

And as Nienke Blauw of the Netherlands demonstrated, there are newer models of the female condom that may soon be on the market that can add to the variety for the female condom.  One condom, which is called the cupid and is being developed in India, has a sponge instead of an inner ring which is meant to gave a different sensual experience to the user. Another is cone-shaped and has a tampon-like tip which expands to fit into the inner vaginal lining upon contact with moisture. Unlike other female condoms, it does not use lubricant as it makes use of the woman’s fluids to eventually open up after insertion.

But while innovation around the female condom is increasing, barriers still exist.

“In Zambia, female condoms are going for a (United States) dollar for a pack of two,” explained Carol Nyirenda of the Coalition of Zambian Women Living with HIV.

Prices of female condoms remain much higher than those of male condoms, which means that many women cannot afford to buy the only HIV prevention device that they can control themselves.

Currently, Zambia’s activists are in the process of lobbying the Ministry of Trade and Industry to review and formulate policy for the regulation of the quality of privately imported male and female condoms by 2011.

Also, Nyirenda stressed the importance of educating those who use the condom to do so correctly and consistently, and also to challenge cultural norms that increase women’s vulnerability to HIV transmission, such as marital rape.

“There is need to work on cultural norms which promote the subordination of women, especially in terms of sex, notes Tabona Shoko,the Director of Zimbabwe’s National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (ZNNP+), who is an advocate for the female condom. “We need to create leeway for women to negotiate for safer sex.”

Interestingly, Annie Michelle Salla of Cameroon shared that in her country, male military officials had actually requested that rather than train them to use the male condom effectively, they requested that condom promoters train their wives to use the female condom.

The reason?

The men felt that it was important for their spouses to be able to protect themselves since they admitted that they were not responsible enough to do so.

Roli Mahajan, a journalist from India also feels strongly that the female condom should become more widely available and affordable. But when asked how it could be improved, she admitted to never having used it.

Veanne Turczynski from Germany has also never used the female condom but is sceptical about the product. “I cannot imagine that it’s practical to use because it’s hard to handle,” she noted. “It’s so much more complicated than the male condom.”

But with an HIV epidemic that still affects far more woman than men, the female condom remains a tool well worth investing in – for the sake of women’s health.

Rejoice Ngwenya in his latest article entitled the 3G Revolution That Never Was reckons that Zimbabwean corporates like Econet are taking their customers for granted. Read more from Rejoice . . .

One of Zimbabwe’s leading transnational blue chip telecommunication companies, ECONET, is once again promising the local market a miraculous transformation of the country’s Information Communication Technology [ICT]. For several years, the ambitious Strive Masiyiwa-owned enterprise has been trumpeting molten corporate lava on new 3rd Generation platform [3G], spending thousands of dollars in the process to seek attention from habitually technology-averse Zimbabweans. A massive excavation along Zimbabwe’s main trunk road is now been backed with more promises of memorable fibre optic 4G revolution.

If customer satisfaction was measured per capita of advertising and promotional ad spend, ECONET would probably be running out of space on the human utility scale! There are those who argue that a proliferation of ninety base stations in ninety days to support a two million plus subscriber base is the ultimate symbol of success, not to mention high share prices, exciting dividends and healthy bottom line. Others also insist that a company that has a hundred square metre full colour billboards at every major intersection in every major town is a symbol of marketing excellence. No doubt there are similar such experiences across the length and breadth of the African continent. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that market dominance is a precursor to customer satisfaction; rather, it evolves into irritating monopolistic behaviour.

The global corporate graveyard is littered with big spend ventures whose customer satisfaction index – for want of a term – is no higher than the intelligence quotient [IQ] of the cockroach hiding in a dark corner of your laptop case. At one time, it was impossible to send short message services [SMS] on Fridays through the ECONET network, let alone make a call. Their engineers, as expected, had a perfect explanation. Subscriber rates, they mourned, were literally controlled by business-hostile central government regulators, so much so that the use of local Zimbabwe dollar currency rendered sustainable service delivery impossible. The market accepted the explanation, and waited with abated breadth for the day when the nervous ZANU-PF government would allow use of ‘foreign’ currency in local transactions. I remember – ironically with a tinge of trepidation and amusement – that my account was arbitrarily ‘converted’ to pay-as-you-go for reasons only known to the late Egyptian Tutankhamen. My and every account holder’s protests fell on deaf, highly-paid electronic ears.

As fate would have it, we are almost two years into the multicurrency use, but I am yet to experience a ‘phenomenal rise’ in service delivery. When wireless internet provision became fashionable, competition from ‘fixed’ broadband pioneers like Zimbabwe Online ‘inspired’ ECONET to go one up by introducing the mobile 3G ‘dongle’ connect card internet browsers that were billed to take Zimbabwe business a notch up in regional ICT competitiveness. As expected, these promises were bankrolled with expensive promotions and fanfare, and those like me whose survival solely depends on mobile web-based activism, fell to our knees and showered praises to the galaxies. As it turns out, the prayers were premature.

Many months after I and perhaps thousands of other techno-freaks fell into the 3G promotional trap, we are still to experience the beauty of the ECONET ‘inspired’ ICT revolution. Compared to US1 [one United States Dollar] per thirty minutes that ‘fixed’ broadband service providers charge in public internet shops, or the US20 or so dollars levied for a miserly 100 megabytes, I quickly moved onto the USD25 per month unlimited access offered by ECONET’s miracle dongle. This was a gigantic error of judgement, on my part.

For the ten or so months I have been ‘hooked’ to this much heralded 3G system, I can access my internet only an average of two hours per week. On several occasions, I have met my colleagues-in-despair at ECONET HQ, seeking answers from arrogant, stoned-faced young technicians more interested in showing off their latest i-tuners to bamboozled school girls. I have tried to scream, but my voice chokes with anger, and I can only have just enough energy to wobble down the stairs with nothing but a bruised ego.

In the past few weeks, my misery has been incremental, as expected, compounded with a perfect explanation from ECONET that the fibre optic project is ‘interfering’ with our access and that all will be well once the cables are buried! To date, I have probably lost a couple of exciting activist deals due to my lack of communication, never mind the mental stress of dealing with a technology beyond one’s control. Sometimes, as I do now, I feel local ECONET engineers should be rounded up and thrown into an ICT dungeon filled with archaic Olympia typewriters, Moss code, telex, Gestetner machines and discarded valve-type black and white television sets where their reputation can assume a comparative semblance of respectability – that is if they survive drowning in volumes of black duplicating inks, scarlet correction fluids and used machine oils!

The question essentially is: why do ‘successful’ corporates take us customers for granted? Toyota International had a rude awakening, so did British Petroleum. I call it corporate stupor. At a certain stage, the blue chippers get drunk and choke in their own success, paralysed by exciting financial results and moribund with self praise that only immunises them from customer sensitivity. I cannot recall how many cars Toyota had to recall, or how many millions litres of oil BP has so far spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, but my wish is that companies like MTM or CellTel waltz into the Zimbabwe market to give these overzealous chip-on-the-shoulder  players like ECONET a f*****g whipping. Just perhaps, perhaps I might be able to open my Yahoo without having to sing the Khoisan desert anthem 100 times over in Latin. I am a stickler for free market competition, even if I have to lose a network I have been hooked since July 1998. Thus I am agitated by market dominance that has manifestations of monopolistic behaviour. Ninety base stations in ninety days my black a**! Jeeper’s creepers, just give me only one base station in three hundred and sixty five days that WORKS and we will be lifelong pals, Mr Masiyiwa!

Zimbabwean Brian Chikwava was recently included in a stellar line up of writers for a special issue of Granta. The theme was sex.

The Fig Tree and the Wasp

It was 1979 and I had just started primary school. That summer was the first time I witnessed what later became known as iskokotsha, a craze that would, in the euphoria of a newly independent Zimbabwe, trigger the focus of motion in popular dance to snake decisively, seductively, up the body, from the feet to the hips – a sex pantomime of outrageously suggestive moves that enthralled our young nation for the decade to come.

Read more

Your father
is a man in a red beret
1983
Carrying a rifle
a bayonet affixed
blood dripping
A belly slit open.
Your father
is the man in the red beret
trained in Korea
there is blood
and hair
on his boots
An old man’s head
kicked in.
Your father
carries a smoldering gun
the villagers lie dead
They said
they don’t know
were the dissidents are
Your father is the man
in the red beret
forcing  the villagers to sing
as they dig mass graves
for their mothers, fathers…
Your father’s stiff thing
burned into me
at age fifteen:
To emphasise his conquest
he whispered his
name into my ear
as I lay writhing in pain.
Your father
now an army captain
27 years ago
Chopped Mkhluli to pieces
the boy
not a Dissident
who had made
my loins
burn with desire
Your father
27 years ago
gunned down a mere shopkeeper
for being a dissident
Your father
was the man in a red beret
who extinguished
all feelings
of love
of desire
of hope.
Bitterness
hatred
and despair remain.
Your father
was the man in a red beret
who killed everything
in his path,
including chickens and goats.

© Mgcini Nyoni 2010

In past agricultural shows in Zimbabwe exhibitors have showcased raw agricultural products straight from the farm. However very few of us ever knew that there are amazing value addition initiatives taking place in the remote rural places like Lower Guruve, Murehwa, Mutoko and others. The Processed Products Fair, the first of its kind held at the Harare Show Grounds on the 14th of July 2010 opened a new page in history. With traditional mbira music playing in the background, people mingled looking at the traditional goods that were on sale.

The show was organized by Zimbabwe Adding Value to Sustainable Produce (ZAVSAP), a coalition of nine Local Non Governmental Organizations that spearhead the introduction and training of value addition initiatives in the rural parts of Zimbabwe. Some of the organizations that showcased brilliant products include the Community Technology Development Trust (CTDT), Lower Guruve Development Association (LGDA), Caritas Zimbabwe, and Cluster Agricultural Development Services (CADS) among others.

Mr. Thomas Pouppwz, the ZAVSAP Communications Facilitator explained that his organization is a coalition of organizations that work largely in Mashonaland provinces to ensure food security. The network comes up with initiatives like workshops, training and scholarships. The network discovered that Zimbabwe has a lot of potential but its agricultural goods are being sold unprocessed.

He explained that the fair’s purpose is to show what is happening out in the rural areas, and market the products. One interesting move is the invitation of other NGOs and businessmen who might make deals with farmers so that the products may be sold on a larger scale.

Memory Rusike a farmer who works with CTDT expressed great interest in the project of producing traditional vegetables. She explained that these vegetable are very helpful to people that are living with AIDS. She confidently explained the process of drying the vegetables using a locally invented solar drier. Memory encouraged young children to stop looking down upon traditional vegetables, which she said, keep people healthy.

Ms. Muslin Fusire, one of the Programme Managers for CTDT, explained that the organization noticed that the traditional vegetables were fast becoming extinct despite their being more nutritious than the exotic ones. As a result the organization started to promote the production, utilization and commercialization of traditional vegetables. Ms Fusire feels encouraged that men are also coming aboard the venture, which is usually called “a women’s business”. Commenting on the impact that the project has had on people, she indicated that the benefits have been both economic and nutritional.

Mr. Sherperd Kamudyariwa, a bee farmer from Lower Guruve Developmemt Association, explained how he produces products from honey. His range of products include wax, mosquito repellent jelly as well as honey.

Lillian Machivenyika, from Cluster Agricultural Development Services (CADS) explained that her organization operates in Mashonaland East and Mashonaland Central. She said CADS works with community-based organizations in teaching farmers how to produce crops and further process them. CADS have also published a recipe book that contains all the information on how some products are produced and further processed.

In Zimbabwe today it is encouraging that rural people are getting this support to add value to their products. Of worry is the fact that the projects seem to be largely NGO driven. The government is called upon to intervene and cooperate in this endeavor, which has the potential to see the farmers of traditional foods making a mark on both the local and global market. It is our great hope that the Processed Product Fair will become an annual event and will also draw international attention.