Writer in Exile
I’ve just won a prestigious prize – tens of thousands of dollars (US) – thanks to that large, yellow-fleshed Swedish friend of mine, the one who nominated me for the Nobel Prize, which was won, would you believe it, by a racist white Afrikaner whose name I forget.
So, no, I don’t feel bad about winning a prize as a writer in exile. We black female writers with peasant backgrounds are the most discriminated against of all when it comes to prizes. I’ve won only about twenty since I began publishing. The fact is, I can’t write when the mossies bite. (Ha ha: I’m a poet and I didn’t know it!). In Bulawayo that means November to March or April, depending on the rains.
Thanks to my Scandinavian, German, and Canadian fans (they have called me the Jane Austen of Africa although I believe I am better than her at marulas and stones), I have no problem with free accommodation at these divine writers’ retreats, which range from medieval castles to five star hotels. They worship me. After all, they say I am Zimbabwe’s greatest author. Eat your heart out, Doris Lessing!
I got the idea from these battered old Rhodies who can’t survive on the sort of income that their servants have been surviving on for decades. They sell what’s left of their worldly possessions in order to buy a return ticket to England. There they are in great demand as care-givers to the elderly. After three months they have earned enough forex to live fairly comfortably in Zimbabwe for a year or two. Then they return to England for another stint. A woman called Mrs Tennyson, who rents one of the servants’ quarters on my property in Kumalo suburb, and who teaches A-level Maths at one of the local private schools, told me her story.
What with spiralling inflation and a plummeting economy, teachers in Zimbabwe can no longer survive on their incomes. It was only as a last resort that Mrs Tennyson decided to become a nanny in England. Before that she tried to supplement her income by selling what she called “finger dips”, at church bazaars, flea markets, and school fetes. She made egg cup sized containers out of tin foil, and then she went round the various hotels and restaurants of Bulawayo importuning the waiters for left over gravy. The little she received was poured into a large enamelled pot and blended with herbs from her garden and shocking quantities of her home-made, used tea-leaves wine. If the sucker hadn’t given away most of her dips she might have earned good money from her enterprise; but you know what these people are like? Giving things away is so patronizing, so condescending, so racist, really, when you come to think of it.
The same thing happened with the used motor car oil (to bring out the glow in paving stones), which she importuned from petrol attendants at garages all over town. Then it was shopping bags sewn from used plastic litter, tons of which, she informed me, can be gathered from the pathways that make diagonal connections with the road grids of suburban Bulawayo. What was it after that? Oh yes: insect repellent made from repellent insects, crushed, and mixed in a Vaseline base; sold by the thimbleful. She had inherited a thousand plastic thimbles in five different colours from her grandfather, Fred, who had been a frequenter of auctions and who could never resist what he considered a bargain.
Anyway, this loser, Mrs Tennyson, and her ilk, gave me an idea. It’s always pissed me off, somewhat, that the one literary prize I haven’t been able to compete for is that which is awarded to a writer in exile. I’ve done pretty well with all the other prizes. One of my books, Called The Scent of Jacaranda, won a poetry prize in Canada, a novel prize in Sweden, and a play prize in Germany – all in the same year. I used the money to buy this house, my Pajero, and my imported crystal chandelier. Don’t touch it; it’s fragile; it came all the way from Vienna in Austria.
I said to myself, you can’t claim political exile since you are well up with the ZANU PF élite; and you can’t claim economic exile since royalties and prize money have helped you amass a small fortune; you can, and will, however, claim exile from these pesky mosquitoes. They interfere with your creative genius, which is a world heritage. The rest, my dear, is history. From my place of exile, a five star hotel in Frankfurt, I submitted a piece called Jacaranda O Jacaranda. The Scandinavian adjudicators (I know them all personally) were unanimous in awarding me the prize. I intend to go into exile every year from now on, especially when those pesky mossies begin to bite.