Lost in Harare

Approaching Harare on [what used to be] Second Street. This was a guided "tour" back to the airport, so I didn't have to worry about getting lost yet. I would be lost on the Monday I used a Kombi for the first time, from Borrowdale West to Copacabana.

Some fellow Zimbabweans in Sacramento had warned me that I would be lost in Zimbabwe because I had lived out of the country for too long, but I had told them that I would not be lost; in fact, I had taken offense to the implication that I could be lost in a country I grew up in, and especially in Harare, a city I had known inside out.  And as for Mototi, down or up there in Mazvihwa, there was no way I would be lost in a village I lived in for the first seventeen years of my life. Villages don't change fast. In the city I would just follow the streets, look for familiar landscapes. There was no way I would be lost in Zimbabwe. But even as I got on the plane to Amstedam at San Francisco, I could hear the sentence wringing, "Munonorasika kumusha uku", which means "You'll be lost at home."

As we were getting ready to land at the Harare International Airport, I craned my neck to see Harare through the tiny window, and there was something: treeless, ugly residences, but I knew there were places that would not disappoint, places that had stood the test of time, or the ravages of change, and those new areas that bore witness to a new  Zimbabwean Dream, a dream whose  fuel is currently the US dollar, or at least the pursuit of it.

At the airport, I was met by a crowd bigger than I had anticipated. I had just imagined that the only person who would be there was my tsano, with whom I had arranged a ride into town. But there was my sister and two of her daughters and their husbands and children. Then there was my sister-in-law, and of course my brother-in-law, the tsano who was giving me a ride. Suddenly, I was surrounded by family love. I was surprise, for a moment I was lost, especially since I was still thinking about the fact that I had entered the country without all my suitcases. So then that's what I started grumbling about, while trying to get a clear sense of the reality on the ground. I was scheduled to join a writer's conference downtown, which had about an hour to go, but I wasn't in a state to do that anymore. We went straight home instead, and I was trying to take it all in, unbelieving that I was here again.

Tired of Copacabana chaos, I started taking photos like this one.

When I finally entered the city, and later the suburbs, there were posh places and poor ones; a new Harare, an old Harare.  So then I met family members and friends. Nieces, grand nieces and nephews. They were everywhere, seeking the attention of an newly-arrived uncle (they didn't have to know anything about the past, about how once I had left and now I was returning). I only met two of the four nieces I had left young sixteen years ago, and now they were mothers, directing my attention to the little ones, introducing, confusing me.

One thing I had mentioned even before I left the USA was that I wouldn't have a car in Zimbabwe, that I would try to appreciate as much of the way we used to travel as possible; besides, I would only stay for three weeks, so why waste time make an arrangment for acqusition of a vehicle? Then upon arrival, I saw the driving in downtown Harare and told myself I probably wouldn't easily give it a try. And then the obvious reason: why waste money on a rental, et cetra....

So I gathered information about how the public transportation would work, and I figured I would do okay using Kombis, and even taxis. I had arrived on a Saturday, by noon, had spent the rest of the day with family and friends. On Sunday we went back to the airport to collect my lost or delayed suitcase. [I wasnt already happy about Kenya Airways, like how they would just decide to split my luggage without alerting me of the possibility, making me worry about whether or not the gifts people were anticipating would arrive at all). And upon entry in the lost buggage area, there was my suitcase, bruised. Sigh. Forgiveness.



Second day in Harare, Sunday August 5, having just met Memory Chirere and Masiya at the National Arts Gallery. I was on my way back to the airport to see if Kenya Airways had kept its promise about the arrival of the suitcase on the very "next flight."

Third day, Monday, August 5th:  I had to face Harare city, something I was looking forward to.  From Borrowdale West  I  took a Kombi bound for Copacabana, not Fourth Street. I was going to meet someone there at this place whose name sounded familiar, but which I couldn't remember. Then the hwindi told me I had arrived, and the combi left me on at the Chicken Inn on a street I still don't quite remember, but it near Jameson Hotel and Samora Machel Avenue. Nearby there is a Chicken Slice and a Pizza Slice. I could tell this wasn't Copacabana, so I called a friend to direct me, and he told to go futher down towards the ZANU PF headquarters. And sure enough, after I crossed two streets, I heard a sudden  burst of noise and chaos; there was the place full of Kombis whose drivers seemed to be at war. I tried to determine where exactly I was and I could not and that could drive me nuts. No matter how hard I tried to think what this place really was, to figure out whether I would remember it from my Harare days in the 90s, I still couldn't. I started to call friends for direction, and I hadn't quite figured out how to use my local service on the blackberry, which kept defaulting to its Sacramento number. Finally, I reached one friend, a writer friend, Beaven Tapureta. At first I confused him in my attempts to describe the location; then we got it all figured out; he gave me directions of how to get from there. But I had to meet someone first.  I called and told him that--forget about Chicken Inn, Nandos, or whatever;  I would not move from the chaos of where I was, which was near a car dealership and many vendors. He would have to come where I was, to look for me. And that he did. I was delivering a laptop from the Diaspora.

Next, I had to travel to Mufakose, so I had to find the Kombis to the place. I knew I would eventually find them, since the destination calls where very loud. What really aggravated me when I thought I was lost in Harare, of all places, when I could not see a familiar feature, was the unusual level of noise, and the chaotic driving. I was aware that in another day or two I probably would not think the noise was bad, and that the chaotic driving would reveal its method, but at the time this was the last place I wanted to be in. I couldn't take the noise. I even call back home (in the United States...especially since I found myself intensely missing quiet and passive Sacramento) to complain about the noise levels in Harare, and what was worse, I couldn't quite hear the person on the other end of the line, and I was there wasting my airtime on the international call. I hated Harare at that moment; but soon realized that this wasn't all of Harare, this was Copacabana, a place where Kombis fought for passengers, a place where walking from one spot to another was the most difficult thing to do, and it doesn't help that when I called one of my nieces she warned me to watch out for thieves.

But in my entire visits in downtown center I would not be concerned with pickpockets, at least not as worried as I had been in Amsterdam, where the airport people had warned me to watch out for thieves, especially on the trains. In Harare I thought I blended in quite well, even with my camera I thought I was quite invisible, and that felt really good. Even in the initial chaos of Copacabana, I still walked with an air of belonging, of blending in. And then the most amazing thing happened. A lady selling tomatoes and avocados called me to her stall, not to but anything, but to please take a photo of her at work. She wanted to show her business "to the world." I explained to her I took pictures just to capture memories, not for business (because she had offered to pay), and she said it was okay. So here is the picture, of a business woman at work:

I regret not having remembered to eat Zimbabwean avocados while I was there; there was a lot of catch-up eating to do on a lot of things, but these avos are a particularly interesting species. They are way bigger than any I have seen in California; I might have to keep on looking, but then maybe they might turn out to be too expensive. I told the lady that I hadn't seen avos this big and she didn't think she had the real big ones.

Copacabana was not easy to get used to, but knowledge is power, as they say. By the time I left Harare, the chaos of the place didn't bother me anymore. In fact, I had already realized that this kind of chaos exists elsewhere too, on street corners where vendors try to sell airtime, juice drinks, icecream, pirated books and music. I saw the chaos in Glen View, in Mufakose, in Zvishavane, in Kwekwe, in Kadoma, I saw it everywhere, the kind of chaose that goes away the longer you stay in a place, and is often replaced by a kind of order which is not always obvious to the visitor. I still saw it and decided this was this was the nature of survival: so when I went to this wholesale grocery store where I had to join two lines because some items like toffees were in a special cabinet, I saw chaos, but it was the kind of  chaos no one else seemed to notice.