Anatomy of a birthday

18 11 2013

Wake up early and go through to the bathroom. The sun is half way up on the horizon. It’s 05h16 which is far too early to be awake on my birthday and a Sunday to boot. The dogs know better than to make a fuss on a Sunday so let me sleep on to nearly 07h00.

Finally get up and go through to the kitchen where there’s a dead rat in the trap I set last night. That’s the last time that one will shit on my kitchen counter. There will be others of course, but for now I control the premises. I show it to Zak hoping to trigger some sort of ratting instinct but his attention is on the packet of defrozen bones in the sink.

The dogs get their biscuits and breakfast, I get my coffee. The rat gets flushed down the toilet.

I pull the DVT stocking off my left leg and get into the bath. The wound dressing on the ulcer on my left foot smells bad but I am supposed to leave it on as long as possible. The specialist wound nurse finds my obsession with the bad smell amusing as only health professionals can.

Bath done, dressed and ready to face the day. No need to make the bed as I slept on top – it’s too hot to get into a bed and there are no mosquitoes. They will come when the rain does but for now it’s too dry for them.

Breakfast. I briefly contemplate cooking something but lassitude wins and it’s cereal and milk whilst being dogged. The bones for the dogs have defrosted overnight in the kitchen sink and they are making certain I don’t forget. They get their bones and the pantomime starts. Zak watches Kharma to ensure she is nowhere close before settling down to chew. Once finished he baits her by running past her with his bone in his mouth. She chases. Eventually she’ll get the bone off him.

Time to get off my problem foot. I settle down with Beethoven’s 5th and 6th Symphonies to read Steven Weinberg’s  Dreams of a Final Theory. It’s well written without and equation in sight (what it is to be  brilliant and a good author) but the heat and Beethoven win and I doze off.

Midday. Time to go into work and see that the tobacco seedlings for the Marondera farmer are properly loaded. He’s there  but the transport is not. It’s stuck at a police roadblock on the west of town and they won’t let him go without paying the fine there and then. We get bored waiting and go our separate ways. No doubt the police will get their money.

Lunch and it’s far too hot to do any serious preparation. So it’s genuine French Paysan Breton brie (I didn’t even look at the price when I picked it up – some things one just has to have), olives from who knows where, local Coke Zero and tomatoes. I manage a few more pages of Dreams of a Final Theory before the heat again wins. It’s supposed to rain today but there are just a few half-hearted clouds around. The rains are not late, yet. We really need a good season to make up for the dismal rains of the last 3 years. Business is oddly slow at the nursery for this time of year, probably due to a general lack of cash in the country. Some $900m fled the country at the time of the election and it is in no rush to come back. Not that surprising.

Muddle through the afternoon getting progressively more bored – there’s only so many times on can check for birthday messages on Facebook. At last it’s cool enough to take the dogs for a short cycle. We all feel better for it afterwards though my foot doesn’t agree with this statement. It smells distinctly bad (due to a Pseudomonas infection as I find out later) so as the day comes to an end it gets my full attention and the dressing is changed using imported specialized dressings at an eye watering $12 for 15cm x 15cm.

It’s been another non-event. Birthdays when I was a child were full of excitement and fun though my parents tired of them long before I did and I recall that the last one they organized was for my 6th birthday. Thereafter they were distinctly low key. I would thank them for that but they both died prematurely; my father murdered before his 53rd birthday by and assailant unknown to this day and my mother from cancer in 1992. It’s sobering to think that I have surpassed my father’s age already.


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I have seen the future

7 11 2013

Entertainment in Harare can be a bit lean – the West End we are not. So people get creative. Drinking is a popular pastime with the sports clubs and various bars, especially on a Friday night. Most middle-income families have satellite TV with all the usual channels that one could find in Europe or the UK. I have found the satellite TV with its endless repeats and bad films tedious so opt to get my entertainment from the internet and in the form of DVDs from Amazon UK. They take 10 days or less from the UK and if I’m lucky, which mostly I am, I don’t get charged duty provided I keep the orders small.

The internet is not bad in Harare. As I live just out-of-town I don’t have access to the genuine broadband from the newly laid fibre optic cables that have been going in for the last year or so.  I rely on WiMax which is generally OK though occasionally it just loses the connection. I could get the ISP techs to come out and redirect the aerial but that would mean killing the bees in the chimney onto which the WiMax aerial is attached, so I just put up with it.

I collected a number of DVDs from the post office yesterday and, last night, being thoroughly unmotivated, sat down to watch the latest Star Trek film. I should explain I am not a “Trekkie” but I have seen one of two a few years ago so thought it would be quite fun to see how things have changed. Well, I have seen the future according to Star Trek and it is good. Some 200 years in the future we will still have a role in flying complex spacecraft which still have engine throttles à la current airliners. The aforesaid spacecraft will have beam weapons that still miss and humans will still fly them through impossibly small gaps that a computer just could not manage despite being able to beam crew members up to distant locations. Pretty girls will still be wearing impossibly short skirts (a pity I won’t be around for that) and medical staff will be wearing starched white safari suits. The baddies will still be speaking with a plummy English accent and over-acting the part and the goodies will be led by an arrogant American who learns humility through self-sacrifice. Quite familiar and not at all bad. The future that is, I definitely won’t be buying another Star Trek DVD.

It seems the Minister of Finance in Zimbabwe is struggling to see or imagine what the economy might be doing next year. He has postponed presenting a budget this year and has said it will come out early in the New Year. My guess is that he simply hasn’t got a solution for the lack of money in the economy. Employment is still falling and I know of at least two people made redundant from companies that have closed in the last 6 months. My company had an excellent September and dismal October. It’s not often that the deposit summary that I print out for the bookkeeper only runs to one page. In fact, I think this is the first time it has ever happened. The future I am seeing here is not great.

It is not all doom and gloom of course. The Acacia karoo outside my bedroom (that I planted 9 or so years ago) has been in splendid bloom and alive with insects, all living for the present. I caught this wasp, plundering nectar. Its future is now and I bet it doesn’t give a hoot for tomorrow.

A wasp feasts on Acacia nectar

A wasp feasts on Acacia nectar


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A bit of marketing

19 10 2013

The economic climate in Zimbabwe has changed substantially over the past 4 years. Not only do we no longer use our own currency (just about any hard currency is acceptable but the US dollar and South African rand are the most popular) but we are all fighting for what little business there is. This was not always the case for my business. I used to just rely on word of mouth for the customers to come to me. So when a few weeks ago I got an email from a local farmers’ union asking if I was interested in advertising at their annual congress (for a small fee of course) I decided it was time to do a bit of marketing.

So for 2 days this last week I went just east of Marondera to a government technical college where the annual congress of the ZCFU (Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union) was being held. I had little idea what to expect, or even who the ZCFU is, so borrowed a gazebo tent, took along some examples of seedlings that we grow and brought the senior foreman/clerk along too. There was a LOT of waiting. Finally on the last day just as we were packing up the delegates came out of the congress and we got quite a lot of interest. Just how much will translate into business remains to be seen.

A very basic setup

That’s us -a very basic setup

All quiet

All quiet

These photos were taken on the first day when there were just a few students around. The second day there were quite a lot more exhibitors.

The convener of the congress is a relatively small-scale farmer and long time customer of mine. Quite what was discussed I don’t know but he was pleased with how it all went. Most exhibitors were of the usual agricultural supplies and input type but there were even some representatives of the local tax revenue authority there “trying to persuade the farmers to pay their taxes”. I kid you not – this is what one of them told me! We had quite a long chat discussing how to get agriculture going in Zimbabwe again (access to finance and all that implies) though I was quite circumspect on the political aspect. We both bemoaned the dearth of Zimbabwean produce on the local market. So when I went shopping yesterday and actually saw some local fresh produce I just had to take a photo.

Finally some local produce

Finally some local produce


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Waiting for the right moment

10 10 2013
Kindly donated by...

Kindly donated by…

I have always wondered how condoms are electronically tested (the red arrow on the box is mine). They have been tested this way as long as I can remember which is long before Google and the internet. For those who are interested this link will tell you how. They certainly haven’t been free in the National Blood Transfusion Service toilets for more than a few years which is where I photographed this box. I should know; I am such a regular donor that this last time my blood was marked for pediatric use. I did ask the nursing sister, who took the blood, why not just test the blood and rely on the test results but got a vague answer. Are regular donors less likely to have risky lifestyles and are therefore less likely to be HIV positive? I don’t know. I DO know that the HIV tests are not infallible. But it was time to head out to the customer in Marondera South, some 2 hours south-east of Harare who’d placed a large order of tobacco seedlings through my nursery and check up on how things were going.

I have never smoked. I did try really hard in the Rhodesian army as it had benefits in keeping the mopani flies (actually stingless bees) out of one’s mouth, nose and eyes but I could never finish a pack of 20. I did smoke occasionally at school but that was just to be a bit of a rebel. Tobacco also played a major role in killing two of my friends so it is a bit ironic that my company has done well this year, largely from growing tobacco seedlings and related business.

Driving east out of Harare I got onto the new section of four lane highway not far from town and breathed a sigh of relief. It is part of a $500 million upgrade of the major roads in the nation and not before time too. They were in a disastrous state with negligible maintenance done in the last 10 years. It’s being funded by the South African Development Bank and a South African company has got the contract. I seriously doubt if any local companies have the capability to undertake a project of this size. It was also evident in the speed of which the resurfacing has been done. Curiously the main road from South Africa to Harare and from Harare to Zambia has not been included in the current project. I know this from a friend of mine who plays tennis with one of the senior management figures in the aforementioned company. Such is the small town nature of Harare.

There were three sections on the road to Marondera where the traffic was controlled by solar-powered lights with a radio link to the lights at the other end. Definitely not a Zimbabwean setup. The hawkers had not wasted any time and were gathered at the traffic controls to see if anyone was interested in various fruit or drinks. Very Zimbabwean.

Turning south in the middle of Marondera I headed off down a road which I have never travelled and within the hour was lost. Not a problem; I simply phoned the farmer I was visiting and got directions. This is something that would have been unheard of just 2 years ago but now the nation has 95% cellphone coverage. That is not to say it is particularly reliable and one company has a stranglehold on the market. It is into just about every form of telecommunication around and is behind the laying of a LOT of fibre optic cable in the suburbs this year. No living in the suburbs I have to rely on a 3G link into town which is OK most of the time but not what would be termed broadband in the developed world.

I eventually arrived a good hour late at the farm. The farm manager was delighted with the seedlings. So much so that he wants to grow them himself next year and use me as a consultant. I guess success has its cost.

This tobacco had been planted the previous day. I was told there is a pack of heyena that live in the hills in the background.

This tobacco had been planted the previous day. I was told there is a pack of hyena that live in the hills in the background.

The farm was bought by its current owner in the late 1970s but has not seen a lot of use. A lot of the infrastructure will need to be rebuilt but it has a lot of potential in good tobacco soils and access to plentiful water. I see it as a metaphor for this country that has extraordinary resources but is just waiting for the right moment to take off. But for the moment we seem to plod along with modest growth largely in tobacco farming (though we are a long way off the peak production before the farm invasions). Food production is still dismal and this year a lot of people will go hungry in the rural areas. The outlook for the coming season is apparently good but even so, there will be at least 8 months before the crops are mature enough to eat.


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The long view

2 10 2013
Burnt to the horizon and beyond

Burnt to the horizon and beyond

 

It is not often I get a view like this at the beginning of October. Just 2 days prior to this there was so much smoke in the atmosphere that the sun effectively set at 5 p.m. – a good hour before it would have dipped below the horizon if one was visible. The day before THAT the thermometer hit a record 35 degrees C – the hottest September day on record. By this morning it had plunged to 14 degrees, definitely cold for October. So yes, it is great to be cool and clear. But there is a catch.

As far as the eye can see (about 60km in this case) the bush has been burnt. It will continue to burn until the rains arrive, hopefully in mid-November. What this costs the country , and indeed the sub-continent, in lost soil fertility can only be guessed at. If the world has to increase its food production for a burgeoning population we could well do our bit by controlling the bush burning – after all, Africa will be where most of the population growth will occur.

And that black shape in the sky top right, that’s a bit of good news. It’s a bird. Take a photo in this part of the world of the sky and there is invariably a bird in it. But will this abundance always be there if the environmental degradation continues apace?


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Grapes of wrath

5 09 2013

“2 million face hunger” the newspaper billboard blared.  It didn’t say where but I assumed it had to be in Zimbabwe. It was certainly nothing new and the newspaper headlines here are notorious for being misleading.

Topping up on supplies in the supermarket a bit further along the road I noticed some grapes. “Produce of Egypt” it said on the side of the box.

gyppo grapesWell things couldn’t be too bad if we can still import Egyptian grapes I thought. So I bought some. They tasted good for “grapes of wrath”. The skins were a bit tough but tasty, yes. I guess the producers were not concerned where their grapes went – just so long as they still have a market.

The hawk moth I found outside the bank. I had no interest in finding out how tasty it was but given the rather contrasting background I wouldn’t be surprised if a more natural predator had a go.

hawk moth


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Appropriate technology

24 08 2013

Freightliner truckThis is a Freightliner truck. An American brand they are popular in Zim ever since a number were imported from the Middle East quite a few years ago. This one arrived at work yesterday to take a modified container to Hwange in the South West (the landlord’s son converts them into liveable cabins). I got chatting to the driver. He admitted there were rather a lot of electrics that had once stopped him on a weigh-bridge because of a faulty oil pressure sensor. They’d also disconnected the automatic greasing facility – trust Zimbabweans to “make a plan” to get around inappropriate technology.

Growing up on a forestry estate in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe my father had a Peugeot 404 pickup truck. It was definitely more comfortable than the Land Rover it repaced and it lasted well on the less than perfect roads – not least because my father maintained the roads AND the pickup! I haven’t seen a Peugeot 404 for some time now but they were made to last – appropriate technology at its best. They were followed by the Peugeot 504 which was definitely more luxurious by the day’s standard and didn’t last as well.

Other appropriate tech cars included the Renault 5 with the gear stick on the dashboard and yes, you do still see a few around. A physiotherapist friend and her twin sister had one when I was at the St Giles rehabilitation centre in 1979 which they had to hire from their father who happened to be the managing director of Anglo-American in this country (Anglo-American is a VERY big company in Africa!). Somewhat thrifty was Mr Carey-Smith!

I own a seedling nursery business that is definitely appropriate technology orientated. Nearly everything is manual with a few exceptions, one of them being the clipping of the tobacco seedlings for which we use a Husqvana hedge clipper. It works really well for the purpose and requires little maintenance. Unfortunately it does require 2-stroke oil to be put into the petrol so when the operator came to me yesterday and said the machine had just stopped I had a pretty good idea what had gone wrong. Now I’d really like someone to come up with foolproof technology but maybe that’s a contradiction in terms.


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Bee season

13 08 2013

I got in late last night from a successful day’s flying in the Zambezi Valley. 7.5 hours driving 1h40 flying, 1100m height gains but no big distance. That is a successful day for a paraglider pilot, especially one who doesn’t get much opportunity to fly these days.

landed

It’s easy to be a celebrity in the Zambezi Valley (near Muzarabani)

day end

Day’s end – the crowd moves off one by one

 

Richard and Craig offloaded the wings, commented on the bees in the dining room and left. I didn’t bother investigating further; there are often bees swarming in my chimney, especially at this time of year and they get trapped inside the lounge. No big deal, I’d get the vacuum cleaner out in the morning and suck them up.

This morning I walked into the lounge and discovered a swarm of bees had moved in during the day. There’s not a lot I can do at this stage except leave the windows open and hope they move off to a better location. In the meantime I think I’ll go somewhere else while they make up their mind!

Not a pretty sight early in the morning!

Not a pretty sight early in the morning!


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The election part 2 – where to now?

7 08 2013

As Helen said to me on Saturday; “If it’s such a landslide victory for ZANU-PF where are the celebrating crowds?”. They certainly weren’t on the street in Harare. Or anywhere else that I have heard. A client coming through the airport on Sunday night said the officials there were in “shell-shock”. The stock market, that perennial barometer of things economic, reacted on Monday by dropping 11% in value. Austin muttered at the gym that once again we’d failed to grasp the scale of what ZANU-PF was capable of doing. German Embassy officials I spoke to on Saturday commented that it was a blatantly fraudulent election and yes, it would be declared fraudulent in a court of law. But perhaps not a Zimbabwean one. The USA, UK and EC have described the elections as deeply flawed.

As I type this on Wednesday morning 2 ZEC (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) officials have resigned in disgust.

Jacob Zuma, the South Africa president, has endorsed the results as “free and fair” as has the African Union observer team. Other African observers have declared various degrees of reservations on the veracity of the outcome.

Botswana is asking for an audit (their president, Ian Kharma, and ours have never seen eye-to-eye).

ZANU-PF are crowing that they “have a mandate from the people” to change the constitution with their 2/3 parliamentary majority and will be enforcing the 51% indigenous ownership (that means black Zimbabweans) of all companies. Hence the stock market slump.

Most Zimbabweans I have met are continuing as normal. Yesterday I watched as a group of older women bought roses in the next-door nursery.

My doctor said she’d not prescribed any more Prozac than normal.

On Saturday night I attended the first graduation of the current Dance Foundation Course (DFC) for which I am a trustee. Politics could not have been further from anyone’s mind. The students had great fun showing off their new skills, proud families celebrated and even the guest of honour, the US Ambassador relaxed a little. So to answer the question in the title; I suppose we will just wait and see as we have been doing for the last 45 years.


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The election part 1 – all calm

31 07 2013
All is calm above World's View in Nyanga

All is calm above World’s View in Nyanga

I resolved as I climbed the steps into the Nyanga Police Station not to ask if we could paraglide but simply to state that that’s what we’d come to do.

The female constable was clearly uncertain about this paragliding thing even after I’d shown her a photo on my cellphone. “I have to call my boss” she replied. Her boss, the duty sergeant, was completely uninterested. Clearly, with an impending general election, he had more important things on his mind. Anyway, he knew about paragliding and that we’d been coming to this premier site at World’s View for as long as he’d been at Nyanga.

The flight was uneventful, and not the best conditions that this area can deliver, but after a long break from thermic flying I wasn’t complaining and I got in a nice hour in punchy, small thermals that still managed to lift me 400m above takeoff before high cloud stopped play.

I got chatting to a couple of well-spoken youngsters on the landing field.

“Where is your Robert cap” I asked one, referring to the profusion of the yellow caps in the area with a picture of Robert Mugabe on them.

“In my house” he waved vaguely in a northerly direction. “Anyway, you don’t have to wear them”.

“Are you going to vote?” his friend asked me.

“Of course, but it’s my secret who for”.

“That is obvious” he countered.

“No it’s not, I might decide Robert is my friend”.

They found this hugely funny.

We’d been in the area a few days and I’d been concerned about a paragliding trip this close to the election on the 31st July. The last election in 2008 had been marked by a lot of violence but this time around all seemed quiet. I’d seen a number of ZANU-PF (Mugabe’s party) vehicles giving out caps and T-shirts and putting up posters and even a few vehicles from the opposition MDC (Move for Democratic Change). The visit to the police station was merely a courtesy to cover ourselves just in case someone accused us of spying (seriously!). In the past they did ask us not to fly over the police station and of course I ended up in a thermal for some 10 minutes directly over it but high enough to escape notice.

Today was voting day. I was in no rush as I rather thought I’d avoid those who thought that it would be necessary to get to the polling stations early. Leaving the house just after 11 I visited the first polling station in my area only to find that I was registered for another ward. There wasn’t even a queue. At the correct polling station there were 2 queues of some 30 people each. Policemen and observers lounged in the sun and one waved me to the front of the queue. 5 minutes later I was out my duty done and I was back home by 12.

Duty done!

Duty done!

So whom did I vote for? Well, that’s my secret but as I was at school for one of the councillors, it wasn’t just a vote for president, he got my X. Now it’s time to get on with this day off and hang out the washing and start pruning the roses.


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