So, last I left off, it was the morning of the Roora process. Me and my sister in law, Tariro, successfully returned from the airport with the rest of our suitcases. I came home and sat in the yard with my monyayi, who was my negotiator, named Tendai, and my BabaMukuru, BabaStan (father of Stan) who was the husband of the eldest sister of VaMushuku. The three of us eventually went in to on of the back rooms of the house through an outside entrance. We sat in the room for quite some time while everyone was arriving and getting settled in. Eventually, we settled in and the process got down to business.

In the beginning, there were three things to pay,

Ndiro YaAmai:
Kuripa Muchato Nekutaura Nesu:
Vhura Muromo Nedare:

BabaStan went to the living room with 4 million dollars to pay these charges. Eventually he returned and brought a list of all the other things that we were required to negotiate payment for.

Matekenya Ndebvu – Makandinzwa nani nekuripa Rose (Kugara Benji, Mbariro, etc.)
Kunonga Rose
Rukusha / Mapfukudza Dumbu
Rugaba / Rutsambo
Rupinda Mumusha
Chiuchiro
Mombe (including Mombe Yahmai)
Majasi a Baba
Majasi aMai

Most of these things we paid without negotiation. The negotiation was saved for the Rutsambo and the Mombe which were the two most expensive parts of the charges. Tendai went out into the living room and I waited in the room with another one of my BabaMukurus named Dooley, who is the husband of Aunt Faith (VaMushuku’s sister.) Since he was also a man married into the family, we could be around each other.

The majority of the process for me was waiting in the room, with BabaStan or Tendai popping in and out, briefing me on the proceedings. Along the way, generally whenever we had just paid a fee, I could hear singing coming from the living room.

Eventually, I heard people coming down the hall singing. Several of Rose’s Tetes, or Aunts, came into the room. I knew then it was time to go. We sang a song together as we went down the hall to the living room “Go Go Goii VaMushuku, tauyawo!!” which means “knock knock knock Mr. Mushuku, we are coming!!” We came into the living room and sat on the floor near the door.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure what all went on after that. At one stage, we presented the clothes that we had brought to Rose’s parents. Her father had a full suit, shoes, tie, socks, and we still owe him an overcoat and hat. One of the other things that he had requested was a chair. We bought him a foldable chair from Walgreens like the kind that you take to an outside festival. For Rose’s mother, we also gave her a full suit of clothing, shoes a handbag and an umbrella. One of the additional things we had to provide to her was a water pitcher so that she can milk the Mombe yahMai (the cow of the mother) and give the milk to our children.

After this, several people including myself made small speeches. I basically thanked the family for their graciousness and hospitality and told them I looked forward to their help as we began our family.

For the rest of the day, we ate, drank and relaxed around the house. At night we built a fire in the back yard and danced and talked. It was quite an interesting day…

After the Roora process, we settled into life in Harare. Most of the family slowly left over the next few days. My typical day was comprised of getting up and having a cup of coffee, grabbing a rake and going out into the yard and raking leaves from the orange and mango trees. It was kind of a way to get out and burn some energy and somehow touch the earth.

Time moves slowly and there’s little to plan for. We spend a lot of time around the house, talking, sometimes watching TV or listening to music. As for the TV, it is strictly ZBC, Zimbabwean Broadcasting Company. They cut up the news in bite sized pieces, flavor it with a little Zanu PF approved sauce and dish it out for all people to obediently consume. Zanu PF is the ruling party, the one party rulers of this “democratic” country. They’ve been in power since independence in 1980 and have a firm control on the country. The opposition party is MDC, the Movement for Democratic Change. All over Harare, you’ll see things like “Vote MDC” spray painted on walls. Its kind of a sticky situation.

Sunday:

Monday: By the time we got to Monday, we had pretty much gone through the three quarters of a tank of gas that John had provided us with. We got the call sometime in the morning that there was petrol available in town. Now, granted, it wasn’t available to everyone, but we had a connection. We traveled into town and came to some petrol company. After being let in the gate, we waited a minute and pulled up to a pump next to a few tanker trucks to get a full tank of the special liquid.

On the way home, we went by another place to exchange another $400. This replentished our money supply that had been depleted by the whole Roora process.

Tuesday:

Wednesday: Since we finally had fuel, we decided to make the trip to Sanyati, the rural homestead of VaMushuku. We got up at around 5 am and packed into the car with a

Thursday:

Friday: Relaxed around the house. Went to town to pick up the tickets for Mtukudzi.

Saturday: Went to town and saw Oliver Mtukudzi playing at the Harare International Conference Center.

Sunday: Today we got word that there was going to be petrol available at a station near Avondale. While the rest of the family headed off to church, me and my trusted sidekick Tariro headed across town to get this precious fluid. We went to a service station and waited around for a while and eventually got word that the petrol was finished. Disappointed we headed back across town. On the way home, we stopped by Nando’s, a local chicken chain and picked up some food. While we waited, we had the car washed for $40,000 (about $1.75) We then went around to a flea market sort of place to see some of the curios that they had there. The rest of the afternoon, we relaxed at home.

So, continuing on… I’m finding that I’m not keeping up with events, hoping for time to fill in the rest of the story and being to busy enjoying myself to stop and write…

In any case, going back to where I left off, we managed to get through the first morning, the greetings and such, and sort of hung around the living room for a while. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. Eventually, we got into the room Rose was sleeping and in got our things settled a bit.

In the beginning, my father in law VaMushuku was sort of quiet and felt a bit stand offish. Culturally, I shouldn’t be staying in the Mushuku home, but he was flexible enough to allow me to stay for the first few days before the Roora ceremony until I could officially be in the house.

Our first order of business was to get some money changed. I’m not sure how much detail I should go into about this process while we’re still in country, but it should suffice to say that the official rate of exchange is 1 US Dollar to 9000 Zim Dollars. If you go through channels to get the unofficial rate, it is more like 1 to 25,000. To be prepared for the Roora and other things ahead, we changed $2500 and got more that $57 million dollars in return. Now carrying 57 million dollars requires more than a wallet. It took about three bags to carry it all.

After we got home in the afternoon, VaMushuku and I got in his car and went over to the space that the family is building a new home. We walked around the foundation of the building and he pointed out the different rooms that are on the floorplan. After that, we stood by the car and he told me the story of how his ancestors came to be in the area of Zimbabwe that they settled. I’ll get into that a bit more later.

We moved on after that and went to the local bottle store, which is basically a combination of a liquor store and a bar. We sat outside in the car for a few hours, having a drink and talking about all sorts of things.

Thursday the 14th we got up and took the bus to town. Downtown Harare is just a few miles from the neighborhood the Mushukus live in called Waterfalls. The bus was packed as expected, due to the fuel shortages that are happening right now. Basically, you can not find a gas station around town that you can go to where you can just pull up and buy gas. Some gas stations are completely abandoned, and others have lines of cars stretching down the street 40 or 50 cars long.

We got into the downtown area and got off the bus. Another thing that has been happening lately is his effort to clean up the country and get rid of all of the street vendors and informal convenience stores that are scattered all around. When we got off the bus downtown, Rose was remarking at how clean the city looked. The bus stop area had a fresh coat of paint and the streets were empty of vendors. From one perspective this does indeed clean up the city, it is more sanitary and allows people to move around comfortably, but it also robs a lot of people of the ability to earn what little money they can from selling random things on the street.

We moved around downtown, meeting a friend of Rose’s sister Tariro, who was lending us a car to use while we were in Zimbabwe. We first dropped by the place where Rose’s father works, then went over to a hotel to meet up with Tariro’s friend John. We had a nice buffet lunch, then walked out to the car. John handed me the keys to his “extra” car, a Mercedes Benz E320. I turned to Tariro and told her that I’d prefer that she drive, and she told e she couldn’t drive automatic (the logic of that I still can’t understand.) So basically, it was up to me to drive. Now, not only was this a handful of a car, but it was also a car with the steering wheel on the right hand side in a country that drives on the opposite side of the road than what I’m used to. I panicked for a moment. I had expected to drive in Zim, but I thought I would have a few adventures on the back roads to get used to the idea of driving on the let hand side of the road instead of just hopping into a luxury car in downtown Harare traffic and making a go of it. But, that is what we did! After driving a block or so with the emergency brake on, we finally got sorted and were on our way. It was a bit nerve wracking, but what better than a bit of an adventure to get your heart pumping.

Our first mission was to go to the grocery store. As part of the Roora payment that I’m making I have to buy groceries for the family. MaiMushuku (Mrs. Mushuku) provided a list of things that we were supposed to buy. We traveled to Avondale and shopped for a number of things. While Rose and her sisters collected the things on the list, I went across the way to the internet café to post my blogs thus far and check in on my email at work. For $500 a minute, I sat down and attempted to connect to the outside world. Over the course of 20 minutes, I typed in the address for my blog space and waited for it to load. Once it came up, I entered my user name and password, hit enter and waited. When the start page came up, I clicked on the link to post a blog and waited. That was as far as I got in 20 minutes. The network was so slow that it took forever to get a page to even load. At the end of the 20 minutes, I left a bit frustrated, but not too surprised.

The rest of the afternoon we spent running around various parts of Harare buying more things for the Roora ceremony. The way it is in Harare is that there are shortages of most basic commodities. You can’t just got to a grocery store and find what you need. You have to go to yet another store to see if they have rice, ten on to the next to see I they have cooking oil. After that you have to bribe someone at the next store for the privilege of buying sugar, so any trip out to get groceries is not simple.

Friday the 15th was basically spent running around town buying groceries we hadn’t managed to find on Thursday and other supplies for the Roora ceremony. In the afternoon, I went with VaMushuku to collect the bags that we had to have shipped from England. We first had to go to the shipping company’s office in Harare. We got some documents signed, paid a $100,000 handling fee and headed out to the airport. At the airport, we waited in various lines getting this form or that form signed, waiting for this official or that, until finally we were able to go back with a customs agent to the bags so that they could see what is inside. This involved opening up all the bags so that he could look through them and grill us about the value of various things in the bags. They weighed the clothes that we brought for ourselves, they weighed the clothes we brought for the family, etc etc. In the end, they filled out a customs form and sent us over to other other building we had started at so they could calculate the customs charge. After waiting in line again, we were told the total was 1.3 Million dollars, or about $50. At that point I only had about 600,000 on me, it was about 20 minutes from closing time, and they didn’t accept credit cards. Needless to say, after having spent about $400 shipping this damn pile of clothes to Zimbabwe, I was quite livid to have this customs official tap my vein again for another payment. We went back to the warehouse to try to cram all the clothes back in the suitcases, so we could leave them there for the night. The trip back to the house was not that talkative.

Saturday the 16th… We woke up in the morning. I got a bath, got dressed and went with my sister in law Tariro back to the airport. This time I took about 1.8 million million dollars with me. We arrived at about 8:20 in the morning and had to wait for the people to get settled in to their desks, etc. when the office was supposed to open at 8 am. After paying the 1.3 million, we went over to the warehouse where the suitcases were at. We were then informed that we had to pay the warehouse $540,000 for some sort of random fee. After digging into my pockets, I found that I only had $490,000 left on me. At this stage, I was beyond myself. It was hard enough dealing with all the demands for money that came with the whole Roora process, but then to have these people continue to tap me for money, it was too much. We asked if there was anything we could do about this and they said we had to talk to the security supervisor. Tariro and I went in and talked with him for a bit and after some wrangling for a while he eventually loaned us $45000 from his own pocket so that we had enough to pay the extra fee. After this we went back to the warehouse where they proceeded to open up the bags all over again and spread our stuff all over the place so they could have another look through and see if they could charge us more then the 1.3 million they already charged us. During this search, Tararo was talking to the guy ever so sweetly telling him there’s no way he could charge us more since we didn’t have any more money with us. We eventually managed to get out of the place with the three suitcases and head back to the Mushuku home so that we could get down to business. It was about 10:30 in the morning by that point.

So, up until this time, it was atypical for me to be staying with the Mushukus. I had slept in a separate bedroom with one of the other mukwashas, BabaStan. He was married to one of VaMushuku’s sisters, MaiStan. The son of VaMushuku’s brother Julius, named Nyasha was going to sleep in the same room, but after the bed was set up, someone recalled that he my tezvara since he represents his father who is equivalent to VaMushuku. So basically, I couldn’t be around VaMushuku, and by extension Nyasha. My father would be the tezvara of Rose, for instance. In this same spirit, when I got back to the house from the airport, I couldn’t just come into the house and have a seat. I had to come in a back door and hang out in a room while the majority of the Roora process was happening. And that, I’ll get into in a bit…

So, we are finally on the other side of the Roora process. The last few days have been very interesting. Let me return to the beginning…

We left the airport and traveled to the Mushuku’s home in a part of Harare called Waterfalls. It is to the south west of downtown Harare. I traveled with my monyayi, Tendai Nyahuya, and my two sister in laws, my maininis, Tariro and Rutendo. Everyone else was in the other car with my father in law (to be) VaMushuku.

We arrived at the house and sat on the couch, in kind of an awkward time where I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Rose had told me that after the casual greetings, we would have to do the more formal greetings after a bit of time had passed. I sat nervously waiting for the time to come. Eventually everyone sat down in the living room and after a bit of small talk, my monyayi, Tendai, started the formal greetings. This process basically consists of each person greeting each other, one by one.

Well, here we are, I’m waking up on my first day here in Zimbabwe. So much has happened since I last sat and wrote in the airport as we prepared to leave Chicago. We had a rather quick flight to London (6 hours or so) and arrived into London at about 10 am on the morning of the 9th. As we left the airport in Chicago Rose sent a text message to our friend Mike Potts (the guy who photographed our wedding) letting him know which terminal we were arriving at in Heathrow. So, we buckled down for the flight on Air India.

I’m not quite sure that taking Air India was worth the $100 we saved by using it. The plane looks like it hadn’t been modified since about 1970. I’ll let Rose get into some of the other details of the story, but let’s just say it was interesting.

So we arrived in London, sat on the tarmac for a while before eventually “docking” and getting off the plane. As we were working our way through immigration we encountered a woman that had a friend who was Zimbabwean and had told her abour the Roora process. So as she was processing our paperwork she was asking about what it was going to be like and such. Small world I guess.

So, we met up with Mike Potts and left the airport. I should probably mention at this point that we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 lbs of luggage with us. Our of our bags were 70 lbs each, plus we had a carry on suitcase each, as well as my laptop/electronics bag and Rose’s bag, as well as a folding chair that her Dad had asked for as part of the Roora price. Thank God Mike came to meet us, because we would have had a serious time trying to get across London with our 6 suitcases and additional things.

So we hop on the tube to leave Heathrow. Mike stayed near the Angel stop on the Northern Line, so we headed that direction. Before we could get too far, and announcement came over the load speaker letting us know that the train was going to stop at the next stop and everyone had to depart there. I assume that these changes we due to the bombings that had only happened two days before, and that the transit authority was trying to mix things up by making it impossible to forecast the route of the train. So, we lug all the bags off the train and try to navigate to another train to continue on our journey. Turns out our early terminating train wasn’t unique, so we ended up doing the same thing two or three times until we finally got close enough to Mike’s stop that we just headed above ground and caught a cab for the rest of the way.

So it was a great pleasure staying with Mike. We finally got to meet his girlfriend Stephanie, who we had heard so much about. They were most gracious hosts, and helped us get settled in a bit and rest up on the first day in. We slept there the first night, and got up Saturday to spend some time running around London. I had heard that there was a sound system called Solution Sound playing at a festival in Findsbury Park, so Rose, Mike and I headed over there to check it out. Once again in the complications of London travel, we had to catch two different buses to find our way, which I don’t think we could have done without Mike’s mastery of the London transportation jigsaw.

I’ll let Rose cover some of the other details of the journey in London, and move on to Zimbabwe.

So, we got a ride from Tendai and Stan to the Heathrow airport. They hung out with us while we got checked in, and we parted ways. We grabbed a bit to eat in the terminal (BLT sandwiches in the airport cost about six dollars each) before heading to the plane. Once on the plane, we discovered how much nicer British Airways is, despite the fact that their luggage allowance is trivial. The flight to Zimbabwe was smooth. We ended up watching movies most of the time, and I got about 2 hours of sleep along the way.

So we arrived in Harare about 6 am on the morning of the 13th. Soon after we arrived in the airport, we found the emigration line. After we had gone through it, we discovered that I had to go to a different line to get my Visa, while Rose was able to go on to the baggage area. I went over to the Visa line and waited a good half hour for them to process the 10 or so people in front of me. Eventually I paid the $30 visa fee and entered a second line to actually get into the country. From there, I joined Rose in the baggage area and saw the Mushukus all waiting in the lounge above for our arrival.

After we gathered our luggage, we waited in line for customs. Since we only had things like a laptop and camera to declare, we wondered if we should really wait so long to get through. I stepped over and asked a guy who was working there if we should really go that direction since we only had a few personal electronic items to declare. He responded we should. Rose then went over to another guy and talked to him. After a bit of haggling (in Shona of course) she got the answer we were looking for. So, we finally were able to go out to meet the Mushukus. It was so nice to see Rose and her family so happy to see each other. I also finally got to meet the whole crew, her Father Patrick Mushuku (here after referred to as VaMushuku aka Mr. Mushuku) her Mother Lydia Mushuku, here after referred to as MaiRose (the mother of Rose), MaiSha (Lydia’s sister) Rose’s younger sister Tariro, and her next youngest sister Rutendo. We grabbed the bags and headed for the Mushuku’s home…

I’ll leave it there for now…

in the airport

Well, so here we are, sitting here in O’Hare, getting ready to board the plane to London…

This last few weeks has been busy, just that whole process of getting ready to go, making sure everything is packed up, the house is taken care of, work wrapped up smoothly, etc etc. For me, it was a bit of a rush, trying to take care of all the things at work that I had to finish, making sure that the things that I usually do were handed off to others.

Last night, Rose asked me how I felt about the whole process thus far, and my response was that the whole thing felt much more like handling business than dealing with some sort of emotional process of preparing for a long journey. I think back to the first time I went to Africa, sitting on the front porch, preparing to leave the next morning. I was a bit mystified, excited, anxious but ready. I felt like I was stepping into a vortex that would catapult me into another world. I had been outside the country before, one time traveling to Jamaica on a journey with a bunch of people in High School for a service project, but this was something else. I was the only student in my University going on an exchange program that no one had gone on before. It would be one of the first times that I would be truly independent, and besides that, it was for a year.

I sit here on the other side of the years, much more pragmatic, a little less dreamy, preparing to board the plane and go to visit Zimbabwe and my wife’s family. (Of course, she’s here as well, she always gets pissed when I speak in terms of me instead of we, but so it go.) I guess I feel a lot more prepared looking towards the experience now. I’ve been to Zimbabwe, traveled from Mutare to Vic Falls, (west to east) lived in a families’ home, walked down the street, etc. Last time I was there, I was carrying locks, and I wonder what the difference will be between the vibes I got from folks due to that and the vibes I’ll get now. I remember walking down the streets of Marondera and all the stares that I got from people.

Just the other day, as we prepared to leave, we heard word that some bombs had gone off in London. Once again, the chaos of this modern world hit smack dab into the face of the western world. Of course, for us, it is a bit scary, thinking about spending the next four days in London, but I suppose once it’s happened once, the likelihood of it happening directly after that is slim. I sure I hope I don’t have to see the kind of knee-jerk patriotism in London that Americans showed here in the States after people slammed those planes into those buildings. Its really a shame that a few people can have such a profound affect on the perception of so many others. Now days in the western world, at least in the feeble minds of those Dubya loving hordes, Muslim is almost a bad word. It really sucked to watch the way people responded to that whole scenario, and how Dubya took it and ran with a swaggering arrogance into Afghanistan and then on to a new war in Iraq…

But, I’ll leave that for my own blog, let’s get back to our journey to Zimbabwe… So, the main reason that we’re heading to Zimbabwe is so that Rose can see her family for the first time in four years. In these past few years, she’s graduated from Grad School, got married, and adapted to her life here in the states. This is the first time in four years that she’s had a chance to be home. It will definitely be exciting…

one week to go

so, now it is a week away. we went over to a friend's house today to watch their viseo of their Roora ceremony. It was interesting to see the whole process for someone else. I look forward to capturing as much of the process as I can and making a DVD out of it for family and friends.

I've been picking up a few more pieces of the story as I go along and soon will go through the different parts of the ceremony and describe the probable things we'll have to pay as part of the Labola process. Soon come...