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…
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…
posted by algoriddim @ 8:00 AM
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