The Third World as seen from the saddle

Yuletide blogs are supposed to be full of goodwill and bonhomie, which is a snag when you live in a country where your President has gifted you no fuel, no power and hyper-inflation for Christmas complete with $700 chickens on the supermarket shelves, and zero Mazoe Orange Crush. (By the by, Schweppes have had to stop making Mazoe Orange Crush because they’re 10 million US in debt to Coca-Cola for Orange Crush ingredients they now have to import.)  I’m guessing $700 chickens don’t move as fast Mazoe Orange, because instead of tinsel and a huge sparkly Christmas Tree, Pick and Pay Westgate have gone with a ‘less is more approach’ to Christmas decorations this year, with a poster of a Christmas Tree, possibly with sparkles and tinsel on it, but the print definition on the poster wasn’t good enough to be sure. Quick to see a gap, Bon Marche around the corner, upped the ante with an actual tree, albeit a three-foot short one with eleven lights and seven baubles.

But you don’t look for the spirit of Christmas in supermarkets I admonished myself, you look for it in the people around you. Admonish is a new word I’ve given myself for Christmas, in lieu of new underpants and socks. And so, I looked at people around me. Bummer. The next day in Mazoe, just 40 kilometres from Harare city centre, 22 illegal miners got macheted to death in a pit in the orchards where they used to grow oranges, before land reform, back when Schweppes didn’t have to import the ingredients needed to make Mazoe Orange Crush. For a whole day, I could think of nothing else other than those machete gangs on the rampage, terrorising poor desperate people not too far from where I live. I admonished myself again, don’t get too down over a one-off incident of violence, especially in silly season. Alas. Another bummer. Apparently, according to Google, there’ve been more than a hundred machete murders in and around Mazoe, in just the last three months, with no arrests, and not too much about it in the national press. And all just 40 kilometres from city centre. That sort of savage and barbaric carnage, unchecked and unremarkable, means we’re just a hop and skip away from the likes of living in a shithole like Somalia, or Goma, or Darfur. I hope Thabo ‘What Crisis’ Mbeki next door reads this, because he’s on his way back up here to once again mediate on the non-crisis. And Nelson, please beware of Thabo because he is not an honest broker.

The police couldn’t react to the killing fields of Mazoe, where they used to grow oranges, because they were busy elsewhere, i.e. threatening to arrest me for double-parking, and arresting Marry Chiwenga, estranged wife of our Vice President, for illegally externalizing a million US dollars to buy a mansion in Pretoria and two Range Rovers, and for saying her husband was bad in bed. The police were that swift to bring Marry to book, they didn’t even wait for her to get out of her bath. Granted, she externalized the monies back in 2018 when she was still happily married to the Vice President, but when those wheels of justice start to roll, man they roll fast.

As I saw first-hand the next day, when they pounced on me for double-parking outside the Central Vehicle Registry. We were at the CVR because Jenny has paid zero attention to my many lectures on the need to file important papers and documents in an orderly fashion. Those of you who have followed my blogs on Tour will know I am pedantic verging on anal about a neat kit bag with contents arranged either alphabetically, or numerically, or by colour, or FIFO and or LIFO, or all of the above. Likewise, my cupboard at home is colour coded, apart from loud, floral shirts which are filed everywhere, including under K for khaki, because that part of the cupboard is empty. This orderly approach allows me to make wardrobe decisions quickly in the morning, leaving more time to enjoy ePap, filed in the pantry either under C for cereal, or N for nutritious or F for food. But clearly Jenny has paid not a jot of attention to my many lectures, because come time to renew car licences, her car registration book was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t filed under L for logbooks, or V for vehicles or P for papers, mostly because her office is full to overflowing. But for her right hook, I would have given her my ‘Neatness is Next to Godliness’ lecture yet again, as part of her Christmas present. Instead, I agreed to go with her to the Central Vehicle Registry to get a duplicate.

Taking your wife to the CVR might not sound like much of a Christmas present, but you need to know it is on South Avenue, deep in the cow’s guts in downtown Harare. And those guts are horribly obstructed. In forty years, the number of cars on Harare’s streets have increased one- hundred-fold, but the number of parking garages have increased by zero. I think they have been saving up for the new parliament building we’re getting for next Christmas. However, I digress. Back to South Avenue.  Because South Avenue is nowhere near Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa Crescent, my sat nav guy on my phone was able to take us there no problem. While Jenny went in to do battle with the long queues inside the CVR, I joined the even longer queue of double-parked cars outside. I wasn’t there two minutes, when a murder of six baton wielding, helmeted riot policemen were banging on my window with their batons, telling me they had to arrest me for double-parking dangerously. CVR. There was no small talk about moving on or writing a ticket, it was wham, bam, we’re going to arrest you. I don’t know if murder is the correct collective noun for a group of riot policemen, but it works. That I had my hazards on and I was in the middle of a queue of forty other double-parked vehicles, counted for diddly squat, because the law is the law, period. I shook my fist at them whilst snarling, “Expletive off, go arrest a real criminal.” That was what I was doing on the inside. I’m braver than Mel Gibson inside. But on the outside, not so much. On the outside, my snarl was replaced by an obsequious smile, and instead of shaking furiously, my fist tugged where my forelock used to be while I grovelled “Please don’t arrest me, officers, my mom is eighty and I’ve got skinny legs and pattern baldness and please don’t arrest me, just let me go around the block, I’ll never double-park again, ever.” Reluctantly, they eventually said “Okay, but next time, we will just arrest you.” Around the block on South Avenue takes you past the dreaded Harare Central Police Station, a Zimbabwean version of Mordor where evil and misery live. The only thing missing is an ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter’ sign outside. Outside the place was lousy with murders and murders of cops, thick like hairs on a dog’s back, and they all took time out to glare at me as I drove past. It struck me then that I hate police uniforms and the people in them.  And I rather think the feeling is mutual. Alas.

Hate is a word that should not appear in a Yuletide blog. It should be strictly reserved for broccoli, picking up dog crap and visits to the dentist, who I need to point out is a very nice man, in case he reads this. So, there I was, back home, sitting in front of an empty computer screen, further and further from finishing a blog full of yuletide bonhomie, getting more and more down, because I couldn’t get words like hate, horrible and Grinch which actually rhymes with Ed out of my head and then my blog was interrupted. Alastair, Jenny, Jocelyn and I had promised to deliver Christmas hampers, donated by Steel Warehouse, Top Shaft Engineering and the Old Legs Tour. Despite 40- degree heat, we donned our silly Christmas hats and set sail. In the end, it took two-and-a-bit days to deliver the hampers, and they were my best days of Christmas yet.

We hugged it up with tiny little old ladies absolutely dwarfed by the hugest of smiles, so very happy that someone out there still cares. We were able to put a smile on the heart of a lady riddled with cancer.  We met an old chap absolutely down with life, on oxygen and struggling to cope with a five- day power cut, but still so proud. He didn’t know who we were, wasn’t in the mood for bonhomie and absolutely hating that he’d been singled out for charity. But then he phoned us back thirty minutes later, to thank us through his tears for taking time out to help. Where we could, we took time out to sit and chat with the old folk we were delivering to. I think the old dears enjoyed that more than the box of goodies. On top of their hampers and courtesy of a generous donor, we were also able to give two old dears accounts at a local pharmacy to cover the costs going forward of their chronic medicines they could no longer afford.

This year, the Old Legs delivered 102 hampers to pensioners in Harare and Marondera. Next year, we want to deliver 1000. Huge thanks for helping us get there to Graeme and Debbie who wrote the book on giving, ditto Michelle in Mkushi, Zambia. If you would like to also help get us to a thousand hampers next year, please join us at the ‘Spreading Joy’ Yoga Class, hosted by Tiff Webber from Panacea Yoga and Hatha with Tyler at Mukuvisi Woodlands on Saturday 21st. I’ve been asked to give a brief talk, with the emphasis on brief, about the Old Legs and our Cape Town to Kilimanjaro Tours.  Registration is at 7.45 a.m.  All proceeds will be shared by Mukuvisi and the Old Legs.

In closing, I hope you have the best Christmas ever and look forward to a 2020 full of hope. I am given huge hope by the words of Boris Johnson. Speaking to the British parliament, Boris said –‘If people go to Zimbabwe, they will see that the disaster is of almost biblical proportions. Inflation is running at 300 per cent. According to Save the Children, 5.2 million people need food aid. The economy is contracting. I think that the figure was 12 per cent. for last year alone. Harare is a glorified car park. It is paralysed. There is simply not enough fuel for people to move around. That is to say nothing of the routine torture and intimidation of members of the opposition, and above all, ZANU-PF use what food supplies there are as a political weapon. Grain stocks are being used to bully and coerce. It is no longer good enough for the British Government to say that they are powerless and that anything they do makes matters worse. A policy of standing on one side is no longer good enough, and it is time for us to re-engage for the good of Zimbabwe and for the suffering people of that country.”

Boris made that speech in 2002, after visiting the Bayley family on their Danbury farm near Mazoe in the middle of their farm invasion, whilst they were being besieged and ‘tortured by ZANU-PF thugs.’- Boris’s words, not mine. Fast forward eighteen years and nothing has changed, except for the huge fact that Boris is now the boss. Let’s hope he delivers on the promises he made in his last sentence above. I also hope Boris gets my missing 5th favourite pair of padded ride shorts back from Jeremy Corbyn.

Also in closing, I have to say a huge thank you to President Ed for giving Jocelyn and I the hugest reminder that Christmas is more about giving than receiving. Felling very noble after playing at Father Christmas, I rushed home to share the lesson of giving with six-year-old granddaughter Cailyn. Whilst preparing my noble lecture, I was guided by Adam’s nine-year-old granddaughter Gaby’s last year’s request to Father Christmas to skip Barbie dolls and My Magic Ponies, in favour of world peace, and a goat. Here’s how my Cailyn conversation went-

Me - What would you like to ask Father Christmas for?

Cailyn - A car.

Me - Hey, how about world peace instead?

Cailyn - I don’t know what that is.

Me - No more war, no more conflict, no more bombs and suffering.

Cailyn - Nah. I think I still want the car.

Me - How about no more famine.

Cailyn - Huh?

Me - No more hungry children in the world.

Cailyn - Eric, I don’t know about that stuff, I‘m only six and I just want a car.

I’ve decided I’ll try again when she’s twelve. Until next blog, Ho, Ho, Ho and enjoy by helping others.

Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.

Photos below - Spreading Joy, the sum total of Christmas decorations as seen by moi in Westgate, cops doing what cops do, Ed spreading Xmas cheer, and the Old Legs doing likewise.