Vervets!!

Jonas eyeballs the homeless outside of the Zambia/Zim immigration office.

I was always shocked when I saw Africans roll their eyes about monkeys. 

Monkeys?  Those cute little smarties, so quintessential to my utopian Africa?  Surely they were nothing but sweet little Curious Georges.

But now I know.

Zim is home to three kinds of monkeys: baboons (technically not monkeys, but for this argument they are), samango, and vervets.  VERVETS.  God’s joke on humanity. 

My last twenty encounters with monkeys have not gone so well… There were the vervets that pooped in my bathroom sink with a bag of chips. And vervets that left their feces next to our empty bag of eaten cookies on the dining room floor.  And vervets that pooped while ripping through a bag of cabbage four seconds after I set it down.  When it comes to these anything-but-cuties, feces and food go hand in hand.  Literally.

Do not be fooled.  Africa is full of monkeys.  But not a sweet one exists on the entire continent.

VERVETS!

Jonas, sitting next to friend Lucy 
As Jonas described it later to Kurt, "A monkey stole my hamburger in Zambia!"  
I reported it to the waiter, and when he went away, I thought he was going to
bring Jonas another burger.
Instead he brought Jonas a slingshot made with rubberbands and a wrench...

I am told this is the only way to deal with vervets... 
apparently I need to make my own!

Deep "Seeded" Tradition

Above, a vendor in Matopos National Park
shows off a seed pod from the mahogany tree.

Would you be shocked to learn that there is not one bead in the picture above? Seeds are everywhere in Africa, and they aren’t just used for planting.  These colorful beauties are shucked out of seed pods by the thousands before being plied through with needles and string to make necklaces and bracelets for the masses… a gorgeous and long-held tradition.

 Here our friend Lucy chooses some fantastic souvenirs for her friends back in Boston.  

Sinking in Quicksand

There really is nothing quite like being trapped in an eerily silent African forest with a four year old as the vehicle you are sitting in slowly sinks in quicksand.

If you read my other blog, you’ve just heard this story. Sorry for the repeat, but it is one story from Africa that will stick with me for a long time.  That’s because in what can be described as one of my worst parenting moves thus far, our lack of taking Africa seriously landed us in quite a pickle when we found ourselves stuck in quick-sand miles from any other human being or cell-phone signal.

 

After a lovely English breakfast, my husband Kurt and I put our four year old Jonas and Bostonian friend Lucy in the car for a lovely day out in Matopos National Park.  The plan was to scout out the park’s most famous inhabitants –endangered rhino- and other happy wildlife from the luxuries of our all-wheel drive Honda CRV.  There are two sections of the park.  One is highly visited, full of prehistoric rock art, camping grounds, and the View of the World.  The other, though known for its wildlife, is less frequently visited.  And by “less frequently,” I mean we were the first of two cars to visit that morning. Also important to note, the rangers at the front gate –not surprisingly- had no vehicle.

 

Of course, we didn’t have sneakers or socks or bugspray.  For that matter, we didn’t have a car-jack, a tow rope, cell reception, a shovel, flares, first-aid kit, weapon, or a back-up plan of any sort.  Why would we possibly need those things?   Just taking a drive in a national park before a lovely afternoon at View of the World (another blog post to come).  Thank God we had water, sunscreen, and a sense of humor.

Kurt is an excellent driver, but no one could see this one coming…

We spent two hours wading in water and sinking in sand as we moved every branch we could find into a hilarious sculpture that looked… ahem… a lot like a still-sinking car.  We dug. We put our floor mats under the wheels. We spun. We pushed. We fried in the sun. We taught Lucy about a parasitic snail found in water and promised to buy her some medicine first thing when we returned home. We laughed when I spun the wheels but forgot to roll up the windows.  We sunk more. We watched our backs for lions and leopards. We literally tried to pick up the car. We prayed and Jonas cried.

It was clear.  We were not getting out without some major help.  The conundrum was whether to abandon the car and walk through lion and leopard territory while trying to urge a four-year old on, or to wait in a sinking car until A) someone whose vehicle just happened to be equipped like a tow truck came upon us, or B) dark, when the ranger station would hopefully realize we were missing and try to borrow a vehicle to find us.  Options were not so good.

We looked at Jonas, who of course chose that particular moment to desperately need to poo outside for his first time ever and decided only God knew how long that would take.  We had to split up.  Kurt and Lucy went on foot with water in hand to bake in the sun as they headed for the park entrance 15 kilometers away.  Though we didn’t make a dramatic thing of it, inside I had enough drama for a whole Shakespeare company.  There really is no worse feeling than being left alone in the middle of the African bush with a four year old needing entertainment and comfort while you run through scenarios of what to do should a predator attack you and whether you will ever see your husband and friend again.  I quietly took a photo as Kurt and Lucy walked away, in case it was the last time I saw them.  Then Jonas and I eventually sat to bake in the sun inside our sinking car (fewer lions in there) and waited.  Alone.  I finally gave in and handed Jonas my iPad, creating a computer-addicted monster for the rest of our vacation in less than a minute.  Desperate times call for desperate measures...

Kurt and Lucy made it about 8 kilometers before miraculously coming upon the only other vehicle in the park, driven by none other than a local church minister.  Alleluia! Talk about heaven-sent. Kurt’s only question? “Do you have a tow rope???”

It took an hour of maneuvering: pushing, pulling, moving, jerking, and shifting loads.  The tow rope broke four times until, when we finally got out, the rope was so embedded around our car hooks that it could never again be untied. We cut it with a knife under the car, dragging a foot-long section of rope during the rest of our week until our gardener spent over a half hour cutting it loose from the undercarriage of the car when we returned home. Whenever we saw it, the rope served as a good reminder: Sometimes divine intervention will get you out of sticky situations,  but always be prepared when on safari.

(celebration lunch!)

Pieces of Learning: Shona Manners

I am learning that to understand another society, one must understand that even the most universal assumptions a person can make about manners can often be entirely false or even the opposite.  Good manners in one society can often be seen as bad manners in another.  For example, among traditional English society, when a woman walks into the room the men stand up.  In Shona society, when a man enters the room, the women stand up.  (To clarify, though I refer to English custom a few times here, the white locals in my country are mostly no longer English, but many still maintain many of the cultural practices that were brought here by the English.)

Here are some other manner-related tidbits we’ve picked up on in our time with the Shona:

-When someone receives a gift, they clap both hands in thanks and then receive the gift with both hands.  This gesture says the gift is too great to be received with one hand only.  We see this mannerism all the time, especially among children.  The gesture often replaces words of thanks, so a person often does a double clap and receives silently.  This has become a personal habit of mine during my time here, as well, and I often wonder how long it will take me to lose this automatic tendency after I leave!

-A person can also say thank you by merely clapping their hands three times.  Women do this with right hand over left and men do this with finger tips together.

-The Shona greatly value respect.  One of the ways of commanding respect and giving respect is to use the plural form of a verb or pronoun when addressing someone.

-In English custom, it is impolite NOT to look someone in the eye when talking to them.  In Shona custom, it is impolite to look someone in the eye. This habit varies slightly from rural areas to urban areas.  In areas with a slightly higher white population, Shona used to dealing with whites have often changed their habits. 

-In Shona custom the hand-shake is weak and limp, which feels the opposite of Western culture, in which a strong handshake can often be more respected.

-Before and after eating a meal, it is customary to wash hands.  The traditional way is for a young maiden to bring a basin of water to the guests to wash their hands.  The modern version of this custom involves pouring water from a jug over guests’ hands as you wash them, with a basin placed in such a way as to catch the dripping water. (Soap is never included and the amount of water is small, so the gesture feels much more symbolic to me than hygienic.)

Here friend Laura washes her hands before our tea time.

-The traditional way of eating sadza and relish is with the hands, hence the need to wash after eating. After meals, a wife or daughter (not allowed to be higher than her sitting husband or father) comes into the room on her knees while carrying a container of washing water on her head.  Then the same hand-washing ritual is followed.

-Men eat separately from women, and are served by the women.  It is bad manners to leave the plate or table before the older men have done so.

Here at an outing, we women sit on the ground to stay lower than the men, while the men sit in chairs in a group to the side.

Silly Little Lingo

This week for some reason, more than ever, I am coming to realize that the linguistics of Zimbabwe have crept into my family’s repertoire when we haven’t been looking.  Our conversations have adopted a number of quirky words and phrases that flow so easily off our tongues that we rarely notice anymore. When we first arrived on the continent, words like “tortilla” and “bathroom” got confused stares. Now certain words have entirely dropped from our vocabularies and we find ourselves Africanizing our language without even realizing it. As the locals would say, “Shame, eh.  Shame.”

lost the plot or loosing the plot= loosing it (They sound so similar, but here “loosing it” often gets a blank stare!)

I was so chuffed!= I was so excited!

Roties= tortillas (Impossible to find in the country until about a year ago, now they are in every grocery store!)

Bin= garbage can  

Rubbish= garbage

Make a plan= find a new way, go another route

Aish or eeish= yikes, zowie

Izzit or Wazzit (linguistic stress on the Zs)= is it, or was it

Pampers= a word for any and all diapers

Toilet= bathroom or restroom (I used to cringe at asking for this, and now it’s the only word we say!)

Sweeties= suckers (Not to be confused with sweets, which are any candy.)

Veranda= porch

Sorry= oops (One often says “sorry” to a person if they see that person drop something or make a mistake.)

Till= cash register (This one is unique, as most Shona seem to have a hard time saying the word.  Locals will often say the word as it looks, but the Shona pronounce it something like “Tee-oh.”)

The Butcher

Racial and cultural interactions are fascinating in a place with such a recent colonial past.  The dust has yet to settle in a lot of places in which tangled webs of Western culture, African culture, 21^st Century expectations, traditional viewpoints, the educated, the misinformed, the tourist, the indigenous, and the colonist all tangle together, joined by a common passion for Africa and apparently a strange love of affordable Chinese goods! 

I often think about the concept of the “American melting pot” vs the “American salad bowl,”  and how cultures blend, become lost, maintain distinctness, misunderstand each other, and operate within and outside of the context of stereotypes. For the life of me I cannot understand why every social anthropologist has not set up camp in this country of complicated interactions that involve an economically powerful and wealthy -but politically powerless- white minority and an economically diverse –but mostly povertous- politically powerful indigenous majority. 

Please be clear that I am trying to be as unbiased and un-opinionated here as possible. I am merely stating that the complications of having a diversity of players are immense.  Witnessing these evolutions and interactions of culture can be the messiest and/or most beautiful thing ever. 

And WHAT, you are asking, does all of this have to do with meat?? 

I’ll get there.

I was sitting next to a lunch table full of a diverse group of women the other day.  Everyone laughed as a Shona woman gave her white friend a hard time.  The white woman had a pile of chicken bones sitting on her plate. “Eat that meat woman! Do you not know the cartilage and skin and bones are supposed to be eaten!  That is meat! Look at you, wasteful woman!  You are spoiled and you don’t even know it!”  It was all in good fun, but also inspired me to introduce you to some simple differences in the different cultures which I have the fortune to interact with in Africa.

If you keep your sense of humor, it’s actually kind of entertaining. Though there are a number of ways racial and cultural complications are played out constantly, the butcher is one of the most segregated places you will ever see in the country.  From advertising and prices to products and services, the butcher makes it clear who it is marketing to before one even walks in the door.

 

It is hard to tell from the pictures, but the butchery pictured above -one of the most popular in town- is two different stores right next to each other.  

 

One side advertises and caters to a crowd that will end up paying at least five dollars a kg for meat. Here imported cheeses, frozen sea foods, and upscale pre-seasoned specialties can be found.

  

Around the corner the other side, often with little variety of inventory, advertises and caters to a crowd that will end up paying an average of one dollar per kg of meat.

  

Above is a picture from a South African chain grocery store that recently opened in our neighborhood.  I unintentionally visited on opening day and was surprised to find that even then, the meat section was pungently foul. No matter what your color or culture, one thing is understood about buying meat in Africa:  Go to a butcher, not to a grocery. Groceries often have a gaggingly bad smell coming from the meat section.  Products that have been butchered and packaged off-sight have often been frozen and thawed ten times over before hitting the shelves.  

Coffee Shopping

Meet a southern African version of a coffee shop.

Coffee shops are a standard stop among the locals of Zim.  Every tea time, morning and afternoon, coffee shops fill with women, children, and occasional families eager to take advantage of delicious desserts, outdoor space, and play equipment impossible to find in the country's very rare public park spaces.  Desserts after a meal tend to be very rare here-most locals intake their sweets during tea times instead. During after-school hours (most local schools end their day by 1 pm!) these hubs are packed with customers looking to spend a relaxing afternoon sipping tea and enjoying sweet treats outside.

  It took me over a year to get some of our American friends to visit a coffee shop; the concept here is entirely different than what the term indicates in America.  In Africa, coffee shops are frequented by the upper and middle classes as places for children to play while adults enjoy a restaurant-like setting.  Some coffee shops charge entrance fees as a way of making money off their grounds and outdoor spaces.  Others only serve breakfast or only serve lunch.  Most hold strange hours, entirely dependent upon their owner's preferences.  And most have dreadful service that can take days to bring their customers menus or edibles. (Over and over we find humor here in the lack of dependable businesses.  They close and open when they want, and take holidays when they like.  In a country where individuals are complaining about economic challenges, little differences like having steady days and hours and being open on weekends would certainly help!)

Whatever the concept and make-up of the coffee-shop, it is easy to feel their popularity.  I am told the concept of the modern coffee shop came to southern Africa only within the last fifteen years, when new concepts like cappuccinos and lattes began spreading through nations still modernizing.  Most of these businesses are highly successful, offering expensive food to coffee shop junkies while paying extremely low wages to their employees.  All one needs is a large yard, a dependable generator, and some good recipes.  Finding people desperate to work for next to nothing?  And dilapidated play equipment?  Piece of cake!  Literally....

 

Above and below, Jonas enjoys taking in a coffee shop with a zipline, fishing ponds, and hiking paths that offer some natural beauty within the city.

 

Though each coffee shop is unique, most are well manicured and offer the standard trampoline, sandbox, and wendy house (a playhouse named in reference to Peter Pan) in addition to other play equipment.

 

Like many businesses, most coffee shops are run out of a residential property that has been converted into a business.  Our doctor's office looks the same way...

 

 

My favorite coffee shop (The Bottom Drawer) has an upscale home-goods shop inside and divine desserts like these pavlovas (below) that I will introduce you to someday!