Normal but Bizarre Licenses: Radio

To remind you, we were talking about "normal but bizarre" in Zim.  To continue my explanation that started two days ago regarding licenses, here's a little reminder of where we left off:

In Zimbabwe, one must own a radio license if owning a car, and a television license if living in a home.  It does not matter if you actually own a radio or a television. You must have a license anyway. The problem is that when the tax-man or woman approaches you, the tax must be paid on the spot... immediately or the fine is sometimes up to four times greater than the actual tax and then the task of paying the fee involves police stations and standing in line at a number of department windows to get your name off "the list." The prospect of not paying is actually quite burdensome.

The car-radio license, though cheap, was a bother. Our car did not have a radio, but still showing an officer that at a police stop was no valid argument. We had to pay like everyone else.

At times you could purchase a six month license.  At other times, the country was only selling three month passes.  Always a person's car was checked for the sticker at police stops.  The licenses for car radios were sold in the post office (my one attempt took six hours of line-waiting before the office simply closed on the angering crowd and said we would have return another day) and large parking lots by random people with clipboards, able to give you a ticket for not having a license if you did not approach them first to ask to buy one.  Awesome.  The problem was, at times the country ran behind ("they ran out of money," the rumors always said) on printing the license stickers, so often a person could be looking for a license for months at a time, needing to know when they were suddenly available to purchase one and then doing so immediately before coming onto a police stop.

Such was just my luck last year, when I searched for a new radio license for over a month.  I pulled up to a police stop just two days after unsuccessfully scouting out a license.  The police officer spoke harshly to me, explaining that I could buy a license from him for thirty dollars, or receive a twenty-dollar fine plus then be obligated to buy a license before being able to drive again. Someone was making his own rules, but I bought the license there and went on my way.

A few short months later when we again needed to purchase a radio license, I decided to play it smart. I pulled up to a woman with a clipboard in the parking lot of a place called the Chase Shops and opened my window.  I requested two licenses, one for now, and one for three months later.  "That is not legal," she had told me. "The stickers on them say they are only good until April."

I thought for a moment and then clarified. "Yes, but it's already mid February.  So really I'm only buying one for the next month and a half?" A new license-seeking headache would start again before I knew it.

"It is not my problem that the licenses were not available until this week. You can also choose to not drive for a month and a half."

And this is how I spent my time in Zim.

Normal Yet Bizarre Licenses: Television

I am inspired by what my friend Beth, still in Harare, recently called a "normal yet bizarre experience" in Zim. Bizarre is true.  But I think I'd replace the word "normal" with "typical."

The experience is an example of a number of things:

-how one is kept busy in Zimbabwe running around to fulfill sudden, often changing, requirements,
-how the country tries to seem highly organized by charging taxes but then has no way to carry-out the system fairly or appropriately,
-how individuals doing official business often take the position as a blessing to make up their own rules and have their own little piece of power,
-and how people assume that if one owns something then that person must have a great deal of money at their fingertips.

What am I talking about? It's that time of year again... Beth recently had a run-in with the television license company and it gave me flashbacks of my own experiences dealing with this headache each January.

In Zimbabwe, one must own a radio license if owning a car, and a television license if living in a home.  It does not matter if you actually own a radio or a television (which we didn't during our last year). You must have a license anyway. The problem is that when the tax-man or woman comes a-callin' the tax must be paid on the spot.  One must pay immediately or the fine is sometimes up to four times greater than the actual tax, which makes for a hefty fee and a huge run-around to get one's name and address off the list of non-payers! But it's sort of a good luck, bad luck thing, as some years your street may be entirely forgotten by the tax collectors.

Last January when the gate rang and I picked up the speaker to see who it was, I was less than enthusiastic to find out it was a television tax collector for the ZBC (Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation). Okay; I'll admit it, I may have just tried to pretend I was the housekeeper and said that "Madam" was not home.

"The household will automatically receive the fine and a ticket then," I was told.

No dice.  I went out to the driveway to have a conversation over the fence.

As I stood on our gate box and looked over, I knew immediately from the fluorescent vest, receipt book, and clipboard, that the man was legitimate and ready to collect, immediately. After some back and forth about the fact that I did not have fifty dollars lying inside my house at the time, the man made it clear that the alternative was the fifty dollar license fee, a fifty dollar ticket to be paid at the police station, and a twenty dollar fee to be paid to him for having to write the ticket.  Hmm.  That was a new rule...

Zimbabwean citizens often assume that if one owns something or lives in a house then that person must have a great deal of money at their fingertips.  Because a large percent of the population does not use a traditional bank but instead carries their valuables on their body, it is expected that a person well off enough to own something requiring a license will always have money on hand.  I found this little assumption to be quite inconvenient a number of times, and always when talking about tickets and licenses.

When told I had no money lying around the house, the man suggested I drive him to my ATM. (Oh why was my husband never home at the right moment to deal with these things?!) I had to get the gardener, Shoman, from the back (on his day off, no less) and ask him to go in the car with me to feel a little safer as I took the tax collector to the bank.  (A beer is always promised for these kinds of things.)  The collector was very nice -albeit extremely inconvenient- until we returned home and I went to pay him. That's when he realized the machine had only given me hundreds.

"You expect me to have fifty dollars of change on me?!" he had guffawed in disbelief.

This from the man who expected me to have fifty on myself for a television I did not own when he was the one collecting money. I clenched every piece of my insides and thought for a moment.

This time Showman saved me; offering to walk the collector to the nearest set of shops to get him change.  I knew this would be incredibly difficult, as finding a person with two fifties would not be an easy thing.  Shoman came back an hour later, receipt in hand and a fifty in change. I owed him more than a beer, that was for sure!  The tax collector was no where to be seen,which made me wonder if he'd ever made it back to my neighbors'.  Probably not.

Oh, do you see why I never like answering the gate?!

My Discomfort With the "Expatriate" Title, Explained

Though it is less about Africa specifically and more about being an American living abroad, I appreciated this recently written article by Ann Jones, pasted below. It is fascinating to feel the shifting waters on how those around the world view Americans, simply by listening to the questions foreigners ask when they learn one is American. As I now spend my last few days as an official expatriate (a term I admit gives me the heebie-jeebies in a number of weird ways) for a while, here are some questions I've heard oodles of times, and some questions I've often asked myself!

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/13/have_americans_gone_crazy_partner/

The Giant Rat

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=03-P13-00025&segmentID=7

Well, the good news is that the animal eating all of our garden grown vegetables was not a gray rat.  The bad news?  It was a giant rat.  

No really.  That’s not my own adjective or nickname.  It’s a giant rat.  That’s the species that took over my yard, gardens, and comfort zone. (I am sure there is some sort of Princess Bride “Rodents of Unusual Size” joke to be made here, but that would make my husband way too happy and I don’t want to encourage him.)

After something began gnawing our tomatoes and eggplants in large ways, with scratch marks on each side, I approached my gardener.  "It's a frog," he had said. Yes.  Same gardener who I caught standing in the garden, hose in hand, watering plants in a rainstorm.  Oh, I miss Shoman.

So... call me crazy, but I wanted a second opinion. It was the perfect time for one; that afternoon an exterminator was being sent to the house after a large something had gnawed a hole right in the side of our house and could be heard overhead scurrying around at night.  The exterminator was to come, confirm that the animal was not inside at the moment, and then we would promptly have the wall patched to keep it out.  My totally humane plot to rid our house of critters.  Well, aside from the unavoidable lizards and flatty spiders that donned our walls around the clock. 

When the exterminator came, I approached him about the vegetables.

It was definitely a giant rat.

The giant rat is an animal commonly found in tropical and subtropical areas.  In Africa, there are two species: the Gambian pouched rat, and the giant pouched rat.  These omnivorous critters love to live in old termite mounds, forests, and thickets... and our yard was perfect.  With a thick bamboo grove next to our largest veggie garden, and a large abandoned termite mound on the other side, they were in heaven.  And probably setting up shop for the long haul.  Known for their enthusiastic breeding capabilities, the giant rat is considered a dangerous invasive species that can hoard so much food in its mouth (hence the pouch name) that at times it cannot get through the door of its home upon return.  There have been reported cases of these rats killing babies and the elderly in South Africa, so though they look cute, they are not to be messed with. 

The exterminator had joked with us, as the giant rat is prized as a sought-out food in a number of African countries. Why didn't we just consider them part of our farm?  We could have a braai (South African word for barbeque) every day when they really started reproducing!

I am all for letting animals live and let live. But that was one day I put down my ASPCA card down and asked the exterminator to help us.

Thank God neither of these pictures are my own…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1393836/Giant-rats-eat-babies-South-Africa-townships-separate-attacks.html

A Weight Off My Shoulders

I pretty much have something ridiculous to admit every day of my life. Today I have something weird, bizarre, and maybe just a teeny bit disturbing.  I have been carrying the inside of a toilet paper roll around with me since Africa.

Yes, yes, I know.  Eight months.  Three continents.  My husband likes to remind me, too.

I have a weird habit of writing down random thoughts and notes on whatever strange writable item I can find on a moment's notice. In my last days of Zim, as I zipped all over town wrapping up odds and ends of my African life, the bus names I collected ever since arriving never went unnoticed.  Until the day I left, new fun and festive ones were always showing up thanks to some fabulous African entrepreneur's creativity.  I'm only sorry I didn't get pictures of any of these. Here are the last of my bus names, which I admit are written on a toilet paper roll I would really like to get rid of before continent number four....

Not Guilty

Singing the Song

Physical

Cherry Car

Fab Fab

A Weight Off My Shoulders

Commander Joe

Chocolate Tastes Better

So I Get Lost

It Tasted Fine

Zebra Adventures

It's Okay

Good Medicine

Finally letting go of the toilet paper roll?  Priceless.