Archive for July, 2009
We were burning the midnight oil last night preparing for the OxFam Australia financial audit for today. By we, I mean they, because I don’t have anything to do with the finances. Unfortunately, midnight comes at around 6.15pm because the groundskeeper kicked us all out – he wanted to go home and had no audit in the morning.
To square away all the paperwork, we needed to get an invoice from the producer of the album. We got about 100m from the building and the car stopped. Oops, no gas. Everton and I decided to walk to the nearest gas station. It seemed awful dark, as in no street lights. When we arrived at the station, no power. So, Everton called a friend. They said they’d come bring us gas.
About an hour and a half later, they arrived. Great! They went to pour the gas into the tank and it was black. Oops! They filled up an old oil canister with the clean petrol. Power was still out in the area, so the crew had to go drive around to find another pumping station. The first one they went to – on the second trip – said they wouldn’t fill a plastic gas canister. They learned that only after about 20 minutes in the queue.
To make a long story short, it took an additional one and a half hours to get clean gas. With 6L of gas – maybe 50km of driving – we head to get the receipt. It’s about 8.30pm-ish now. When we arrive, well … no power, so he can’t print the invoice. The producer didn’t even have enough petrol to get home.
We left there around 9.45pm-ish. No visit is ever short in Zim, hence the half hour visit. From there, we had to drive Winnet home, which was about 20 to 30 minutes from the producer’s studio. Everton lives on the other side of town. Another 30 or so minutes home. When we arrive 10.30pm-ish – no power.
OK, we’ll just get up early in the morning. Next day – 6am, I’m up. We leave to get the invoice and arrive at the office by 7am. Well, we need gas. The 24hr station near Everton’s is closed – of course. We had to drive into town through a smog of exhaust to find a pumping station with gas and no queue. That took us through the crazy part of town – people and commuter mini buses everywhere. Did I mention I was driving?
After getting gas, we headed to the studio, got the invoice and made it to the office by 8am. Perfect.
Except, OxFam Australia cancelled the meeting and rescheduled for Tuesday.
I’m sure many of you must be wondering what a typical day in the life of Chris de Veer is while he helps out his fellow world citizens in Zimbabwe. Wonder no longer. I will tell you.
I have settled into a sort of rhythm that starts around 7am. I wake up, pack my sleeping bag, and get dressed for work. Yes, I sleep my sleeping back. It gets chilly at night and I love the comfort a down bag gives me. Getting dressed takes about three minutes because I don’t have a dazzling array of clothes to choose from. Although I have two pair of brown pants to choose from, I wore one pair for the first 10 days, so I’m switching to the pair I just bought. For a top, I have three collared shirts – light blue (anyone remember me recuperating at Grandma’s last summer? Same shirt), light beige (thanks to Moustaffa’s in Singapore), and white (Target?). One pair of shoes. So, there’s not much decision making to do.
After I’m dressed, I go outside in the front yard and do about 20 minutes or so of taiji. Before anyone asks what the neighbors think, we’re behind a seven or eight foot cinder block wall. The only people who see me moving around are the folks I live with.
Having started the qi circulation, I come in for some tea or coffee and breakfast. Then off to the office where I begin the daily struggle with the Internet. The struggle for information nirvana involves starting multiple page requests and cycling through them until one or more are done. Usually it’s best if you have something else to do like read documents, compose your emails, or translate War and Peace from Russian into Shona. You know, the stuff you normally do.
After a long day of reading nd answering ten or so email messages, trying to download files, and organize my thoughts that are scattered across 15 different tabs, it’s time to go. Lest you think I just came to Zimbabwe to sit in front of a slow Internet connection all day, I don’t just do this. There are periods where I talk with staff to get a better feel for the organization and what it needs.
The past couple weeks, SHAPE has had some artists in the recording studio laying down sick beats for the SHAPE’s fourth album. This process often required staff members to swing by the studio to listen, talk with the producer, deliver food to the artists, or simply pick them up to bring them home. It could take an hour, it could take three. It just depended on the day, whether a power surge had blown up electrical equipment, someone had run out of gas, or the diesel generator was choking on too much lubricating oil.
Upon arriving home, we would eat dinner. South African, affectionately called SA (sounding like essay) soaps would be on TV and sometimes the brilliantly produced Zimbabwean TV news. Usually, we go with BBC or SA news. If we have a game, we might play, or not. We often talk about Zimbabwe and the US.
I prefer to bathe at night, so they’ll heat up some water and I go do my thing. Did I mention where I’m staying there isn’t running water? Not sure what the problem is, but the house has taps and sanitation, the city’s delivery system is broken. The same can be said for electricity. It’s usually off on Thursday, but it can be cut any time for any amount of time. Makes bathing in a room with no lights interesting.
After I finish all that, I usually lay out my sleeping bag again. I either read a magazine or write in my journal. Then I pass out, to do it all over again the next day.
When you earn a few hundred dollars a month, you don’t have money to fill the tank. When your car is so old and beat up that the fuel gage doesn’t work, how are you to know when to fill up? Well, you actually figure out how many liters of gas you put in the car and keep track of how many kilometers you drive the car.
Literally, when we put gas in the cars, it’s a few dollars at a time and the driver always makes a serious mental note about how many kilometers they can drive before they run out of gas. I have never seen so many people who know how many kilometers it is from the house to work, from Harare to Masvingo, Harare to Bulawayo.
Yes, we generally have an idea of the distance between Richmond and Virginia Beach, or New York and DC, but … how many people can tell you exactly? Almost everyone I’ve talked to who drives a a car knows it’s 346km from Harare to Mutare. Folks know it’s exactly 11km from home to the office. New Yorkers may know how many minutes to the subway and from the subway to work, but we’re thinking in time, not distance.
It’s amazing how attuned to the different rhythms of life you become when adversity is imposed upon you. Low wages, expensive gas, and crappy old cars all conspire to make driving less than reliable and always a challenge.
I needed another pair of pants. I came for about 30 days and brought one pair of work pants. Not only are the people in the office getting bored with my drab, monotonous wardrobe, I’m tired of wearing the same slightly itchy polyester pants day-in, day-out.
So yesterday, I went on a mission in Harare to find a new shirt and a new pair of pants. I thought I might pay $5 to $10 for pants and about $5 for a shirt. No, try $15 for each. You want a short-sleeve polo shirt? Try $18. All the stores offered their wares for about the same price.
Well, that’s what you get for high-quality, Zimbabwean made textiles. Not so fast. These prices are for the cheapest, Chinese imports available. My friend told me Zimbabweans usually go to South Africa to buy clothes where prices for the same exact brands are about 1/5 the cost of Zimbabwe.
Another eye opener from Zim-land. Think about how far $15 goes at Old Navy, TJ Max, Ross, or the thrift shop. Then think about earning just a few hundred a month for a family. So, yeah, it’s expensive. You either pay in money to have the convenience of shopping in Zim, or you spend your time on a bus to South Africa where everything is cheaper.
And remember, $15 may still not seem like much, but the government workers here earn about $100 a month. Some nonprofits pay $400 a month. Then you need to pay rent ($100 – $250), utilities ($50), gas if you drive, food (minimum $100) … not much left to buy a $15 pair of cheap trousers.
I’m not quite sure what drives these high prices. Are there import restrictions, high duties, high demand, low supply? What? It’s probably a combination, but the government recently suspended duties on all products imported into the country, effective immediately. Hopefully that relieves a little pressure on the cost of goods; I still need to buy a shirt!
So, at around 8.50, I received a text message asking for help. A friend ran out of petrol (gas) in a dark area (as in, there were not many light) in the city center (Harare). (Do you like the parenthetical inserts?)
Everton and I jumped in the newly repaired Rasheen. What’s that you ask? It’s looks like a poorly miniaturized Jeep of some sort that Nissan made for right-hand drive countries. Luckily, they don’t exist in the States, but we do have equally, as well as more, ridiculous looking cars named the Aztec, the Rav4, and the stretch Hummer limo.
Now that you know what the car is, you should know it’s had trouble working. The mechanic assures SHAPE that it’s fixed, but a quick drive resulted in at least one stall, erratic engine RPMs, very low idle RPMs, and trouble shifting gears. Mint condition.
It’s into this beast, we jumped to rescue our friend. And, I was driving. Not really knowing rules of the road in Zimbabwe, I made a left turn on red (that’s the equivalent of right on red in the States) and Everton laughed a nervous laugh and said I couldn’t do that. Anyway, we made it there with only one stall the gas station. Did I mention this is an automatic, so there are no gear shifts for me to botch.
Amazingly, we had a real, spare gas can. It had a flexible nozzle, a rubber gasket to create a seal between the flexible nozzle and the hard cap, as well as a rear air vent to allow the gas to flow into the thirsty tank. Our friend was also shocked to see a real gas can.
With 5L of gas, he was ready to go. Except his car wouldn’t start. We didn’t have jumper cables. So, we ran down the street pushing the car that wouldn’t start. No luck. Hmm. Maybe our Rasheen could push the car somewhere. Let’s try … turn the key in the ignition … and … all power in the Rasheen is lost. Completely dark. Luckily the friend knew what he was doing and quickly reseated the terminal on the battery and the Rasheen was up and running.
Then, he took our battery, ran it to his car, started his car, put his battery back in, then put ours back in and it’s all good.
So, that was a fun evening and something a little out of the norm for me, but something that’s probably a not-so-uncommon occurrence here.
I arived in Zimbabwe a few days ago. Shep met me at the airport and I was wisked to the SHAPE International Offices. After quick introductions to the staff, I headed to my host’s home. Bleary eyed from a long flight to Harare, it was all really a blur.
Over the weekend, SHAPE had some student musicians in the recording studio for an upcoming album release. Brilliant! Their voices were great. If I had a cord to download the video from my camera, I would upload it to YouTube and post the link here. In the meantime, text will need to suffice.
On Sunday, I rested! Thankfully. I met some of my host’s friends on Saturday evening. We played a game of 30 Seconds until 3am. I still can’t think of what the game is called in English, but you have things you want to get people to say, like garfield or To Kill a Mockingbird, and you can use any clues you like except sounds like and saying the answer. People guess. And, you guessed it, you have a maximum of 30 seconds per card to guess all five. Needless to say, at 3am after a long day, long flight, and little sleep, I was knackered.
Now it’s Wednesday and I’ve had my first few discussions with folks about work in the office. Looks like fund raising, information & communications technology, and some basics in management are the main areas to help with. The next step is to set them up with a few, free Internet-based resources to start organizing their contacts, their volunteers, and their donors. I also have a few management tools in mind. Ever since I was introduced to Salesforce.com, I’ve been a big fan. I set up the resource for HOGC, for myself, and am now in the process of setting it up for Hands on Zimbabwe (aka, SHAPE Int’l).
I have talked with a number of the staff about their individual project areas. There is a real need for project management training, information technology training, and some old-fashioned computer networking. Anyone have old routers or two and a server they’d like to donate and ship to Zimbabwe?
Everyone is quite appreciative of the advice I’ve provided and I hope they feel the same way when I leave.
My first impression off the plane was – flat. Then I felt the temperature – cool. Then I saw the airport – am I in Zimbabwe? I ask, because this airport looks so much better than the one in Delhi. I sailed through customs and was met by Shep, Sisa, and Chenge at the airport.
Driving into town, I was at first reminded of Ethiopia. There was a smell of burning wood in the air, along with the browning grass, and gnarly trees that brought back memories of my first experience in Africa. The more I drove around, though, my thoughts turned to China and Kyrgyzstan. Both of these places had infrastructure before the neglect set it. Kyrgyzstan more so than China, I seem to recall. The houses all have walled in yards. Glass is often cemented atop the wall to discourage unwanted visitors from just hopping over when no one answers the gate buzzer. These aren’t just houses for the rich, but the middle-class.
I learned, though, that houses cost $150 – $300k, depending on the area, so few Zimbabweans actually own them. They simply rent. In some areas, you have million dollar homes. In Zimbabwe? Are we talking about the same country? Who knew? At least rent is cheaper than New York. They are stunned when I tell them how much my rent is.
Food, is not cheap, either. There are no coins for change, so there’s dollar-rounding on your food bill. By that, I mean what ever the final price is, it’s rounded up to the nearest dollar, or you get a bunch of candy as change. You can expect to pay about $3.50/lb for chicken or beef, unless you go to a butcher, where you could get the beef for about half that per pound. A 2L bottle of water costs $0.80. A 1lb box of instant, Nescafe coffee cost about $6.50. Shocking.
Doubly shocked when you think about how little folks make and how high unemployment is. So, even though it’s better, it’s still not a cake walk. But where is it a cake walk? I can go a few blocks away from my Park Slope apartment to find folks struggling to make ends meat. It’s not any easier in the US.
And gas? How about $1.50 per liter. That works out to about $5.70 per gallon. And, this is a city with unreliable public transportation. You ride minibuses, you catch lifts, you walk. Unless of course you have a car and money to continually fill the gas tank to drive along so-so roads, many of which are riddled with potholes. Cars are mostly older models of Toyotas, BMWs, Mercedes, trucks, even Pugeots.
Still, this place is nothing like I expected. If you read the US State Department’s website, you’d think setting foot in the country is tantamount to either a jail term or death sentence. Far from it. I know there are shenanigans that go on here, but the people are friendly. I’m amazed by how many Shona say that they are a peaceful people, not like those South Africans. So, despite the high prices, the pollution, the power cuts, and the lack of running water – all things that I pretty much anticipated (except the high food prices) – Zimbabwe has refreshingly It’s much better. Much better.
