Zimbabwe

Across the border from Mozambique, Mutare is paved roads and neat rows of old houses with collard greens planted in modest front yard gardens. Here, clean and tidy streets echo of British colonialism, which took a different shape and structure than that of the Portuguese in Mozambique, who took exponentially more than they left behind. And Mutare is also a stunning rocky landscape, dotted with schools and clinics, the fruits of international religion-based development. Decades upon decades of missionaries have certainly left their mark, sometimes in the shape of a fist. In our case, it’s in the shape of a Catholic-run training center for Africans (and two grinning-nervous Americans) who wish to learn about agriculture and small business. A training center faithfully guarded, appropriately enough, by 2 skittish Rhodesian Ridgebacks*.

After thoroughly noisy and purposeful stamping, furtive glances and suspicious questions, we made it through the border crossing, where the throb of tension that runs through the country, constant as a heartbeat, is even stronger. In Africa there is an undercurrent of danger to even the most mundane of everyday activities - going to the store, filling up the car with gas. Crossing the border to Zimbabwe is not an everyday activity.

But we can breathe again, and take in the thick opaque orange river, useful for bathing and disguising hungry crocodiles. Starched navy and blinding-white school uniforms migrating across impossibly red and dusty roads. How-do-they-keep-things-so-clean.

At the training center, I am odd man out. The only other white faces here are those of the family in charge of the ag. training, accustomed to playing “bossman”, descendants of the pre-civil war white Zimbabwean farmers, hard and sun-worn and capable, accustomed to the remnants of colonialism; descent roads, dropped eyes, first to the dinner table. Later, a cracked porcelain mug of red wine under a starry black sky, distant hills periodically ablaze with windy uncontrolled burning, help to alleviate the tension of so many day time eyes. What is the wazunga (white) woman doing in our dorm? As I let myself into my tiny room, equipped with bed for sleeping and sink for washing, the electricity buzzes to life and I blow out my candle with mild disappointment. I meet a girl on the way to the hall bathroom, and because she is the only one who has even half considered returning my maniacal over-compensating grins, I do whatever it takes to make contact: in this case, offering her toilet paper as she enters a stall that I know does not contain any. Politely confused, she says that she only needs to urinate and quickly disappears into the neighboring stall. I gotta get better at drip-drying.

For lack of anything else to do, I smile yet again at the women across the hall from me as I return to my room, and just as I am about to duck in, they invite me to sit with them, and suddenly I am surrounded by a room full of wide-eyed, dark-as-night-skinned Zimbabwean women. Clearly in the time it took for me to get from bathroom to bedroom, word got around that I was not a spy or a cannibal.

As expected, the first morning of our fundamental Christian based conservation agriculture training is kicked off with prayer and song. Although 75% of Zimbabweans claim Christianity as their religion, the music blissfully holds much of its traditional character. Clapping and multiple-part harmonies of African words, in Shona, Dbele, Shangani, Sena, are repeated almost as a chant, making my throat catch and my eyes sting with restrained tears. Everyone knows I’m a sucker for a pretty tune.

I feel inspired to be part of a project that is not just a “band-aid”, i.e. not dumping resources into the country in an unsustainable way, but rather teaching techniques that are meant to improve lives at an individual community based level before resonating outward. The leaders of this training go so far as to emphasize that Africans must summon up the pride to break away from reliance on foreign aid, to refuse to seek handouts; however, there is no talk of past abuse from the international community which actively participated in creating the need for aid, no mention of exploitation that maybe created a sense of guilt and obligation among certain donor communities. Maybe it’s better that way; dwelling on heartache could be counterproductive to creating new partnerships. Either way, the NGO presence in Africa would do well to make a concerted effort to decrease dependence by empowering Africans to change their own lives in ways they see fit.

*Rhodesia was the former name of Zimbabwe before the civil war and consequential independence from the British empire.