lie with me, and just forget the world

Gloomy mood in post-poll Zimbabwe, BBC News Africa says.

Boy, you don't have to tell me that.

Lois, or MaiChris (mother of Christabelle) as we call her, is Joseph's older sister, 31 years old. She has been living with Sara and me since February, which is when she and her husband left Harare and, like thousands upon thousands of other Zimbabweans, (ambiguously-legally) immigrated to Mozambique. Chimoio is only an hour from the border, so naturally, is now swelling with people seeking a better life. Stiffly polite Black Zimbabweans, dressed smartly, eager to speak English, stop me about once a week on the street to chat, anxious to ask for a job. Very casually dressed white Zimbabweans pull large fishing boats behind shiny SUVs and crowd the aisles of Shoprite (Moz's only Western-style grocery store), their carts overflowing with beer, bread, and biltong (dried jerky). Their fortunes are vastly different but both groups are headed in the same direction: out.

The irony of Moz now being the better place to live - us, poor redneck cousin to urbane, sophisticated Zim - is almost more than some can bear. It's humiliating. In 1980, the Zim dollar was on par, and even briefly surpassed, the US dollar. Mugabe was the Big Man back then too, but it was a whole different ballgame. Now they live with an illogical, murderous Mugabe. Same man, way different world.

BabaChris, Lois' husband, stayed in Moz only briefly and has been eeking along best he can back in Harare, (sometimes) working as an anesthesiologist nurse while dodging Zanu-PF henchmen who are shooting people in the head and bulldozing their homes. Christabelle, their 4-year old daughter, is living with Lois' sister and her family in Zim. Lois has only seen her once since February.

I hate to generalize negatively but - "because this is Africa" is the title preceding most of the bullet points which follow:

• MaiChris can't begin working because her documents need to go to Maputo and
• there isn't a reliable mail system here
  
• so she has to wait for someone she trusts to go and deliver them to the Ministry of Something or Other where they'll likely sit for several months, and
  
• in the meantime she can't finish the numerous informal sewing projects people have offered to pay her for, because halfway through the gargantuanly tedious task of sewing 600 school kit bags for the Anglican diocese, our machine broke and
  
• the replacement part is not available here, only in Zim, and
  
• she sent money with two different people to purchase it for her, but neither returned with it, and
  
• one was her husband, but she has no way of telephoning him about it because
• telecommunications have more or less collapsed in Zim and
• I'm not even sure he has a phone because inflation in Zim is at 2.2 million percent, and that means
• it is cheaper for Zimbabweans to use their money as toilet paper than to actually purchase goods with it but it doesn't really matter anyways
  
• because there aren't any goods in Zimbabwe anymore
  
• because a man named Mugabe really, REALLY screwed everything up.

So there you go.

Sara and I genuinely like having Lois here. She's a wonderful person, helpful, kind, generous, friendly. But six months is a long time to live with two muzungus (white people), far from your husband and young daughter, even if one of them is going to become your future sister-in-law. She gets by with Shona in this part of Moz, but not knowing Portuguese is tough. As time goes on, as the work papers don't come and the sewing machine part still doesn't arrive, we can see she is fighting depression. If it were me, I'd be long past the point of a stiff upper lip.


The other thing is, Lois' mother died unexpectedly in March. It was at her funeral that Lois last saw her daughter.

Gloomy is excusable.

Tonight, two little girls are sleeping in the bed formerly known as Sara's and lately known as Lois'. (Sara and I have been sharing my double bed for so long now, I'd feel lonely and cold if we went back to how it used to be.) One is Tia Liliana's beautiful little daughter Laura, who is back visiting her brothers and sisters for the first time since she was sent away (she didn't go to her mother's funeral). The other is Ivania, Sara's old host sister's daughter, who has come a few different times to stay with us. They're like best friends when together (see especially the video of them splashing in a tub, on that latter link), all bubbly and chatty; but tonight Ivania got overtired, probably, and Sara was gone for much of the evening, and anyway, about a half-hour after I tucked them in, Ivania reappeared, quavery and silent. Sara asked what was wrong. The poor little thing simply burst into tears, and cried out, "Mama!"

I was washing dishes, Lois was sitting across the table from Sara, who was cradling a sniffling Ivania, and all I could think about were my own memories of doing that same thing as a child. Homesickness was pretty chronic for me until I hit third or fourth grade. The Portuguese word for it is saudades.

All Lois could think about, of course, was her own young daughter, sleeping under somebody else's roof, a long way away from her mother's arms. I don't know what the Shona equivalent is called.

Poor Laura, of course, no longer has a mother to cry for.

Things got very quiet in the kitchen tonight as Sara fetched her phone for Ivania to call home. Just me splishing around in the sink, gazing out at the dark night, and thinking about MaiChris thinking about her Christabelle. I sneaked a peek at her over my shoulder and she was nearly in tears, slumped over the table.

Yes. Gloomy is excusable.

Mr. Mugabe, please.

Enough.

Yvaniah and Laura