HoneyCrisp 5. Ashmead Kernal

Our African countries have problems with foreign currency shortages specially the international currency, the US$. We need these precious resources to procure fuel, medications, crucial spare parts, balance of payments support and mostly arms, to keep the army excited. The army is that power that keeps the dictators in and makes sure the opposition stays out. Open advice to the powers that be. We have uranium deposits everywhere. You don’t need look. Just announce to the world that you are going to build a nuclear plant and you will enrich the uranium to 100%. The USA and the European Union will buy your bluff. Tell the Israelis the whole truth lest they send you their stealth bombers, not to visit tourist sites ........

5. Ashmead Kernal

Keisha, Keandra and a lady drafted in were finishing off at a cluster residential site in Mabelreign to the north west of the city proper. It was an impressive residential site with shared facilities like beautiful flowers, shrubs and lawn gardens with attendant security. Formerly it had been a disused patch of land that had been on offer over many years. It was snapped up by a consortium that had a dream. Where someone had seen an ugly blank canvas, another had seen hundreds of cluster units to either sell off plan or rent out. Every person had a different vision and dream to chase after otherwise we would all have been William Shakespeare. Maybe then, the world would never have had Benito Mussolini nor Adolf Hitler. Where would we have been without Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandi, William and Orville Wright?

There was a tarred road that went around the block as well as tarred roads feeding each unit. Over and above that were walk ways with pavings and rockeries. Each units had an paved entrance near the gardens and an exit by the kitchen door. Standard facilities were three bedrooms with ensuite facilities, a lounge, fitted kitchen and separate dining room and carport with a lazy man's door. Other units had three/four bedrooms upstairs with by the other rooms downstairs. These had double carports. The ones without upstairs had each a verandah for those sunny days when residents wanted to rest in shelter. The upstairs ones had a balcony for each bedroom with a smaller verandah near the downstairs entrance.

"There is one advantage of cluster accommodation. It has good social scenes," the drafted in lady had suggested. "You are close to your neighbours unlike the lighter suburbs. In the high density areas, you are too close to your neighbours for comfort. The intelligence services just need a free hotline to receive all the tit bits from nosy and noisy neighbours. Everyone goes about with antennas raised. Their directional ears are tuned on to the latest gossip. They know what you are eating by analyzing your paper bags and the smell of your cooking. Just dance to loud music with a few people. You will discover you have guests who thought there was a party. Where is the beer? Which, did you buy any?"

"Most light density suburbs have huge tracts of what should be greenery. The droughts, downsizing of resources especially the financial side and water woes as the councils fail to bring piped water, there tend to be dry patches surrounding houses. It is a waste of valuable urban residential land. That is why some land has been subdivided to smaller units. Flats too have the advantage you don't need worry about the tree leaves turning green or golden yellow/brown."

"Cluster accommodation has many advantages chief being it’s easy to safeguard against thieves. A team of two security details can guard many houses. To do that in the ordinary suburbs you need be filthy rich or be a politician with clout so you can misuse state assets by having state security personnel as your guard detail. We see it in Nigerian movies where there is a gateman to open massive gates. Electronic devices and electrical gates can do that just as efficiently.

"CCTV operated by the owner and a set of alarms can do the same job as a single guard out there in the cold. Then if each house has a security guard, a gatekeeper, a cook, woman, if there are ten million houses! Anyway how do you pay all that excess labour? Or if you buy opaque beer, overzealous party youths can guard for you. That is before they become riotous or they all fall asleep, drunk they will have tummies protruding like victims of kwashiorkor or food poisoning. You share facilities that are costly to maintain for individuals like swimming pools, tennis courts, gyms, emergency power and boreholes," suggested Keisha.

"It's all the same at times when it comes to minding your own business. There is little interaction here too. Neighbours hardly known each other," Keandra pointed out.

“The idea with housing is to enjoy what you have otherwise you get frustrated. Someone will be looking at your place and saying you are blessed while you will be crying foul. Any accommodation type to me is okay. I will make the best use of it. If water is a problem and size is minimum, just pave it up, put flower beds etc. and enjoy the music.”

They had done the interior decoration in preparation for the marital anniversary of the owners. The lady had driven up.

“Hi Yvonne,” Keisha had said. “We had advised your maid that we were vamoosing.”

“Please do come to the party,” Yvonne exchanged hugs with everyone brushing her cheeks against each one of them. “I will take time to introduce you as our interior designer. You know what it does for indigenous business. Some have been short changed by indigenous business gate crashers.”

“I won’t miss the party,” Keisha had replied. “Meeting new and exciting people sells business. Besides it helps getting personal with a client. Some people speak the honest truth. That will do well for constructive critiques.”

"There is the social aspect Keisha of mixing, mingling and meeting as people. We are so focused on so many things we forget to survive at times. We are so squeezed thought wise we forget to live. Seeing a new home or garden broadens the creative prospect," Yvonne had said.

Keisha had not elaborated that some customers were a nuisance at the most. The motto, a customer is king doesn't work when the foreign kings or dignitaries try to rule outside their domains. Their foreign policies stunk like an African caveat cat sitting in the wind. Some of these customers wanted to undercut the quotation at all fronts including sub-standard material. They thumbed their noses at every professional suggestion that increased the budget.

In the end she ended up politely declining such contracts. They compromised materials and workmanship. They dragged her company into muddy waters. Some were like perking hens. They required her to side step. Others set the price including labour and materials that were the opposite of corruption by padding invoices. An excellent job sold itself. It was not about making the buffalo wallow in mud just to call it a pig or warthog.

"I will be there. I won't be selling business, no, or talking shop, that is wrong. Being there to relax, learn new things/news and see another aspect of daily living. It's wonderful to make new acquaintances or to support other enterprising people like me."

Checking out new home designs anyways enriched her creative juices. She wouldn't miss the party. Even deserts were inhabited. That meant there were some resourceful humans, animals, plants, flora and fauna.

"Before we came to this 4-bedroom unit within a complex we had extended our Norton suburban property to six bedrooms for the main house. That is beside the two 2-bed cottages that are detached from the main property. With all the four kids married and leaving in different quarters, we downsized and rented out. Here I am nearing sixty living in a complex. We had a walk up bedroom but Philemon is past sixty-five. The joints when walking up the steps creak like an oversized load on a rickety bridge. At times he forgets things so going upstairs up and down were a strain. I will ask you to see the Norton suburban house one day Keisha."

She was having lunch and drinks at the massive Westgate shopping and business complex. The complex sprawled close to Lomagundi road. She couldn't hear the noises of traffic to and from the road. The complex was hundreds of metres away from the main road. The major thoroughfare opened out to traffic to Chinhoyi and environs to the west of Harare. Just outside Westgate complex heading west a series of different residential suburbs had sprouted out. Further on was prime market gardening plots and agro industries. It was an outside café on an elevated platform. Downstairs, about three metres underneath the ledge she sat on, a woman and her friend came to sit to have the something to bite.

Keisha was just looking without intending to be staring like someone looking from an upstairs window at the world below them. The first woman’s friend was sitting down. The other woman bent to hug her friend. Keisha hadn't seen how these had come from different directions.

The interior of the blouse of one of them came partially into view. Keisha wanted to avert her eye sight from ogling another woman’s boobs and their structure when something in there drew her attention. Watching like she did would be best done by a man. It was odd for a woman to appreciate the lactation organs of another unless they were queer. Who had said the bosom, sitting apparatus and body shape of a woman was an asset?

The woman was wearing a blouse cut at the shoulders leaving the top bare. From her point Keisha saw into forbidden territory. Keisha saw as vividly described. There were tattoos. She was visualizing what someone had given a description of. The tattoos were on the top part of the left shoulder slightly above her breast.

Keisha accosted the two friends. They had just finished their meal. She gave herself the courage. It was not easy trying to make out to strangers. People could be very sensitive. It would be like trying to charm out a hungry tiger. They could easily shut her out from conversation. She gave them her business card.

"I just assumed ladies like you are into having magnificent interiors or if you know someone who requires service, that's my calling card," she had stated. "I am an indigenous business woman. If I hesitate or am shy, I won't pay the rent or wages."

In soft talk, she discovered they were very social. There was an air of sophistication about them. Their English tone was very affluent and fluent. Their dressing showed they knew something about the latest fashion. The skin tone was definitely suburban with house maids to do chores. Most suburban women were closed shop. It was the tattoos that she was maneuvering around. It required tact and wisdom.

“Is that a tattoo just above your hooters?” Keisha asked.

“It is just above them. It was done by a female of Afrikaner stock when I worked for two years in a wine estate in Cape Province.”

“Oh, wait till you see the one on her navel,” the friend had said. "I have one on my left arm too."

"Tell me more about how the two of you got tattooed," Keisha suggested. "Let's see the ones on the arm."

That was a hook, a line, a sinker and a bait to a carefree and talkative set of women. They needed to talk about three tattoos someone had described vividly.

"Me, it was her that got me that one."

"For starters, I am Netsai. That is Bridget."

"Keisha, interior decor and soft furnishing are my forte."

"I and Netsai are into catering. We run two food shops too. It wasn't that easy at first."

"Really?" Keisha had queried.

"We both trained as primary and a secondary teacher. I was teaching African languages, Shona to be precise. We got teaching posts where we were less than sixteen kilometres from the Mozambique border. Even the Shona languages slanted towards deep Manyika. That is a common sub variation of Shona right into Mozambique where it thickens into an entirely different language. You ever heard of the Gairezi River?"

"Yeah a lot when politics is talked about," Keisha replied. "Everyone is reminded once in a while how the liberation war started by crossing this river into Mozambique. I heard it’s a massive river which when the seasons are good has crocodiles and hippopotamus. In rain season it and other major rivers are impassable at most points. Even after the good rains such rivers are only fordable where they are bridges."

"If the bridges have not been swept away. Stormy water is very powerful. I once saw a whole tree going down river. Just imagine it stuck on a bridge. The force will shatter inept shoddy work done by companies tied to the political hierarchy. That is where we taught, she and I. The salaries versus the economy were not good. Add to it was the human sentiment. Irate villagers politicized to the brink turning every word you say into pro or anti-government.

"Then there were the governing authorities bored by hardship and political manipulation. We applied to be transferred to Harare. This is the time when to survive, we awaited upon the monthly salary. There was no other source of income unlike now where teachers are selling peanut butter, sausages, pork or chicken to survive. The yearly increments if any were so welcome. When increments were back dated, Wallah, we praised God. We reminded the Mashonaland East province of our need to transfer to Harare home base. Unfortunately applications were to Harare not vice versa to the rural hamlets set out like some chess boards. They were not shuffling feet. You would be told you were on the number something within a thousand. Sixty places down by year end it would be eternity before we were moved to within Harare province.

"I and Bridget went on vacation holidays to Western Cape. It was like magic. The sights and sounds were terrific. You could eat as much as you want not enforced dieting in our rural backwash. There were two former college mates making out there. We never came back to teaching. Our unceremonious exit would have had us serve a punitive time back in the rural areas. We never returned to our old stations neither did we write resignation letters. We just went during the holidays and returned years later as mothers. First, we would have had a professional misconduct hearing session. We would be like in a court only that those doing so would be education officials," said Netsai. "We both married in western Cape working in different restaurants. I was in Constantia. Oh how long we have been friends ever since we met when we were rural. Being good friends in the rural areas helped in team work, social life and tactics"

"Where are your rural homes?"

"Me from Bikita, her from Gutu Mupandawana." Netsai replied. "We use different buses though the same route until we get to Mupandawana turn off on the way to the old city, Masvingo. I hesitate to think of what could have happened had we not been bright enough in high school. Maybe I would have been a grandmother by now."

"If you look at where people grow up but where they end up, you wonder how we met," said Keisha. "Our rural home is Sadza. I hardly go there. Usually I meet someone that knows someone connected to my family once in a while. The main problem being about six siblings grew up and set up their own homes. They in turn had children after them. You can't go there and try to trace the lineage of my grandfather. His offspring is scattered all over. There is his grandson on the homestead working the fields. He is my cousin so to say. You, both of you went to South Africa. There you changed tact in business logistics ___."

"Bridget was in Stellenbosch. Here we are in the catering trade. It is very painful to painstakingly go through college and practice then shade it all off for a totally different profession because of a tattering economy. Africa is full of leaders who constantly win landslide election victories while their people swim in the murky waters of dead economies. Cuba, Syria, Libya, Iraq and North Korea are better, they don't even play at elections. They defend their revolution. I still miss coaching my students and watching them progress.

"For some seven years I was working in Constantia, Western Cape near Cape Town. That is where I met and married Gerald. I worked on a wine estate. It served tourists, the monied locals and the surrounding community. The area is beautiful, valleys, dry river courses that flowed in rain season and misty mountains appearing like gatekeepers against Viking invasions. I would have wanted to remain there watching the seasons. But life is life. I love cooking so did most women of Afrikaner stock. I have trained extensively on the job in cookery. We, operate a catering service besides two eatery shops.

"It was these white women who initiated me to have these bosom tattoos and the one on my navel. It started with hard work. Then I was favoured as an employee to be entrusted with much. It is like being accepted into the British gentlemen's club for those with Rolls Royce's when you travel on a mountain bike."

"And you both married locals?"

"No, mine is in the South Africa foreign services posted to Zimbabwe, currently. Lucky me," Bridget replied. "I am however open to the fact that he can be posted any way, even Afghanistan among the Taliban or Pakistan/Laos wherever. If that happens we will cross the river Congo when we see the raft, barge, ferry or the bridge. We say our lives as if it was smooth sailing. It wasn't. In the rural areas as teachers you had to worry. Getting your salary from town was one thing.

"The groceries had to last a month. Every month prices were going up including bus fare. Then successive droughts meant even teachers had to walk long distances to get water. Price control by the government had negative repercussions. Buses cut off routes to survive the fare freeze. One time I walked almost five hours in entire darkness to get to school. Thank God there were no robberies or worst case scenario rapes but both happened to others. It was as good as sleeping with the door widely open. The structures were as if they could accommodate goats at times. Some staff house walls danced if you touched them. The single farm brick line walls built without brick force or cement, knelt down when it rained heavily.

"Added to those physical problems we were young women growing in age. You grow upwards not in reverse. We were growing old in a society that accepted child and early marriages. We were without any worthy dates. Those willing to leave calling cards were married business men, truck or bus drivers, shop operators, farmers or agricultural field workers. These were willing to yoke you to polygamous unions. Romances from the city died out when we were teaching in the rural areas. By the time we did our monthly ritual to the cities, the guys had other dates."

"Any improvements in the Western Cape on those problems?" Keisha asked with side brown eyes out like the rising moon on a cloudless night sky.

"At least what we earned was good enough to get in and out of the city spots whenever we had to. Independently we were able to date, meet in Kaapstad and reminisce over the past hard times. One date after another was the life. We are now mothers with families. We learnt a new art that we loved which we have capitalized upon. Tell me about soft furnishings."

"I did them at technical college. I normally work with former college mates when the orders are very big. One time you are running three or four orders and the next I am manning a small shop in town without any orders coming in. The costs are fluctuating. That is the state of the economy. There is a need to import materials. Those with free flow foreign funds are the best customers. On my part there were no jobs after Harare Polytechnic graduation. I had to use as a loan my dad's exit package when his company went defunct. I never actually tried to find a job. I never looked back when I started hitting the road running."

Garry had called.

“Hi Garry."

"K- my dear."

Small talk.

"Can I pass through your place Sunday evening around 1700hrs to sit on the verandah? It being so hot these days cold drinks and home baked goodies would do."

"Sunday? Guess who I was talking to whom I ran into, and invited to a customer's party alongside her business friends?”

“Who and which party?”

He had drawled. He was probably raising his eyebrows.

“I talked to Netsai, a mother of two girls. She likes to run eateries or what we call mobile kitchens for events. I didn't know you were trained on paving by an Afrikaner called Du Toit in Cape Town. You wouldn’t know them would you, Netsai and her girls?”

“No. I never heard of them. They say they know me?”

“Fiona and Flora?”

“No.”

“By the way Nestai is staying with a husband whose features look very familiar to a visitor to church recently. I should have invited her to church too, silly me. He is in the construction industry. Some people actually invested in this company which her husband has been running as an operations manager for some time. Why didn’t you tell me you are fluent in Xhosa and Afrikaans?”

“So?”

She described the woman to him.

“She is more than six feet tall, thin with a body like that of a champion swimmer who stays on diet. She has absolutely no son neither does she wish to have one. She suspects her husband is shopping for girls with many of the illicit looking younger girls out there.”

“I have no idea. It is a case of mistaken identity.”

“You wouldn’t have any ideas of your own wife would you Garry? You have even forgotten her name for convenience sake. No wonder why you love tattoos. If you were to get the address and decide to come, bring in at least Netsai! Of tattoos Gerald, Netsai's belly one is very erotic!”

He never called her again.

© Copyright tmagorimbo July 2017