Letter from Granny

Letter from Granny-in-Zimbabwe-(who-now-lives-with-Aunty-Darryl-in-Durban) - Gee we really have to find new names for the Grandparents - it is getting very complicated differentiating one from the other these days ....

"The main purpose of this is to send along, what may appear silly, a little theme that wafted around my head at the time. Since sleep has been dodging me so successfully - as to appear the norm and almost to be a thing tangible that I should be able to get a hold of, decided it would lighten my heart to transfer it onto a bit of space:

Once upon many months and a few days ago there were two beautiful little princesses that visited a house in Zimbabwe where their Granny and Grandpa lived. They brought their parents with them.

At this house there was quite a big pond with big fish and little fish and flowers and frogs. There were baby frogs too – some that had only tails, called tadpoles, some that had tails with little legs, called tadfrogs, and others that only little legs, called little frogs.

Now these little princesses - whose names are Amber and Sarah – were very kind and sweet and thoughtful to the baby frogs (those with only tails – tadpoles, and those with tails with little legs – tadfrogs) They scooped them out of the deep water of the ponds and put them into their own tubs where they would be safe and grow up to be big frogs. They gave them their own food from the ponds so that they would have their lunch and supper. So these were super spoilt frogs-to-be. And they did grow up. And they jumped back into the big pond and croaked nicely for Granny and Grandpa.

(And I must tell you a little secret – Gran and Grumps loved the sound and will always remember that Amber and Sarah gave it to them)


Also at that time – many months and a few days ago – there was not a lot of water. None came out of the taps. Only out of the borehole. Into a little paddle pool for playing in, and into a bucket, which went into a bath, for bathing in.

Now, one day Amber and Sarah (because they were kind and sweet and thoughtful) to save their Mum & Dad the bother of bathing them, and save using the bath, and save using soap, decided that they would short circuit the routine and bath in the bucket. So they climbed into the full bucket and splashed and splashed and cleaned themselves so well. And their Mum and Dad were so happy.

Sarah and Amber loved Arthur the parrot and they gave him all his bestest food and they talked to him and made him happy.

And they loved Maxi, the little dog. They stroked her gently and tickled her tummy and gave her lunch and they made her very happy.

And they came to stay with their Gran and Grandpa and gave them hugs and sat on their laps and had breakfast with them and climbed into bed with them and brought their parents with them and made them exceeding happy.

They are true little princesses.

(And I must tell you a little secret – your Gran and Grandpa love you both very much)"

Aaaaaand they're off...

So. We finally made it!

At the time of writing there is less than a week to go till we leave again. (At the time of publishing I'm fiddling with an exciting GPRS connection in Sedgefield 10 days later...)

After grossly and fundamentally underestimating the amount of stuff to be done in switching off one life and heading directly for some kind of bardo before the next one “begins”, we find ourselves in an anticipated flux.

Getting onto the plane on Saturday was supposed to be more of a relief for me than it turned out to be. Cognitively I was expecting more of a halt than I experienced. Anyhow, it was a milestone, and now the lack of urgency, activity and the absence of an endless list of things to do is causing a stress of its own! Go figure.

The girls enjoyed the flight and handled it without problem. I think they are going to like travel. With a mom like Hayley the chances of them escaping this genetic preordination are slim indeed. It should aid their transition from a predictable life to the more nomadic one planned, although they have already made their first requests to sleep at home. We have some way to go yet!

Now… to Zim.

I have not felt any kind of kinship to this state for more than 20 years and being occasionally labeled a “when we” has caused me to patiently explain... over... and over... that there is nothing “when we” in me. Anything that was there died a very long time ago. Probably somewhere in the mid ‘80’s by which time you needed a complex system of taps and dials on the phone, or direct answer to prayer from God to get a dial tone. My sister, determined as she was to spend another hour on the phone began to uncover the code for achieving a dial tone and seemed to accomplish this feat after many hours of toil and endless experiment with different combinations of things including storming around like a thundercloud, banging the phone on the table and swearing at it in a manner that would convince a passer-by that the phone was indeed animate, could obey the explicit commands being given and would indeed burn for eternity. So, when I see the outcome of neglect and mismanagement about me I don’t feel anything but an occasional surprise that such backwardness is possible in a time such as ours.

Just for instance...

This is a tap:

Patently! While this seems like an obvious statement and one would be well justified wondering why I would waste valuable Internet space pointing it out. This tap is not all that it immediately appears though.

Permit me to tell you why...

It’s not that it differs anatomically from its kin in any way or that it has magical functions or anything of the sort. This tap is special because of the geography of its installation. Most people would quite reasonably, and probably unconsciously, assume on seeing the tap that it if you twist the spiky bit, the result would be a gush of the universal elixir. Naturally, this in turn depends on its connection to some kind of supply. Indeed, this particular tap is connected to a municipal water supply. What is interesting about this particular tap is that, according to an sms received from my mom in late November this chap has not been able to deliver on its anti-clockwise demands during the day since 8 August 2006.

No water during the day for 3 months. No water at all for large periods of that. By the way, there is no "fault" in the system, burst pipes and so forth, this is how water is supplied in parts of Zim.

Other interesting things – electric supply is subject to load shedding on a daily basis. If you thought that the winter of 2006 was amusing in the Western Cape, you'd be all laughed out if you lived on Bobs' plot.

Here you can expect to be regularly thrown off the grid according to a schedule of some kind.

Inflation here is around 1700% p.a. By way of illustration, if you have a Z$ 100 000 note in your wallet (about ZAR 400 at the parallel rate) it is physically losing close to 5% of its value every day. If you get paid 100k on Friday by the time Monday rolls around you have just shy of 86k left. The weekend cost you nearly 5 grand a day without you having to do a thing. Aint that magical? Disappearing money!

There are still some valuable things still here though hence our presence.

Not a bad place to spend a week though the scenery is great as always .

Many a pride of Charles Glass has been sunk in good company while taking this in... *sigh*

Bugs settling down to some Darles Chickens Another *sigh*