The So Typically Zim Concise Guide to Zimbabwe: Situations never to let yourself get into

I noticed that this blog is getting a fair amount of visitors from outside the continent. This gave me an idea: why don’t I act as a tour guide to this beautiful country? With that spirit, I took the liberty of compiling a short list of the situations you should do your best to avoid when you get into Zimbabwe.

Being in an over crowded kombi on a long distance trip between two…um…strong women: one who just won’t stop indulging in every purchasable food item at all stops along the journey, and another with a restless, noisy child on her lap who screams for all the food items the first lady eats. By the time you get to your destination, you are drowning in bananas, Cascades, oranges, infant screams, mealies, $1 for two creamed biscuits…and the like.

In a queue at the bank right on teacher's pay day. This is the perfect time to start reciting the months of the year in Shona. By the time you get it right, the queue could be noticeably shorter. If you are based in a major city though, you might want to count down from 100 to 1 instead, also in Shona.

Seated on the couch in the evening: happily skipping through TV channels (or alternatively, skipping the long boring extended parts of an ‘African movie’ to get to the crazy exciting parts). Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, the thing is, just when you get to your favourite programme, this is just about the time ZESA  decides to pull a fast one on you and leave you in total, electricity-less and extremely frustrated darkness, wishing you hadn't turned on the darn TV in the first place.

Get caught between two rival political parties without a membership card of either. That could be a deadly situation. Now this is a dilemma for people who prefer to remain apolitical for a number of reasons: which might be religious reasons, moral or just the simple use of common sense.

Riding a train. If you a romantic, you might have thought this is a novel way to explore the country. Don’t. The average Zimbabwean railway carriage is older than the ages of all the Zimbabwean cricket team members added up together. You will get to your destination, you just won’t know when.

Attend a soccer match where the home team is bound to get a good whacking…and the team tops the league table….and you are supporting the away team. If you do insist though, then make sure you sit yourself near the exist, and you are fit enough to be able to run very fast.

That concludes my list: which is short enough to prove this is a great country to be in. If you are able to avoid these situations, then guaranteed, you will definitely enjoy your stay in this beautiful country. See you when you get here!

Chronicles of a Kombi Crew

When I still in crèche, I wanted to be a bus conductor. The thought of spending the whole of my working life riding up and down the country thrilled me, especially considering these guys never had their moms screaming at them to sit down when the bus started moving. Of course, I changed my mind ages ago. In Primary School I decide to aim higher - I wanted to pilot a plane.

I hardly think today’s kids ever dream of being conductors or drivers. They all want to be Akons and Shakiras (you should attend any kindergarten party to see the type of music they are ‘whining’ to). Apparently, this profession has lost appeal even in the feeblest of minds.

However, a recent discussion I heard in a kombi made me spare a thought for the people in this industry. It was invoked by a woman who tactlessly cared to comment that this profession, compared to a number of other jobs, wasn’t all that hard to do. The kombi conductor and driver didn’t take this lying down: they decided to defend their livelihoods with only two, but well articulated points.

The first point brought forward was that the most difficult jobs in the world involved dealing with the public…and a kombi crew is high up there in the customer service sector. You get to be yelled at by a number of people letting off steam from their own personal problems, and you get to do an awfully lot of yelling back at people who fail to perform the basics of riding on a kombi.

Take, for example, the guy who gets into a kombi, pulls down an ‘aisle seat’ before the back seat gets filled and sits there. I’ve seen it happening myself and I got to say, it doesn’t make any sense unless you intend to pay for all the empty spaces behind you. Then there is the guy that gets in, waits for the kombi to fill up, pulls out his brand new G-tide and starts playing music full blast, impairing other passengers' attempts at conversation, and even drowning out the car radio. Wouldn’t that just give you a headache?

The second point involves the long hours put in by most kombi crews. This particular kombi crew stated that they wake up at around 4.a.m and usually drop of the last customer close to 9.p.m after an exhausting day…and we are talking 7 days a week. The conductor probably gets the worst of it since he has to awkwardly hang at the door for the duration of the journey. This can be particularly torturous in a small kombi and is probably going to create a new health disorder,  ‘Curved Back Syndrome’ or something.

The long working hours also mean these guys have no social life. The conductor stressed this by saying that he doesn’t even drink anymore since he would simply doze off on the bar counter before the first drink. He woefully added, “This other day, I held my 8 month old child and she cried, she didn’t know who I was.” Tragic, really.

Just a glimpse into the day of a kombi crew. I am not saying you should start teaching your children to want to be kombi drivers and conductors when they grow up. I am just encouraging you all to spare a thought for the humble kombi crew next time you are commuting.