Tracey stands up, saying she will leave you to settle in. You are about to ask Ma’Tabitha to take the bags to the bedroom when you remember your arrival on the other side of town in Gloria.
“Bring the rest,” you say when you have picked up as much as you can carry.
“It is no problem, madam! I will carry them!” Ma’Tabitha smiles and insists you relinquish your load.
Pedzi, who had been the receptionist at the agency, is the receptionist-cum-typist-cum-project-officer at Green Jacaranda Safaris. She comes round the receptionist’s desk to give you a hug on the day you begin. She is genuinely pleased to see you and confides she cannot keep up with the workload as the organization expands. You hug her back. After this moment of intimacy, you stand apart, look each other up and down, and declare how well and beautiful and marvellously styled the other looks. You disclaim the compliment, while Pedzi, on the other hand, pleased, says, “Thank you!” After this moment of reunion, she motions you to a minimalist, post-colonial Zimbo-chic wrought iron and leather chair. Asking you, with professional politeness, to wait so that Tracey can show you around, she speaks softly into the intercom, in a low-pitched business voice. You remember how none of the clients at Steers et al. ever forgot that voice and sometimes called the agency just in order to hear her speak.
Tracey comes through immediately. Laying an arm round your shoulders, she asks whether you have settled in over the weekend, then begins a tour of the premises.
“It came to me while I was at the agency,” she confides, leading you into the interior. “I was in this terrible place where I couldn’t reconcile what I was doing with what I believed in. Making more money for people with so much they didn’t need more at one point stopped being all that fulfilling. Honey Valley, Blue Train,” she says, ticking off the accounts she worked on. “Afro Sheen. That one did it. It was like getting people to pay for something instead of getting something from the product. But I loved what I was doing, the variety, the people, the buzz, everything. So I started reading around and thinking about it, and that’s when I came up with ecotourism!”
Your boss holds the swing door from the reception into the business area open for you.
“This way we can sensitize people to and advocate against climate change at the same time as we’re doing business,” Tracey explains, brimming with the enthusiasm with which she did everything, from sending electric shocks up frogs’ legs in the biology lab at Sacred Heart to sitting in on a campaign recording. Your boss’s excitement ignites your own dormant appetite for adventure. Savouring a sense that this office is the perfect place for you, you are confident you will achieve more success than you did at the convent and advertising agency. It is small and safe, a sheltered community in which you will garner recognition for work well done, and with this acknowledgement will finally come the upward mobility you are so hungry for.
“We can actually show our clients what the change in the weather is doing to the most vulnerable while they enjoy a normal safari. Green Jacaranda Safaris is the first NGO to come up with the concept,” continues Tracey proudly, leading you up a narrow hall that has no window. You are disappointed that your new workplace is not as lavish as the advertising offices had been. You are, however, pleased to be part of a proper establishment and not obliged to improvise in a run-down house like your cousin must.
“Our edge is that we’re forward looking, visionary. We don’t bring people in from Europe to workshop our locals. We’ve got a unique product, maximizing what we’ve got on the ground. It’s like adding value to our weather. Everyone loves it. Zimbabwe’s always going to be here. People are always going to want great weather. In principle, it’s our one definitely sustainable resource. Climate tourism is the next big thing. There’ll be dozens of ventures like ours in five years’ time, but we’ll have this country, and if things go the way I intend, even all of southern Africa, covered.”
Your boss indicates a room to the right with a nod. Remarking, “That’s the boardroom,” she opens the door.
The longish, rather narrow space faces Jason Moyo Avenue to the north. The city council has made an effort to keep this part of the Central Business District, which everyone calls the CBD, presentable, since the old five-star Thomas Hotel, visible from the boardroom’s far window, stands in the next block. The central park, renamed Africa Unity Square from Cecil Square soon after Independence, with its paths arranged in the pattern of the British flag, which is green and clean enough for people to lounge on the grass, lies across the way from the hotel. Looking out at this view, you enjoy a welcome sense of security.
Tracey leans against a windowsill. “The rents down here aren’t what they used to be. That’s good,” she says. “We had to soundproof it. Now we’ve done that, it’s fine for our purposes.”
On your way out, your heart sinks as you catch sight through the other window of another Zimbabwe, whose heart is the Fourth Street Bus Terminus. People are moving in from the rural areas. The migration is swelling the terminus, distending it toward your offices. The city council, skilfully deploying avoidance strategies in preference to planning, is issuing transport licences to numerous combi owners in an attempt, it is said, to prevent the snaking queues of people becoming so desperate for transport that they riot. With the increase in travellers, in the terminus, and the roads around it are developing into markets. Women and adolescent boys sell airtime, vegetables, mazhanje and matohwe fruit, which are not stocked in supermarkets, and cheap Chinese biscuits, almost to the Green Jacaranda block doorstep. The city council has abandoned cleaning in favour of other pursuits. A pall of decaying leaves, pods, plastic wrappers, and peels is heaped at every corner. Tracey tells you she pays one of the vagrants twice a week to pile rubbish from the overflowing bins in the nearby sanitary lane and burn it. Turning your back to the view, you admire the dining suite, which is of the same post-colonial Zimbo-chic design as in the reception, that serves as boardroom furniture.
“We’ll move one day,” grins Tracey. “For the moment, this place serves its purpose. Our corporate values are investment, building the future, not wasting it. I get to put funds into the programme instead of paying those guys who’ve taken over the upmarket buildings. If I were a donor, Tambu, I wouldn’t put a cent into today’s development aid bling!” She looks proudly at the table and chairs. “Everything’s one hundred percent local. The proper boardroom fixtures will be too, when we get them.”
You walk back into the hall. Tracey gestures at a door and tells you, “That will be your office.”
“Space to swing the proverbial cat,” you say with a chuckle, peering inside.
Tracey gives you a look and says, “That’s the idea.”
The room is separated from the boardroom by a tiny space, which turns out to be an extremely orderly stationery cupboard.
“Loos,” Tracey waves at two doors on the left. “Did you read that article about the city’s water reticulation system in last week’s Clarion? Apparently Harare doesn’t have a reticulation system anymore because the old one rusted away. That’s what’s causing the water problems. At least partly. You know, like the cholera Pedzi said they had in Mabvuku. And goodness knows where else they’re not telling us about. Chitungwiza, I bet! We’re going backward, Tambu. Peasants, serfs, warlords, running sewage. It’s so Middle Ages! So I put in a shower as well, for all those low-pressure days. It makes everyone feel a little more comfortable. So, in principle it’s a good investment.”
Forecasting that the politicians will keep the water supply to the Central Business District functioning in order not to jeopardize their own affairs, Tracey asks what you think about the disintegrating service delivery in the city. You respond that with the rate of change being so fast, it is difficult to form an opinion. To your relief, Tracey lets this go and proceeds down the passage to a nook at the end where a sink, hot plate, fridge, and cupboard have been installed to make a kitchen.
“And this,” she smiles proudly, turning from the alcove
after she has pointed out all the appliances, and returning to a door she had passed, “is where I do the things that are important for my soul.”
Inside, your boss settles behind a mukwa desk and gestures for you to take a seat on a chair done up in leather upholstery that softens a frame of the same softly glowing wood.
“Welcome, Tambu, to Green Jacaranda Getaway Safaris, the only exclusive ecotourism service on the whole continent. Which we happen to have thought up right here. There’s so much we could do for this country. In this country.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know if we ever will. The odds seem so much against everything. You know what, Tambu? You and I will have to make a plan.”
Skirting this invitation to engage, you tell your boss how delighted you are to have an opportunity to serve her pioneering establishment.
When you have finished, she says, “Here,” and passes a brochure across the desk.
“This time I want an answer. Tell me truly what you think.”
Your boss’s demand for another opinion so soon is frustrating; it is absurd even that Tracey should ask for truth now, so early, when you have not had time to weigh anything.
“Think of it like bouncing ideas around,” Tracey smiles. “The way we used to do at the advertising agency.”
“I see there is a website,” you say, endeavouring to appear familiar with the technology and hoping you sound professional. “I would like to have a look at it first. To connect everything I’ve seen and that I will be observing and learning in the next few days.”
“We don’t have the billboards here,” your boss tells you. “Our agents distribute those overseas. We haven’t started offering the tours locally yet. Everyone has a kumusha, although, in principle, you never know—the townspeople—I’ve been thinking of doing something for children. One day maybe. But our clients are from Sweden, Denmark, some from Germany. Places like that. Some Spanish and Italians. The government’s working on the Chinese, which promises to be a great market, but, it’s all bilateral with the Asians, you know. Looking east. Surely you’ve heard and can tell me the implications of that?”
You nod noncommittally, trying to recall the phrases in the newspapers you browsed through occasionally at your cousin’s.
“The Chinese are interested in governments, not people,” continues Tracey. “That being the case, we can’t get to them, especially given our funding sources. So in principle it’s your Europeans. That’s an established market so, for the time being, we can’t change our continent’s ‘single singular thought.’ Nature, which naturally also means weather. Sun. As time goes on and things get worse or better, we’ll strategize for the next phase.”
You hand the brochure back.
“The thing is to consolidate. I want us to get to the point where we’re running along sustainably. Then we can start shifting the paradigm.”
Tracey turns the flyer over in her fingers.
Four women laugh up at her as a moment ago they beamed up at you. The bodies beneath the faces are wrapped in brightly patterned Zambia cloths. One woman kneels on the ground behind a clay water pot. Another stands beside the first, carrying her jar in her arms. The third one still has her vessel positioned on her head upon a head pad. She is not using her hands but balances it perfectly. The fourth has her bum out, arms spread, and one leg raised in some kind of dance. Behind them is a semicircle of pole and dagga huts.
“The world’s finest organic game,” the tagline reads. “Eat only what you dare to pick, kill, or catch … The ultimate eco—in African.” You know there is no such language as African, but you kept your expression constant as you read and continue to do so now.
Your boss gazes at each of the women in turn. “We didn’t want to use head pads,” she sighs, remembering the photo shoot. “But our kind of hair’s so slippery we had to go with it. You need good hair to work properly with those things. So”—she is apologetic—“these models are … well, since they in principle are our market, we just had to go with the pads.”
You nod and tell your boss that she had made the correct decision.
CHAPTER 16
You put a certain nagging wretchedness down to how much has slipped away from throughout your life. You are unable to stifle a recurrent anxiety that exasperates during your early days of employment at Green Jacaranda. Concerned not to let your newest opportunity float away, you are constantly on the lookout for handholds, like low-lying branches above a raging river, which you can grasp first to balance yourself and, subsequently, to heave yourself upward, which in this case means northward to the affluent suburbs that signal undeniable success. The environment in the building, however, depresses you, holding out not much promise that you are on track to meet the future you are chasing.
The only exception to the general air of discouragement that rests over the building comes from the shopfront enterprise on—surprisingly enough—the eastern, bus terminal side, which is run by a woman called Mai Moetsabi. You are amazed to discover that although she is not Zimbabwean, she presides over her establishment, the Queen of Africa Boutique, with admirable work habits. You arrive for duty at half past seven every morning to find Mai Moetsabi’s boutique doors already open. In the first part of the morning, she waves a welcome to staff arriving for work and later nods at all who go into the building on business. Her desk faces the entrance to her shop, allowing her to greet everyone entering throughout the many hours she is present. Displayed in flamboyant constellations throughout her store, Mai Moetsabi’s garments are of best Ghanaian wax print and Nigerian lace, offset by satins, shiny as the recently discovered diamonds of the eastern regions. She books seats on the new Air Zimbabwe flight to Beijing via Singapore in search of silks and trinkets. Shoppers are still going in and out with appreciative murmurs when you leave at five in the evening. The woman reassures you, for her success, although she looks sufficiently like you to pass as a woman from your village, is indisputable. Her achievement nods, yes, women like you can flourish. By the time you arrive at Green Jacaranda, Mai Moetsabi’s well-to-do, competent, and yet gregarious air has earned her, with grudging recognition that is not quite respect, with an inflection that stops short of affection, the same name she gave to her shop, the Queen of Africa.
Past Queen Moetsabi’s boutique, your office building veers into a passage. Down one side of this entrance loom unlit booths, where every individual’s ambition is partitioned into half a square metre. In these stands are desperately stocked, though seldom bought, phone cards, plastic jewellery, and traditional cures with added value in the form of plastic wrapping and shipping costs from East Asia.
Opposite the cramped stalls is a space that the mysterious proprietor of your building, who is whispered to be a serving cabinet minister, calls a studio. Here three aspiring young seamstresses—diplomas in dressmaking from the People’s College of Zimbabwe hung on the wall—bicker and scowl at each other. Sharing half a dozen tailors and two sewing machines to produce workmen’s overalls, layettes, and orderlies’ dustcoats in poly-cotton, their squabbling escalates into threats whenever a customer approaches and they tussle for business. You rarely see the same face in the studio twice. Visitors on tailoring errands, who always receive a gracious nod from Mai Moetsabi, are normally first-time customers, or people returning items they bought with complaints that the cut is asymmetrical or that seams are crooked. A shouting match generally erupts when this happens, for, rather than admit their mistakes, the young graduates search for segments of perfectly straight stitches on the returned garments, after which they fling insults at their clients.
The only other affluent-looking location in the building is the street front opposite Queen Moetsabi’s. You never venture into it, for its air is as grim and repelling as the Queen of Africa’s is inviting. There, under the impassive eye of a woman known to all merely as Sister Mai Gamu, two nervous copy typists committed, when you first arrived, handwritten CVs to two-page memory stores on secondhand electrical typewriters. “Is it on now?”
“It isn’t!” “It is!” “It’s gone!” the overwrought young women call to each other as the power supply surges and wanes, shouting so loudly in their frustration that people pursuing their affairs in the entrance hall laugh at them.
You learn, before your first month at Green Jacaranda is over, to keep clear of Sister Mai Gamu, and to pity the young women she employs when you catch a glimpse of them through the large glass windows, their faces to the wall, waggling plugs this way and that to coax their defective machines into working. One eye stone blue with cataract although she has not yet reached forty, Mai Gamu writes up larger orders and does the cash box. It is rumoured she is an incognito politician’s wife, at fifth or sixth far down the matrimonial ladder, hence her permanent expression of intent to commit grievous assault. To prevent such a scandal, the politician bought the building that Green Jacaranda Safaris is housed in and gave his wife the western shop front.
You meet the women who make up your office building’s community as you enter the building, in the lift and on the staircase when the lift is broken. From bits and pieces, spoken kindly enough not to raise any alarm in your mind at first, you discover Mai Moetsabi, whose commercial shrewdness you so admire, left her home in Botswana a few years after your own country’s independence in search of a freedom fighter her church in Francistown had sheltered in the nineteen seventies. Several of the women working in the building being single mothers and disappointed, a joke went round that the short foreign woman only smiled like that and was successful because she never found him. Rumours or none, the garments in the Queen of Africa Boutique shimmer and glitter like good omens of the new abundant life you have recently begun and are determined—at any cost—to hold on to.
In the second or third, in any case, no later than the fourth month after you commence employment at Green Jacaranda, there is a commotion on Jason Moyo Avenue below your offices. Mai Moetsabi had worked late the night before, not only creating a fetching new display in the storefront window, but also developing the theme in appealing ways throughout her shop floor. By midmorning of the following day, a group of youths had gathered on the pavement outside her shop. They are enthusiastic and keen, pointing out particular garments to each other, pressing their faces close to the windows and staring as though they are guests at a Paris catwalk. The one or two who have cell phones and money in them, SMS their “maFace.” The crowd keeps growing hour by hour. By lunchtime the window Pedzi opens to cool the reception lets a buzzing commotion from the street into the room.