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March 18, 2002

Mealie-meal
by HS

Arriving home from the long journey of many nights. I am greeted at the door by sekuru. He grins his simple timeless smile of welcome. 85 years of knowing what matters and what doesn't lights his eyes with peace. He asks me did I bring some mealie meal from South Africa. My smile does not cover my shame. I brought him chocolate. He says he should have phoned to ask. We both know he never would have. A wider heart than mine would have known.

Next day, I take my inadequacy on a mission. The hunt begins. Many shops just laugh when I ask. I pass a delivery truck. It hasn't even parked and the people are climbing up. Trying to pull the covers off the hopelessly small lump of bags. Supplies desperately inadequate for the gathering mob.

I drive past and go to Borrowdale. In the while tiled new shop, the shelves stretch for miles laden with bounty. I ask :"When are you expecting meal". They don't know. There is a queue stretching miserably out of sight around the side. No, they don't know when the delivery is coming. The last delivery was last week. Every day since then some have got up to join the queue. At 7 pm - another day no delivery – they go home again.

In the store the price list for mealie meal stands above a shelf filled with cat food.

Mealie meal $374 for 10 Kg

Whiskers $999 for 1Kg

On the oil shelf normally filled with vegetable oil at $141.81 at bottle stands olive oil imported from Europe, over a thousand dollars a bottle. Only the milk fridge looks sparse – a few packets of lacto in on a large aluminium plateau. I survey the shelves from the corner by the milk, grateful for a small gap in the illusion of plenty. Close by attendants are briskly moving packets of imported rice $525 a kg to cover the space left where the sugar used to be. I want to leap in front of the empty shelf and yell "STOP"

Stop filling our empty shelves with things people can't buy.

Stop hiding our hungry brothers, patiently waiting in a fruitless line, round the corner out of sight.

Let us sit together on the spotless white floor, all of us in front of the barren shelves and rock from side, doubled over with grief for a world where there is not enough. Let the "lack of" - tower over us as we sit in the hunger and the emptiness of our hearts. Let us hold our meanness and cry for a world where sharing is important only to parents of small children with many toys. Can we begin to dream a different world? A world where every one has enough. What does enough mean to me? What is too much, what would be not enough? Enough what? Food, tolerance, shelter, giving a shit, hope, trust, meaning, freedom, compassion, empathy, listening, hearing, looking, seeing, holding, helping, not running away from, truth speaking, allowing, being, standing in full heart, grace, openness, love, friendliness, being willing, letting go.

Where is my territory – what am I surrounded by in my world? Do I belong here? What is the country that I am willing to fight for, die for? Do I live there? What do I really believe in, is it urban, modern, nuclear family, money, security, comfort, western commercial world? Is it freedom, keeping my options open, adventuring, pleasuring, learning, knowing, being big, being small? Do I believe in the right to choose my washing powder from 50 brands. Do I believe in apples all year round, kept alive in great fridges. What is mine and what belongs to the great wolf of history and culture? Am I willing to lose my hand to bind the wolf, like the warrior Tyr binding Fenris the great wolf of Nordic mythology knowing he could not and should not be killed. Victory through sacrifice. Do I want real change with out having to really change?

I leave ineffective, floundering .I leave having plucked a heartful of ripe questions from the well of wanting. My grasping wants to seal them with answers and pack them away. Through the emptiness of my hunger, they start to rise and fall on the tide of my life.

With the election result a great river of broken expectations floods the land. More questions sprout in the fertile land of our grieving. What is my place in the divine blue print for Zimbabwe?

HS
Harare
Zimbabwe

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