This afternoon I am invited, without my pimple, to attend a parent-teacher meeting at my daughter’s school. I am already preparing myself (little under-the-breath pep talks) to control the natural aggression that comes seething up my chest and threatens to burst from behind my teeth at any criticism of my child.  It’s not that I think she’s perfect (I do), and it’s not that I expect her to excel in every aspect of life (I don’t) but I expect her to get credit for effort and improvement. If we don’t applaud our children for trying, why should they? Often I think the teacher’s shortcomings are projected onto the child. The teaching profession is no longer a vocation or a passion for the majority of teachers, but a paycheck and discounted school fees for their own brats. My advice to teachers?  If you are telling more than one parent their child is ADHD – it may well be that the content of your lesson, or its delivery, is BORING.

I also think that our schools have forgotten the fundamental importance of play and rest. 5 year olds are not designed to sit still for 2 hours at a time, and boys and girls ARE very different. Children are robbed of their freedom, their natural exuberance, their curiosity, and their right to question everything (including the teacher’s right to lead them). I am dreading the day my son starts school; then the feathers are really going to fly! I received his acceptance letter yesterday, and attached were the rules and various avenues of discipline at the school’s disposal. Can you believe he would be punished if I forgot to sign and return his communications folder? If I decided to put a Coke in his lunch box, he would be penalized, possibly with detention. How does a 5 year old control these things? Oh, and if he INADVERTENTLY breaks something, he will be punished, and I suppose expelled if he did it on purpose?

Clearly that is why I am in such a strop today. And I’m getting angrier as I write. It’s nothing to do with my daughter’s teacher, but rather, with the school.  Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes. Whether everyone leaves the room alive, whether I am transformed into a red-faced harridan with spittle flying from my screaming mouth, whether my husband is spared the embarrassment of me losing my temper … so much responsibility to behave myself.

But someone once gave me fantastic advice – stick up for your child! If you don’t, who will?

Sinners is the story of three sex workers, who when business becomes slow, decide to exercise their entrepreneurial skills by harvesting sperm from unsuspecting men. Speaking to Zimbojam, Patrick Chasaya says he wrote the play after meeting a man who was traumatised after being abducted and raped by a gang of four women. The Herald’s review of the play titled ‘Explicit Sinners opens at Theatre in the Park’ implied that the actresses stopped just short of actually having sex on stage. I went with my wangu to get the male perspective on things. Although he had a good laugh during the play he was a little disappointed – it wasn’t as titillating as we had both been led to believe.

The play opens with each of the three protagonists describing how she became a sex worker. Chipo is the housewife whose husband left her without a penny, Samantha was raped at an early age by an unnamed relative, and Keresensia was orphaned and has to care for her younger brothers and sisters. The three women work on the same corner, watching and waiting for their male customers to show up. The actresses do an admirable job of drawing the audience into the play by treating them as customers, or in my case, hated competition. At one point, the police raid them. The youngest, Samantha services an officer in exchange for her freedom, while Chipo, who may be past her prime, is unable to negotiate and is forced to pay a fine.

Tired of scraping a living together especially as business is not going well, the three women hatch a plan to put their skills to better use.

The subject matter would have made excellent material for a tragicomedy, but ‘Sinners’ misses the mark. The skill of the actresses in bringing the characters to life cannot make up for their lack of depth and complexity. The script’s superficial treatment of the protagonists’ tragic back stories and circumstances detract from its comedic elements. It only glosses over the characters’ motivations for doing what they do in an attempt to lighten the subject matter.

The play picks up many interesting themes such as the long-term effects of child abuse, and the exploitation of sex workers by the police, but these are abandoned without warning or resolution. There are a lot of ironies too, like Keresensia being inspired by the Holy Spirit to harvest and sell sperm, or the trio praying before they embark on their enterprise, that are too under-developed to be fully appreciated. The play also ends abruptly, with the trio falling out in loud and emphatic disagreement about how the money they earned should be divided. At the end, we had a feeling that there should have been a message, but were unclear about what that message was.

It was refreshing to watch a play that wasn’t driven by a political or women’s rights agenda. It is not often that a story is told simply to be told in Zimbabwe. The playwright and director should be commended for trying to tackle such a difficult subject matter. It cannot be easy to walk the fine line between objectifying sex workers and turning them into victims. This play at least tries to depict them as real women with real problems.  Charity Dlodlo, Eunice Tava and Gertrude Munhamo portray Samantha, Chipo and Keresensia not as women who are at the mercy of men, but rather as women who show strength, resilience and even ingenuity in facing their difficulties. I believe that is something to be admired.

Over the weekend I was in town going around hardware shops looking for price quotations for building materials. I was looking for plumbing material, which Chitungwiza Town Council failed to provide me. After visiting the Chitungwiza Town Council offices on several occasions asking them come and connect water and waste disposal pipes at my place, I was finally told to buy my own pipes and pay the connection fee.

So I went around several hardware shops asking for price quotations in town. The most surprising thing was that, of the three shops I visited they had already adjusted prices for all the products on shelves in anticipation of the pay increase which civil servants had been promised. The previous day I had checked prices for the material I wanted to buy so there I was arguing with the shop assistant over the prices. So I moved to the next shop and it was the same story. Since it a was a Saturday I had paid little attention to the news headlines in daily papers only to be reminded by the shop assistant that the story of civil servants pay increase was the headline of the day. This got me interested so I rushed to grab one of the daily papers and it was on the front page “Civil servants get salary increment”. The interest I had about the article quickly faded just a few lines into the story when I read that government’s pay increase will give a $31 rise in the basic salary of the lowest-earning employee.

The culture of adjusting prices and overcharging, which was heavily experienced during the Zimbabwe dollar era, is still part of some unscrupulous business people in this country. But this time I guess the timing to make a killing was wrong because its only $31.

Upenyu’s writing resonates with many folks, and it is disturbing that such attitudes exhibited by the cop she mentions can still be found in the “locations,” many years into the age of enlightenment. A guy “grows up in the hood,” goes to varsity, and the chaps treat him as one they cannot “hang with” no more. A friend said it is important  for him  that “even though” he is pursuing an MA abroad, he can still come to the “hood” and hang out with the fellas and pass a calabash of opaque beer just like they did back in the day. It is important because it tells him that he has not changed. Obviously this self-consciousness is also for the benefit of childhood chums who have this thing in their heads and would not expect him to hang out with them simply because he has been out there getting an education. That’s how it is in the “locations,” “elokitshini,” kumarokesheni” as Winky D puts it.

That education makes you interpret “reality” – constructed or otherwise – differently is obvious despite of course there being some who think not, yet there are chaps who think because you do not see and interpret the universe through their lenses you are therefore placing yourself on a higher intellectual plane. Come to Bulawayo and just try and respond in English to a cop who addresses you in Shona! He expects you to understand him but not him you, and will tell you to your face “saka ndimi makafunda” (so you are the educated type!). I heard over the weekend a pirate taxi driver say to some student teachers from Hillside Teachers College: “phela abantu bengafunda bayahlupha” (educated people are troublesome) after they had asked him to drop them off near the college gate but claimed they did not have extra money (ZAR5) to pay for this convenience. It reminded me of the good old days in Zimbabwe when teachers were respected as part of the “educated middle class” but have over the years seen the profession being ridiculed because of poor salaries and working conditions.

Yet there are many more others who impose “erudition” on you. A few years ago, a friend’s wife asked me to tutor her on some subject I had no clue about, and her reasoning was that since I was at varsity therefore I had the knowledge therefore was supposed to assist her, thus went the logic. And yes she did not take kindly to my claims that I had no clue about what she was talking about: “if it was some salad chick you would have assisted her” – her exact words. And these are the folks who will be quick to remind you that you belong in the rut along with them so don’t imagine you are a better person because you went to varsity! Of course you wonder where the heck that is coming from? And that’s not to say anything about my wife who over the years had to deal with the whole neighbourhood as folks sought to be tutored on one subject or another, and woe betide her for claiming commitment to other issues. Why? Because she was at varsity! That’s just how folks view life, and that is where resentment of “privilege” and “education” is found in very generous servings. Like Upenyu says, you are expected to apologise even if you do not know what exactly you are apologising for.

Another friend who earned his PhD last year said to me he had learned to do things differently when we scoured the CBD looking for a decent joint where we could sit and catch up over a few beers. It was no longer about just seeing the neon lights of a pub and getting in, but being careful about the places one patronises. Thing is, he would be expected to hang around the corner with his old neighbourhood buddies, but you also have to imagine the conversation. He bought himself a decent home, and said to me, “when people see me walking and commuting, they will ‘say look at him, what did he bring from the Diaspora’!” He, like many returning or visiting from the Diaspora, would be expected to be driving and buying copious amounts of beer for old mates who still hang around the local “bottle store” waiting for anyone to buy them anything from a cigarette to beer, and hell, pilfer change from the money you give them to buy another round of beer!

That’s what we found older chaps doing back then when a childhood friend visited from Wenela or Goli, and they obviously left something for their younger brothers to emulate. Ah, this Diaspora and education thing, you have to be in the township streets to feel the pulse. It  is here where throwing in a few English words in the conversation is met with disgust because, as some put it, you are flaunting your education, you think you are smarter than everybody!

Perhaps Upenyu ought to say, “sorry, I’m not apologising!”

The Graduation Ceremony of students who got scholarships in the US under the US Student Achievers Program (USAP) was held yesterday. This event was a true personification of Ambassadors Ray’s latest book title, ‘Where you come from matters less than where you’re going”. It is true in the sense that students are academically talented with most of them being head boys and head girls in their former schools, but face financial challenges in furthering their education.  Some have lost both parents, others are heads of their own households and three of them are physically disabled. Despite such backgrounds USAP has afforded them the opportunity to study at top US colleges and universities including Harvard. This resembles the title of the Ambassador’s book; in that one day you may be somewhere great and tell a different story altogether.

The event was graced by the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai and Ambassador Charles Ray. The PM encouraged the students to exhibit the Zimbabwean characteristics of ‘hospitality and hard work’ and to return home. In that same vein the Ambassador urged the students to return to Zimbabwe with these words, “And do return. Zimbabwe needs you and your talent, your open minds and your news ideas, to realise its potential”.

It is interesting that only a few weeks ago, the government was being extolled by some incorrigibly optimistic watchers of the Zimbabwean crisis for “opening” up media space by licensing new publications and also calling for applications from prospective broadcasters. Media reform is one of the sticking points of the GPA and the GNU that it birthed, and one has to imagine the reluctance of the former ruling party to give in to the demands of its sleeping partners based, of course, on its own historic knowledge of how these “tools” were used in the hands of the “white enemy” back then.

Yet there is something about some “analysts” here who are always quick to see reforms in the making each time the unflinching Zanu PF lifts its finger to scratch itself. They imagine the party is about to move the mountain of political, economic, media or whatever reform demanded by progressive forces and other people of goodwill. Yet here we are this week being told yet again that some scribes from the alternative media have once again been made very reluctant guests of the police. The latest arrest of these journalists coincided with Webster Shamu telling a gathering of SADC journos that there are scribes who continue to do the bidding of Western and other forces, a line favoured by oligarchs when referencing the private media.

That Shamu does not raise a finger – even to scratch his head – about these continued arrests tells some he could well be colluding with the police, after all, the cops have publicly avowed their allegiance to his party! How else would “ordinary” Zimbabweans read into it? Is not ours a land filled with political conspiracies? You hear it in kombis, pubs and yes, newsrooms! One just has to listen to ZBC bulletins and the unstinting dressing down of Biti and Tsvangirai to get the gist of how the Minister of Journalists favours his own. Thus it is that it is apparent that anyone dreaming of reforms of any sort in this country as long as Zanu PF lives is surely indulging in an exercise that will only give birth to ulcers and migraines.