Zimbabwe’s no playground
Greenwood Park is just a stone’s throw away from State House where Mugabe lavishly welcomes an array of visiting dignitaries, albeit a dwindling one and most often the usual suspects. For many years Greenwood Park represented respite for kids and adults living in Harare’s central Avenues district where living a life in apartment buildings can bring on claustrophobic misery. I know this because I spent most of my adolescence growing up in a flat on Montague Avenue, which later became Josiah Chinamano.
Lately I’ve been spending some time in the Avenues again. The gorgeous, sequined skirted commercial sex workers that trawl the Avenues at night brighten up the place and provide a welcome distraction to the piles of garbage mounting in alleyways, street corners and even in some of the front gardens of apartment buildings. A small exaggeration perhaps, but thinking of the “dinosaur” sized shark that recently made short work of the Zimbabwean in the sea in Cape Town, last night I saw a dog sized rat sprint across the road in front of my car.
I don’t brake for rats.
My tour of the Avenues has also taken in Greenwood Park. The other day I included it on a run I was doing. The grass is knee high, rubbish litters the place, the swings and other pieces of playground equipment are broken. But still, irrepressibly playful kids try and find some fun messing around on what’s left. There are still a few worse for wear park benches around and about but their occupants are a mixture of the unemployed, the hungry, the sad and those that are just plain scary. How safe are these kids I wonder?
Mugabe’s motorcade regularly sweeps by this playground whipping up very little dust in its wake because 7th Street is one of the few well maintained and groomed streets in our capital. Go figure – it leads to the little man’s mansion. Mugabe would do well to ask the battalion of street sweepers who keep his immediate periphery neat and tidy to expand their mandate and make good this park that was meant to provide a safe solace for the people of the Avenues.
But the majority of Zimbabweans, myself included, don’t expect much from Mugabe besides more misery while he and his cabal of chefs continue to look the other way.
Presidential Motorcade
Masi, Jamu and I
wave our hands to the President.
The windows of his limo are tinted
and are always closed.
The motorcade travels fast
but Masi and Jamu say
the President waves back.We wave our hands
every time the motorcade passes
in the hope it will stop
to drop a coin.But we hear
the chauffeur does not know
the ‘Give-way’ sign
nor the ‘Stop’ sign.- Julius Chingono, Zimbabwean poet