For many years now, you have been witnessing for us all
the strange process this Zimbabwean experience has been.
Your listening ensured that we never lost our voice
patiently and kindly assuring us
we are being heard and supported.

And there has always been the question
when do we begin to speak of the other side of this story?
when do we step beyond the fear of drawing unwanted scrutiny
and speak of the seeds that are being sown?

When can we name the women and men who fix the bodies,
and who run the websites,
who stand outside jails,
who take care of the orphans,
feed displaced and aids victims,
who sell vegetables on the side of the street to feed their children,
who write the records and take the pictures?

When is the turning point
when we walk beyond our fear?
and bring the invisible into the eye of the world
and speak of who we are and what we have been part of?

Zimbabwe’s story of resilience  has been built on the individual efforts of the Zimbabwean people who, in the face of un-edited punishment, have stood their ground.  Within this chaotic process there has been a slowly growing pattern, a chaordic movement, small circles of creative action.

The Tree of Life circle has decided that it is time to tell our story and to speak of the new forest emerging from the trees planted during these years of chaos.

This is only one of many stories. There are circles of resilience and hope built around health clubs and herb gardens and football clubs and churches throughout Zimbabwe, and they have all played their part in the bigger picture.  Beneath the darkness, a strong light shines and we would like you to see it.

The planet tipped north
celebrating equinox in a pink flush at dawn and dusk

Already the sun sends shafts of rainbows through the crystal on the A-frame
and cold fingers reach out and touch
my cheek in the early morning the manikins have returned to the seed holder
the bush babies to the fruit tray
the tall summer  grasses begin to fall

It has been some time now, to find words to speak of the present

We watch our own chaos with a strange compassion
who else could understand all is the same all is different

The dictator still waves his fist
takes the last farms with brutal violence
arrests the opposition
controls the media
the army
the police

and the new ministers drive their Mercedes
in a show of wealth
in the face of the people who voted them in

there is no currency below 1 US$ (R10)
change is bartered and bargained
given in eggs or sweets

SADC tells the west to pay for our salvation
despite the evidence of continued abuse and corruption

Noel and his small family have been evicted from their one room
Wadzi and her children have been evicted from their cottage

rents are exorbitant as landlords try to make a living out of small rooms
hundreds of dollars beyond what is possible
dignified and hard working people back on the street – without jobs

the intensity and immediacy in which life unravels
shakes the system

so we wait in a stunned silence
still with dignity
where there should be devastation
still with humour
where there should be despair

counting the rainbows

Our team got together for the first time since Christmas in
Zimbabwe to share our stories
where had we been?
what had we done?

3 funerals . . .

R’s nephew drowned in the sea at Mozambique
2 and a half weeks to negotiate borders and bribes and restrictions
before the family could lay him back in the earth.

Stories of visits to the mortuary
– without electricity,
filled with bodies
waiting for relations to get together enough money
to pay the cost to retrieve them
searching for loved ones through maggots
the indignity brought into our lives and deaths.

Of relations back from Namibia
visiting their home in Buhera for Christmas
the purchase of a cow and the sharing of this feast with the community
their first meat for months.

Of people resorting to the old foods of the ancestors
leaves of black jacks and pumpkins and forgotten fruit from indigenous trees

Of one desperate family exchanging their young daughter
for seed – to survive another year

Of green fields in some communities who had received seed donations
exploring new ways of dry planting with cow dung and compost
in the absence of fertilizer
and of their determination to never starve again
drawing people into shared work.

Of an estranged family together for the first time in years
old connections, broken and remade
the slaughter of a goat in celebration
the joy of belonging.

Riding the edge of the wave with the immediacy of the moment
and keenness of attention
learning of survival when our reactivity or despondence is our worst enemy.

This is the grey time of unending ‘coping’
and waiting until we can dance again.

For the past few weeks it has been impossible to buy air time for cell phones
- Christmas without communication due to some incomprehensible banking/foreign currency/political manoeuvre

So the new queue to get air time for cell phones in January was enthusiastically long
with everyone waving the ‘now legal tender’ – US$ notes – to activate connections.
We smile at one another in hopeful expectation
One young man gives us a rundown on the names and lives of all the Presidents and Generals pictured on the US$ notes
‘I am a history scholar’ he says
the queue nod encouragingly
Another explains that today our dollar has reached a new low
(1 to the power of 19, I think)
‘that many! for one US$!- imagine what the equivalent value to 100 US$ looks like’
we chuckle together at the unfathomable quality of it all

A tired and gentle voice of the teller breaks through our exchange
‘We do not accept crumpled or creased notes’
(pointing at a hand written sign stuck to the wall)
we all look from the sign to our pictures of Presidents
with creased and crumpled faces
Franklin and Grant and Lincoln
our path to freedom
old and used
and disallowed

‘well’, the woman behind me explains
‘all that is needed is a quick dip in Sta-soft*
and a warm iron – just like new’

‘Sta-soft?’
the two young men look at one another
here, finally, is something they didn’t know

* Sta-soft is a fabric softener

What outrage?
as you watch your much loved children starving
as your family is beaten and killed

What outrage?
as there is no seed for this years planting in Zimbabwe
as the schools are closed because the teachers are not being paid
or there is no phone
or electricity
or water

Along side this barrage of abuse
this abandonment of lives
this huge dying
there is a place on the other side of outrage
where we search for ways to keep our lives and our spirits intact

the welcome first rains feel like the unshed tears
held back for so long

Last week, Tendai wept in the circle
telling of her abduction and gang rape by 15 men
kept for 2 weeks
now with STD and HIV her life has changed forever

we sat whilst she cried

but at the closing circle she sang
and drummed and danced
and sang and sang . . .

On the other side of outrage
where we begin to consider what really matters
and look at other ways of survival
there are ripples of love and forgiveness and sharing
that emerge uncalled for

what space is this?
where the resilience of spirit
can still be sung?

speaking in many tongues
beyond outrage about who owns our words
we sing of a spirit that is still ours

Since Monday, queues that are miles long
have filled the streets outside banks
waiting to draw the maximum allowed – equivalent to US$2 per day

People are unable to buy food
or to get to their jobs or their rural homes

3 million Zimbabweans
- families that were once self sufficient robust farmers
now stand on the edge of starvation

these are our people
skilled and powerful
gentle and loving and patient and resourceful beyond belief
brought to their knees

. . . and still they battle for power at the top

from in here,
we begin to understand
that this is not just about saving lives
- for we may not be able to do that

in the last 2 weeks I have sat in circles and listened to stories
from faces grey and worn and desperate
for their parents
and wives and children
out in the rural homes without food
‘eating fruit and roots of indigenous trees’
‘what will become of them?’
‘we have no news’

the evidence is already before us
as we begin to hear of the deaths

we are outside the limits of our power to help

what is it that we are able to learn at this time?
apart from bearing witness
to how amazing we are
as we negotiate this space
with dignity and respect
and wait for our voice to be heard
above the clamour for power and wealth

waiting to emerge from old wounds
wearing new wings of hope