Pots, bottles and broken promises
Dear Family and Friends,
I am writing this letter with the Constitution of Zimbabwe open in front of me. Outside on the road I can hear a man calling out: “kunama poto” (fixing pots) as he walks around the neighbourhood. A young man, in his late twenties, he has a small blue and grey rucksack on his back and carries a gas welder everywhere he goes. This young man’s skill is fixing holes in cooking pots: 20 US cents for welding a small hole; 50 cents for a bigger hole and $1.50 for a broken handle.
I page through the Constitution and for a long time get stuck on the first half of the first sentence in the Preamble: “We the people of Zimbabwe, united in our diversity by our common desire for freedom, justice and equality…” . Such grand words give such hope before you’ve even begun and leave you staring wistfully out the window at the gorgeous blue sky, golden grass and deep shady trees.
Another man goes past; riding a bicycle he rings his bells and calls out: “bottles.” He buys old bottles, paying a few cents for empty beer and cold drink bottles or swopping your empty bottles for a few of the goods he has on the front carrier of his bicycle that day: fresh eggs, small packets of biscuits, bags of sweets and chewing gum. Calculations are done with a stick in the sand on the ground outside your door and once both parties are happy, bottles are loaded into a crate on the back of his bicycle and off he goes.
While one man sits on the dusty ground fixing holes in pots and another buys old bottles for a living, I go back to the open Constitution on my desk because I know that something very sad is going on in the capital city.