African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [124]
The hotel is old-fashioned, with an atmosphere that tells you it has been enjoying itself for decades. I hope that does not mean it is due for demolition. My bedroom is large and has four beds: a family room for a society that prides itself on having plenty of children. The others have large rooms too.
In the heart of this hotel is a patio, or court, part-covered, furnished with umbrellas for the sun. But the sky is grey: the long cold spell hasn’t given up yet. For a couple of hours we sit at a table that expands as people join us, friends and their friends, relations, aides and admirers acquired on previous visits of the Team. The courtyard is crammed. More blacks than whites, and many mixed groups. I know that while I have to note this, because of the past, everyone here has long ago got used to the easy mix of races. In fact a young woman–Persian by origin–tells me her generation are surprised at the racism of their elders. It is in this hotel, a local politician, in opposition to Mugabe’s government, holds court most evenings. People come to listen to him. He is famous for saying everything he thinks: in the years before the Unity Accord that was certainly a brave thing. But this is Matabeleland, I am reminded, this is the home of The Bulawayo Chronicle, the newspaper never afraid to challenge the government on corruption and inefficiency. People are proud that the only newspaper ‘everyone’ reads is in Bulawayo.
What I remember is that Bulawayo and Salisbury were always in competition. Salisbury said Bulawayo was commercial, crude, lacking in the graces. Bulawayo said Salisbury was boring, and ‘civil service’, respectable, snobby. Now Bulawayo is saying Harare is full of Chefs getting rich and the smell of bad money. Harare says Bulawayo is a backwater. To the outsider both cities seem to fizz with energy and interest.
Again and again people say how lucky I am to come to Matabeleland now. Everyone here is happy. First, because of the Unity Accord, and because Joshua Nkomo, their man, is an important man in government. Then, the drought is over, and last year was a good season and this year, too, it is raining well. If I had visited before the Unity Accord everyone would have been despondent and suspicious, people were afraid, and then it seemed the long drought would go on for ever.
Cathie tells me: ‘The Communal Areas where we will be in the next few days are poor, the poorest anywhere. Forget the money-fed areas around Harare. Yet people are full of energy, full of spirit, that’s what’s so marvellous. These women…it’s the women…they won’t let anything get them down. You’d think they have it so bad the guts would be knocked out of them. Don’t you believe it.’
In this court, and later around the table at supper, and, for that matter, anywhere where people talk, the same subjects come back and back. It is women everywhere in what is called the Third World who are changing things. If you want to get things moving, go to the women, say Aid workers who have been in a half a dozen countries. Sometimes you have to go along with what seems to be the infrastructure–men in power; but really, it is the woman. Why is it that poor women everywhere are taking hold of their lives like this? asks someone. No one replies: Why questions are not as interesting as the facts, as reports on how things are being done.
They talk about Aid, Aid money, exactly in the same