African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [127]
It is still quite early. If you wake at five or six, with breakfast at six-thirty, it can seem the day is half done when it is only eleven. It is grey, it is chilly, and there are puddles. Bulawayo, however, has a festive and even frivolous look, because sky-blue lamp posts adorn every street, so you expect them to have holiday garlands or coloured ribbons.
One woman with us represents yet another organization, but it is not possible to keep count of them all. Long before Liberation she married a black man–she is white–brought up his children, and has gone through all the harassment that went with this situation. She says that bad old Southern Rhodesia has quite gone.
We are on the road north, which would lead to the Victoria Falls if we stayed on it. It was the road where, in 1982, Terrorists kidnapped tourists and then killed three of them. No one remembers this now. The bush on either side is fresh, young, glossy, full of juices. Last time I saw Matabeleland everything was brown and dusty, which is its usual condition. At every turn of the road there are fat goats and cattle. The goats wander about apparently untended, the cattle are behind the fences: these are Commercial Farms, and so the bush is whole and healthy. No game, though: plenty of animals, but they are cattle, goats or donkeys. Animals are animals, I try to tell myself. But sometimes a pair of guineafowl run beside the road, or partridges. At this time of the year the guineafowl are not in flocks, they are pairing, but someone remarked that last year, up near the Wankie coal mine there were so many guineafowl it seemed the earth was moving: there were hundreds of them.
THE GARDEN
People talk about the garden as they did about that potent little shed near Harare. Something about this garden delights them all, but they say, Wait and see. Half way to the Falls we turn off into a Communal Area. In spite of all the rain the bush is thin and scrubby, semi-desert, with low dry hills. Suddenly, in this apparently infertile waste, there is a large lush garden. Out we all pile, and stand together to listen to the story of this garden…we stand shivering, for you simply do not take jerseys to baking Matabeleland and none of us is properly dressed.
All around here are extremely poor villages. On the radio there was a government-inspired talk about ‘projects’, that is, how villages can improve their situation. A garden was mentioned. But this is dry country, with pale Class Four soil…but there was a worked-out gold mine, which had a borehole…
This time it was men and women together who started the garden. It is growing tomatoes, onions, cabbage, mealies, carrots, spinach: you would never believe this soil could do it.
Twenty-four women and nine men invited anyone interested to join the new co-operative. Women work harder than the men, but the men help them, because the family eats better, both because of the garden and what it earns.
We stand looking at half a dozen women working, bent double, knees straight: impossible to work like this, you think, but they do, for hours. Their feet are bare, because of the mud.
When this garden was started there was only poor dry soil. An Extension Worker came and told them how to make irrigation trenches, and contour ridges, and a fence around the whole garden because of the goats. This commune is now closed to new members, but if there was money for a new borehole, another garden could be started. Now everyone wants to start a garden. The whole district is improved because of this one garden.
How are they to get a new borehole? The village representatives men, and women, are hoping the Aid representatives among us will help them.
One of the women with us, representing a modest, not one of the rich, international organizations, was asked for money a couple of years ago, and offered one hundred dollars–about thirty pounds. The man talking for the village is reproachful, if humorous. ‘One hundred dollars,’ he says. ‘What could we do with that?’
The Aid woman says, ‘But