A few of my favourite things

Hello there!

My sincere apologies for the radio silence… Life has been so busy lately. Ever since Easter, it felt like field work had started for real. With multiple interviews and group discussions on a day, transcription at all other times (including weekends and evenings), my days were monotonous and tiring: waking up at 6 am, leaving for field work at 8:30, a long drive to one of our sites (and a really uncomfortable one, depending on the roads), interviews until 2 pm, a long drive back, transcription till 18:30, making dinner, bathing and finally going to bed at 21:00. But all the hard work has been incredibly rewarding: because of our dedication and hard work, field work ends 1 month early! I was supposed to pack up on May 25, but I’ll be leaving Chimanimani on April 25 instead and I’m flying home on the 28^th. I am, of course, a little sad to leave Zimbabwe, but because Chimanimani is such an isolated place, I am really looking forward to the company of my family and friends. Sadly, I have no money to travel. Zimbabwe is expensive and as an individual, it is next to impossible to go to any sites that are worthwhile. I will undoubtedly come back in the next 2 years though. Friends and family who want to join and who are in for some amazing national parks are more than welcome to come with me, Zimbabwe won’t disappoint you!

I will share the main outcomes of my research on my next (and last) blog post, but right now I am in the mood for something happy and would therefore like to write about some of my favourite moments during field work…

Snake Guy

When I had dinner with my team yesterday and asked them their favourite moment of field work, my research assistant Tapiwa and driver Washington did not hesitate a single second: it had to be Snake Guy. For a moment, I grimaced: how could the most annoying person we have come across simply be one of your favourite things about field work? But I got to admit: while being in the company of Snake Guy was distressing, he also gave us many good laughs and enough gossip material for our long drives back to Chimanimani Town.

We met snake guy in late March. He had come to one of the recruitment sessions and wanted to be interviewed. We had just had an interview with another man, who mainly seemed to be lying about the amount of household chores he performed, and so I was a bit iffy about interviewing another guy, but I also realised it would be weird if I talked to women only. On our first encounter with Snake Guy, he pointed to the bushes along a narrow dirt path that led to his homestead. “There is a big snake there,” he said. “It smells like potatoes”. He then started telling us about a green mamba that chased him a year ago (all while we were walking on the exact same path where his harrowing story took place).

The interview with Snake Guy was simply horrendous. It was an hour’s monologue about things that were totally irrelevant to my research. He went, for example, on about the entire building history of the houses that were washed away during Cyclone Idai, how much he hated the Headman of his village because he spent more time being drunk than appeasing the spirits that would make it rain, and had an entire rant about how the generation that was born from 1995 onwards doesn’t know how to behave. I was born in 1995 and at that moment I was like, we need to get out now! Like the other guy we talked to, Snake Guy bragged about how he and his wife shared all household duties and that he was a great cook. He had, after all, learnt to cook at age 8 from a woman in Machongwe.

After an hour we managed to get out and hoped we would never see him again. My team and I only suffered during the hours we had to put into transcribing that awful interview, which was next to useless. But this week, when we were starting our focus group discussions with the last group of girls, two girls showed up who had not been selected. Their parents had sent them (we all know this is because of the 5 USD people get when they participate, it turned out to be a huge incentive). While slightly annoyed, I didn’t want to send two girls away who were at the verge of an emotional breakdown (one almost cried when we told her we didn’t know if we had enough space), and so they stayed. The only issue was that their parents hadn’t signed any consent forms prior to the meeting, like the parents of the selected girls, so we had to find their parents. When we walked out, we were welcomed by Snake Guy. He was one of the parents who had instructed his daughter to come, even though she had not been selected. He was very keen to sign the form. And no, he hadn’t found the snake yet, but claimed the smell had gotten stronger.

On day 2, Snake Guy showed up AGAIN and waited by the gates of the school the entire time (2,5 hours), waiting for his daughter to bring him the cash. He started talking to poor Washington as if they were besties and asked him if he could please sit in the car and listen to the radio. Washington, who hated Snake Guy as much as Tapiwa and I, immediately lied that no strangers were allowed in the car and that he also couldn’t talk to anyone. He then had the brilliant mind to lie to Snake Guy that I am from Zambia when the man asked him if I was South African. Snake Guy bought that joke and I now have a new nationality.

My favourite thing about Snake Guy though is the fact that is daughter seemed to have an entirely different impression of her father than he had of himself. When I asked of any of their fathers ever cooked, she was the first one to scream: NO!!!Sadly, we didn’t see Snake Guy on the third day. We almost started missing him.

Sex for free

One of the things that came back many times during our discussion was the sexual exploitation of girls because of Cyclone Idai and drought. Especially directly after Cyclone Idai, many teenage girls were abused by soldiers, construction workers and even NGO staff (although all our adult participants without doubt blamed the girls for their abuse, as they are “loose” and “don’t know how to behave). Sex-for-food has become increasingly common here. Some girls find their own suitors. These are usually miners and majoni joni’s (local guys who work in South Africa and come back to display their wealth). Others, though, are encouraged to find suitors by older women in their family or are pushed towards a certain guy by their parents. These sexual relationships almost always lead to child marriage, as most girls get pregnant and are then expected to marry.

Our first interview heavily focused on teenage girls engaging in transactional sex. The lady we talked to seemed very distressed about the high rates of prostitution in her community after Cyclone Idai and was condemning the girls and women who offered their bodies to men. After the interview, my assistants and I had to meet some parents, so we asked Washington to drive her back home. When Washington returned an hour later, he looked a bit pale and was less talkative than usual. Turned out the woman had offered him sex, “we can pull over and do it now”, she had said. When Washington said he didn’t want to, she even offered it for free. Thank God, our car did not turn into a brothel, though. Needless to say, we all keep this story alive to tease poor old Washington.

When teenagers are nice

I really hate teenagers. I know I was one less than 9 years ago, but seriously, they are my least favourite people. Teenagers are mean, awkward to talk to and not interested in anything but their phones. You might wonder why on Earth I fought incredibly hard to include 21 teenage girls in my study. You see, Zimbabwean teenagers are radically different from their European counterparts. Zimbabwean teenagers are polite (a bit too polite, maybe), they shut their mouth when others are talking, and they laugh playing games. You won’t get any bored faces from them, only genuine interest. Many of the girls we talked to were quite shy, but they were all very committed to the research. Most of them consistently showed up 1,5 hours early and insisted on unloading the car and carrying our bags and equipment (they’d usually balance it on their heads). Weirdly enough, they were so polite that most of them wouldn’t even talk to each other while they were waiting for the session to start. And if they did, they would only whisper. I really tried to encourage them to talk to one another, but Zimbabwean children are not used to speaking unless asked to. In school you would remain silent and could get beaten for given the wrong answer. This meant that we sometimes had to pull quite a few tricks to get the girls talking. But once they did, they shared a dearth of information with us. I will always cherish the conversations I had with all these girls. What saddens me though, is knowing that these kids all have big dreams that most likely will never come true. They all want to become pilots, engineers, nurses and doctors. But in reality, most girls here marry really young becausetheir parents have no money to pay for their education. I really hope that when I come back in two years time, these girls will still be chasing the dreams they shared with me. But I fear that some of them might be mothers next time we meet.

Brand new boots

Most of the times, we were able to meet participants somewhere in the village. But we also did a number of house visits. Contrary to what I believed, most people here live in stone houses, and not in mud huts with thatched roofs (although they are here). Most houses are hidden behind banana trees, far from the main road. On one of the rainiest days here, we had to meet a participant at his place, perched on top of a hill. It was a very steep and incredibly slippery path and I was wearing vans, arguably the worst shoes to climb a hill on. I was continuously afraid that I would fall and break my leg. News flash: I did fall at some point, though flat on my bum and was treated to a lot of sticky orange mud on my dress, shoes and legs.

The next time it rained, I had the brilliant idea to put on my hiking boots. They too, turned orange in an eye blink. I left the boots in the car over Easter in Harare, and when I was picked up at the hotel by Washington, he pointed at a pair of boots I barely recognised. They were my muddy shoes, but brand new. It turned out his wife had cleaned them for me over Easter and they really looked like new. I was so touched by this, and it is a great example of the Zimbabwean kindness and hospitality.

A discount for a tear

Today is Independence Day, so we were off. I really hate the weekends here since they are fecking boring - there is not much to do. So, to pass the dreaded day off, Washington, my assistant Rumbie and I drove 120 kms to the Savé Valley Conservancy.

I know I am a total loser for having visited Zimbabwe twice and not having been to Vic Falls a single time. So I wanted to safe face and see at least some wild animals. I first looked into Gonarezhou, but the park is too far away for a day visit and accommodation there is expensive, so I will sadly have to go there another time. A local suggested we’d go to Savé Valley instead, which is an unknown national park a mere 2 hours away. It has the largest population of rhino in Africa (both white and black ones) and is also home to the Big Five and all the other animals you’d expect to see on a safari.

We tried to call the park, but there was no telephone number available online and they never replied to our messages on Facebook. We decided to go there anyway, but were immediately halted by the park guard, asking for our booking. We told him we had tried to reach out repeatedly but had not been successful, and we were thankfully admitted to the park. After a 20 km drive, we met the ranger, who made life a bit difficult for us. He told us that it was absolutely the wrong time of the day to see game and that you could only go on a game drive if you had booked accommodation. Apart from impala, he thought it unlikely that any other animals were around at noon. I really tried to get us on the game drive that would take place at 15:30, but the ranger insisted that we should have booked and that the drive was only open to the people who were staying here. After we kept trying, he did allow us to go on a game drive at noon but told us to keep expectations low. When he wanted to charge us 30 USD each, I started to pull a really sad face. I asked if he could please give as a discount since it was not our fault that their booking system was down, and that we would have come at a later time if we had known all this. I managed to get us in for 20 each. We did, indeed, not see many animals as they were all hidden away in the bush. Yet, the game drive in an open vehicle was tremendously fun and we did see some giraffe, impalas, kudus and warthogs.

See you next weekend!