Short Writings from Bulawayo III

The Harare Hermit

112 The Harare Hermit Tinashe Mushakavanhu I am in Harare. Harare on first impression is one big insane asylum. It is disgusting. I don’t understand how anyone can ever get used to living with filth and dirt, continuous noise, thickly polluted air, and the people, most of all. Ninety percent of them are rushed, angry or talking to themselves, yellow cigarette butts hanging out of their mouths. As I melt into the Harare crowd, I become defensive. I take on a Hararean consciousness. Everyone in Harare is a potential thief, not so much by design or want, but by some inexorable circumstance. I look at some of the faces. Sad faces. What keeps Harare people going is the bare desire to live, to survive. People in the crowd silently pass each other, somnambulists seldom speaking, moving in single units like a broken army walking away from war, cheeks sunken, eyes dead with fatigue. Harare faces reveal sickening symptoms of sadness and despair. Harare streets look dirty, dirty of unattended piles of rubbish and roads full of potholes. Her huge towering buildings stand out of fumes emitted by the streets of feverish traffic. Harare with her petrol scented streets, the fetid stench of hot, hurrying humanity and, over all, the grime, grime unspeakable, Harare’s grime, from which there is no escape. I keep on walking with no specific destination, unconcernedly taking a palaver with my prostitute Harare. Harare is the most deceitful lover. She sits like a bitch on heat in Fife Avenue, thighs spread-eagled, showing her naked soul. She alluringly whispers, her face hidden, enticing thousands like me, who become victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet, others she condemns as factory workers, a few she favours and fondles, riding them high on the bubble of fortune, then, with a sudden breath, she blows the bubbles away and laughs mockingly as she watches their helplessness. 113 I see more deep sombre faces. I wonder what secret thoughts they hide, secret thoughts swarming, seething, chattering like millions of bats in an underground cave, rustling beneath the surface of the day like cockroaches in summer. Unintentionally, the secret thoughts slip out as people shout, scream, swear and whisper to each other. Harare is bursting at the seams. I keep on walking. Harare, the city of urgency. People push and shove in a rush, mechanically marching in every direction. Pulling through is what Harare people do. There is a kind of bravery in their lives that isn’t bravery at all. Harare life rattles on mechanically and there is less and less meaning in its motor-hoots and, in all the noise, all meaning is drowned. In Harare, no person cares for another person. There are many blind people in Harare, blind parents being led around by their ragged children. There are the disabled who sit on street pavements with empty begging bowls hanging in their limp hands. No one cares to drop alms in them. I don’t care. In George Silundika Avenue, a plump woman in a fading green dress, with CITY OF HARARE boldly written across it, sweeps dirt on the pavement. She has a stubborn monotonous zeal, rapid strokes that pull the street dirt towards her until she forms a small pile, then she bends, scoops with bare hands, rises and empties the dirt into a wheeled, black plastic bin beside her. She pauses. Thick throngs of humanity hurry along the clean pavement. I am one of them, rushing to Africa Unity Square near Herald House – the propaganda factory. I stretch myself on the luscious green grass, and, at once, someone begins to yell. I turn to look and there is a stout young man, wearing a chequered green shirt, green chinos and black suede shoes. In his left hand is a large open bible. He is shouting. I distinguish the words Christ Jesus and repentance. I stare at this poor preacher, bringing, he thinks, God to Harare’s heathen. Harare people do not care; they do not look at him, they stand on the pavements, sit on the green concrete benches or on the grass like cows in a field at noon. He is flies. Harare people ignore flies. They twitch their heads and gaze about them. It is lunch hour. I oversleep. Tired and bored, I pick myself up, ready to go to the Highfields pick-up point at Market Square. My body feels light with hunger. I...