Due to the Corona pandemic I cannot migrate to the South this year. Missing Africa, I dwell in memories.
In the township
There is laughter. The joyful treble of children at play: The girls, skipping with an old elastic rope tied to their waists, are showing off their intricate foot work. The little boys are chasing each other, trying to ride an old cast-off tire, its rubber grey and worn off. White teeth, red lips, little bare feet against the dry orange soil. The children throw you hidden glances and when they see you smile at them, they scream in delight. Their laughter comes as a relief. They don’t hate you. You, who in your Goretex shoes and polarized sunshades, your high-tech camera gripped tightly in your hand, didn’t come from another country, or another continent, but a different world altogether.
Makokoba is a township at the outskirts of the South Zimbabwean town of Bulawayo. A township like so many other townships in Africa, installed by European colonists in need of work force but in fear of Africans. A place to keep the workers close by, to cultivate their fields, clean their clothes and wash their dishes, build their roads and houses and churches, but safely fenced off, separated from their roads and houses and churches. A township to keep the Africans out of sight. To send them back to Africa when night falls.
The main streets of Makokoba are paved, but they are potholed, and blanketed with thick layers of orange dust. A bitter stale taste that with every breath coats the inner of your mouth. A pale orange that clings to the children’s skin and the stray dogs’ shaggy fur, the scattered plastic trash that piles up at every corner, the bare bricks of the one-storied buildings, and the rubber sandals at the callused feet of the people of Makokoba. When you catch their eye, you wave at them: “Salibonani!, you call, which, as your guide told you, means “Hello!” in their language, Ndebele. An old woman – or maybe your age only, yet prematurely hunch-backed and brittle, clad in an apricot-colored head dress waves back at you. Her smile reveals bare toothless gums in a wrinkled face. A young man with bloodshot eyes keeps his gaze at his feet. His gait is unsteady as he passes you by. Still you smile at him. You grip your camera tighter. Not because you fear he might rip it from your hand, but because you feel just as unsteady. You feel out of place. You feel guilty.
The land, fertile and sunbathed, was given to the English immigrants, in exchange for coming to Africa. The land, fertile and sunbathed, was taken from the African tribes that had settled here before. The Ndebele people were relegated to the barren land, far off the water lines, not living from their land anymore, but working for the landlords.
“Salibonani!” A woman in a yellow T-shirt and a skirt of a green leafy pattern wants to show you her garden. She has used discarded tires as beds to plant vegetables. Water is expensive here, you learn, she has to buy it a high price by the barrel, back there, at the manually operated iron cast pump. The rubber tires keep the water from dissipating in the sandy soil. Her plants are thriving: full leaved cabbages reaching for the cloud covered sky. She poses for a photo with a sunny smile.
Makokoba is an enchanting word. Within the century of its existence, the township has gathered fame as a place where African culture has thrived amidst all the poverty and oppression, a place that has brought about music, dance, and literature. A symbol of how a bitter root can bear the sweetest fruit. But still, Makokoba is a poor, disadvantaged African township, where unemployment and poverty lead to gangsterism and alcoholism. A place forever at the margins.
At the market, in the midst of terracotta pottery, bowls and pans neatly aligned, and hand-carved drums, lined up by size and tuning, among iron headed spears and glass pearl-chains and silver bangles, among dried herbs in cardboard boxes with Chinese labels, sits the sage woman. Her face weathered and serious, her eyes piercing. She knows of all the illnesses and their cure, your guide tells you. And you want to buy from her, but you don’t speak the language. You can’t spell the illness. “Salibonani,” you say instead. You smile. But she looks back at you, empty handed. She doesn’t have the cure.