Parallel Lives

Zimbabwe. Our land of contradictions. Ironies grow from the city concrete like mealies. Because these are parallel times of parallel economies and parallel lives. An economy turned-around so many times that it's dizzy, upside down, standing on it's head. It makes you laugh and cry in the same gasp.

This is a land where those selling cell phone air time are treated like criminals, where women selling veggies are dealt with as if the cops have finally found serial rapists. But all they've found is rape, a vegetable commonly sold by women determined to make sure their families survive. It makes you laugh how surreal it is sometimes: having vainly attempted to buy mbanje, weed in Zimbabwe, from the usual Rastas we succeeded in buying it from the local security guard. And when you pull up just down the road to fill up your car with petrol the garage is empty. 'No petrol' is the eternal graffiti. So instead you fill up your car from the makorokoza, the hustlers who swarm around the empty garage with their battered containers vomiting out petrol. Everyone is living upside down, turned around, on their heads. It makes you laugh and cry in the same gasp.