A.U.’s Southern Scene, or Quintessential Cuisine at 18o 54’ South Latitude[1]

I’ve been looking for silver linings behind the storm-clouds of Zimbabwe’s current economy, and I have found a bright one. First I shall define the typical meal in this country, and then I’ll describe a hard-times improvement that should be in every Sandlapper’s cookbook. When a Zimbabwean thinks of a real meal, she or he wants three things: sadza, meat, and vegetables. Sadza is like grits on Viagra: you know, exactly the same old thing but made a bit stiffer. Meat in southern Africa means beef; here it’s boiled in a tomato sauce and served in portions of 3-5 cubes, maybe a little bigger than gaming dice. Vegetables will be something like mustard greens or collards, stir-fried. For the middle class (= endangered species; see below), the vegetables are fried in maize- (= corn-) oil or maybe sunflower-oil. But sunflowers have always been a minor crop, and repeated droughts have created maize shortages. Without a reliable supply of raw materials, the country’s only cooking-oil mill could not justify its connection to the ailing electrical-power grid, so it was closed. Such a culinary disaster would have defeated a lesser people, but Zimbabwe’s rural poor have risen to the occasion. Nowadays, at 18^o 54’ South Latitude, Momma will grow a few peanuts in her garden—and grind them into butter for stir-cooking her vegetables. So, you may be really southern if you eat your collards fried in home-ground peanut butter. (I’m sure that the good President Mugabe would sanction the substitution grits for sadza, and I’ll request his dispensation to use Peter Pan instead of home-ground. For West Floridians, armadillo may replace beef.)

The collards in peanut butter are really good. Otherwise, however, there’s little to recommend Zimbabwe’s current economic situation. In an earlier note I bemoaned my struggles with inflation. For me it’s a minor and temporary inconvenience. But consider folks who once comprised Zimbabwe’s middle class, the economic backbone of a nation that, back in the ‘90’s, was “going somewhere.” In some ways the essence of a productive middle class is to envision a better future and to save for it. And when I first worked in Zimbabwe, almost everybody tried to squirrel away at least a little money. Over just the past 5 years, however, by some accounting, Zimbabwe’s inflation has devalued savings by 99.99995%.[2] Now, think about the related issues of education and fuel. This week Zimbabwe’s elementary schools re-opened after the long winter vacation. Parents are legally obligated to keep their children in elementary school, and middle-class parents try to do it, no matter what. School-fees are not oppressive (unless one elects to send a kid to what we’d call a private school), but in hard times no expense is welcome in a household without savings. Furthermore, schoolchildren must wear uniforms, and many that fit marginally in June have been outgrown over the long vacation. It’s another expense. To make matters much worse, this year the government has virtually no diesel fuel to run its school busses, so children who could ride last June will be forced to walk—much too far, flirting with darkness mornings or evenings or both. (Or the kids will have to carpool by the dozens in private vehicles that are seldom reliable and often unsafe). Finally, consider the teachers, who are paid the equivalent of one or two $US per day. Many (male) teachers work all night as security guards. (Don’t you bet that makes for a stellar classroom performance?) Others have fled to South Africa, where students are said to be “cheekier,” but the pay is a whole lot better. And, most recently, school districts in the UK (particularly London) have been enticing Zimbabwe’s elementary school teachers into a world where the winters and the currency are both as hard as—well, as hard as cold sadza. So, this week some children have struggled their way to classrooms without instructors. And one wonders how, with no education, these kids will face the future.

These and other frustrations (mostly undetected by this ignorant white boy) have elevated the general level of tension among Zimbabweans. At the national University in Harare, student unrest simmers—and occasionally boils over into acts of destruction (thus far expressed against property rather than people). In the countryside, people burn the grasslands and forests. This burning reflects to some degree long-standing traditions of agricultural and rangeland management. Almost all tree-species native to this area are fire-tolerant, and the long-term ecological effects are similar to those of burning a South Carolina longleaf-pine savanna. But this year, in the darkness of electrical power failure, virtually every mountain within a thousand square kilometers has been torched.[3] I asked one English-speaking man about the fires, and he said, “Mice. We burn to get mice for meat.” Certainly meat-hunger is part of the deal, but I sense that more is involved. Of course I’m way outside of the Zimbabwean culture, and of course I’ll never get really deep into the local frustrations—note that I did not write “despairs”—of spring, 2007. So I could be wrong about all this. Besides, everybody tells me, “If good rains come on time this year, everything will be all right.”

Meanwhile, I’m still having fun. But right now I wouldn’t object to a nice, fat mouse, stir-fried with greens in peanut butter.

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[1] Outsiders will please forgive the Wofford in-jokes. And everybody please excuse three footnotes; I shan’t use them habitually.

[2] This assumes that savings were invested at a rate that would have compensated for inflation in the USA. Interest rates in Zimbabwe were actually somewhat higher, so you might knock a “9” or two out of the devaluation-factor.

[3] Up to now, no human lives have been lost—but far too many houses have been destroyed.