A Zimbabwean Christmas

A Zimbabwean Christmas

By Busani Bafana December 3, 2007

A beautiful, snowy Christmas card bearing the words, ‘Across the Miles’, turned up in my letter box the other day. It was from my pen-pal in England and it was the only mail in that usually empty metal box. I mopped tears flooding my eyelids because it reminded me how much I had forgotten what Christmas is.

I do not know when I last celebrated Christmas – not that I had become an atheist – but that the spirit of Christmas has been snowed over by the thick falling economy in my country that made such a celebration heretic luxury. I am not about to question the spirit of Christmas, but the person who stole it if I can find them.

A Zimbabwean Christmas remains in nostalgia. It was a time to give and a time to be given. For our parents who worked in the cities, it was a deserved break to herd home to reunite with the family. It was the time to buy gifts, groceries and literally to be merry for a hundred reasons. The main one was to share almost everything with your neighbours during this time to ensure that everyone had something to eat, to drink and for some even to wear.

The mood of Christmas in Zimbabwe was infectious, you could not help having food and eating it alone, even if you were the World’s best miser. Bonds were renewed, love rekindled and gaps of distance closed. In addition, consumers went overboard buying items that did not even need for they had more money that sense at the time. Even those with more of the sense and less of the money made good use of it because it could buy the few comforts for their families at least to know it was Christmas time.

In retrospect, before that I got to appreciate having a Christmas tree in the house, Christmas time was family time and presents time. My father made it a point that each Christmas we were together, both in spirit and in person. One of his favourite Christmas presents was a pair of good quality shoes. My sisters and I enjoyed many years of Christmas shoes not to mention clothes. Talk about food, it was a beef and chicken galore, enough to have us detained for months in hospital as a result of gluttony. This year the price of chicken and beef in US dollars terms is unfathomable.  A kilogramme of chicken will set you back ZW$8 million (US$32) and a kilo of beef ZW$4,5 million (US$18) that is based on the bank rate of exchange. I cannot dare talk about Christmas Turkey, I do not remember what it looks like because I have not seen it on our shelves for such a long time. Nor do I include, Christmas pudding and other treats, those are even rarer. Christmas lights and other decorations are beyond affordability that is if you find them.

I have not sent my pen pal a reciprocal Christmas card, I will hunt for one and hope it would be affordable but I cannot guarantee she will get it in time for Christmas because the airmail postage is too dear to think about. I may have to send an e-mail, thanks to e-greeting cards.  

Less than 20 years, all that is gone. Christmas was killed by the economy, strangled by measly incomes and a round of shortages of food, food stuffs and money itself which my country has earned a name and records for. We have one of the world’s highest inflation at officially more than 7000% for a country not at war and the figures for unemployment and global uncompetitiveness too edge towards Guinness Book of World Records material.

I read with interest that Americans are making a run for Departmental stores to beat the festive rush, well, this side of the Hemisphere, the rush is not for Christmas shopping but for everyday essentials like sugar, milk, salt, beef, bread. Each time you see a queue forming you either have to be part of it or have a friend in it, there is no time to ask what it is for because you may miss out.

But above all the challenges, a Zimbabwean Christmas remains special in that many of us have survived, we still smile and greet each new day with renewed hope. The love we have for our families, both near and far supersedes the difficulties we face and the wish of a white, glitzy Christmas.