Kisimusi is’fikile. Mari yako chete
In monetary terms the journey to Harare is easily quantified.
It’s easy to look at Zimbabwe from the comfort of Johannesburg, pointing out its ills, its politricks, its idiosyncrasies and offering nothing more than deflated hand-wringing. From the inside, the view is more complicated.
I’ve already declared to friends and the few family members still living there that I’m minding my own business and staying indoors because I don’t have the stomach to deal with the cost of spending time in Harare. Get in, show face, get out.
It’s not so much the expense that weighs heavily as it is going to a home you no longer recognise.
Harare is still a grand dame, but one who’s fallen on hard, uncompromising times. It’s not as bad, but it is as bad because nostalgia — like a fever blister — pops up at the most inopportune times. I can’t afford to go home but there’s something about being among my people that puts everything into perspective.
The bus trip with Intercape, that evangelical church on wheels, costs a migraine and between R900 and R1950. The prices double over the December/January season and, with other bus services, there’s a possibility you may not arrive alive.
For those who can’t deal with the beautiful service at overland border posts, you can send bigger luggage ahead with bus drivers for a fee. There’s the possibility of overheating engines, breakdowns and frayed nerves, but thankfully Zimbabwe’s finest aren’t running their roadblock extortion rackets, so driving there is a matter of getting good car insurance and fuel.
Low-cost airline Fastjet’s roundtrip from OR Tambo International Airport to Harare International Airport quotes their prices in dollars, which start from about $270.
It’s always better to drive or bus it with groceries in tow so you don’t experience the carnage of shopping for basics at hugely inflated prices. It’s a gruelling schlep that can potentially drain your pocket if your travel documents are not in order and someone’s looking for a backdoor bonus.
Like our political landscape and discourse, my home is stagnant — it hasn’t moved an inch. Money woes are a constant and budgeting is for those who even have the money to begin with. For me, it’s the gaps in memory that cost more.
The Harare of my childhood doesn’t exist any more and no amount of patriotism requires me to be there this December. The annual homecoming for city dwellers is built on a longstanding tradition of expectation placed on the travellers to come with something. “Awunokungena uphaca,” they say.
As a result of an uneven combination of duty and wanting to floss that you’re a working girl, you’re independent and you’re in the realm of making it, you oblige and make a little showy spending to prove a point and to pay (back) your dues to the village that raised you.
Those dues include but are not limited to:
• Groceries for your mom’s house (iinto ezimnandi): R1 500
• Contribution for umqombothi, ibhekile or another homecoming msebenzi: R500
• Airtime, data and smallanyana e-wallets for your cousins, domestic worker, that relative who is always helping out at family functions (be it cooking or cleaning) and your functioning alcoholic of an uncle who knows izinto zamasiko (traditional rituals) more than all of you combined: R700
• Imali yokuthunywa: for when your mom or dad asks you to go to the shop quickly to buy bread (for the, like, 12 people) for ibreakfast and then to sommer just also buy sausage, charcoal, firelighters, ice and some cool drinks for the braai later. There will be at least three of these occasions depending on how long you are staying: R1 200
• Alcohol and snacks for the first night reunion braai: R300
• Christmas presents for your grandmothers: these could be anything from a walking ring, new shoes, a blanket, an outfit or groceries. Note the plural in grandmothers: R600
• Christmas presents for a family member that you’ve chosen: anything from Mr
Price Home, the Crazy Store, Milady’s, Queenspark, At Home, Boardmans, Woolworths or Edgar’s. This gift-buying business is relatively new. We didn’t grow up buying gifts beyond getting new Christmas clothes, but it’s become a thing: R300
• Lunch with your high school or varsity friends at Café Neo, Beach Burger, Grazia, Sanook, Hemingways or any new restaurant that opened just in time for iFestive: R150 • Petrol for the drive back: R1 200 • Snacks and food (you have skaftin): R200
• Toll gates: R100
Obviously no two people’s spending habits are the same.Some people spend much less than this and others spend a lot more on, for example, hiring cars for the holiday, giving their parents expensive appliances, cars or houses, as well as “cleaning” your ancestral home (that is, renovating).But this is a sample of the kind of expenses that are on the menu alongside that unavoidable Christmas lunch.
P.S. There’s still the annual getaway with bae or with friends either somewhere along Southern Africa’s long coastline or Zanzibar for New Year’s Eve.
And, of course, those with offspring would have the cost of having a holiday Anti to help to look after the children.