Average Joe's Blog

"Shamwari mwana wako ava kunetsa uyu." The voice of my wife rang out, probably saving me a lifetime by cutting out the murderous plans my idle mind was forming in case I met anybody that would claim to work for ZESA. It was the third straight night I had to come home from work to find Madge groping in the candlelight for our Primus Stove. Not that I was not used to living in the dark - my light had blown out two years ago and has steadfastly resisted persuasive attempts to resuscitate it since; something about the wires that bring the elusive ZESA to the light being awry. I really didn't care a owl's fart; as long as the relevant switches were working fine, then my relationship with ZESA was like, ZESA who? But there was the problem now - the important switches in my house were not working, and it had nothing to do with my wires not performing the task I had bought them to do - some asshole at some substation somewhere was deliberately choosing to switch...

By Jere Chikambure The biggest threat to our body politic and the peace and prosperity of our nation today is – MEN. Men hate losing – and that is to tell it as it is. If a man loses a battle, he will return to the scene again and again and try harder until he gets something – anything – from his constant nagging. The men from Germany were so livid after their humiliation in Versailles that they spent the next two decades plotting their revenge, which exploded into World War II of 1939. Never mind about Hitler wanting to restore the German pride and economy back on track – it was a point to prove to the men who had disgraced his countryMEN after the previous war that the Germans still had the balls. And because other men just could not resist the challenge from another, thousands of people lost their lives so that a few men could prove they still had it down there. If a woman is fired from her job in the morning, she may cry foul. But overall, she will realise there is ...

I slept like a dead man. Not that I felt dead; I was curved like a handball at the back of the bus, my knees digging into my ribcage – breathing was becoming a luxury I was too crammed in to afford. There was simply not enough space to stretch my legs so I could enjoy my fitful sleep. The soil at the Kasumbalesa Border – which separates the Zambians from the Congolese – is so fine a conman could succeed in selling it off to you as cement. As the buses and gonyetis ooze towards the exit point from the Zambian side, their tyres are actually buried halfway in the quicksand-like clayey-loam; leaving soft ditches and raising enough dust to bleach everything and everybody in the 5km radius of the national boundary. I think I may have told some of my friends that the Beitbridge Border town is the worst pace I have ever been to. But now that I have been here, I can apparently see how  so wrong I was – Kasumbalesa will beat them all systems down. Ignorant that their p...

There is only one word to describe a ride into the splendour of the eastern jungles of Chimanimani in Manicaland Province – green. Yes; Green Like Me Garden , one might want to add – shades of Wallace ‘Winky D’ Chirumiko and his self-appointed ‘Di Big Man’ mantra. There is really no telling. For the road network in Chimanimani is maze after labyrinthine maze of green wattle tree after tall green wattle tree. The road leading to the frontier town from Chipinge has enough wattle trees to make you wonder whether you are a wattle tree too. And yes, the sharp curves as the road meanders its way around the mountains are dangerous, with ravines plunging straight from the edge of the road and settling where the eye cannot see. There are heart-stopping tales of vehicles straying off the lanes and flying into the deep, and – looking down at the dot that is the mangled remains of an unlucky commuter omnibus – somehow the knowledge that all the passengers made it out of their ordeal un...