I never thought I´d go to Zimbabwe. I have never been to Africa, so starting with Zimbabwe looked like a very unlikely way to go. Until it actually happened.
Zimbabwe is a beautiful country, people are beautiful, even though most of them live in extreme hardship. The countryside is amazing, even though in October it´s rather dry and turns brown. Yet the blue lizards and the birds, the zebras, even the cattle, it all feels to beautiful, so real and down to Earth. I feel privileged for having been there, seen it and experienced it first hand.
Now, the amount of spiders - even though they are harmless - was not all that pretty, but I have made significant progress in learning how to live with them.
The most beautiful part of the experience were the stories people were telling. Stories of resilience, of hope, of innovation, of never giving up and always finding alternative solutions and new ways of dealing with reality.
I found it somehow incredible to see kids walking for miles and miles to school and sitting down in the shadow of a tree in the afternoon to read their books. My reality has been redefined in a couple of days - seeing ladies carrying baskets on their heads, babies tied to their backs, vans so full that people were hanging from the door, roads full of people walking on them with almost no cars in sight.
Hearing the local stories of why development aid does not work and what kind of investment would be needed to help the country recover was yet another reality adjustment for me.
The willingness of businessmen to develop in a sustainable way, to build communities and protect biodiversity was so humbling. If people in hardship do get the message, why don´t we?
Even though I was in Zimbabwe for less than a week, it taught me a lot about life in the developed world.
Just recently, a famous Dutch actor committed suicide. He was loved, rich, young, famous, and healthy. But he had nothing left to fight for. He had it all.
This will not be true for the people in Zimbabwe where unemployment is 90% and the 10% that works helps throughout families and villages so that everyone can survive. I do not know where they see the end of the fight against poverty. But what I saw was that rather than trying to define a timeline, they go on, day by day, adding value to their lives. Not just monetary one. Maybe they do not even thinks it´s a fight. It´s just their reality.
Under the sun, the hot red sun, the song of the birds and the grass life goes on, slowly, calmly, with a lot of will and determination. We should all go to Zimbabwe to learn something about ourselves... and it would help the country a great deal, too.
