by James Best
There are two major ethnic groups in Zimbabwe: the majority Shosa and minority Ndebele. In the mid-1980s, twenty thousand Ndebele were massacred by Mugabe’s thugs to prevent any political uprising. In 2000, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF supporters, led by unemployed war veterans armed with axes and machetes, invaded and seized white-owned farms with the president’s open support. In the same year Uncle Bob was awarded the winning prize in a lottery run by the state bank. No corruption there.
Politically motivated beatings, rape and murders were common, and their frequency rose prior to planned elections. In the 2005 election, the opposition, mainly supported by the urban poor who suffered most under the regime, dared to win some seats in parliament. In response, the government burned markets and homes across the country. Seven hundred thousand people lost their homes or livelihoods, and two million people were driven further into poverty.
In 2009, hyperinflation of over five billion per cent finally led to the suspension of the currency, but not before ridiculous one hundred trillion dollar banknotes were issued. The economy was bleeding out. Food became scarce. Life expectancy, exacerbated by rampant HIV, plummeted to the mid thirties.
The country was now paralysed by corruption, waiting for the abominable old criminal to die. But who knows what will come next.
As we walked back to our accommodation a warthog marched importantly down the footpath towards us. We crossed the road to avoid him; he had big tusks so he got right of way. After we crossed the road, a large male baboon glared at me from atop a parked car. The hawkers were not the only hazard on the streets of Victoria Falls.
That night Sam and I shared a warthog schnitzel for dinner, which was another impressive win on the food front. I felt a bit guilty eating our friend Pumbaa from The Lion King, but it did taste good.
In the morning, the English woman from our group discovered monkeys had broken into her tent and ate her antimalarials. At least one Zimbabwean monkey was going to have bad diarrhoea that day. When we returned, we found small vervet monkeys had surrounded our chalet. Sam approached one, and it screeched and advanced towards him aggressively, before I shouted at the small creature, frightening it off. Sam thought it was hilarious. Once we were safe in the chalet, the monkey glared at us through the window while he sat on the sill.
Later in the day when Sam and I visited the supermarket, we saw a blind old lady begging outside. She had sunken eye sockets, sunken cheeks, and a sunken spirit. Inside, as I looked at which juice bottle to buy, a young girl approached me and offered me ‘favours’ if I bought her one too. When we returned outside, a young boy, presumably the blind lady’s grandson, led her away by a stick. Sometimes all you have left is family.
I felt a seething anger well inside. This should never have happened to such a resource-rich country. I hated that ubiquitous portrait photo.
On the group’s last afternoon in Zim, we treated ourselves to high tea at the opulent and grand Victoria Falls Hotel, the oldest hotel in the area and the preferred way station of intrepid early white travellers who worked their way from Cairo to Cape Town or vice versa, by land or air. It was all very British, very indulgent and very cool.
With the camera rolling, Sam debriefed me, conducted a formal interview with Stephanie, a Swiss woman on our tour, and ordered drinks and food. His talk with Stephanie was a high point. I was heartened to see his reciprocal conversational skills were definitely advancing.
His questions were:
• What’s your name?
• Where have you been, where have you been travelling from?
• Where is Switzerland in?
• What town, what city do you live in?
• Have you ever been in Australia?
• Where abouts in?
• Did you went to any shops in Australia?
• Have you been to Coles? (He explained that it was a supermarket.)
• Have you been to New Zealand?
• Where else besides Africa have you been?
• Have you been to Japan?
• Have you enjoyed the trip?
Sam also made an appropriate welcome and farewell, but there were two long pauses, one over a minute long, that Stephanie tolerated and waited through. Stephanie, like so many people we’d met on the trip, was so supportive of what Sam and I were attempting.
As the sun lowered, rainbows formed in the iridescent mist rising up from the falls. The hotel had views up the second gorge to the elegant Victoria Falls Bridge, linking Zimbabwe to Zambia. The bridge, opened in 1905, was constructed by the same company that would go on to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and at the time of its construction it was the highest bridge in the world. The placement of the bridge, directly over the point where the water exits the first gorge into the second in a flurry of white water, referred to as the ‘boiling pot’, was specifically designed to give train travellers a view of the falls as they headed to the next destination for Sam and I, Zambia.
CHAPTER 15
The dementor at the falls
Our tour had ended after an amazing eight days. Early the next morning, the group parted ways. Sam and I headed off in a bus transfer to Livingstone, half an hour’s drive away in Zambia. Our friendly driver allowed us to walk across the bridge over the Zambezi River, below the falls, to get a good look. We stared down at the tumultuous waters far below.
Sam turned to me. ‘Would I die?’
‘Absolutely.’
He didn’t like that. ‘I might land in the water and be all right, just injured.’
‘Perhaps.’
As soon as we crossed the Zim–Zam border you could feel the poverty and oppression of Zimbabwe lift. While certainly not a wealthy country, Zambia felt completely different. We booked into a very cool backpacker hostel, the curiously named Jollyboys, and settled in. I wanted to emulate our week in Windhoek and focus back on schoolwork, on neuroplasticity, and on Sam.
Benison had sent me an interesting article she’d found on autism, discussing the issue of disability. A growing neurodiversity movement, mainly driven by high-functioning individuals with autism and Asperger’s, proposes that autism is simply a ‘different way of thinking’. The author of this article disagreed with this proposition, arguing that we need to acknowledge that it’s also a disability. A disability, by definition, stops you doing things that most other people can do. This, he continued, can be tough, seem unfair and lead to discrimination, but to not tell an autistic person they’re disabled is to not prepare them for what life might throw at them.
I thought it was a valid point. However, as I sat in Livingstone, Zambia, I explored the idea further in my mind. Disability itself is a fluid concept. An individual’s level of disability is entirely contingent on the social context.
What’s socially expected of a person living in a village in Africa is entirely different to what would be expected of a person living in an urban environment in a developed country. An African villager with moderate autism might receive the same level of schooling as every other child, might well get married and then go on to work at a similar manual job to the one they would have had were they not autistic. A similarly affected individual living in Australia would likely go to a special-needs school, flounder in the modern teenage dating scene, and potentially have no chance of finding gainful employment, where appropriate communication and social skills are generally deemed essential.
In his 2008 book Unstrange Minds, American anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker, who has a daughter with autism, explored how different cultures around the world respond to individuals with autism. ‘There are still cultures today that do not have a name for autism,’ he wrote, ‘or that do not even see as pathological the symptoms that we call autistic.’
What we as individuals or as a broader society expect can determine whether a child or adult is disabled, or just different.
Livingstone was about four times the size of the town of Victoria Falls. Tourism for the falls had developed almost entirely on the Zambian side
of the border, despite offering the less spectacular views. Such was Uncle Bob’s legacy. But bad news for Zimbabwe was good news for Zambia: the city was booming.
Jollyboys had table tennis, so I decided to grab the opportunity to teach Sam a new skill. Table tennis certainly involves a lot of motor traffic across the midline; that is, it requires the use of both sides of the body. Sam had never played before, and could barely hit the ball on our first effort. Not to worry. We filmed some more interviews with myself, fellow travellers and staff members of the hostel. We’d managed to keep up our planned schedule of four interviews per week, and all this practice was improving Sam’s speech skills and focus on others. Well, I thought it was. I reminded myself I’d have to wait for the results of the study to be certain.
That afternoon, the hostel posted a notice about an excursion to a local orphanage to play football with the children. I signed Sam and myself up.
The orphanage was set on the edge of Livingstone in a poor section of town. On the drive there, our ebullient taxi driver, Evans, told us that two years earlier the orphanage had taken in a newborn baby found abandoned in a bathtub in bushland. This sounded almost biblical.
The orphanage, run by nuns, survived on money from churches, private donations and what the staff and children could earn by selling eggs, tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes from the orphanage garden at the local market. Fifty children, aged two to sixteen, lived simply but comfortably in dorms similar to a backpacker hostel, sharing a communal dining room, a single large school room, a small library full of second-hand books and, of course, a small but lovely church.
The kids were keen as mustard to play football against all comers, which today included a young Swedish guy, Oskar, and his girlfriend, Frida, as well as Sam and me. Sam didn’t last long, complaining about the dusty hot playing field. After a compulsory minimum five kicks from Sam, he sat in the shade of the school building nearby and stimmed in the dust, gathering small rocks together and running his fingers through the pile. He was having one of his late afternoon cranky-pants sessions. An eleven-year-old girl sat near him, eyeing him with curiosity while she played a version of marbles, with a circle drawn in the ochre sand and small rocks as makeshift marbles.
The manager of the home, an impressive and determined lady in her forties, was proud of their work and protective of her charges. There were to be no photographs or videos, and questions about the children were answered carefully and slowly; no disrespect was to be tolerated. She had the aura of a woman who had had to deal with a lot of crap. She got Sam straightaway; no issue there.
Oskar asked how the children ended up at the home.
‘Sometimes their parents have died or abandoned them, or they bring them to us because they cannot afford to feed them anymore. Sometimes we agree to house, feed and school them for a while until the parents can get themselves back on their feet.
‘Sometimes relatives will take care of the children for a while after the parents have died, if they have left them some money, or valuables like a fridge or furniture. Then when the money runs out they abandon them, and if we don’t take them in, they end up as street kids in the city. This never used to happen years ago. Family ties are not as strong as they used to be.’
I asked if any of the children were orphaned by the HIV epidemic.
She replied after a considered pause, and I wondered if the question was too direct, too personal, whether I had crossed a social boundary. ‘Yes, five of them.’
On the way back to the hostel, Evans took us to the local market where the produce from the orphanage was sold. Frida’s eyes lit up. This, she said, was what she had always imagined an African market to look like: chaotic and crowded, a cacophony of music blaring over the buzz of conversation and laughter down the dirt aisles of the market. Bikes and dogs and breastfeeding mothers. Food stalls sold vegetables, herbs, spices, dried nuts, grains, and…caterpillars.
Evans got some of the last to take home. ‘They are my children’s favourite,’ he said. ‘If I say I’m going to bring home some caterpillars, they get very excited.’
Sam had a look of disgust on his face. ‘Sam, do you want to eat caterpillars for dinner?’ I asked him.
‘NO! Not for me!’
Oskar and I rose to the challenge and each downed one of the brown comma-shaped morsels in a single bite. I expected piquancy, but discovered a mild musty taste that did not remind me of chicken. Sam was grossed out, and looked at me with an amalgam of disgust, amusement and curiosity. Did Dad really eat a caterpillar? Evans seemed a touch crestfallen in our lack of enthusiasm for the snack, and told us they tasted better when you ate them alive.
Over the next few days, Sam resumed his campaign to go home, demanding the requirement of scoring eight or more for seven days in a row be relaxed. I held firm, but he frequently escalated the argument, becoming threatening and aggressive, bordering on violent.
On the third morning in Livingstone I gave Sam an eight for the day before, even though he may not have quite deserved it; he’d had a bit of a tantrum shopping in the markets. I just sensed he needed it for his morale, which was starting to drop.
I wondered what was distressing him. It wasn’t missing his mother, his brothers, his home or his school. I didn’t even think it was missing his electronics and games. My suspicion was that Sam was missing control in his life. This was something I couldn’t remedy. It was exactly the purpose of the trip, and it was proving very difficult for him to cope with.
We visited the Livingstone Museum, which was literally across the road from Jollyboys. It was a good opportunity to give Sam a history lesson. The solemn and venerable institution covered natural history, the anthropological, cultural and political history of Zambia and, of course, the life of Dr David Livingstone. While the atmosphere in the museum reminded me of the mustiness of caterpillars, it was still a worthwhile visit.
I had always wondered why Livingstone was so celebrated, and particularly why Africans revered him. Now I got it, as did Sam. Driven by missionary zeal, he had brought modern medicine to central Africa, as well as exposed the ongoing slave trade decimating the region, at a time when it went largely unacknowledged in Europe. He was unstoppable: mauled by a lion, repeatedly ravaged by dysentery and malaria, on and on he went, expedition after expedition.
Apart from advancing the world’s understanding of the geography and nature of Africa, he helped rid a large chunk of Africa of the nightmare of slavery. His exploits became headline news in England, and questions over his health and sanity added a dimension of mystery that fired the public’s imagination. When rumours circulated that he had died on the upper Zambezi, the New York Herald arranged the publicity stunt of sending journalist H.M. Stanley to track him down and see if he was still alive. With two hundred porters in tow, Stanley found Livingstone in what is now northern Zambia, and greeted him with the famous line, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
The two journeyed on together and became close friends and exploring companions, before Stanley returned home. Livingstone refused to stop his work in Africa, and his disease-ravaged body eventually succumbed. He died kneeling in prayer. They buried his heart in Africa while his salt-preserved body was stretchered by two close African companions hundreds of miles to the coast, before being shipped to England. The Royal Geographic Society doctors confirmed it was Livingstone’s body because of the deformed humerus bone in his arm—a legacy of the lion attack—before he was interned in Westminster Abbey.
We ambled through the city that bore his name, banking and shopping. Women in bright tribal dresses effortlessly balanced trays of fruit on their heads. Soldiers casually carried Kalashnikovs as they smoked and waited in line at the ATM. A car drove past, megaphones hoisted on the roof, blasting out political messages. Schoolchildren in royal-blue uniforms, the boys in ties and blazers, the girls in vests and long skirts, laughed and jostled at a bus stop.
Once again, Sam and I got into a rhythm and efficiently worked through neuroplasticity e
xercises and schoolwork each day: table tennis, boxing, chess, checkers, drawing, throwing, catching, handball. Algebra, writing narratives, writing postcards, the history of Africa, the geography of Africa. Jab, jab, uppercut, uppercut, kick, kick.
Word about us spread among the staff and guests at the Jollyboys. When you box with your adolescent son in the backyard of a backpacker hostel, people want to know why. Yet again I was moved by how supportive people were. They were interested, fascinated, motivated to help. It reinforced to me that there’s an innate helping drive present in all people. Well, in most people.
Sam was turning his week around. He was calm and co-operative; a couple of day scores of eight had improved his confidence. His boxing was now miles ahead of what it had been when we had started on Table Mountain, and in a few days he had grasped some table tennis to the point of being able to sustain short rallies. Apart from the occasional blow-ups he was always fun to be with. Everyone around him enjoyed his quirky sense of humour, his constant smile and his fascinating take on the world.
But Africa continued to frustrate. The wi-fi sucked. Only some ATMs would recognise my bank card, and they changed from day to day. People only dealt in cash. Everything moved languidly, and we needed to match that pace, whether it was walking down the street, going through the supermarket checkout or buying stamps at the post office. There’s an expression the locals use to explain these inevitable delays, inefficiencies and frustrations. This Is Africa. What other explanation is necessary? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. With time it became easier and easier to adopt as my own mantra.
One evening, I chatted with a group of the backpacker hostel staff and their friends over a few beers in the bar. Dutch, English, Finnish, white South Africans, white Zambians, black Zambians—they all lived in Livingstone and they all liked it. Christie, a Zambian woman, worried about the Chinese buying up too much of the infrastructure. The Chinese workers on development projects lived in a self-contained village on the edge of the city and kept to themselves.
