Two things happened last
week that have caused the invisible structures of injustice that are built up
around me and my comfortable life to become, for a moment, very, very clear.
Number One.
On Friday morning as I
walked to school from my flat I saw a red twin cab truck pull up to the chapel.
A white woman got out of the driver’s side and her passenger, a black man
dressed in worker’s overalls climbed out the back seat. The front passenger
seat was empty. The image smacked of a past we should not be living in and I
thought, (I distinctly remember), “Wow, do we really still live in this kind of
a place?” Shaking my self-righteous head, I went to work.
Less than 24 hours
later, I was cringing in shame: Yes, I
really do live in such a place.
On Saturday I was driving out the school gate on
my way to the bank and I passed one of the maids that live at the school
walking out of it as well. Now, I’ve often given lifts to people who work at
the school, but usually I know them. This maid was not one I knew and was not
one who was particularly friendly when I had come across her. I didn’t stop. I
felt guilty the whole way down the road as I glanced in my rear view mirror and
watched her turn onto the road walking the same direction I was going.
As I turned off the smaller
road the school was on, onto the main road, I saw one of the lab assistants
standing at the corner waiting to catch a combi (mini van that provides public
transport) into town, probably the destination of the maid as well. I saw him
just as I passed and waved. I did know him and he waved back. With the guilt of
passing the maid still in my mouth I turned off the main road to try to turn
around and pick him up. It took me a few minutes to get back on the road, turn
back onto the small road and try to pass him again, this time intending to stop
and offer him a lift into the city. Right as I was ready to turn back onto the
main road, a combi pulled up next to him and he stepped on. It was full already
but he managed to squeeze in and I watched as he stood next to the conductor,
half of him sticking out the open door, as he held on to the inside handle. I
drove to the bank in my little corolla with three seats empty.
And then, just to make
sure that I had got the message, as I left the bank through the glass exit
security door – the one with the double doors that you have to wait in between
until you are closed in before opening the outer one – who should be standing
waiting in the entrance side, separated only, but very firmly, by a wall of
glass? The maid I had left at the gate. She had been going to the exact same
place I was in my car of empty seats.
Number two.
On Monday morning I
arrived back at school to hear that the daughter and grand-daughter of the man
who organizes our all the chairs, cups and rooms for all the functions (kind of
the head of housekeeping) that happen at school had been killed in a car
accident. The man is called Mr Domingo, not Mr Musona, which is his last name.
Domingo is his second name. In a country with a culture that respects elders
fiercely and where children traditionally do not even know the first names of
their adult relatives, he was Domingo to us and the students here. His wife, a
maid, a woman old enough to have a 7 year old grand-daughter, is called Rita.
Their first born was
coming in from outside the city to visit her parents here at Arundel where they
stay when a tire on the combi she and her five month old were travelling on
burst, causing the vehicle to roll. She and her baby were killed instantly.
A teacher friend and I
went to pay our respects on Tuesday. We crossed the beautiful sports fields
including the newly built hockey astro-turf (the only one at a school in the
country) to the far side of the school grounds where we passed through a gate
into the area where the people who work to clean and look after the school
live. Another world. Today, another world of grief where the differences
between them and us glower at us as we sit with Rita on the floor of her small
house, trying to think of what to say to a woman who has lost her first born. Her
second born comes in carrying the dead woman’s second child, a girl of four who
is stark naked and wriggling after her bath. Another child of Rita’s daughter
is outside. He is seven.
As we walk back to the
school we talk about our privilege. In the staff room, we complain about the terrible
roads that are riddled with potholes and bad drivers. We urge our colleagues
travelling to Bulawayo and Chinhoyi over the weekend to drive carefully and not
at night.
Mr and Mrs Musona’s
daughter did not have that choice or privilege.
To visit her parents
she had no option but a combi. A combi driven by a driver whose only concern is
the speed at which he can deliver his passengers and replace them with more, and
then the number he can cram into his van. A van that is, no doubt, in need of
serious work but which manages to get past all police road blocks and
inspections by paying the unofficial fine of $10 which will not be put into the
books. A van whose tire burst, killing her and her child. To get to her
funeral, her husband and the two children she left behind got into a similar
combi.
I have never driven in
a combi in my life.
Yes. I really do live
in such a place.
