What’s in the pot? A Christmas message from Zimbabwe
Dear Family and Friends,
Christmas in Zimbabwe is a time of watermelons and litchis, of sticky orange mangoes and sweet fresh mealies roasted over a fire, dripping with butter, sprinkled with salt and pepper. It’s a time of sticky fingers and juice dripping down your chin. It’s a time when the crickets and frogs sing at night and the cicadas deafen you during the day. This Christmas it’s a time of vivid streaks of lightning blazed across dark purple skies and thunder that rattles the windows; a time of pinging hail and pounding rain and of thick, sticky red mud.
Christmas is also the time for me to thank you for reading my Letters From Zimbabwe for another year. At home or away, near or far, there are now readers of this Letter in 70 countries around the world and it is our love for this country and its people that connects us.
Thank you all for your emails, messages, stories and memories. I read them all, some make me smile and others make me cry but all show me how the pulse of Zimbabwe still beats in your heart. Thank you for your help and support of my Letters, Books, Photobooks and Calendars; it is thanks to you that I am able to keep going.
This is my last Letter in 2025 and I leave you with this little story of a black pot and a troop of monkeys. On an ‘escape from the madness’ trip to the Mazowe River a few months ago, I put my tent up on the riverside, my faithful old yellow kettle on the fire and the river flowing gently past. With my notebook in my pocket and my camera in my lap, I watched and waited, as we do in the bush.
I knew for sure that something would come along soon enough if I just sat sill and was patient. A troop of monkeys had been watching my every move: checking the zips on my tent, peering through the car windows, sliding down the windscreen leaving little fingerprints and skid marks in the dust on the glass, attacking their own reflections in the wing mirrors.
The star attraction was my black cooking pot. Again and again the monkeys came to inspect the pot, some would just stretch out a little black finger and touch the pot, others were braver, taking the lid off, dropping it on the ground, looking inside the pot and then running away. Every time the lid clattered to the ground I got up and replaced it and a bit later the monkey came back and did it all over again. Perhaps, in that rhythm of Zimbabwe, there was a message for us all, and for our country, never stop looking and never give up hoping.
There is no charge for this Letter From Zimbabwe but if you would like to donate please visit my website.
Until next time, Happy Christmas from Zimbabwe and hope for 2026.
Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)
Love Cathy 18th December 2025. Copyright © Cathy Buckle https://cathybuckle.
My new Photobook “Zimbabwe’s Timeless Beauty The 2025 Collection” and my Beautiful Zimbabwe 2026 Calendar are now available. They can both be ordered from my website or from LULU. Click here to order www.lulu.com/spotlight/
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