Toward a World that Works for Everyone
Crisis? What crisis? Dear Family and Friends, Just before sunrise when the sky was yellow and apricot, a jackal ran out into the road, saw me, turned and ran back into the golden grass. It was a very cold winter morning and there was an icy wind with the temperature hovering around five degrees. The […]
Seizing maize and deja vu Dear Family and Friends, Winter snuck in the back door in an icy blast this week in my home town. It came after two months of bizarre weather: pounding, flooding rain when it should have been bone dry, then cold and misty, then hot again and now a biting wind, […]
Thirteen cents an hour in Zimbabwe Dear Family and Friends, With my head swirling trying to make sense of the latest economic absurdities in Zimbabwe I set out into the mist early in the morning. Winter is coming, sunrise is at 6.14am but the mist hangs around in the valleys longer each day, hiding trees […]
The crocodiles will take the goats before the children Dear Family and Friends, Arriving at the wide blue river crossed with swathes of golden sand, there was a feeling of overwhelming timelessness. People passed by in carts pulled by donkeys or oxen, children wielding thin hide whips to steer the animals; young children in charge […]
The time is now to grow food, Zimbabwe Dear Family and Friends, It seems insensitive, almost offensive to write about anything else when bombs and missiles are falling, cities lie in rubble, thousands are being injured, maimed and killed, thousands more are trapped and unable to escape, millions are becoming refugees a world away. A […]
Don’t blame the police March 18, 2022 Dear Family and Friends, Tropical Cyclone Gombe hit Madagascar ten days ago and then moved across the channel into Mozambique and Malawi and the tail end rains are now in parts of Zimbabwe. The rains are desperately needed but the talk everywhere is of drought as we’ve watched […]
Zimbabwe’s Thuggery Methods Dear Family and Friends, I slowed down on the highway as a stream of school kids skipped and cavorted along the roadside at 9am in the morning. Two little boys were showing off, tugging at each other’s rucksacks, play fighting, tumbling in the grass. In the shade the dew was still thick […]
What is life really like in Zimbabwe? Dear Family and Friends, After 22 years of writing about events and life in Zimbabwe it would be remiss of me not to record recent events because, two weeks ago, after seventeen years of bickering, accusing and finger pointing, it’s possible that hope has been rekindled in our […]
Letter from Zimbabwe: Teachers in leg irons in a beautiful Zimbabwe Dear Family and Friends, On a rock on the path the trail marker is painted: a white circle with a green antelope footprint in the centre. Behind the rock is nature’s own trail marker: a low mound of hard anthill carpeted all around by […]
Too Hot to Walk Barefoot Dear Family and Friends, Greetings from under Zimbabwe’s beautiful blue sky on a scorching hot December day. All the windows and doors are open, it’s too hot to walk barefoot outside after ten in the morning and every day we search the sky for signs of rain. In the grasslands the […]
Dear Family and Friends, The rains have returned to Zimbabwe, breaking an unbearably hot couple of weeks which had left us melting the moment we stepped outside. Green is everywhere and with it has come the weird and wonderful, the absurd and the insulting and the downright shameful. First the weird and wonderful: the noise […]
Walking with elephants (https://cathybuckle.co.zw/) Dear Family and Friends, Under a stormy November sky I headed north east on the highway. It was a very hot day and the humidity was suffocating; the rains are very near. Up a steep and winding mountain road a lone Jacaranda tree was still dropping the last of its purple […]
