28th of August to 13th of September, 2018.
Marcie’s brother, Kevy, is a nice young man. We talk during our trip to town where I first met Marcie. She seems shy. Me and Kevy take another kombi from town to get into their house.
The place is a big house, with four bedrooms (which three are being rented) in a big space, where Marcie and her mother keep almost one hundred chickens (a big business around Harare), half for the eggs and the half for meat.
I met Marcie’s mother and her sister, Millicent. Talking about movies, me and Kevy realize we both have basically the same opinion about most of them.
I would sleep in the floor of an empty room. I do not mind and the girls arrange some nice and clean sheets and a big blanket, which make my bed on the floor very comfortable.
Next day I go to town. I am hopping to get a free entrance into the National History Museum, because otherwise it would cost me ten Bonds. I have to take a kombi, which not pleased me at all, but they live quite far from town. In the opposite of everybody’s believes, I manage to find the place and come back also safe (again, as in so any other countries, everybody treats me as I am an incapable person, who cannot follow directions or find myself in a complete new place). This time, the manager of the museum, in opposite of that jerk from Mutare, is a very nice guy and he allows me to go for free. Unfortunately, the museum has no info about Zimbabwe itself, apart of the animals which live in there. Coming back, I finally buy new socks and a new earphone.
The next few days I decide I would not come back to town and just wait to met the guy from the volunteer work, Ezequiel, on the first of September, as we had agreed since July. That supposed to happen on Saturday.
I try to reach him the whole day but his phone is off. Then I try another number he had given to me. Another guy pick up and tells he would try to talk with Ezequiel. I have to spend another night in Marcie’s house because I have no answers from neither of the guys.
On Sunday I finally speak with Ezequiel. He say still having problems with the documents about my arrival (which documents?) but he would pass at Marcie’s place so we could talk. When he spoke with Milli to get the coordinates, I think he said something about coming just on Wednesday. My alert about bullshit was ringing.
Of course he does not showed up that Sunday so I decide to look for another place to do the volunteer work, even if it is for just one week and a half. Marcie say there is no problem if I need to stay for longer, as much as I need I would be welcome. But I do not want to be a burden for three weeks (I could not leave Zimbabwe because my other volunteer works were all settle for the next months), so I decide that if I could not find another place to volunteer, I would stay half time with them and call Wendy, asking if I could stay the other half with her family.
I go for walks around the neighborhood and I even by a very cheap snack by curiosity.
There is a refugee camp nearby and an elderly house. At the first one, I drop a simple letter talking about my intentions and a copy of my passport (I’m still waiting for their answer); and at the second one, a nice lady is honest with me when she say that because they have just a few inmates by the time, they do not need extra help. Apparently if I had come three months early, I would be more than welcome.
I decided to wait until Wednesday and see if Ezequiel would appear. There is this other place, also nearby, which takes care of kids in need who have HIV. Ezequiel does not show up again or even have the decency to call. He never called again for the next three weeks until I left Zimbabwe. Can you believe that?
I go to the centre for kids with HIV and talk with Tapiwa, who is nice and even say they usually take volunteers and they actually need teachers, but they are looking for long term deal, like six months or so. It is quite a nice place and I start to think if they actually need my kind of volunteering, like with no payment. I think they are able to afford employers.
Middle time, I am being well treated at Marcie’s house. I cook my porridge in the morning, write and read, and watched something during the day, her mother would cook some lunch (usually bread with eggs and vegetables or potatoes), I would go for a walk in the evening and at night we would have a nice dinner all together.
I would just have some troubles to sleep at night because of the presence of a inconvenient fellow: a mice. If I checked and saw and knew for sure that it was a mice? No I did not. But for the noise and the behavior it had to be. Then another night I wake up in horror with a big spider just beside me on the wall. I know she had no intentions of harming me, but it was difficult to go back to sleep after she disappeared. We are also running out of water for the last few days. Even drinking water was difficult to get. I am here for almost one week and even though I am a little ashamed to call Wendy, I decide to do it.
I supposed to call her on Saturday and arrange my return on Monday to stay until next Monday. Instead, I called her on Tuesday and arranged everything to Thursday. In my last night, Marcie’s mother quite scared me when she started to ask: “Why are you leaving me my daughter?”
I have a good time on Marcie’s. I collect some eggs from the chickens, and I learned that they do not need the rooster to do that.