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After the Delta variant had caused further upsets to our lives and lively hoods, we decided to go to "kumusha ", as many of our fellow countryfolk have been forced to do.
When the chips are down there is no where like home! However in our case, home has a whole bunch of problems of it's own.
They seem to start and end with the fact that we have a currency called RTGS , which sounds like someone from Star Wars, In "reality", it is an imaginary currency that is shifted around from cell phone to cell phone. There is also some fiat currency floating around, the highest value being 10 RTGS which amounts to 50 pence. And then there is the REAL money the US dollar. I will get back to that, everything in life comes back to the money.
For me " kumusha" is also the home of Zimbabalooba. It is where the heart of Our Brand has always been - The Printing Shed and the land on which it sits, on the outskirts of Harare. It is a bit larger than a shed, more like a barn, but we don’t have barns in Zimbabwe, so it is a shed. We built the shed, in the beginning, when Zimbabwe and Zimbabalooba, had just got started. The bricks were dug out of the ground and fired on the spot. The thatching grass came from nearby and the people who built it with us became part of the Zimbabalooba extended family. These were some of the people that made home feel like home when we now returned.
When I say we, I am talking about a family unit that came about on the tip of Africa, in that beautiful city of Cape Town. We are Catherine and I and our raisons d'etres, Mila, Ella and Oscar. They all happened in Cape Town and like all children, they are open to any new experience, excited for this next chapter to begin.
For inspiration, we are drawing on Swiss Family Robinson. Apart from the storm and getting ashore (admittedly we took flights), there are going to be a lot of similar experiences.
For example, no electricity.
Back in the beginning, I had built a tree house on top of the kopjie, where I stay when I am "on site" during the printing season. There are two seasons in Zimbabwe, the rainy season and the other one when it doesn't. This other one is the printing season, by nature of the fact that we do a process of sun-dried dyeing and then screen print on top of that. This means we have a window of 3 or 4 months which are ideal for what we do.
When the rains come, towards the end of November and the Cape Town summer is in full swing, it is time to migrate South again. Taking our wares to market, so to speak.
This year, thanks to the C factor, we are all making the migration, if things go badly out there, we plan to “stay on the island” until the world recovers.
For us to live in "kumusha" on top of the kopjie, Catherine has informed me, the Tree House needs to be revamped. So as the printing season starts, I set off as the advance party, with a fist full of dollars. (REAL dollars).
