I am looking for Memory Gomwe
I am looking for a friend of mine from the University of Zimbabwe, when I attended back in 1999 as an exchange student from the United States. Her name was Memory Gomwe (if I recall correctly she was engaged at the time, so her current surname may be different).
I believe that her father was a schoolteacher in Chegutu and I am certain that she was a Shumba (from what she told me about Shona culture). I understand if there is insufficient information to find her, but I am trying as many resources as possible to track her down. I humbly ask that, should you have any information on her or her family, you pass it along. I would be in your greatest debt. Thank you for your consideration.
And so UDI, I protest…
So, having waited those five months, having emailed UDI (Norweigian Directorate of Immigration) many times, the Norwegian embassy in Harare even more times and even the King of Norway four times, and receiving from non of these parties a response that would tell me when I would get the VISA I must protest. To this day I am told “we do not know when your papers will be processed.”
Five months later! Not acceptable. In my own country where government departments have all but fallen apart, I applied for a passport and got it within two weeks. So, will someone please tell me, how a country, which has year after year been said to be the best place to live in the world, cannot process a VISA application in five whole months?
Can someone tell me how in an age of online transactions that take five seconds to process, it should take so long for a man to get the paperwork so that he can be with his wife?
And so I protest. Vehemently, I protest.
Starting Monday, 2nd March 2009, I am going on a reunification fast and I will drink only water till I get word about when I will be with my wife. I am also hoping that this action will bring attention to this issue and urge the UDI and other immigration departments around the world to fast track family reunification VISAs.
Sorry sweetie, but I protest.
Zim- Dog Eat Dog Nation
Last weekend, I happened to have got the recently introduced $100 and $50 million dollar notes. I went out of Harare. Just as I got back into town, the following day, I wanted to board a kombi home but failed to, for a possible 2hrs. Not that there were no kombis, but the hwindis (conductors) wanted only people with smaller denominations. I thought of buying airtime so I could get change for transport, but the vendors said they had no change. I went into the shops, and tried to get something to eat, but they had no change. Finally, someone hinted- if you go by Chinhoyi St and Speke Ave, you will find guys selling ‘change’. You give them Z$50 million, they give you Z$40 million in smaller denominations. If you give them Z$100, they give you Z$80 million as ‘change’. Though not suprised by that move, I still wonder where we are going. In areas like Greendale, Mandara, Mabvuku, Tafara, Glen View, other people with access to water, sell it per litre to desperate Zimbos.
Zimbabwe is now a nation whereby individuals who have ’something’ which will be in shot supply, try to gain as much as possible from that through selling it to others at exhorbitant prices.
If we did it once, we can do it again…but when?
“If not now, then when?” Echoes from a plaintive Tracy Chapman song, if my memory serves me right. But the mind is numbed by a vicious summer flu (as well as age, I guess), so I can’t be certain. But that line finds resonance as deadlocks continue, Troikas defer crucial meetings- all because there was an apparent hide and seek shenanigan with travel documents…If a small country like Zimbabwe can’t make agreements work, what more the grand dreams of SADC, AU and Pan Africanism? Read more
