change the world, twenty minutes at a time

called around yeaterday evening. She comes around periodically and I usually buy something from her. Last time it was a T-shirt for my son.

This time, we bought a lace cover for food. (Not really my cup of tea, but anyhow we bought it.)

She is a dignified lady trying to make ends meet in a country where many are very hostile to Zimbabweans.

Is Robert Mugabe pickled or something? There seems to be no end to him and his greedy, wicked, grasping and tyrannical ways. His wife, Grace is not any better. They both remind me of bloated ticks engorged with blood.

is that now I am his backstop when he is desperate for food or money.

He arrived again today. He was again wearing the woman’s jersey andI gave him money and some apples.

How awful it must be to have no recourse than the ‘kindness of strangers’.

Thomas arrived today, shaking with hunger (and a bit hungover I think).

Gave him some nourishing hot vegetable soup and bread, sugary coffee and taxi fare to the township.Promised him a day’s work on Monday varnishing the garage doors.

He was wearing (amongst other items)a shabby discarded woman’s sweater patterned with large silver cabbage roses on a black background.

heartbreaking!

A person who was subcontracted to another oragnisation, where Iwas managing a large writing project,needeed to be paid urgently so I paid her form our company funds, hoping to get refunded by the larger organisation.

Not good business practice, but I felt her need ….

(single mother, payting a bondand high school fees)

made a reasonably substantial donation to an organisation that is helping people displaced by the terrible xenophobic violence that has swept the poorer areas and townships of South Africa over the last two shameful weeks.

May the money be used wisely.

Thank you to the media and the charities who are helping the victims of this appaling behaviour.

but I did do a little something – too little, I think, for a man who came around saying that he had worked for me in the past. I did not recall him until I realised later that he was the Malawian immigrant who had actually done gardening for my sister across the road and helped my elderly mother (who lives in a cottage on our property) for a bit. Then he disappeared – perhaps he went home for a while.

Anyway, I gave him some money, enough to get back to the township, and to buy a little something to eat. But I should have given him some tea or cooldrink, or taken a contact number …. I only thought of that afterwards.

My tardiness made me quite maudlin later on …. life is so difficult for so many people, and at the moment there is a huge and nastily violent backlash against ‘mkwerekwere’ or ‘foreigners’ that it must be rather terrifying to be here,away from family, with no money and no job.

Why was I so slow on the uptake?

I am trying to find a job for a person who needs one badly. I have tried to open discussions and smooth the way – hope it works out. In the meantime, I have given him a small freelance task in my organisation.