Hold on Zim

Another week has come and gone and I am faced once again with Monday morning. Oh how I hate Monday mornings. To console myself after having been jerked from the comfort of my bed and thrust into my office, I have opted to close my door (how easily I have adopted to the office culture here) and spend as much time as I want catching up on the website recap of all the episodes of Lost I have been forced to miss. Woe is me.

My weekend, although always too short, was a good one. Alexio’s visit has allowed me to permit myself some culinary luxuries that my modest stipend and keen watch on my budget ordinarily wouldn’t allow in such abundance. But oh have I been enjoying. We went for dinner with some friends on Friday night, then just the two of us on Saturday night and I stir fried up all the leftovers in the fridge last night (which included chicken! – we normally don’t have meat in the house since Regan is a vegetarian and therefore we mostly eat meat-free) into a very delicious fried rice dish, if I do say so myself. Luckily he gets reimbursed for expenses (with a receipt) so all our taxi rides will be refunded to him, and we will share my half of the costs of meals. After our dinner on Saturday we went to a small house party and had a good time drinking and dancing and talking, and ended up being invited to a bbq the following day with many of the same people, which was also a good time.

The weekend vibe was overshadowed slightly by the Zim election however. Saturday we spent most of the day in my room on the internet (when it worked) and tuning into the shortwave radio trying to follow the latest news as Zimbabweans went to the polls. It seems everything was rather peaceful though probably not exactly fair and democratic. Still, all the calls to his family relayed that things were going ok and everyone was fine. He left them with his 2-way UN radio and we made sure they knew when to tune in for security updates and when they had to call in for their daily check-in. I think it’s pretty great that the security procedures that are available to him in his job extend to the members of the household he lives with, even in his absence. Alexio’s boss wrote last week to say that since the official results won’t be ready until mid-week, he should stay here for an additional week (now 3 in total) just to be sure. The opposition party has already claimed victory, despite the fact that the official results aren’t out, but then again, so has Mugabe, so who knows. I hope this week brings change to Zimbabwe.


PS. Thanks for the call Alie!