The Market of Memories

Tucked away in one of Harare’s shaded northern suburbs, you’d be quite surprised to come across a quaint little farmer’s market that springs up twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. With crafts, jams, vegetables, and fresh food, it’s like a little slice of Brooklyn or Seattle on a summer’s day, though with conspicuously fewer bearded hipsters.

The market has been running for three years, according to Beverly (whose name has been changed because I can’t properly remember it). A teacher for forty years, now retired, Beverly looks like the battleax you remember from tenth grade English – short, grey hair, sharp eyes, and a posture that dares you to try anything funny.

“I have no use for any more stuff around my house. I got rid of all my bras. I got rid of my silver. I’m in the process of getting rid of things I don’t need!” Her deep voice reminds you of a smoker’s rasp but is crystal clear and dripping with sarcasm. I’d been told she was one of the founding members of the market, which has been running for three years now. I had to wait a bit to ask any questions as she gave a tongue lashing to someone she obviously didn't think was very intelligent.

“Why do you think I started this market? It was 2008, and our pensions were wiped out after they switched to the dollar. Mine as a teacher, gone. My husband’s as a civil servant, gone. We were wiped out and had to start over again. This is my business now.”

Beverly sold bee products – honey, beeswax candles, lip balm, and propolis. “You don’t know propolis? Why not? The Egyptians used it to embalm their mummies. The bees get it from tree sap. If a beetle or a something large gets into the hive and they can’t get it out, they cover it with the propolis and mummify it in the hive to keep the rot out.”

It seemed that Beverly was talking about more than bees.

The woman next to her, Maggie, wasn't reliant on the stall as a source of income like Beverly was. She, like Beverly, had been a teacher, her husband a mining consultant. He still works occasionally, though it’s hard going in Zimbabwe, even for a country awash in minerals.

Had she ever thought of moving? “Where to? This is my home. I’m fourth generation Zimbabwean. I have as much right to be here as anyone, even if some don’t agree.”

Maggie lived in town now, but her and her husband used to own forty hectares of land outside Harare. Now they rent, their land sold off and pillaged. “The plan was to subdivide it, make it a conservancy. Allocate plots to several families who would help in the conservation.”

It wasn't a farm? “Oh no. It was far too hilly for that. You couldn't grow anything there. No, a man came. He was junior manager at a hotel. He wanted the land for himself. It was just greed, really. He came with a bunch of war veterans. They would camp at the end of our drive and harass us every time we went by.”

I assumed that this was in 2005 or 2006, during the worst of the land invasions. “Oh no, this was 2009. This was after the new government took over. It’s still happening. People should know about it so that it doesn't happen again.”

Maggie told me about several months of harassment at the hands of the war veterans. Her husband eventually went to the owner of the hotel and demanded that he rein in his employee. “He went right to him and said, ‘I’ll tell everyone I know. I’ll tell everyone that your employee is doing this to us.’” Afraid that such a story would ruin his company’s reputation, the owner reprimanded his junior manager. Told him to lay off. He wasn't backing down that easily, however. One day, he came to Maggie’s house with a paper from the Harare provincial government claiming he was the property’s ‘caretaker.’ “Well it was ridiculous. We didn't even live in Harare province. It was a complete fraud.” Her husband took the junior manager to a lawyer. They settled. “We paid $1000, so that was that.” They’d paid him off and saved their house.

Wait, so why did you move then, if everything worked out? “Well, the war veterans lost face. They had been told they’d get this land, and then it was over. He told them to go back to whatever other property they were squatting.”

“If it was just them, it would have been fine, but there was another. I don’t know his real name, but they called him Comrade Charles. He was the only one our staff were afraid of. The other war veterans, we knew them, they were fine, but when Comrade Charles came around, our staff would hide.”

One afternoon, three men came to the house with thick poles the size of police truncheons, typically used to knock the fruit from msasa trees. “There were three of them. My husband went out to talk to them. They attacked him. They beat him. They hit him on the head, across the bridge of the nose. He has no sense of smell now because of it. They nearly killed him.”

“They beat me. One stabbed me right through my hand.” She shows me her gnarled palm. She couldn’t properly flex her right hand between her third and fourth fingers. “I still can’t move this hand very well.” One of them threatened to rape her. Maggie is 72, “going on 73 next month,” she says with a laugh. She looks like the sweet granny everyone wishes they had. The one who would always sneak you cookies with a wink and a look that says, “don’t tell your mother.”

“I was glad they didn't do that,” she says, referring to the rape. An ambulance rushed her husband to the trauma center, where he received twenty-six stitches in his head. She was admitted to hospital, the doctors worried that she had suffered grievous bodily harm. They gave statements to the police. They never heard back.

“We filed a complaint, but nothing came of it. They just forgot about us. After that, it was too dangerous to go back. We sold the land for less than it was worth, and we haven’t been back.”

I couldn't fully wrap my head around the reason for the attacks on her and her property. Was she involved in politics? “Oh no, never. I think I went to one political meeting in my life, and I was bored to death. No, politics just bores me. I've never had an interest in it.” Then why? “Oh, just greed. I think it was just pure greed and the thought that he could get away with it.”

Maggie relates the story like she’s talking about the weather. She’s sunny and sweet. She never seems to reflect on darker days; she just takes the memory in stride. Her mood only changes when I ask if she wanted to go back.

Her and her husband left some things behind. There are some personal belongings that she wouldn't mind collecting, but she doesn't know if she’ll ever get them. “I’m not brave enough to go back.” She laughs a bit, but not out of humor. She laughs that sad, quiet laugh, the one that’s attempting to stave off something dark, some memory better left alone. “I talk about it, but I’m not brave enough. Even if we had the title deeds now, I wouldn't go back.”

Maggie handles her loss better than Paul. He left his farm in 2006. “I left and went to South Africa. My wife’s a trained chef. We tried to make a go of it there, but they didn't want us. If there’s ever a book about it, it will be called ‘Living Next Door to Malice.’” Paul made jams, chutneys, spicy marinades. His wife baked meat pies, biscuits, and brewed ginger beer. On the surface, it appears that he has a successful business. That he’s doing alright now.

“No. It’s hard. We live hand to mouth. Week to week. We’re on the edge.” He says it with an edge to his voice, a bitterness that verges on tears.

Paul’s father bought his farm near Plumtree in 1948. It was marginal land, used for cattle, market gardens, and game. His father still lives in the farmhouse, the only piece of the property they still own. “They came for us in 1999,” he tells me. I thought the land invasions didn't start until after the constitution was rejected. “They didn't, but they were pressuring us. They wanted us out. I don’t know why they targeted us so early, but they did. They wanted that land.”

A stylish, middle-aged black Zimbabwean woman walked by and called out, “Paul’s! I used to buy these all the time.” She gently handled the various chutneys and hot sauces, examining each one with the care of a product long-forgotten. “What happened? I never see anything in stores anymore.”

“Well, my dear, it’s a simple thing called land redistribution.” He bites the words. They come out mean and appear to be directed at the well-heeled woman. “They took the farm that had the canning equipment on it,” he says, softening a bit, perhaps noticing that he’s put the woman on the defensive, fearful that he’ll lose a customer over a policy she had nothing to do with. “We’re a much smaller operation now. I do everything out of my mother-in-law’s kitchen. It’s a bit more expensive now after Zimglass shut down. All the jars come from South Africa. The lids too.”

The woman’s friend tries to bring the conversation back around. “It’s much better to buy it here. Look how much more selection there is.” A sale is made; the tension in the air subsides. I can tell how much the sale means to Paul. A few more dollars to get him through the week. I buy some ginger beer, sipping it while he tells me about his father’s property. “We had 200 sable on the land. At the time, they were worth $5000, so that’s a million right there. American-made fences for the game reserve. They've all been torn down. There’s no more game, no sable, no antelope. They ate everything. All the animals, gone. Poached out. The trees have all been cut down.”

Maggie had mentioned that the trees were the first casualty of the new owners on her property. They’d been cut down for firewood or sold off as timber. They hadn't been managed, they were just gone. “We had beautiful trees,” Paul tells me. “One hundred years of conservation gone. They've raped that land.” His face softens and for a second, it looks like he might cry. He moves to greet another customer and our conversation ends.

I've often heard, in my time here, that land redistribution was necessary, but that it was just poorly done. There is no doubt some truth to that. The indigenous population, oppressed for over a century deserved social justice. They deserved a greater share of their home land.

But in Zimbabwe, violence begets violence. Land is more than just property. It is memory. It is livelihood. It is identity. As I wandered the farmer’s market, I realized that this space was much more than a morning diversion for ex-pat aid workers and embassy staff looking to find bargain-priced produce. It was a refugee camp, a place for those who no longer had a home, who’d come to Harare for relief, to share their stories, their experiences, and their lives. It was a place of loss and rebirth, even on the margins. Tucked away in a secluded Harare suburb, I was surprised to come across a quaint little farmer’s market. What I couldn't have known, nor ever expected, was that among the baubles and the beetroot, there were stories, tales told of the past, of the present, and of uncertain futures. 

The Return: A Search for a Living Memory

I've been struggling with this decision for most of my time in Jos, but by nature of the fact that I just got the visa, I think I've resolved it: I'm going back to Niger.

I figure, why not? It's only a two-day trip on tortuous roads through the heat and dust of Northern Nigeria and that half-remembered road from Niamey to Zinder. After all, when will I honestly next get the chance to be a mere 1,271km road trip from the home that built me up, pulled me down, and, every day for two solid years, fundamentally changed the person I was and the person I was to be.

It's impossible to describe the emotion that goes into this decision. It's something I've been grappling seriously with for the last two weeks now. As this idea took shape and began to materialize, I realized that it isn't all Tuareg tea and starry nights. If I'm expecting life to have frozen there in my time away, I'll be sorely disappointed. The children will have grown, there will have been births, deaths, marriages, all the events of life that ground us and give us structure. And I'll have missed many of those.

In fact, I have no idea what has happened in the village in the nearly two years I've been away. I lost my Nigerien SIM card while I was traveling in West Africa. With that small piece of plastic and electronics, I lost my only living connection to my village. Every phone number I collected in Niger is now lost in some forgotten corner of Africa.

I remember meeting a young woman in Sierra Leone. She was set to leave the country and was a bit heartbroken by that fact. We commiserated over leaving a place that felt like home, and I mentioned how much I wanted to return to Niger. "Don't," she said, "I know how much you want something like that right now, but you can't ever go back. What is there for you? Things change."

In every way, she's right, and that's the biggest fear I hold. Two years is a long time in a country where the average life expectancy is 53, where 16% of children don't make to to the age of 5, where, as a woman, you have a 1 in 16 chance of dying during childbirth over the course of a lifetime that averages 7.6 children per woman. In my mind, I imagine this place held in time, where I'll step out of a bush taxi and have a horde of screaming children welcoming me back to village. In reality, there's every possibility that a few of those children will no longer be there to greet me. There's every possibility that the old men who spent their days napping in the shade of the neem trees will be fewer in number. There's every possibility that sometime during one of those hot, black nights of the past two years, someone I cared about has slipped into a malarial fever from which they couldn't recover.

And what can I do about that? Can I mourn time lost in a place I once called home? Or can I return and find a place that has continued on without me and be thankful that I was allowed such a profound experience? One that can never be shared, no matter how many words are spoken or how many photos were taken. Can I grow and plant this piece of myself, permanently locate it within my heart, and continue on, carrying this shard of experience with me, knowing that there is a piece of myself somewhere that continues to live, to grow, to flourish in the harsh, near-desert of the Sahel?

That is ultimately what has brought me to undertake this journey back to Niger. I don't know if I'd ever get the chance to do it again. Despite all the promises and assurances, I've met too many people who never got around to that great passion, experience, or dream that slowly faded into the soft pain of regret and a wistful nostalgia of a previous life.

If for no other reason, I want to go back in the hopes of seeing this kid again:



That's my attakurmizo, my little trickster, the kid who saw me through the trauma of leaving, who taught me more about love and friendship than I ever could have imagined, who did that all without being able to even properly say my name. That picture is the perfect representation of him. Whenever I think about him, that's how I see him, arms wrapped around my leg, wide-eyed affection without a trace of guile. I could keep him like this forever, like a glass ornament, precious and beautiful. But I want to see what he's become. As much as possible, I yearn for the living memory of this place, even if it has a few cracks and scratches. That's what this ultimately is about: the search for that living memory, even if it's painful or broken in some way. Tomorrow, I'll start that search, unsure of what I'll find but longing for it nevertheless.

Leaving West Africa

So, I fully admit: that last post was a bit crap. I apologize for the confusing, piecemeal nature of it. What I should have written is as follows, and I hope it can help explain the confusion and general anxious strain I've been feeling for the past few days in Senegal.

Today is my last day in Senegal, and looking at it more and more, my last day in West Africa. Mauritania marks my transition from the African world I've known so long to the Arab world I'll be discovering soon enough. Technically, it's still West Africa, but from everything I've heard, Mauritania is really a mix of Arab, Berber, and African all in one enormous expanse of desert. Leaving this place is kind of a hard transition. For almost two and a half years, I haven't known anything other than West Africa, one of the poorest, hardest, grittiest places on earth. And it's difficult to put this leaving into words: what it represents, how it feels, who I'm leaving behind, and when I'll be back.

First, what does leaving Africa represent for me? In that regard, what does West Africa, my Peace Corps experience, and my travels represent? Many things, I guess. I feel as if I'm closing an amazing chapter of my life. I thought I was closing that chapter when I left Niger, and in many ways I was. However, in just a few ways, I think this trip has added a few footnotes to my time there. Peace Corps was a unique experience that I don't think I would have otherwise had. I've grown so much in the past two and a half years that I don't even recognize the person I once was. I joined Peace Corps less than a year after graduating college, which is pretty overwhelmingly true for many other Volunteers in West Africa. At that time, I was lost. I didn't know what I was doing with my life, so hell, why not join Peace Corps? This, I've found, is a common thought amongst those of us who have no idea where life is taking them but who want to do some bit of good in this world.

I think most people end important chapters of their life with a "Now what?" mentality. It's far too easy to encounter the first thing that comes drifting along, attach yourself to it, and hold on tight. It's a way of sleeping through life, and it's a pretty awful way to waste precious time on this earth. But I can't judge. This is exactly how I wound up in Peace Corps. But the difference is that Peace Corps has an expiration date. Two years and you know things are going to end. You'll say goodbye and move on, with clearly-defined memories of challenges and triumphs, failures and rewards. Some people spend their entire lives attached to the first thing that drifted along after college and never experience anything else.

And the key memories in my and several other peoples' service are those challenges. Whether projects, people, or day-to-day life in another culture, we need those challenges to reaffirm our place in the world or to knock us on our ass so we can have the chance to get back up again. We succeed or fail, but I think we often learn more in our failures, and they often make success that much sweeter. I'm thankful that I've had this opportunity to challenge myself so thoroughly. Like iron after it's been through the forge I think I'm stronger, more resilient, and ready to take on more weight, more responsibilities. More importantly, I feel as if the time for drift is over. I may not have a much better idea of what I want to do, but I have to strike out on a path. I can't abide staying in one place, growing old, and losing that edge. Along the way, I've met several others, in all walks of life, who are in the same category, and it feels nice to know that you're not alone. The road is full of those looking for some kind of existential sign.

So how does it feel? Leaving again? Well, after all that I've just written, better, but still kind of horrible. It's hard to transition any chapter of life, and being young, an experience like this takes up a greater proportion of my life. I'll apologize now if this gets overly romantic or dreamy. Just bear with me. I've given myself to this place for a long time, and it's returned my investment tenfold. But, there's no denying that there are some things you can't get back. I once wrote about taking a hammer to my sanity, throwing the pieces to the wind, and collecting them at a later date. Those pieces that I found were all I needed in life, and the important ones would, obviously, be the easiest ones to pick back up. It was a pretty mentally challenging part of my service, which may go a way to explaining the violence of the imagery. Well, I did that. Metaphorically. I did not take a hammer to my head; I just smacked it a few thousand times because I never quite realized the extent of my own height. I went a little crazy, learned what was important, and have pieced myself back together pretty thoroughly. However, now I feel as if I've left a piece behind in Africa, and it's important. It feels as if this is an integral piece. And it's not coming back. It's taken up residence here, and I can't lay hands on it to collect it again. The problem seems to stem from the realization that this piece is everywhere and nowhere all at once. I can't relive my life and pinpoint the place where I left that small piece of myself, but I can catch glimpses of it: in the photos I've taken, the lines I've written, and the people I've met. It's there in every memory, like the creepy guy at a bar.

But it's not as if I have some hole within myself where this piece is missing. Instead, I have an assorted conglomeration of friends and images that have taken its place. That's why that piece of me is so impossible to reclaim. It's because it has also been smashed into ever smaller pieces which are now distributed all throughout this chunk of the continent: in my fields, my house, my favorite overlook on the mesa, in Dogon Country, in Monrovia, in the Fouta Djalon, in all the PCV friends I've made in Niger, Burkina, Mali, and Senegal, in Emilie and Charles, Knut and Bianca, John and Karen, Sangeetha and Becca, the Inter-Aide crew, in Annarita, in all my village friends, and even in Pip, who should have worked his way up to King of the Bush Cats by now, Insha'Allah. Hats off to one of the cutest cats ever. He probably won them over with his charm.

And when will I be back? That really depends on when God wills it, but I know that one day I will return to West Africa. And I will probably realize that I never really left. Because until then, there are pieces of me bouncing all around this part of the world, and I'll always be able to catch a bit of Africa's sun whenever I see old friends from these two years. Part of me will never leave. I'll always feel the absence of a place I love, but this loss will hopefully be tempered by new places to love, new adventures that await. It won't be too long before that happens either, because as soon as I've left West Africa, I have Morocco and North Africa, a whole new world of which I know nothing. After that, who knows? I will eventually go home (much to the relief of my aggrieved parents), but I doubt I'll be there long (sorry Mom and Dad). There's just too much of the world that I want to see. Too many people to meet and an infinite amount of adventures just waiting outside the door. Life's too short to experience them all, so we might as well try to find as many as we can.

And that's exactly what I do tomorrow, when I cross the border to Mauritania, en route to Morocco and another stretch of road. Until next time, kala han fo West Africa. I will miss you terribly.