Shopping

In Harare with Dingaan......

Around the corner from where I used to live at number 10 St Luke’s Road in Rhodesville, a suburb of Harare, is a spectacular fruit and vegetable market bursting with produce. 
As you walk into the large thatched building there is a gentle mist, which keeps the vegetables fresh and the customers cool.

Waist high boxed shelves are arranged in blocks of colour. In fact when I think of that market I think of colour – red apples, green apples, yellow apples, orange paw paws, green and black punnets of grapes, pink potatoes, grey potatoes, purple onions, white onions etc.

And there’s a tea room next door where the world meets for a friendly chat and a prolonged cup or two of cappuccino coffee.

Often I used to walk to this market once known as Honeydew with assistant gardener and Mr Fix-it Dingaan, Sophie’s husband, who is 80+, very frail and nearly stone deaf. 

He would always put on his long trousers and a smart shirt to take me shopping and would walk two steps behind me and direct my path with remarks like “mind that big hole in the road” or “here comes a bicycle”. It was quite the wrong way for a partially sighted person to be directed but he insisted - a reversal of positions would have not been polite to him. He was a true gentleman.

We would do the shopping and Dingaan would pack a little tartan bag with wheels and pull it along so he did not have to carry too heavy a load.

On one occasion, coming out of the side road of Honeydew on our way home, we noticed a huge truck about to turn into it. Dingaan called to me to “GO” so I went, but then he yelled “STOP!” I heard the truck coming towards us and so I ran rapidly across the road, full tilt into a gathering of surprised basket weavers. 

“Today is not my day to die,” I informed them as they looked at me in wonder.

I was soon joined by Dingaan and we went on our way having negotiated the main road without incident. As we ambled happily along the pedestrian path I heard a car hooting as it bowled down the same main road. It was a friend of mine named Pam on her way home from the airport with her sister Jo. I rushed forward to greet them, waving and smiling, then tripped. It was one of those falls where your head moves forward and your legs move like pistons trying to catch up. But no such luck - and down I went on hands and knees.

Greeting Pam and her sister, I assured them I was fine – only a graze on the knee. When I looked back at Dingaan he was almost white-faced, standing with dropped jaw and limp outstretched hands hanging at his sides. The tartan shopping bag lay askew on the ground with vegetables spread all over the path.
We gathered them up, packed them away again and headed slowly back home. When we arrived at the front door of the cottage, Sophie took one look at us and said, “What has happened?!”

Dingaan was looking very peaky so I gave him a glass of sherry and we were told by Sophie that we were never, ever allowed to go shopping again. 
Well I always listen to Sophie, and we sadly never did.

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... and in Johannesburg with Innocent

Whenever I visit my son Anthony in Johannesburg I am taken shopping by a tall man with the flattering but unlikely name of Innocent.

He has long legs which he crosses modestly when standing and talking and he punctuates his every sentence with a huge laugh which he thinks is a good way of keeping out of trouble.

We drive in Anthony’s old truck which he seems to understand. I did have to reprimand him a few times for driving using the cell phone in his left hand while waving at a passing “chick” with his right and yelling “yebbo”.

On arrival at the shops we usually parked in the space for disabled elderlies although at first we had no sticker giving us this privilege. Innocent seemed to get away with it by shouting “You see – Gogo (granny),” and laughing hilariously.

In the shop we meandered through the long aisles in a haphazard fashion, stopping to stare at all the rows upon rows of food which I could not differentiate and he could not recognise, since both of us hail from Zimbabwe.

The one item that really floored us was the range of digestive biscuits. There are so many different kinds, only one of which I would buy – not chocolate, not wholewheat, but plain. 

Sometimes we would get into trouble by stopping the trolley across the aisle instead of keeping it  strictly to the left or right. After apologies, laughter from Innocent and “yebbo” we were forgiven by the many kindly folk who shop there.

Once or twice when the truck was not working Innocent kindly gave me a lift in his own car of which he was very proud. Apart from a strong smell of carbon dioxide coming through the floor boards and many rattles, it went all right. 

Innocent would drive that car overnight to Zimbabwe to see his wife and children. He would collect katundu in Zimbabwe for people living down here. Once he was stopped in Gwanda and fined for overloading. He told me he had to sell everything he was carrying to pay the fine.

 It would embarrass me unspeakably when Innocent would peer over my shoulder at the till for I knew I had bought more than he could possibly afford.

Our shopping finished eventually, and after executing a few terrifying U-turns at the robots and taking a shortcut through the corner garage, we would make our way home.

The Haircuts

Father Richard has twin sons Phillip and Rich.

Rich

They both arrived home after being away for some time, Rich from Tanzania where he had been working on a tobacco estate and Phillip from Johannesburg where he had been singing.

Their mother Fiona took one look at them and said firmly: “These boys must have haircuts. So while Fiona did some
peaceful shopping father Richard, Claire his daughter, the twins and I set off to find a cottage in Borrowdale where the hairdresser lived.

We had bought some chicken pies for our lunch. We were soon shown through the charming cottage onto a spacious verandah and sat in comfortable chairs where we quite rudely munched our pies while Rich was summoned for a haircut at a table and chair on the other end of the verandah.

He had very thick copper coloured hair and the attractive little hairdresser set to with a snapping of scissors and a few grumbles about the length or thickness of his hair which she said would take half an hour to cut instead of the usual 15 minutes. Teasingly she said that in fact she should charge him twice as much.

All was going well until her young son brought out onto the verandah, an alert white parakeet that flew at once onto Philip’s lap. When in doubt Philip sings, so he sang a little song on the lines of: “I wish you’d fly away, leave me be like yesterday.”

"I don't do parrots."

Discouragingly the white parakeet nestled under his arm.

But soon enough, the parakeet became bored with that and wandered over to Claire, who retreated behind a chair saying: “I don’t do parrots.”

Then it marched across to Father Richard and tackled his shoelaces. When in doubt father Richard smokes. The parrot moved away swiftly looking affronted.

Father smokes when in doubt

I told them that I thought they showed no courage at all when it came to birds.
A little later I moved from the verandah to the lounge to look more closely at a painting. As I came back onto the verandah the parakeet gave me a good peck on the left heel, which bled. Cotton wool and plasters were rushed to the scene and the parrot was removed to its cage.

Claire said to me: “You see Granny that is why we don’t like parrots.”

My reply was: “Well Claire, I’m glad he pecked me as I didn’t kick up much of a fuss. Imagine if he had pecked you lot.”

The last thing we saw when we left the cottage were two wrinkly-browed heavily dew-lapped dogs with their noses pressed against the glass door gazing at the parrot cage. We wonder if it ever got its just deserts – and they just got dessert?