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.