Empty Pages in a journal 1

“I did not go to Nicaragua intending to write a book, or write at all, but my encounter with the place affected me so deeply that in the end I had no choice. So: a moment, but I believe a crucial and revealing one, because it was neither a beginning nor an end, but a middle, a time that felt close to the fulcrum of history, a time when all things, all the possible futures, were still (just) in the balance.” Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile, p. 5.

I went to Zimbabwe almost a year ago now, to see what I could do to join in the struggle against Robert Mugabe and the ZANU PF government that was slowly and quickly starving, beating and killing its own people. I went because Zimbabwe has always been a country close to my heart, as I spent my formative childhood years there. Every time I read the news regarding Zimbabwe, I felt emotionally charged and desired to do something. After years of feeling this way, I finally decided, that for a little while at least, I would go. It was hard getting any type of support in going there, as everyone knew the potential danger of the now news-heavy African country. I understood this but also understood my desire to go. Even upon reaching South Africa, the country bordering Zimbabwe to the South, I was advised not to go into ZImbabwe. The danger was severe, and I realize now, I wasn’t aware of the degree of that danger until I left, miraculously safe. However, having risked my life to capture these stories, when I came back I found myself unable to write about them. A feeling of defeat still weighs on me as I think about my response to my time there; I made a video, went on NPR, and wrote a blog, but did not achieve my goal of writing about the people in the country I cared about so much. I kept these hidden, as the story and the suffering has been for so long, now finally creeping into the limelight. I wrote a piece when I got back about how much I wanted to forget, how I felt there was a force pushing me to forget, and how weighty it was. That force, that weight I feel and felt was the desperation, the need, the tear trailing story doubled behind each of the faces I encountered. That is the one side of the force, the affected, the victims, the traumatized, that is a deep sadness, a hopelessness, a “I can’t do this anymore”. The other side is equally if not more powerful, the power that kept me silent this year. A well loved folk group stated in one of their songs, “Empty pages in a journal say more than any words were able.” I believe that this was true for my time in Zimbabwe, the lack of writing, the lack of speaking out by so many, the continued quieting says more than the multitude of words on the news. This quieting force is that that I feel is ruling Zimbabwe, a dark, dominating, oppressive force that has been present there for some time now, I would like to argue, since the beginning of colonization; a force that has beaten into passive survival mode many of its citizens in and outside of the country. This is the force of control, manipulation and brute power stealing, a force of no freedom, constant boundedness, fear gripped, rights erased. The fear is pervasive, a well earned paranoia of big brother breathing down and often times beating down your back. It has caused a hospitable, polite society to turn on its own, those oppressed and oppressing mostly doing it for the same reason, survival of the fittest. Once the fitter or bruter start receiving more than survival, they become sickly addicted to it, and cannot stop even when their piece grows avaricely large, dividing and necessitating distrust of any other unknown. It is this crippling force that grips both oppressed and oppressors which keeps me and so many desiring to be free in Zimbabwe silent.