The Sunday Mail
Fatima Bulla
EVERY morning when she opens her eyes, she is confronted by thoughts of what her two daughters and grandchild are going to eat.
She says she has nightmares about it.
This is the story of 61-year-old granny, Mrs Janet Ndhlala, whose life revolves around ensuring that her family, which includes an ailing 25-year-old daughter and young grandchild, are fed and catered for.
Gogo Ndhlala, as she is popularly known, will not be receiving a Mother’s Day gift today.
She, like thousands of other women countrywide, is enduring a tough economic environment that has been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sitting, rather sinking in a black leather couch, which has seen better days, Gogo Ndhlala ponders how to get people to buy her vegetables when she goes on her prohibited door-to-door rounds.
The returns from vegetable sales are her only source of income since her husband died in 2017.
Since Zimbabwe went into a coronavirus-induced national lockdown on March 30, her profits have dwindled to almost nothing.
Further eating into her meagre profits are the daily increases in the wholesale price of vegetables as farm produce becomes scarce on the market.
Her business has slumped.
Most of the customers that used to support her business at Spaceman Business Centre in the high-density suburb of Glen Norah cannot do so anymore.
They retreated into their homes in compliance with lockdown rules, whose first phase exempted only essential service providers and frontline workers.
The knock on her profits has affected her household — the family now has to make do with only two scrappy meals a day.
“I now walk door-to-door selling vegetables because customers are staying safe in their homes. I wake up at 4am and walk to buy vegetables for resale from Lusaka (vegetable market) in Highfield. I come back home to repackage them into $2 bundles and start moving door-to-door,” Gogo Ndhlala said wearily.
“At my age, walking is becoming difficult. My legs cannot carry me anymore — they get swollen or are simply sore at times. But if I do not go about selling, my children and grandchild will not have anything to eat.
“Right now, the entire country has been affected. Those who used to help us have also been affected by the lockdown, so there is no help.”
Six weeks since the lockdown was effected in Zimbabwe, Covid-19 has been detected in 35 people.
Government has moved the country to Level 2 — a partial lockdown — signalling a gradual return to normalcy, or the new normal.
This has seen more sectors of the economy being given the green light to operate.
The normalcy has not been replicated in Gogo Ndhlala’s ventures, which took a massive blow when illegal vending stalls from where she earned her keep were demolished by Harare City Council.
The demolitions were effected to clear all illegal structures and pave way for properly built stalls with sanitation facilities.
In the meantime, families that depend on vending such as Gogo Ndhlala’s have to wait, sometimes going to bed on empty stomachs.
Vendors are getting involved in cat-and-mouse games with the police, but for Gogo Ndhlala such dangerous pursuits are impracticable. “At my age I cannot be going back and forth, running away from the police. No, I can’t do it. It is better for me to walk door-to-door selling my vegetables. And when the sun sets, get back home.
“At times I get $50, sometimes I get nothing. It depends on the day. It has become a problem to provide for my family because basic commodities run out at the same time in the house and everyone is demanding US dollars,” she said.
With a loaf of bread costing $30, the Ndhlala family is more than happy to eat sweet potatoes (mbambaira/imbambaila) for breakfast and skip lunch to save maize-meal.
Added to that is the constant need for soap to wash clothes for Gogo Ndhlala’s ailing daughter, who requires assistance with the most basic of her needs.
Other than the bars of soap she received recently from an Econet-sponsored initiative, she told us that no one has been able to help her as the lockdown has taken a toll on her neighbours as well.
“All a woman needs in the house is mealie-meal, cooking oil, salt, sugar and soap. We have no idea what life will be like after this Covid-19-induced lockdown or the future of our initiatives. At least if they allowed us back to our vending sites, it would help a lot.”
Having taken a chunk of her productive time, The Sunday Mail bade her farewell.
She finished repackaging her vegetables and onions into smaller bundles, revealing that she had two more rounds to make within her neighbourhood before calling it a day.
By the time she settles back in her battered sofa at night to watch a bit of television, fatigue steals her away before worries of the coming day wake her up to start the daily routine.
“It won’t be surprising to hear that I have collapsed. One might think I am asleep, yet I would be long dead. Who knows?”
All these toils show how the world rests on the shoulders of indefatigable women, who continue to define societies and are duly commemorated on this day.
