Christmas in Zimbabwe: What’s in the pot?

Christmas in Zimbabwe is a time of watermelons and litchis, of sticky orange mangoes and sweet fresh mealies roasted over a fire, dripping with butter, sprinkled with salt and pepper. It’s a time of sticky fingers and juice dripping down your chin.

It’s a time when the crickets and frogs sing at night and the cicadas deafen you during the day. A time of vivid streaks of lightning blazed across dark purple skies and thunder that rattles the windows; a time of pinging hail and pounding rain and of thick red mud.

Read:
A little window of hope in Zimbabwe
Christmas boxes and the final return from SA to Zim

Christmas is also the time for me to thank you for reading my column. At home or away, near or far, there are now readers of my blog in 70 countries around the world.

It is our love for this country and its people that connects us. Thank you all for your emails, messages, stories and memories. I read them all. Some make me smile and others make me cry, but all show me how the pulse of Zimbabwe still beats in your heart.

This is my last column for 2025 and I leave you with this little story of a black pot and a troop of monkeys.

The black pot

On an ‘escape from the madness’ trip to the Mazowe River a few months ago, I put my tent up on the riverside, my faithful old yellow kettle on the fire, and the river flowing gently past.

With my notebook in my pocket and my camera in my lap, I watched and waited, as we do in the bush.

I knew for sure that something would come along soon enough if I just sat sill and was patient.

Soon a troop of monkeys was watching my every move: checking the zips on my tent, peering through the car windows, sliding down the windscreen leaving little fingerprints and skid marks in the dust on the glass, attacking their own reflections in the wing mirrors.

The star attraction was my black cooking pot. Again and again the monkeys came to inspect the pot.

Some would just stretch out a little black finger and touch the pot.

Others were braver, taking the lid off, dropping it on the ground, looking inside the pot and then running away.

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Every time the lid clattered to the ground I got up and replaced it and a bit later the monkey came back and did it all over again.

Perhaps, in that rhythm of Zimbabwe, there was a message for us all, and for our country – never stop looking and never give up hoping.

Copyright © Cathy Buckle

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