Away To Zimbabwe

Why am I here tonight?
I must tell you truth.
I love to send people away--
especially this way--
to Zimbabwe.

Away to Zimbabwe : 1998
( abreviated )

Bob Komives

 

Till now,
I had the misfortune to not truly know Jay Em,
but now I have the good fortune to meet her
and help you send her away--
to Zimbabwe.

We are here to give her a lift--
each in our way--
to Zimbabwe.

And my way goes by way of ignorance,
because I have never been there--
not even half way--
to Zimbabwe.

Yet I have traveled far
and found some of the depth in my ignorance.
Where this, perhaps, was said by me:

o o o

When I went to you, I went to help.
By the time I left
you had.

[ from: By The Time I Left ]

o o o

Is this why we want to send Jay away?
To take bits of we who stay?
To Zimbabwe
where more than eleven million people
who don't know us
have already worked and played this day.
Forty--four of every hundred are under age fifteen,
so, we wish they played a lot today;
it was Sunday;
and they are rising (as we sit)
to start the tasks of life--
of Monday--
in Zimbabwe.

And so we go as volunteers,
leaving loved ones,
leaving good ones,
meeting new ones,
meeting good ones
who will never know how good they are,
till we each feel like a taut and lonely string
that wants to pull distant attachments
to a place of ideal opportunity
where short, but common threads
would pull together,
forever,
for better.
Now, this, perhaps, is what troubled me:

o o o

We went southward from north winter
into tropic damp,
leaving and befriending
those that never meet.

[ from: Those That Never Meet ]

o o o

Can we meet the Bantu majority?
And the many minority?
We can speak the English
because it is official--
in language and in history.
For size, think Montana,
but thirty latitudinal degrees closer to the equator,
more like Chiapas,
or like a shorter Bolivia--
with high plateau, mountain, and lowland,
seven percent arable land,
worked by seventy percent of the people
who live in towns that Jay will walk into
never knowing what she will be taught
before she walks her way out.
This, perhaps, was taught to me:

o o o

Yes, these are pretty flowers.
Does not every village have such flowers?
Yes, this is my bench.
Does not every village have such benches?
...
Can there be village without benches?
Why have flowers but no bench to sit on?
Why have neighbors but no benches
for them to wander by?

[ from: Benches ]

o o o

Jay will wander by a land so far away
that of every thousand people she sees
most will have a bench,
but only twelve will have television,
one hundred twenty, a radio,
and seventeen may have a copy of today's newspaper.
Yet, eight hundred and fifty have learned to read.
So, we send Jay away--
to Zimbabwe--
to work with media there.
While here, perhaps, this happens to us:

o o o

According to a poll
released last week
by State University
and Press Mystique:
sex without love is at worst third best,
(The Journal Press Daily reported.)
and love without sex is at best third worst.
(The Press Daily Journal retorted.)

[ Press Released ]

o o o

More important,
in Zimbabwe
there are fifteen million chickens,
five million cattle,
three million goats,
half a million sheep--
and eleven million people
who die on average by age thirty-nine.
There are twenty-two thousand hospital beds,
but one million relatives, friends, and passers by
with cells infected by
Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

Just as important,
some four hundred years after the birth of Christ
the Bantu moved in
on top of strangers from the Iron Age,
and fourteen hundred years later
a Britsh man moved in--
on top.
His name was Cecil Rhodes.
Between making millions
in the diamond mines of South Africa
and giving millions
to his Rhodes Scholarships,
he got a charter
to make his own white-on-black Rhodesia.
And it stayed that way
till I was walking the roads of Guatemala,
my classmates were fighting in Vietnam
and on the streets back home,
and people in the southeast of Africa
were raising hell with a man named Ian Smith
who wanted to keep it Rhodes' way.
But the world got a conscience
and squeezed from the outside,
and people stayed upset,
swelled up on the inside,
and, in 1980, voted their way--
into Zimbabwe.

You may remember the drought of '92.
Or, if you are like me,
you just now looked it up--
under "Z"
for Zimbabwe--
where we find there is much to do
and most of us won't do it.
Or, I will go to Honduras
to help those whom I know better.
So, we help send some of the best of our people away
to wherever she can help,
to where she will learn what she already knows,
that no matter how much she gives there
she will never repay what she will there be given,
and we will never contribute enough
to pay for what she will bring back,
if she does come back here
before she goes back out,
and then comes back home,
and then goes back out,
and then comes back home again,
again.
And on this matter of going and coming,
this is, perhaps, advice from me:

o o o

You help family and friend
if you come back with a better label--
for yourself, a better label.
Coming back or going back,
what we call you
is what we believe of you
in the little time we have to think of you.

[ from: Thoughts On Coming Back and Going Back ]

o o o

Why am I here tonight?
Jay Em, I must tell you truth.
We send you away,
and then we wait
for the part of us
and the all of you
that you bring back--
your way--
from Zimbabwe.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 1998 :: Away to Zimbabwe :: ,9820