I spent the past three weeks with my rural folk, far from Harare’s madding crowd — out in Masvingo’s drought-prone Bikita district; a place considered peripheral, remote, backward and primitive by those that believe the city is everything.
the oracle BY TANGAI CHIPANGURA
Although at the time I grudgingly bade farewell to my folks early last week, the rains had begun to fall in earnest for the first time this season, it is not debatable that this mountainous beauty I call home has in recent years become a big victim of perennial ravages of drought.
Year after year, my people have failed to harvest enough to take them to the next cropping season as we used to do hardly two decades back, when we filled the local GMB silos at Nyika Growth Point to the brim and still remained with full granaries.
Nowadays, our land suffers from the scorching heat throughout the year; broken briefly by intermittent heavy rains that pound the dry soils destructively for two or three days before disappearing to God knows where. And no crops grow on the fields and we yield nothing.
Or, the people are given false hope by early rains which get farmers toiling on their fields and leave broken backs in its wake, only to invite floods of one kind or another — El-Nino this La Niña that. The floods destroy every fledgling crop — all the expensive seed gone and all the sweat goes to nought. Once again, we harvest nothing.
But the people have not lost hope. When I left Bikita last week, the fields were a joyful hive of activity. The skies were pregnant with black rainy clouds and, with faces brimming with hope; everyone was ploughing and planting corn.
The subject of this article though is the surprising trust, confidence and speed at which the people of my land have embraced plastic money, which the so-called learned, advanced and sophisticated urban elite are still struggling to accept.
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I was taken aback when, on the morning after my arrival home, my cousin Stan, a loyal patron of the local seven-day brew, sent me a “call me back” on my mobile phone. I was down at the growth point, more than 10km away from the top of the mountain where the beer fest was and when I called him back, he was requesting that I buy him a few mugs of the brew. I told him it was impossible for me to get up that mountain in less than half a day on foot as there is no vehicular road.
He laughed and asked me to hold on the phone and in no time there was a female voice on the phone. She introduced herself as “mai vedoro” loosely translated “the woman who sells beer”. She also gave her real full names before asking me to take down her telephone number to which I could send my cousin money for beer via ecocash!
I thought this was some funny joke but when she started lecturing me on how I could do it easily, especially if I was on econet, I realised I was in for some real awakening. Barely five minutes after I made the ecocash transaction, sending three dollars to her wallet, she called back joyously advising me the money had come through and that my cousin and his friends were already enjoying themselves.
I called my cousin and he was all happy and thankful, saying he had two big potfuls of the potent seven-day concoction in front of him, more than enough for him and his cronies. He laughed at me for my apparent ignorance about the magic of mobile money before teaching me mobile money was now the in thing and major medium of exchange in that part of the world.
Before the day was over, I had made countless transactions at Nyika growth point using ecocash or the point of sale (POS) method. I bought stuff in hardware shops, groceries from any small shop I got into and even ate my lunch at a backyard restaurant where I bought a plate of sadza and stew for one dollar which I paid for via ecocash!
There were written notices on all shop walls advising customers on how to pay for goods of whatever value using the fast ecocash method — providing the telephone number to which the money was to be deposited. Looking around me, I saw several people in every shop busy on their telephone handsets punching away, making payments for various items they would have purchased.
Watching this and reflecting on what difficulty I had come across trying to use the same transaction method in Harare where I had left a day before, I was intrigued, surprised, shocked even. This was happening everywhere I went that day, from Silveira Mission shopping centre, Mandadzaka township, Nyika growth point, Pamushana Mission shopping centre, Sosera township, right up to the little shops at Bikita Minerals.
Now, as if that were not enough, the following day I was at Nyika growth point again when I overheard two people in discussion about cash. One was asking her colleague if she had any idea of anyone who wanted cash. I approached them and said I did want some cash and asked how I could get it. I was asked to immediately make a transfer of anything up to $600 to her number via ecocash. I did and I got the $600 there where we stood. And, instead of getting to part with a few dollars, as is the norm in the city where people sell cash, I received lots of gratitude.
Dumbfounded, I asked where the cash was coming from and I was told a lot of people, especially teachers and other civil servants in the area, no longer wanted to move around with cash, so after withdrawing their money from their banks, they sought to transfer it into their ecocash wallets.
“You see, most people now find it prestigious to transact using ecocash; it looks quite sophisticated to be seen punching away at your phone while buying from shops. So nobody wants to move around with cash. Others say it protects them from thieves or even prodding spouses who go through their pockets,” said Sam Mugova, a mechanic at the growth point.
So, while your so-called sophisticated city folk are tearing each other fighting for cash, my simple people in “primitive and backward” Bikita are looking for fools to give the cash to, so that they can proceed and use the smart mobile money to buy their seven-day brew, groceries, livestock — virtually anything!
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