✍🏼 TEA, SCONES, AND BIG JOKES WITH PRESIDENT MUGABE:

Five years ago this month, I climbed to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro with my brothers, my dad, and a team of 15 volunteers to raise funds for 60 Zimbabwe orphans. We wanted to impact the lives of these lost boys and girls by bringing them closer to our church community.

Today, it seems like everyone in Zimbabwe is a "lost citizen" and many of them have literally lost everything (life savings, homes, loved ones…).

🇿🇼 // Zimbawe's Dictator Is Dead! What Does It Mean?

He was Zimbabwe’s first president, prime minister, and one of the longest-standing dictators in the world. “He’s a Hero!" That’s what a lot of mixed voices are saying about Robert Gabriel Mugabe (95) after he passed a few weeks ago... I remember meeting him years ago for tea and scones with my dad in the Zimbabwe Statehouse. Charming, loaded with a quick humor on the tongue, yet he didn’t want to budge on his policies, or his bitterness.

Douglas Rodgers, the author of the raw and controversial book “Two Weeks In November,” puts it this way,

“The liberator turned into a tyrant. He won a war for freedom, but then led his country into a ditch.”

An even harder pill to swallow is the fact that Mugabe’s replacement (Emmerson Mnangagwa) has crushed what little hope people had left. Yet in the ashes, there are tons of prophecies about a new dawn. The promises of redemption are clenched tightly by every citizen. They’re clenched by me too.

🚒 // So What Does The Future Look Like?

I received this message today from a colleague: "One of my friends had their house burnt down. They called the fire station. The fire-truck arrived, but they didn't bring water." ... "What did they bring?" I asked. "Nothing." My friend typed-out, "They just came."

This is the picture of the nation. A lot of showing up, a lot of movement but very few actions that are actually making sense, or a more importantly, making a difference.

So what do you do when theres a deep hunger from the people to change things? When there's a thirst for action from the everyday citizen to see the hurting healed, but then it turns into a twisted horror play as they watch their house burn to the ground? Many people in Zimbabwe are wondering what is next ... 16-hour power outages, a thread of hopeless tweets, and a propaganda message that's telling a fine story, "It's all part of the plan. Change is coming."

I talked to a US Embassy consultant a few years back. Here's what he said. "Unfortunately Zimbabwe is like a town where the sewer system broken. The sewage flooded the streets, and a generation held their noses and stayed away from it. They didn't fix it. When the new generation was born, they never knew streets without sewage. They were used to the smell and the reality of a gruesome site. So they played in the sewage and it was normal."

🤔 // Final Thoughts.

There's no denying that Zimbabwe holds onto hope! I have a strong belief that there's a promise over the country and it's people. If you happen to come across any Zimbabweans, you'll be remarkably surprised at the kindness and hospitality you'll walk into. Zimbabweans destroy the nuance of "riches make you happy." In the hopeless economic state, you'll find daily miracles, and a laugher that doesn't quite make sense.

#Zimbabwe #HopeStories #ChangeTheNarrative