Operation ndigadzirisei

"We were made to love and be loved
But the price this world demands will cost you far too much
I spent so many years just trying to fit in
Now I've found a place in this circle of friends"
~from Circle of Friends by Point of Grace~

Clemencia's last comment on the last article inspired me to write this one.
It occurred to me that most of the time friends omit telling each other the
truth about each other's bad points for fear of annoying each other and
destroying the friendship. In so doing we let each other fail in life's issues
yet had we corrected each other success would have been a given. I
therefore decided to use this particular article to make my friends
tell me about my weaknesses and how they affect others. I want to use their
comments to improve my personality and so I urge them to be very frank with me
and feel free to say whatever they want, I won't feel insulted and it won't strain our friendship. The motive behind improving my personality is so that I am the kind of person who everyone wants to be neighbors with to the extend that property values go up when I am in the neighborhood. Just kidding!!! On a more serious note I need to use the comments whilst working on my relationship with my soulmate.

Most of us are probably allured by the attractive notion that effortless
relationships exist. Whether it be happily-ever-after marriages, or friendships
which last forever, or parent/child bonds which supercede the need to
understand each other, we'd all like to believe that our most intimate
relationships are unconditional, and strong enough to withstand whatever may
come. However, at some point in our lives most of us need to face the fact that
relationships require effort to keep them strong and positive, and that even
wonderful, strong relationships can be destroyed by neglect. So this article
is meant to point to me the parts of my personality that I need to
work on for me to enjoy lasting love-filled, peaceful and happy relationships.

A special thanks to my circle of friends. I appreciate your friendship and support.

A tesitmony of love of all kinds

Not a day goes by that I don't think about it.
What it means to love and be happy. I see it all around me.
Men and women basking in happiness to be with one another.
On occasion, I see that love can survive in all possible situations
and combinations. It just makes me marvel at the beauty and
power of love.

Chipo and Dave are a couple whose love for each other I admire.
Their love story unravelled right in front of my eyes and it fascinates
me to see them still strong together many years later.
 Chipo was the girl next door to Dave and they were friends since the 
first grade and through high school. They went to the same University.
Chipo was a beautiful girl and dated some man she met at Uni and Dave 
dated some nurse. But the one he wanted was the one he could not have,
Chipo. He was always there for her and she was there for him. Best friends.
But they were never more than that.....until the day Dave had an accident
and almost died. That's when in a delirious state he confessed his true
feelings to Chipo. Chipo was shocked. She had always loved Dave but would
not show it because she thought he didn't love her the same. She was surprised
to find out that he actually loved her all along. In the hospital, Chipo had
told him her plans of getting engaged to her current boyfriend. He was hurt but
wanted her to be happy because she was his friend and a good person. Her
happiness mattered to him a whole lot. Dave recovered from his injuries and
went home. He was thankful to be alive. Imagine his surprise when he came home
to find Chipo there waiting for him with a surprise engagement proposal. Dave 
looked at the woman she had called her friend for two decades and wept with joy as
he accepted the proposal. While Dave was in hospital Chipo had spent a lot of time
thinking and realized that the man she wanted, the one she sought to embrace for the rest of her life had been right under her nose all along. That night, Dave and
Chipo shared their love, and more, much more, they began to share the rest of their lives. A month later they were married and their love for each other is given as an example of how beautiful marriage can be by the marriage counselors at their Church.

I also have a friend, Clemencia who is very intelligent but very quiet. Clemencia has
always been the nerd type, forever studying whatever subject under the sun. As she grew up she had no time for anything else besides her books to the point of being anti-social and dressing shabbily, she just didn't care about anything except her books. Was always top of her class from first grade up to her last year at University and during all those years she never dated anyone and only made friends with one person, Seby, who accepted her as she was. After graduating with a distinction she got a good well paying job and then started attending an MBA programme during weekends where she met her match, Tendai, an anti-social nerd who is obssessed with books, just like herself. He was a gentle, shy person. They became very close friends. After two months of friendship, he saw her in a different light.
She did have all the qualities he wanted in a significant other and they started dating. Clemencia the nerd became a changed person when she fell in love with Tendai, she began to take great care of her looks and would actually make time to be with other girls and participate in the girl talks something she never used to be interested in. After a year of dating, Clemencia and Tendai got married and their love for each other can be seen by anyone who knows them, two decades down the line.
Their love for each other knows no bounds.

The there is my friend Agnes. Agnes is a pretty girl. All men and boys can't sit or stand still when she is around and she loves the attention she gets from men but never lets them get near her. After divorcing with her irresponsible first husband
she began to believe that all men were only interested in her outer beauty and not with her inner beauty. As beautiful as she is, she never dated anyone after her divorce, didnt trust men. But the man that she eventually married for the second time had no time for dating, it was love at first sight. He gazed at her in awe from across a crowded room at a business luncheon and the next day and for the next two months after that a fresh single red rose with a note written, "Love you Agnes|" and signed TG would be delivered to her desk by a florist every morning. She didn't know any TG and this TG was not coming forward to introduce himself to her so for two months she lived in suspense and anticipation to meet this TG. When he eventually appeared into her life and proposed Agnes had already fallen in love with him during the build up of the anticipation to meet the romantic TG so she accepted his proposal. A month later they were married and they are still married
and strongly in love to this date.

These are the testimonies of love and I have seen these love tales unfolding as I watched from a distance. Whenever I am alone, and that is fairly often, these tales give me hope. Hope that someday I am going to be writing my own "and they lived happily ever after" love story with Dumi as my co-star on this blog. Will also write Babra's love story in future when she eventually meets her soulmate.

To all those people out there who are in love like I am, what I want to say to you is that it takes courage to love and relationships of any kind take work but if your love is true it can overcome any obstacles in its path and become stronger with each obstacle it manages to surmount.
THANK YOU LORD FOR THE GIFT OF LOVE.

Write your own original life script

Most of us are living according to scripts written by
other people, we are not original. We act not according
to how we really want to but according to how the society
we live in expect us to act, how our peers act or what
was instilled into our minds as we grew up or what the book
says. We are more concerned about conformity than about
being ourselves.

Conformity is a kind of mental slavery that restricts us
and hinders us from being creative. It makes us give up
fully utilising the gift of thinking that God gave us
humans by detering us from coming up with our own original
ideas because it causes us to think within the box always.
Conformity stumps our growth through entreprenuer
initiatives.

All inventions in the world comes from those who dare to go
against conformity and think differently. All progress
came from those who chose to question the status quo and
dared to be themselves by writing their own original life
scripts and living according to that script. 

In order to have extraordinary success you need to have a
questioning mind that is also action oriented as well  as that is
mentally emancipated from fear of non-conformity, prejudice,
defeatism and negative thinking.  You also need to be first in
something. Realise that you are a unique individual with a
unique arsenal of talents that no other person possesses and
you have your own mix of capabilities that you need to contribute
to the world which are different from everyone else's so refuse to
act like a clone of another person. Make your own permanent
mark in the world today by boldly going where no one else has
gone before and this you can only do if you dare to go against
conformity. Of course you'll face ridicule and sometimes loneliness
as you try to be different but make sure that that doesn't make you
sacrifice your success to appease society, your peers or whoever was
mentally enslaving you to conformity. Transform rather than conform.

Unfortunately our Zimbabwean culture over emphasises conformity
and this creates a serious mental hurdle in the fast changing global
village where one has to either innovate or face extinction. I
personally think that it is this over-rating of normalcy in our
Zimbabwean culture that causes us to be so passive instead of daring
to think differently and come up with solutions to our  economic
situation.
The current economic situation in Zimbabwe requires that we
think differently for us to cause a positive transformation
of it. We should challenge existing mindsets and question
current economic policies and practices  which brought us this
 far down in the economic ladder and encourage creativity and
change. If the conventional wisdom of sticking to tried and 
tested economic policies and using them to solve our economic
problems is not working for us  then what we need to do is chart
our own economic revolutionary future by identifying the best
solution for our particular economic situation. Conforming
to conventional wisdom can be a constraint on the free fall
of ideas that is neccessary for the economic turnaround
that we badly need in this country.

True peace and happiness comes about if we dare ourselves
to be our true selves not what someone else wants us to be.

Everything is possible to him who believes.

I am a bookworm, an avid reader, a web surfer, a researcher,
I just love acquiring knowledge but the last two days after I
came back from our shopping trip I didn't touch my laptop or
 touch any book, didn't go to work, just treated myself to bubble
baths, watching movies on TV and helping my little daughter do
her homework. It was so refreshing. One thing I just could not
stop doing was to think about issues in life and of course my love
Dumi.

I thought about how we Zimbos have mastered the blaming game,
against a backdrop of doom, despair and defeatism caused by the
economic situation in our country. We blame just about anyone else
except ourselves. Just look around you, have any of our problems 
vanished as a result of our expertise at blaming. When you blame
you actually transfer the responsibility of resolving your challenges
to someone else. By completely absolving yourself from the matter
you are abdicating responsibility. That is why blaming is so 
disempowering.

What really hurts is that it doesn't have to be this way. We have the
brains, the capacity, the means & the resources to turn the tables.
All that we are missing is either the sight or the successful 
implementation of our good ideas. We can make this place economically
sound if we have a strong unshakeable belief in our capabilities as
individuals and as a nation. This is the kind of empowering ourselves
that Bob Marley sang, "None but ourselves can free our minds" and
Mahtma Gandi put it as, "Be the change that you want to see in the
world" but most awesome of all is the qoutation from the bible which
says, "Everything is possible to him who believes." We can cause a
paradigm shift in the situation in this country if we believe in
ourselves and our capabilities.

Have you ever thought of sitting down and pondering at what future
generations  will inherit from our era- poverty, corruption, nepotism,
the black market, profiteering outside the laws of economics and 
commerce, infrastructural  and institutional decay, xenophobia, greed,
 the art of blaming and lies and more lies.
I pondered about it and it inspired me to write this article.

Far-fetched reporting

This weekend I had a hectic trip to a neighbouring country
to do some shopping so as to replenish my pantry which had become
empty. It was an uneventful trip but what disturbed me was the news
I heard about Zimbabwe when I was there. The radio news reader said
that some Zimbabweans had resorted to killing dogs and eating dog meat
because of the shortage of meat in the country. He went on to say that
some dog owners where surrendering their dogs to the SPCA citing the
shortage of dog food as the reason to do so while others were doing so because they felt that their dogs' lives were 
at risk from the dog eaters and the SPCA could not cope
with the large number of dogs being surrendered and so was having the
dogs injected with a drug that makes them die peacefully but the drug
was quickly becoming short in supply.

These lies about my country horrified me and spoiled my mood. I shudder
at the professional ethics of the journalist who reported such lies and
felt hurt at the ridicule we Zimbabweans are being subjected to by our very
SADC neighbours whom we thought loved us and would stand by us in truth
through whatever ordeal we go through as a nation. I wondered  if my dream
of the African Union coming up with one big country called Africa which
will be a force to reckon with will ever happen if our very own reporters
report such lies that go against the group dynamics needed for such a union
to be successful.

Besides that the trip was quite exciting. There were four of my friends Chipo,
Clemencia, Agnes, Chipo's sister-in-law and myself and we touched base about
a number of issues and had quite some laughs of glee such that the locals in the
country that we visited were surprised by our jovial mood which they didn't
expect from people who are coming from a nation which has been making
horrifying headlines in their country.

Why am I irritable sometimes?

Have been feeling irritable lately, tried to pinpoint exactly
why I felt the way I was feeling but could find no particular
reason. My love was in touch, constantly reminding me
of the love he feels for me, I could feel inner peace radiating
around me for I had dared myself to be myself and let out my
feelings by saying the truth about the situation at my workplace,
my home was filled with cousins who adore me and happiness
was in the house as well as within me, so what could possibly be
causing this irritability, I wondered.  So last night I sat down and
 got in touch with my inner self which is where I got the answer
to why I was feeling irritable. To my surprise when Dumi my love
called me this morning before I had said anything he said that
 he was feeling irritable. I marvelled at this connection that we
have which makes us feel emotions the same way at the same time,
extra sensory perception is what it is called.

You might be curious as to why we were both feeling irritable and
I won't go into detail about that because it is personal. All I can say
is that God made humans in such a way that when they love someone
they get some sexual feelings for that person and when those feelings
are not released one is bound to be irritable sometimes. But irritability
does not cause death so my love and I vowed to ourselves and to each
other that no matter how irritable we get as we stay apart we were
going to remain faithful to each other. We agreed that love
unaccompanied by fidelity and trust looses its meaning completely and
since we value our love more than any other human feeling we were
not going to do anything that undermines our love and trust for each
other.

My love taught me that the power of love if combined with the power
of the mind and imagination through words lovingly spoken by the
one you love can actually result in the release of those sexual emotions.
We put it in practice and it works for us which explains why it is not
always that  we feel irritable even though we are distance apart, some
days we would have taken care of each other through phone
communications.

My dear friends now that  I have answered the questions you have been
asking behind the scenes concerning long distance relationships and sex
and sexuality with some trying to plant a seed of doubt in my mind
concerning how my man was managing his sexual emotions whilst apart
from me let me conclude by saying that I trust my man completely just
as I trust myself and so the seeds of doubt you tried to plant did not sprout.

September 11

September 11
How my heart bleeds at the thought of all those innocent civilians
who died on this day. I remember seeing it on CNN and crying that
day as I saw some of the victims jumping out windows in
panic desperation. I wondered at the reasons behind such an attack.
I am of the opinion that nothing ever justifies violence. What
exactly was the point of killing so many innocent souls?

I believe in peace and dream of a world devoid of violence of
any form. Imagine a world in which we all love each other and
live in peace and harmony. Such a world would be pure bliss.

In memory of the September 11 victims I spent
the last 30minutes of this 11th day of September 2007 praying
for peace, love and happiness unto the whole world.

Works that witness

What people should realise is that being at the helm makes one
vulnerable to critics, analysts and reporters, in fact
everyone would be watching your every move and your life becomes
an open book for  everyone to read. It is therefore imperative that
people at the helm do their work perfectly and be blameless in their
behaviour. They should have works that witness if they want to 
silence everyone from pointing out their mistakes.

This reminds me of the story of Daniel in the bible. Daniel 6:3-4
Daniel conducted himself so well and so honorably in his high office that
Darius gave thought of setting him over the whole realm. The other
presidents and princes, however, were jealous and began to devise means
of getting rid of Daniel. But hard as they tried, they could find nothing in
his life to use against him. The bible says that he was faithful nor was there
any error or fault found in him.
What a record! What a testimony! He was loyal and conscientious on the job
-all the while giving God first place. Daniel's life was so far above reproach
that his enemies had to create a situation in which his commitment to God
would come into conflict with his government position.

Would you stand up under close examination like this? Are we so faithful
in our work that our fellow employees could find no charge or fault in us.?
It's commendable to witness for Christ. But consider the influence of a
godly life and a job so faithfully performed that others could find no fault.
That would certainly silence the critics  and glorify God.

So when you are up there at the helm and you don't want the Eusebias of
this world to tell the truth about your works make sure that your works
are above reproach, are blameless. Otherwise you might end up sounding
like a broken record from having to ask again and again, " Eusebia, who do
you think you are?" when I publish your mistakes on my blog.

 

Who do you think you are?

Ever done something that made someone say, "Who do you think you
are?" I am always doing things like that and so am always being asked that question. My answer is always short and precise, "I am me."
Little do the people who ask me that question know that, that type of question
has absolutely no effect on me. Some of us were lucky enough to get
a sense of security, worth and confidence in childhood. We knew we
were somebody not because we could read faster, jump higher or above
average in intelligence but just by being us. My parents gave us a
fantastic sense of security and worth. By the time the bigots got around
to telling us we were nobody, we already knew we were somebody, God's great invention for a unique purpose on this planet earth.

Other people have to learn the hard way that they are who they are and
who they are is somebody. They have had to give themselves the sense of
security.  While others have never experienced the feeling of being
somebody, of having the confidence and conviction that they are okay as
they are.

The confidence that I have comes from the self-approving voice inside me.
My self-approving voice isn't impressed by thundering applause. I don't
need to do every laudable thing I ever thought of or possess every positive
trait I aspire to in order to hear it.  Even if my fiancee says I am great, my dad
says I am great, my friends say I am great, my kids say I am great and my
workmates who are not jealousy say I am great, I won't feel great if I don't
hear the self-approving voice inside me which comes from appreciating myself
as I am. All I am trying to say is that we are the only ones who can give 
ourselves a sense of worth, security and confidence in ourselves.

 

Let the truth be told

There are people who when they leave make you sigh
with a sense of loss but there are also those who when they leave
make you sigh with a sense of relief.
Last Friday there was a sense of relief at my workplace as the
managing director at the company that I work for was serving
his last day at work. In the corridors you could hear people
celebrating with words and the saying of the day was, "Good
riddance of bad rubbish." Yet during the same week the PR
officer had placed an article in the newspaper thanking him
for a job well done whilst he was MD of the company. We wondered
whose opinion the PR officer was expressing, it must have been his 
own as an individual because the general opinion in the company
was contrary to that. Let the truth be told.

Here is a man who joined the company when its financial position
was sound and solid and is now leaving the company when it is
operating on a deficit, its gross margins and productivity levels having
 drastically fallen down  steeply as staff morale spiralled down and this
has got nothing to do with the economic environment in the country
because a lot of other companies in the same industry are thriving well
in the very same environment. Why would such a manager be called an
excellent manager? Let the truth be told.

The very first thing he did when he got to the helm of the company
was to trim the organisational structure  by  offering a voluntary
exit package to those who wanted to leave. This was done without
proper research and planning so the new structure resulted in
understaffing in most departments. The voluntary exit package
was not attractive at all so it didn't lure as many employees as
he wanted it to and some of the middle managers whom he wanted
out as part of restructuring did not opt for the voluntary exit
package so he decided to retrench them. The way he retrenched them
had some legal loopholes so the middle managers took him to court
and won the case and for the past three years & up to now they have
been on full pay and benefits while seated at home. How can such a 
manager who caused some employees to be paid whilst doing nothing
for the company be called an excellent manager. Let the truth be told.

The second mistake he made was to rebuke the law by refusing to pay
market related salaries that had been awarded to the employees by an
arbitrator when the matter of low salaries was taken to Labour Court.
When employees went on a tools down strike in protest of his stance in
this issue he fired all of them despite the fact that they were acting within
the Labour Laws and also within the country's laws concerning strikes.
The result was gross understaffing and employees lost trust in him, and 
productivity levels went down drastically although the panel beaten weekly
performance measurement reports showed otherwise.  What he failed to
realise was that for the successful turnaround of any company there has got
to be trust and harmony between motivated employees and management.
Honestly how can such a manager be thanked for a job well done. Let the
truth be told.

The third mistake he made was to hire consultants who had to be
paid handsomely to undertake a job evaluation and grading exercise and
then never implement the grading system that the consultants recommended
when they finished the exercise. Why waste money on an exercise that you
don't want to implement. What excellent job well done was the newspaper
article talking about. Let the truth be told.

The last and gravest mistake he made was to underpay employees ever since he joined 
the company. The underpaying got worse as the years progressed such that
as I speak the salaries of employees in the company are not enough to sustain
them and their families for a week, the transport fares needed by the employees
for them to come to work for a month are more than the net salaries they get.
As a result there is a high turnover in the company, the number of employees
suffering from stress related diseases is very high and the number of employees
absenting themselves from work everyday is very high. All this is a result of
the employees being demotivated and realising that they are subsidising the company
instead of the company subsidising its employees. Everyone who has been to business
school knows the importance of motivating employees so we wonder why that word
seems not to exist in his managerial vocabulary.  All Employees are happy to see him
leave except that one employee who put that thank you message in the newspaper or
maybe the MD put it himself to market himself to prospective employers.

I believe in the power of truth.  One single truth, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said upon
receiving his 1970 Nobel Prize for literature, is more powerful than all the weapons in
the world. In fidelity to truth lies true human dignity and a successful
path torwards positive change.