Return to Zimbabwe

It's been a long time since I made an entry. A lot has happened. My wife and I returned to Zimbabwe, where we are going to stay for a while before going to the U.S. I like Zimbabwe. In spite of what is reported about the country, the inflation, failing infrastructure, and poverty, the country is a wonderful place and the news media doesn't get it right about Zimbabwe. It's easy to report the negative but not the positive, which are the beauty of the country, the climate (neither heat nor AC is necessary, because of the elevation and proximity to the equator), the people (very friendly (English is the national language), and lack of violent crime, the use of the U.S. dollar, the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, the general peacefulness. Across the street from where we are staying there is a very posh restaurant, Victoria Twenty-Two, which is maybe better than the St. Regis in Amman. Glad we're not in Amman, considering what is going on in Gaza. Down the street is a golf club that I joined, The Country Club (the photos are not of the course), for 60 USDs a quarter. A bit burned out during the dry season, but greening up now. Very good layout, a true test. Zimbabwe has quite a few golf courses. Many professionals were from Zimbabwe, the most notable, Nick Price, who is in the Hall of Fame. On most mornings I write. I started a coming-of-age novel set in 1963 Alabama about a Jewish boy's romance with a Black girl, some antisemitism, small-town nepotism and corruption, titled “My Alabama Story,” but I might change that to “Dogwoods and Jim Crow.” I had thought it would be more like a novella, but I got carried away and now it is maybe 65,000 words and has a complicated plot. Time is shuffled and compressed because telling it in the traditional linear way would make for dull reading. Sometimes present, past, and future can be on the same page, as the narrator, the boy, Simon Klein, recalls his life in the fictional town of Picketville, in the southeast corner of the state, but for anyone who knows the state would quickly identify as Ozark, where I grew up. It was thriving then, during the Vietnam War, and hasn't grown much since then, while Enterprise, on the other side of the Army base, has, as has Dothan. I passed through the area a few years back, just to see how it is. My home, designed by my father, which overlooked a forest of pines and oaks, where I played as a kid, is now a Wal-Mart. That's not progress.

I've had a travel piece accepted by The Hooghly Review, to be put out in their weekly newsletter, and a short story by Twist and Twain.