A shopping trip like no other

My one tonne pick-up truck was so full that the headlights lit up the night sky and not the road in front of me on the way back from supermarket heaven last week. Everything about the trip to buy everyday groceries was an exercise in extremes and abnormality.

For nearly a year our shops have been virtually empty; sometimes you are lucky and find a packet of Egyptian biscuits or Indonesian noodles in a Zimbabwean supermarket. But never any of the basics.

The grocery trip I planned would take six days and entail a return journey of 2,400 kilometres. Two days for travelling, three days for shopping, one for exhaustion. With my passport and a Police clearance certificate for my vehicle I set out.

My grocery list looked more like the requirements of a residential institution than the needs of a small family, but then the provisions were intended to last for six months by which time, hopefully, some sort of a political settlement will have begun to turn around the dire situation in Zimbabwe.

First on my shopping list were the bulky essentials: 100 litres of petrol; 50 kilos of dog food (my security); 100 kilos of chicken food (my protein); a car battery (to run the computer, radio and some lights).

Then came the basics: 50 kilos of brown bread flour; 50 kilos of white flour; 10 litres of cooking oil; 10 kilos of rice; 20 kilos of sugar; 10 kilos of salt; 100 packets of yeast; 3 kilos of baking powder.

Then there were the extras - depending on how much money was left: soup, noodles, tinned fish, mayonnaise, light bulbs, torch and penlight batteries, washing powder, soap and toothpaste.

Finally, down at the very bottom were the luxuries - most of which I knew were just a pipe dream: margarine, tea bags, coffee, shampoo, biscuits and, luxury of all luxuries: chocolate!

Stepping into the first South African supermarket I was agog: eyes wide and mouth open, I felt weak at the knees. Full shelves, aisles and rows overflowing and groaning with supplies. It was impossible to believe that it had been like this just a year ago in Zimbabwe until Mr Mugabe's government introduced price controls which emptied our shops and pushed us to the edge of starvation.

Four days later, stone broke and with an estimated 800 kilos in the back of my truck, I headed home to Zimbabwe. As the Beitbridge border got closer I stopped feeling like a freak as every car looked like mine: loaded, overflowing, groaning with food and supplies.

It took three and half hours to get through the border - not because of searches and duties but because I refused to pay the bribes that every official from gate guard to customs officials and security men were looking for. A real bribe, mind you, of US Dollars or South African Rand - not Zim dollars.

Ten minutes across the border and the change is dramatic as you go from 1st world to 4th. Cars are replaced by donkey and ox carts; goats amble across the highway and naked children bathe in pools in drying rivers. The view from the window, for hundreds of kilometers across Zimbabwe, is of empty fields, derelict farms and no food in the hungry, barren land.

There were 18 road blocks on the eight hour journey from the border to my home town. Manned by pimply faced, painfully young policemen, always the questions were the same: where have you come from; where are you going to, what's in the back of the truck.

Sometimes the questions were demanding too: what food are you going to give to us? We are hungry too.

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