NKAYI, ZIMBABWE — We are puttering along in an ancient pickup with no brakes to speak of, dodging the potholes. Every bolt seems to groan with effort, but Max Mkandla says the car is doing well. He speaks rather like a proud father discussing his brightest child.
"I'm trying to protect these tires," Max says. There's a pause. "Because I haven't got a spare."
I'm taking a turn at the wheel. The seat won't roll forward -- not good for someone just over 5 feet tall, so I've wedged lumpy bags and books behind me to reach the foot controls.
Suddenly a calf lollops across the road and I floor the brakes, or try to. There seems to be no stopping our rattling, chaotic momentum, but eventually we slow down. The calf trots to safety.
But in protest, the brakes get even worse. A line of warning lights blinks angrily on the dash. When I point this out, Max takes the wheel, but within an hour, the car has had enough.
"Everything's gone, brake lights, everything," he says, pulling over in thick bushland. We're stranded in outback Zimbabwe with no cellphone reception on a track with few cars.
I give up hope of getting any work done. I'm supposed to be on my way to research a story about hunger with Max, a stringy war veteran turned activist. But nothing is simple in Zimbabwe. I'd planned to leave by 8. Problems getting diesel (and Max's elastic idea of punctuality) meant it was lunchtime before we got on the road.
But once the car has rested awhile, Max starts it up and decides we can limp along after all.
The music of the cicadas almost drowns out the tinny vibrations of the tape player. Zimbabwean artist Oliver Mtukudzi is singing a ballad in Shona called "Bvuma": "Accept that you are old. Accept that you are worn out. . . . Don't deny it, you are finished." It could have been written for Max's car. Or is it about the country's all-powerful, 83-year-old president, Robert Mugabe?
The roads of Zimbabwe sing their own haunting lament for a people and their suffering.
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Junica Dube felt the birth pangs of her first child. She was hoping for a boy. In the hospital, Dube struggled and labored, alone. There was no painkiller, nor any comfort, in a medical system racked by shortages of even basic items. She asked for help, but the nurses said to call them when she was really in pain.
"The nurses told me to keep quiet, I'm making too much noise," the 28-year-old says. "I tried by all means to keep quiet, but it was too painful."
