Only in Harare: five men on a dead horse, mattress-wielding Amazons, nude Greek statues and a giant advert for Givenchy perfume

You, my dear blog readers, know how much I delight in the weird, wacky and downright loopy. Given my predilections in this regard, I find myself in exactly the right place in Harare. In my first week in Harare, I saw five men sitting on top of a dead horse in a truck on Enterprise Road. There was an explanation, there always is, but that arresting sight, five men, chattering nineteen to dozen, comfy as you please on this dead animal, stayed with me.

Outside Bays Linen Department store are these little Greek statues of Minerva and Aphrodite. They are, as Greek statues are required by statute to be, partially nude. Imagine my amusement when I walked past Bays a few days ago and heard two little kids, about 5 years speaking sternly to the statues and saying, ‘Imimi tinokumwai mukaka wenyu, tinoupedza wese.’ ‘We shall drink all your milk and finish it all.’ Heh.

Then there are the gangs of female rapists in Zimbabwe. These gangs have struck terror into the hearts of men, as they go about raping men. No one believed the victims at first because well, who would? The cartoon above, courtesy of my friend Edmund Kudzayi, is one man’s response to the news of female rapists. The whole thing seems barely plausible when you add little touches like the mattress: some of the women apparently go around equipped with a mattress. As my friend Ranga said, who will save Zimbabwe’s men from these mattress-wielding Amazons?

We may jest, but it seems this thing is real, there really are women who are going about forcing men to have sex with them. One of my taxi drivers told me that some of this is connected to wealth and success rituals. The most disturbing aspect is that some of the men are homeless and often mentally ill. Apparently, when it comes to secret rituals, the sperm of a mentally ill man is worth more than that of a sane one in Zimbabwe. Go figure.

On Borrowdale Road is a large billboard advertising Givenchy perfume. This, I must say, is among the most incongruous things that I have seen so far, but that is Harare for you, a surprise on every corner.

Cartoon: TheAfricanAristocrat