Of Coffee With Stitch In The Park

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words and ask you to make yourself at home, put your feet up why don’t you.

I hope you won’t think I have a thing for sewing metaphors as my last couple of coffeeshares have been laced with sewing-related subtext. This time the stitch we are having coffee with is a graffiti mural I saw painted on a wall in my childhood park…

I know from some sort of code that snitches get stitches so was this some sort of message or was the artist responsible for this work of art named Stitch who was thus establishing having been here in a contextless mural that no one can make sense of.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that I travelled to my home town of Masvingo for the first time in close to two and a half years. Whenever I encounter someone asking me what’s taken so long, I just shrug and smile politely then mumble something about lockdown restrictions which had banned intercity travel, anyway, here I am; I say turning on the wattage of my smile ^_^

Masvingo Hevoi pic.twitter.com/zD4AR2glXZ

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) April 9, 2022

It’s crazy to see how nothing has changed much from the last time I was here, I mean yes there have been changes but everything has stayed the same… The same faces almost exactly where I left them doing the exact same things. I did notice a new building complex so it looks like developments have been in progress.

So the uniquely multi-story Zimre building now has some competition but its still the tallest landmark feature around

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the city of Masvingo seems to be evolving to become a dormitory town for students at Great Zimbabwe University. For the time I have been visiting it’s been (un)fortunate that the university is closed for the semester because it appears the city falls into a slumber and business is slow until the varsity students return and bring the city out of hibernation, most residential properties serve as accommodation for students and of course even the entertainment spots aren’t lively without the vibrant varsity crowd.

As there was not much to get up to, I decided to see how the old playground had faired over the years… The first thing I noticed was how close the park was, when I was younger, with smaller feet, the distance from our house to the park used to feel like miles and miles and now it’s a five-minute walk away.

The park was a bit unkempt but somewhat better than when I last visited several years back when I wrote the article on returning to childhood memories. Cars have been prohibited from parking in the playground as there had been a pandemic of another sort with the park turning more into an adult playground than a safe play area for little feet… Despite the prohibition notice, I still spotted a car or two tucked in the foliage far from the wandering eye.

I might not have mentioned it but growing up I used to be deathly afraid of the big slide and now that I am all grown up, it was interesting to see how I am terrified of it, imagine at my big age falling off, how would I even begin to explain…

I would blame STITCH for the stitches.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that I also took a walk to try and check out the what we used to think was called the Danger Narrow Bridge, when in fact it was simply a width warning notification of the bridge that danger this was a narrow bridge. The train tracks are overrun with weeds I don’t think a train has passed this way in ages.

On the upside, I could safely take some selfies on the train tracks without worrying about a speeding train popping out of nowhere with its horn blaring.

If you were having coffee I would tell you that the Reserve Bank introduced a new note the 100 Zim dollar note… its currently worth about USD $0.66 and cannot buy a loaf of bread, which is currently retailing at a Zim dollar cost of $285….

Moving on something on a higher note guess what, this week, we are facilitating a Blogging Course passing on the torch so to speak.. wooty woo 🥳

Meet some of the facilitators:

•Louisa Msiska an award-winning blogger of thelouisamsiska.com and becomingamommy.com.
•Pollet Kangoe runs a faith-based blog called Becoming+Beyond
•Brenda Nakandi an enthusiastic female cyclist who blogs about her travel experiences on the website; brendanakandi.com
•Evidence Mutumbu runs a YouTube channel and a blog evidencemutumbu.wordpress.com
•Patricia Opio Founder and Creative Director of This is Me! and award-winning blogger of thisismestory.com
•Benjamin Musanjufu a blogger at Benjamin WATCH blog

Whats been going on in your neck of the woods… hows plans for the upcoming Easter weekend?

~B