Londoners – no white Zimbabwean has ever heard of it, but for the Shona people, it is the place to be. Outdoor braai (BBQ) where the cool people hang, meat and beer in hand, watching the door like lions waiting for a kill; smoky dancehall busting out the dancehall tunes, jam-packed with women gyrating their ghetto-booties; pool tables near the back crammed with the types of gambling men you wouldn’t want to run into on the poker table; seedy bar to the side housing a few smokers cradling their scotches; a handful of deep booths where the few white people – intimidated by the scene – tend to hide.
I, on the other hand, relish these types of places. I have from the moment I stepped foot onto the African continent seven years ago. At first glance, it might seem that it’s the attention I relish – the glances and full-out stares at my ivory-white skin – but those of you that know me well know that attention is not really my thing. At a second glance, it could be posited that I love it because it’s “cultural” – a way to do Zimbabwean things in Zimbabwean places with Zimbabwean people. And yes, perhaps I do like it for this reason, at least partially – I am in Zimbabwe, after all, and am certainly not the type to stick to my Canadian-ness when living abroad.
But, really, truly, if I stop and think about why I love a place like Londoners, it’s because I like proving to myself that we, “us” and “them” (à la Pink Floyd), are not so different. I love dancing on the floor with the rest of the women, being laughed at, encouraged, and given dance tips on how to gyrate my bottom like them. I love drinking beer with my mates, laughing and joking as though I were with my own Canadian or American friends. I love pretending that skin color and country of origin don’t matter – that we can all come to a place such as Londoners and enjoy ourselves together. It makes me feel a bit more hopeful for this world.
Londoners has become my Friday night watering-hole/dancehall/free-dance-lesson/hope-for-the-world the past few weeks. But never before has it been such a special night as last Friday. For on this night, it housed Zimbabwe’s great musical sweetheart, Oliver Mtukudzi, or “Tuku”, as he is known locally. Standing alone on the small makeshift stage with his guitar, his white pants prancing around the stage as he strummed and sang out in his native Shona, it was a mesmerizing, heartening performance. Tuku’s voice is light, his tunes melodious and feel-good, and his dancing feet rhythmic and cool.
I stood there, amongst the throngs of black men smoking their cigarettes and siphoning down the liquor, with scantily-clad, bootylicious black women on their arms – I stood there, and Tuku looked at me. I wasn’t hard to spot, as one of only three white people there. But, I think that Tuku noticed me, not because of my light skin shining out like a lighthouse on a dark night, but because he saw the same spirit in me that was in his melodies, voice, and dance. What he saw in my smile and the light sway of my own hips was that here, at Londoners, with Zimbabwe’s national treasure orchestrating the evening, we are all swaying to the same beat. “Hey”, his gaze said to me, “you and me – we are the same.”
