Sorry about the jacarandas

There are jacaranda trees all around Harare. They are beautiful trees which make lovely archways and a beautiful purple carpet on the ground. They are similar to lilacs (my mom's favourite), and remind me of Anne of Green Gables. Yesterday I was in the back of a pick-up truck and I asked if the jacarandas were native to Zimbabwe. Then I got an earful! As it turns out, the jacarandas were brought here by the varungu (whites) who thought they looked beautiful, and so they planted them everywhere. They even used to have festivals where they would all dress up in the same colours to match the trees and get their photos taken. But most "real" Zimbabweans are allergic to jacarandas. It makes them cough and sneeze (the people talking coughed here to emphasize the point). The people who were telling me about the jacarandas were angry. So I decided that I should apologize - on behalf of "my" people - the horribly racist whites who obviously wanted to poison the Blacks with their lust for beauty (wait - this is sounding like "The Herald"!) So, I said I was sorry, and this satisfied the people in the back of the truck. I didn't have much to do with this tree decision, but I'm guessing that no one else is lining up to come here about apologize about the jacarandas. (By the way, did you see that descendants of Lothar van Trotha apologized to the Herero people for the 1904 massacres and forced starvation over land ownership in Namibia? Better late than never, I guess...)