By Farayi Mungoshi

I HAD barely laid my head on the pillow when I got a call from my mother at around 3:30am on Monday.
My brother, Nyasha, the third born in our family, had fallen ill.
I was told he’d already gone to the toilet five times that night with diarrhea and he had also vomited twice.
As real as cholera is, it had not yet dawned on me, until that Monday morning, that I was also vulnerable to the disease.
I was ignorant of the disease because I had erroneously thought it would never affect me or any member of my family.
It was the kind of thing (the disease) I read about in the newspapers and heard on radio only, not something I would find knocking on my door.
I guess this is how most of us think; we don’t see how serious a matter is until it happens to us or a family member.
When it happens to you, you will not find any joy in jokes like the one of a supposed Gokwe man who says: “Vanhu veHarare inga takavhota tose wani asi cholera yacho hamuchadi nayo.”
What disturbs and makes me sad is when I hear people complaining about Government’s decision to move vendors out of town to designated areas where they can sell their goods in a bid to make Harare a clean place once again.
Ask any pedestrian or motorist who frequents the city of Harare if he/she is happy about this initiative, the answer you will get is a resounding yes!
Why?
Because of the litter and chaos that is being caused by the presence of these vendors.
Vegetables are being sold on pavements with nothing but a sack separating them from the dirty ground on which some drunkard might’ve urinated on the previous night on his way home from some bar in town.
What makes it worse is the fact that most of these complaints are made on social media by people who live in the Diaspora and don’t really know what is taking place on the ground in Zimbabwe.
Some rely on information told to them by their relatives, but they never stop to question why their relatives speak so negatively about Zimbabwe.
The answer to that is simple; some relatives speak negatively and play victims of the current situation in Zimbabwe because they know that their relatives in turn will feel sorry for them and send them money.
Yes, there’s been a hike in prices but that does not mean Government is sitting on its laurels.
Besides, it is not solely up to Government to get Zimbabwe back up and running again — it is everybody’s duty.
Hence I felt proud when I heard that some of our more thoughtful brothers and sisters in the Diaspora sent money to help fight the cholera epidemic.
It is not just about cleaning up Harare, other councils have taken a step further and even closed down open braai places at drinking spots such as Zindoga and Chikwanha in Chitungwiza, among others, bringing down the number of flies attendant to such places and the unlicensed sadza vendors who had set up cooking spots outside bottle stores with some operating near public toilets.
With 49 lives lost so far and thousands being treated, the issue goes beyond ZANU PF and MDC.
Unfortunately, some of our own people are still stuck in the past and full of hate that they continue to pull in the opposite direction of development.
People want to work together now without politicising everything as we’d learnt to do over the years.
I encourage our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora to visit home more often so that they can see for themselves that, indeed, there are some positive changes taking place in the country.
From the seven roadblocks I used to go through in one trip to town from Chitungwiza, I now go past one and it is not every time I get stopped but whenever I am flagged down I am asked reasonable questions, seeking to find out if I am not breaking the law.
As everything starts with the way we think and perceive things, it is important that we cultivate a positive outlook.
It is important that we concentrate more on those things that make us Zimbabwean rather than those that divide us.
Cholera is our burden and should not be politicised.