The Bulawayo Flower sellers outside the City Hall in Bulawayo have been an institution for as long as I have been alive and trust me that is an extremely long time !!
A favourite and enchanting tourist trap featured in every tourist publication on Bulawayo since the inception of the city.
Over there is Ma Moyo with her colourful buckets of baby's breath and carnations brought in fresh each day from the farm in Esigodini, on Fridays and Saturdays they have precious bunches of Saint John's Lillies.
There sits is old Willie Ndlovu with his half dead roses and the agapanthus he used to "borrow" on his way to work every morning !!
Staple essentials are the predictable ready made posies and wreaths which are so popular for weddings, funerals, just to say 'Farewell' or "I love you" or just to say "I love Life".
On the northern end of the City Hall mall are the curio sellers selling everything and anything in wood, wire or soapstone.
That awful rapscallion Solomon is still there! He adds four zeros onto the price of a wooden hippo the minute he hears an American accent, but will reduce it quickly if you speak even a word of Ndebele !!
At the end are the worm sellers who can discuss most knowledgeably the merits and de merits of the thin red worms as opposed to the fat brown earthworms in the art of catching tiger or bream at Kariba (in spite of the fact that they had never gone further than Nyamandhlovu in their lives !!
Sitting placidly in the warm winter sun are the very same ladies who have been there for years, day in and day out, legs stretched ramrod straight in front of them, crocheting and knitting doilies and tablecloths festooned with pretty beads.
Remember those little covers weighed down with blue, red or green beads, that are used to cover the milk and the sugar bowls back in the days when gentility was paramount
Still there are the touts and the tricksters, an integral part of the tableau of every society the world over, who rush up to you and drag you over to someone else's stall where they would expertly talk you into believing that this particular hand- carved bowl was exactly the one you needed to send to Aunty Clara in New Zealand, and then he quickly fixes his own inflated price, which included his cut of the takings!
The wire toy sellers are always popular, such ingenuity is displayed by these dextrous young men, who can fashion anything out of wire "borrowed " from someone's farm fence or from the telephone wires leading to someone's property !!
Artists, painters, sculptors, wood carvers, floral artists, an incredible wealth of talent lending great charm and depth to the very fabric of the City of Bulawayo.
Jacaranda Spotters!!
Just to let you know that I've just been out on my balcony and the jacaranda tree in front of my flat is bearing flowers!
BRUCE MC.