Working from home is best

Leaving the house early to avoid the morning rush hour requires retiring early to bed, which involves eating supper shortly after sunset and missing out on all those exciting late night TV shows.
Plan on leaving home after 9am, when traffic has abated, but there will still be ever-widening potholes to negotiate and numerous kombis to circumvent as they randomly stop to pick up passengers. And even if you pay attention to the lyrics of the oldie: “Keep your mind on your driving, keep your hands on the wheel; keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead…”, the distracting billboards and the giant roadside TV screens make you less able to concentrate on the rules of the road, and arrive at work in one piece.
Add to these negative aspects, the costs of renting office space in the city and working from home becomes an increasingly attractive proposition. While the height of cool a decade ago may have been to rent an office in Livingstone House or in the eco-friendly Eastgate, low business activity now works against renting premises in the CBD.
Bard Real Estate MD, Boysen Mutembwa, says that the inner city, where multiple floors of office space remain unoccupied, faces huge challenges. Multinational companies no longer operate in the city, and smaller tenants cannot afford a starting rental of US$7 per square metre, to which must be added individual bills for rates and water.
“Working from home is not yet popular in Zimbabwe,” says Mutembwa, “but the trend is gaining momentum, especially where it involves cutting costs.”
Many businesses have moved out of town to the suburbs, where rentals and rates are lower and parking hassles reduced. In some instances, the dearth of business has forced managers to retrench their workers, convert their living rooms and work from home.
Providing you can create a suitable environment undisturbed by demanding young children, friendly neighbours or domestic phone calls, home working can be highly productive. A converted garden shed or thatched gazebo would offer more seclusion than working at the kitchen table or on the veranda.
A colleague of mine involved in preserving Harare’s wetlands, organises community based environmental workshops from an office created from a 100 year old converted Cato water tank. The need to minimise her carbon footprint encouraged her to find a workspace within walking distance of her home.
Shimmer Chinodya, a well-known writer, lives with his wife in the peaceful suburb of Bluff Hill where he works from.
“I love working from home,” says Shimmer. “I can write a few paragraphs, go out for lunch, come back and write some more, and then go out to listen to jazz or chat to friends.”
Working in a cottage converted from what Shimmer describes as a former boys’kaya; this well-respected author has made his space comfortable, installing carpets, bamboo ceilings and bookshelves.
“I have a huge table for my computer and my notes, and a swivel chair. Don’t forget the swivel chair for that ministerial touch!”
Chinodya concedes that while some of his best works were written outside Zimbabwe within the writers’ colonies of Iowa, Chicago and Italy, from within his well equipped writer’s cottage suits him perfectly as his current fiction novel, based on relationships, cultural issues and community life begins to take shape.