My Zimbabwe Part II-On Potholes and Police Ahead: Poetry Interrupted

A road trip across the country side of Zimbabwe is poetry in motion. Breath taking scenery flies by on either side of the winding tarred roads. From Mutare to Masvingo, that three hour drive through magical mountains, past sturdy thick- waisted baobab trees resolutely pointing their stunted limbs skyward, is a visual sensation. Our energetic and easily bored daughters are sitting quietly, their eyes taking it all in as it whizzes past. Cyril is driving and he occasionally sneaks a look out of his window but he mostly enjoys only what his peripheral vision allows. He has to be on the alert for the occasional stray goat that may dart across the road bleating stupidly, or be ready to slow down for a herd of cattle crossing from one side of the road to the other. Once in a while a wild animal, a small antelope, might scamper out of the bush, make as if to traverse the asphalt, then dive back into the clumps of trees as though it has suddenly remembered that many of its kind have ended up road-kill, belly up in the heat, getting bloated by the hour until they explode to release a dizzying stench along with their innards. Such a fate is not his portion today. Perhaps tomorrow.

 The sky is a clean, refreshing blue, littered only by the fluffy white cotton wool swirling and tumbling across its expanse. This sky and its litter of clouds is a constant companion on many a road journey and to look up is to be sucked into it, lost in its blueness and cloud phantoms; now elephants and  cherubs, then monkeys with curly tails and tall top hats. The girls’ eyes have closed in sleep and I allow my mind to wonder about who lives in the clusters of huts that form homesteads along the road side. I imagine conversations quarrels, laughter and whispers encased daily in the mud walls I think of the cries of the new born soaking into the walls, the beginning of  a new history and memories.

Just as my mind relaxes into my story, Cyril is slowing down, thanks to a sign that reads “Police Ahead”. In a moment of irritation I think to myself how some things never change. From as far back as I can remember, police checkpoints have been a consistent feature on a road trip in Zimbabwe. In the late seventies, during the war for independence, there were police checkpoints as well as checkpoints manned by the Rhodesian Armed Forces. I remember the diarrhea- inducing fear that these stops would evoke and I remember my father being as affable as possible as he responded to terse demands for his driver’s license and for his reasons for being on the road. Sometimes he was interrogated as to whether he had had any clandestine meetings with the terrs (black freedom fighters then know as terrorists or terrs by the Rhodesians). After what seemed like forever, he would be allowed to drive on. Now here we are a good thirty years later and we are pulling over to the side of the road at a police checkpoint.

“Ah! Boss, how are they where you are coming from?” The officer in his navy blue pants, grey shirt and black boots uniform asks.

“All is well with everyone”, Answers Cyril, Mister Diplomacy frank –free- and -friendly.

The officer looks around the car, peers into the back seat at the pile of sleeping children, and sniggers. “Christmas box, boss” he says swinging his arms back and forth in what is supposed to be a casual gesture, signaling camaraderie.

“Ah you beat me to it bros, I was about to ask you the same thing. What are we drinking today?” Cyril responds with his own barks of fake laughter.

The officer guffaws, throwing his head back while wagging his index finger at Cyril,then he waves us off, wishing us a safe onward journey as he moves away from the car.

As we pull away, slowly, I loosen my teeth which have been firmly clamped on my tongue to stop me from blurting out at the officer: "What exactly are you trying to achieve by stopping random cars, asking after people you do not even know and therefore cannot in all honesty care about, proceed to ask for money, in the spirit of Christmas, then laugh like a demented hyena and wave goodbye? You did not ask for a license, registration, check the brakes or search for contraband or for soil from Marange (The rumor mill has it that people drive to Marange, dig up as much soil as their cars can carry and then once safe at home sift  through it for diamonds).” Cyril looks over at me after my rant, smiles and turns his attention back to the road.

This scenario will repeat in cyclical fashion every hour or so, and at each checkpoint, I have to convince myself that the neuronal connections that link my brain and its rampant activity to my tongue have been fried and therefore I am not able to utter the expletives that are free flowing and jostling for expression through my voice. There is no tongue, I tell myself, because to have a tongue  such as mine, at these checkpoints is to risk a 4 hour stopover at the side of the road in the blazing heat until you pay and grovel your way back onto the road and onward with your journey. But if- let us assume- I had a tongue, this is what I would ask:

"With due respect officer, sir, exactly what is your job description and are you paid well for roasting like a maize cob in the hot sun and for fishing (albeit surreptitiously) for bribes while your bosses sit up in nice cool offices in Harare? Are they aware that you are manning this checkpoint or did you and your fellow officers decide that this was a cool, easy way of making something extra on the side? Or maybe your bosses have explained that in order to keep people on the straight and narrow, in order that they may know their place, and that ‘Zimbabwe will nev-ah be ah colony ah-gain,’ you all have to man these checkpoints as a deterrent to anyone who has treasonous ideas lurking in their treasonous heads? Hmmm Officer, you can tell me (nudge nudge wink wink)."

We proceed after each checkpoint and I go back to the poetry in my head. I watch the landscape and think about all the frisky things Cyril and I could get up to in those bushes (It’s the heat, you see. Too much sun does that to a girl, and if she happens to be sitting next to a hot guy handling his business at the steering wheel…). As soon as these thoughts are blossoming and taking on exquisite forms, they are frozen as I feel the car swerve dangerously one way and then the other. Cyril has just missed driving into a gaping gnarly black wound on the road. Potholes, mxim! Now I have lost my delicious reverie and I am clutching my seat, taking deep breaths to try to ease the painful thudding in my chest. The road’s smooth surface is marred with potholes, giant man-hole type potholes which you have to swerve if you want to ever arrive at your destination. They remind me of a picture of Lagos I once saw of a group of men taking a bath in a pond that had formed in the middle of the road, the formation of a new phenomenon; the pond hole!  “Com an take your bat for free ohhh! Bring your own soap an sponge oh!”

I wonder how those who drive under the influence negotiate the pock marked roads on their way home from “MaNdlovu’s House of Happiness” or “Sesilia’s Sultry Sundowners”. The potholes are worse in the cities, a constant, silent indictment on the grossly inefficient, underfunded (or could care less) city councils that are responsible for road maintenance. Citizens are still made to pay road tax and it is infuriating to think that people pay in order that their vehicles can be damaged on the terrible roads, some of which are now no different from the dirt roads in the rural areas. Swerving to avoid potholes is one of the causes of accidents in the country, resulting in unnecessary loss of life.

I look over my shoulder into the back and see that the girls are still fast asleep, oblivious to the ‘police ahead’, the potholes and their mother’s poetry interrupted. Just as well.

Barbs.

My Zimbabwe part I- from this Diasporan

This is the first in a series of blogs on my recent visit to Zimbabwe. They will be written as they want to be written, so here we go:

My Zimbabwe is beautiful. My Zimbabwe is radiant and vibrating with barely repressed energy. My Zimbabwe hums with possibilities, and potent power simmers like a mirage on its dazzling tarred roads. My Zimbabwe is rich in natural and human resources. Her people are “made of sterner stuff”. Her children are robust in spirit; resilient with defiance and determination in their eyes. Her children laugh from their gut; deep sincere infectious laughter that washes over their ragged clothes and bare feet, leaving them clothed in quiet dignity, heads held high, backs straight and shoulders square. Her children cry out, in quiet voice while quiet tears trail down their dusty faces and yet they laugh and they live. They do not want pity and they are contemptuous of patronage. They do not want hand outs and they do not need crutches and if there is an ear willing to listen, that ear will be privy to what they want, what they need, what they desire and dream about: Opportunity.

From the rural villages of Nyamaropa and Chivi, to the cities of Harare, Mutare, Masvingo and Bulawayo, I felt the energy, strength, determination and the hunger for a chance, an open doorway, or even a mere crack in the window of opportunity.  I saw Zimbabweans going about their daily lives, like hungry calves milking even the tiniest udder of opportunity they came across: selling produce, toothpicks and paper clips, making bracelets out of tiny springs from old parker pens, begging to guard your parked car for a dollar, while you attend to business in some office, selling boot leg movies and CD’s, braiding hair (“I will come to your house, mother”), pedaling barrels of second hand clothes from first world places, merchandizing firewood, air time cards, newspapers, biscuits and anything you can think of. I saw them.

 I witnessed the trendsetters, the go- getters, the dealers and the movers- and- shakers, strutting across the potholed streets as though they were marching purposefully down Oxford Street in London, or Michigan Avenue in Chicago; striding to some place, to take care of business, to close the next deal, to make that money: those Dollars, those Rands, and those other forexes.

 I saw Bright yellow Hummer jeeps, gas guzzling Escalades with Chrome rims. I saw women dressed in Gucci, Prada and carrying Coach hand bags while teetering on feet shod in Steve Madden, and red soled Laboutins, swaying to the sounds of Rihanna ring tones on Blackberries and I-phones.

I saw women sporting dreadlocks tinted in browns, shades of blond and gold. I saw women with straight and curly and flipped up weaves. I saw women in twist braids, short hair and long hair. I saw skinny women, fat women, dark skinned as well as light skinned women. I saw them all buzzing around at Nando’s and Chicken Inn and chatting and laughing and bearing pearly white teeth through painted lips- red lips, purple lips, pink lips, orange and brown lips. I saw them all. In their skinny jeans and jeggings and thick belts and bright colored cropped tops. I saw them all. With their men. Tall men skinny men, pot bellied men, short men, gray heads and stud muffins. Men. All of them with one thing in common: fat pockets too small to contain their bulging wallets. I saw them leaning over, all sexy and coy, laughing all languid and suggestive, leaning closer to their men, other women’s men, men old enough to be their grand fathers. I saw them, the “small houses”, the mistresses and minor wives wielding major power and spending major money. I saw it all.

I witnessed the church going mothers and fathers in their “kuwadzana” uniforms. I witnessed the feverish fervor of the young born -twice Christians, Bible in hand, the weapon against powers and principalities and the key to plenty money. I even had the fortune of being handed a flier to a revival “Come and claim your miracle, mother. (Mother is the term in current use in Zimbabwe for women of my age…[sigh])”. The only miracle I was in need of at that moment was the miracle of a clean public restroom- but that, my friends, is a whole ‘nother blog post.

Where was I? Oh I am witnessing and seeing Zimbabwe.

“The poor ye shall always have with you” [The Bible]. Indeed the poor were there, intermingling with the new rich, diluting the scents of Vera Wang, Cloe and good “Old Spice” with sharp, nostril stinging body odor. They were there, getting splashed in rain water from the puddles in the potholes as the big Hummers and the Mercedes drove through them. Holding their begging cups they ran across the streets, weaving in between the slow snake of cars, tapping on windows for alms. They were there, a part of the textured fabric of Zimbabwe, my Zimbabwe. My Zimbabwe with mountains of garbage scattered throughout her cities. My Zimbabwe with wood fires burning within the city as people cook their evening meals. Dazzling red sun set on the horizon. Zesa has taken the lights- power cuts, power sharing, power struggles. My Zimbabwe, enveloped in the dizzying drone of generators, distorting the night sounds and drowning out the crickets, the annoying high pitched mosquitoes and the croaking frogs.

As I settled down to sleep each night, my head would be full of the sights and sounds from the day and I would hold each person I had encountered, each scene in my mind and give it’s a story an ending.

My Zimbabwe may be broken, maimed and bleeding. But a clot has formed and the hemorrhaging will stop. The scab has formed and the wounds will heal. My Zimbabwe is ailing, but she is alive. My Zimbabwe has changed, but so have I. She will have scars, and so will I. My Zimbabwe will recover but it will take time, plenty of time, life times…

In memory of Ndapiwa, on Word AIDS Day, 2011

I wrote this poem when I was 18 years old. I had been to a hospital visit, to Mpilo hospital in Bulawayo. My passion for medicine propelled me to catch two minibuses from home to the hospital to potter around the wards and play doctor. I made myself useful by holding newborn babies while their mothers took a bath or ate. On this particular day I held Baby Ndapiwa, who was HIV positive while her mother went to wash and when she came back, Ndapiwa was gone. I remembered her today, and I searched my old notebooks for her poem and found it. Here it is:

Dark empty pools staring into space

Small pinched lips wince slightly in pain

Nostrils flare in an effort to draw air

She turns her head on a thin frail neck

Veins, a dense network visible

 On the side of her head

I spot a tiny pulse at her hot, hollow temple.

Tiny chest heaves and sags,

Ribs stand out like antlers on a stag

Her swollen belly is rounded and hard

Her twig legs lie limp across my arm

She cries a little, a hollow forlorn sound

No tears fall save those from mine eyes

She turns her head towards my face

And fixes me with an expressionless gaze.

Look at me, she screams.

Look at me and do not wince!

Look at me and love me!

Don’t turn your face away in disgust

 You have to look at me, you must!

I look upon her countenance

And cringe as fear seeps slowly through my bones

Tenacious twig fingers encircle one of mine

And I wish I could flea

A noose tightens painfully round my heart

As she flutters her eyelids. Now closed.

Barbara Mhangami (1990)

The next piece is an excerpt from a work in progress. It was inspired by the many many people, friends and family that I have personally held or walked next to as they journeyed on and out of this realm because of AIDS. We have a Heroes Acre at my grandfather's village in Chivi with over thirty family members who died from AIDS. Whenever I visit home, my grandfather takes me to throw a stone on the graves of members who have passed on in my absence. He cries and asks why he should have lived so long to bury his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, losing them to this hideous ailment called AIDS. Here is my story:

On World AIDS Day-2011

“Er, Sister Kuku, my daughter, a calamity has befallen this family… you see life"

"Is it one of my sisters or their children? Is it uncle Obert, Uncle Hazvi, Uncle Mhike.."

 I am rattling all my relatives’ names starting to feel panic rising in me when my father cuts short my litany.

“It’s your Aunt Melody. Er, you see, she..”

I have snatched myself off the mat and am outside running, tripping on a piece of wood, losing a sandal as I make my way towards the sleeping hut we shared. I hear my mother’s cry, "Kuku wait!” but I am at the door of our hut. My heart is beating so fast I feel as though it will explode out of my chest. It hurts to breathe.  I fiddle with the latch on the door, but it swings open with ease. It is dark in the room and I peer inside before stooping low and getting in.

My nostrils are assailed by the sickening stench of urine and feces. I try to breath but I gag and step backwards as though I have been physically shoved by an invisible hand. I steady myself against the mud wall and put my hand over my mouth, willing myself not to retch. I search the room frantically in the dimness and my eyes land on a small bundle of blankets in the far corner. I scour the room again, desperately trying to find my aunt. There is very little in here and I am compelled to take a second look at the small bundle on the floor. I look hard, then I see a tiny movement.” Vatete Melody!” I call out, teary now. I feel lost all of a sudden! Where is my aunt? Vatete Melody! My voice cracks and I exhale hard. Its sounds more like a groan.  My eyes have now adjusted to the light and I cannot remove them from the bundle with the tiny movements, up and down rapidly like something breathing shallow breaths, in–out-in-out. More movement this time and I hear a mewing sound, like a kitten. I see a pile of bones in a loose bag of brown skin trying to sit up. I move closer, propelled forward by some unseen force. I feel light and numb as I fix my eyes on the shrunken piece of humanity before me. ‘Kuku. She mews and sounds as though her voice is projecting into the back of her throat rather than out towards her mouth. I keep looking. She has no lips. Her teeth and red- raw gums are bare. Her nose is two holes in her head. That aristocratic bridge is gone. She has reddish fuzz on her head and her cheekbones jut out like rocky outcrops on a hillside, with deep hollows beneath them. I see a pulse jumping under the skin on her neck. There are two swollen lobes, ugly and obscene-looking, behind her ears, dwarfing them. She pants from her effort to sit up. I move closer and kneel down beside her. I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s my mother who whispers that I should not touch her. I slap her hand away from me, feeling a violent, volcanic anger.

“If you touch me again..” I mutter through clenched teeth.

I am alone with my Aunt, I sit beside what is left of her, feeling ripe, hot tears flowing down my cheeks in a steady stream. I do not take my eyes of her for a second. She searches my face, her black fiery eyes sharp, alert and focused, their whites whiter than ever. She is out of breath and asks for water. I reach over to the green metal cup next to her and I put it to her lips. Her teeth make a clanging sound against the rim of the metal cup as she swallows gulps of water thirstily. I am astonished to hear water trickling and gurgling down her throat, into her stomach, through the rest of her digestive system and out with a squirt onto the make shift napkin between her emaciated legs, fashioned from pieces of an old bed sheet. I look at her in a white vest and a napkin. She looks like an old withered baby.

“She cannot keep anything in even for a few minutes, whispers my mother’s co-wife.” She is kneeling next to my aunt and I. My aunt winces in pain as she tries to lie down again, wiped out.

I stroke her head. It is damp and the fuzz feels like baby hair. I touch her face. It feels hard and cold. Like stone. I take her hand in mine, slowly, deliberately. I take each of her fingers one by one, gently feeling the joints. The tears keep flowing and the front of my habit is damp. My nose is running but I make no attempt to wipe it. How is it possible that a person could be eaten from the inside out, like a house infested with termites? Nobody knows they are there until the house collapses in a pile of dust. That is my aunt. She has been eaten, sucked dry until she has collapsed in a pile of bones. I hold on to her hand as I did when she came from her city jobs. I hold onto it the way I did when we took a bucket of warm water to the back of the compound at night, to wash and giggle under the stars. These hands scrubbed my back. These hands plaited my hair and clapped enthusiastic encouragement as I tried to dance. My aunt told me about periods and showed me how to keep myself clean. My aunt giggled with mirth as she teased me about my budding breasts. My aunt laughed at my derogatory descriptions and imitations of our family members. She taught me how to blow bubbles from Bazooka bubble gum. 

Now here she is. Hollow, with a faltering heart beat and gurgling breath. The death rattle.

She moves stronger this time and sits back up. “You must write about me. Write it all down.”

She heaves, “Tell them about me Kuku.” She heaves again.

My father says, that’s enough, she needs to rest, but she persists over his protests.

 “I am too much, too beautiful, too loud, too vibrant to be forgotten.” She heaves and coughs and falls back on her blankets, totally spent. I am still holding her hand. “Kuku, she says panting,

“Yes Vatete, I respond calmly,

“This is not God’s fault. Do you hear me?”

Yes vatete, I hear you.

“Good,” she sighs. “Tell them about me.”

My grandmother’s younger sister, my father’s and my aunt’s mainini, has been summoned to come and take care of my dying aunt. She comes into the room and firmly asks everyone to leave so she can wash vatete. I do not move, and she does not ask me to. Mbuya Anna washes my aunt, talking soothingly all the while. She sings a tune I do not know, and after she is done, she rubs her with sweet smelling Johnson’s baby lotion and sprays her body with impulse body spray-musk. “It’s my signature scent. It says Melody is on her way here, has been here or is around here, somewhere, somewhere.” I smile in spite of everything. That is what she would want.

My Aunt Melody is dead and we have buried her.

“Nematambuzdiko, our condolences” is all I hear at the bus stop as I wait to board the bus and head back to Bondolfi Mission.

I heard them whispering at the funeral, “How else would she have died, that one? It’s that terrible disease of whores. She was so thin you could count her ribs under her skin. What a shame on the family. And such a beautiful girl too.”

Christmas under African Skies

December 24, every year,
we piled into my father’s blue Datsun 120Y for our annual Christmas visit to my
mother’s village in Berejena (Chivi). We would have been preparing for this
trip for several weeks prior. Cans of Olivine cooking oil, nestle powdered
milk, Sun jam, loaves upon loaves of bread, bags of rice, sugar, flour salt and
Stork Margerine. We would set off for the four hour drive at 4am in order to
beat the suffocating heat which would melt the margarine, leaving the rest of
the groceries and luggage besmirched in an oily yellow mess.

 Once we were all settled in the car, my mother
in the passenger’s seat with two year old Vimbai on her lap and my other sister
Nancy sandwiched between Dennis and I in the back seat, my father would lock up
the house and we would take off. The excitement we felt would wipe away the
last vestiges of sleep from our eyes and we would look out of the car windows
and play ‘I spy with my little eye’. We would remark at the change in landscape
as we drove along the Bulawayo- Beitbridge road towards Mbalabala. Sharp
escarpments sparsely populated with shrubs would give way to huge grey/green
granite formations, some of which looked like baby elephants lying on their
sides with sinewy trees growing on them. If the rains had been good, there
would be sprouting green grass and muddy potholes on the sides of the tarred road.
If there had been no rain, the landscape would be dry, parched and desert like.

 At Mbalabala we would make a left turn towards
Zvishavane and wave good bye to the over loaded minivans or kombis headed
towards Beitbridge, the border town and conduit into South Africa. My brother and
I would start to sing quietly at first then loudly as my mother joined in
harmonizing to whatever song we were singing. Our favorite song was “Lean on
me”, originally sung by Bill Withers, which we would do in three part harmony
with my father improvising the guitars and the drums. The miles would fly by as
we entertained ourselves and before we knew it, we were in Masvingo Town and
the sun would be beating down relentlessly from clear azure skies. We would
stop to refuel the car and to get some crates of Coca Cola, Fanta and Cream
soda which would be placed on the floor of the back row so that our feet would
have to rest on top of the bottles. The discomfort would only be for an hour
before we finally arrived home –kumusha,
ekhaya!

The drive from Masvingo
to the turn off which would take us to Berejena was my favorite part of the
drive. The huge grey mountains that flank the wide tarred road always made me
melancholic. I would look at the isolated trees along the slopes and imagine
helicopters during the war dropping solder’s who would hastily make their way
down and into the surrounding villages. I imagined the freedom fighters camped
at the base of these mountains singing their songs of freedom and
indoctrinating villagers at the pungwes
(all night vigils) on the need to be loyal and steadfast in the struggle. I
imagined them eating chickens and goats and mountains of sadza prepared under cover by the village maidens and
surreptitiously carried from the homesteads, through the bush to the base camp
at the foot of the mountain. My mind would wonder as I imagined the spirits of
dead soldiers and comrades restlessly roaming across the valleys and mountains.
We would drive past burnt out buildings, relics of the recent war which had culminated
in Zimbabwe’s Independence in 1980, and I would wonder whether there had been
anybody inside while the fires raged. I would add their lamenting spirits to
those of the wailing dead soldiers and comrades and I would get goose bumps as
I imagined all these spirits joining their voices with those of the heroes of
the first war of liberation-Chimurenga
[1896-1897]. I imagined those early heroes who fought against British
colonials, Nehanda and Kagubi leading a vibrant song with a million harmonies
as they flew across the eerily beautiful, magical, rugged landscape of Zimbabwe.

Our arrival would be
heralded by the sound of ululation from my numerous aunts and grandmothers. My
motley crew of twenty or more cousins would appear from nowhere and run behind
the car, swathed in plumes of dust as the car thundered up a small hill towards
my grandfather’s homestead. My siblings and I would turn our heads and shout
out the names of the friends we were soon to meet again. “There’s Sheki, and
look at Hazvinei and Ndaka and Mainini Judy!”

As soon as the car came
to a complete stop, we would bolt out of the doors and into the arms of our
beloved family members. The comforting smell of wood smoke from the cooking
fires which was the signature scent of my aunts and grandmothers would envelop
me and I would sigh in happiness with my head against the bosom of my maternal
grandmother.

It was Christmas time
and we were home with family! My cousins would drag us away from the adults
once the formal greetings were over and we would head out of the home stead
towards the stream and the bush to play and to catch up on what had gone one
since our last visit. The terrain was very familiar because it had been my
playground since I was three years old. I was now 10 years old. We would head
out to the stream and dip our feet in the murky water. Tales of njuzu (mermaids) would flow and gossip
about who had recently been labeled a witch was plentiful. We reveled in the
stories of fights and which teenage cousin had fallen pregnant and eloped before
the elders found out about her disgraced state and meted out justice.

That evening after our
bucket baths behind the pit latrine, we would enjoy a supper of Sadza and curdled milk sprinkled with
brown sugar. The children would be placed in age group categories that would
all eat from the same bowl using our hands, chatting all the while and making
fun of one another. It was a simple meal but one made so special because we
partook of it communally. We basked in one another’s presence as we appreciated
the still quiet night without fear of gunfire or the frightening intrusion by
soldiers or comrades.  The sounds of
muted adult voices emanating from inside the huts imbued us with a sense of
security as we ate our meal under the star studded black velvet sky.

After the plates were
cleared away, the drums would come out and the merriment would begin in
earnest. We would sing old songs which I remembered from the time I was three
years old and perform the traditional dances that accompanied them. The city
dwellers would be taught the new songs and the latest dances. We celebrated
Christmas with Shona Roman Catholic Rythms, Dutch Reformed church hymns and
with old Karanga folk songs led by my
grandfather and his five wives. We danced the Mhande, the Shangari and the Bira,
and we learned the Dhikondo. From the
oldest grey heads supported by their walking sticks to the youngest toddler
running on the spot and falling on their backside, everyone took their turn
dancing, while the drummers feverishly pummeled their instruments till sweat
poured down their faces in rivulets. This was Christmas under the stars, with
the fire burning for illumination, and the mysterious mountains standing guard
on all four sides…

By the time the
children woke up on Christmas morning, the homestead would be abuzz with activity.
The carcass of a newly slain goat would be dangling from a Siringa tree at the
back of the yard. There would be three or four cooking fires with big iron cast
tripod pots bubbling away and the smell of goat offal filled the air. My mother
would be bent over her underground oven where she baked her pink, green and
yellow cupcakes- zvitumbuwa. My older
cousins would be sitting on grass mats, with trays of rice on their laps
getting rid of small stones and chaff. Brenda Fassie’s “Weekend Special” or
some other hit would be blaring from the gramophone planted on a chair outside
the main house.

After a breakfast of
porridge with peanut butter, thick sliced bread with margarine and Sun jam and
sweet, milky Tanganda tea, all the children would bath and get into their brand
new Christmas clothes. That was our Christmas present, a brand new dress and a
pair of shoes. We would parade in front of the busy adults in our pink, green,
blue, red orange, purple and yellow attire and then we would dance, kicking up dust
and laughing as we ate toffee sweets, Bazooka and Dandy bubble gum. We would
drink Fanta, Cream soda and Coca Cola from the bottle. One of my favorite aunts
would bring over a plate of grilled meat and we would eat while dancing. This
is what I grew up experiencing: that when people get together at Christmas,
they eat and laugh and they dance.

Sometimes we would take
a stroll to the nearest dry goods store, where there would be a gramophone
outside on the verandah and people dancing. This gave us an opportunity to see
what the other children in the village were wearing and to see who the best
dancer was. We would twirl, gyrate and stomp to the sounds of Yvonne Chaka
Chaka, Sipho Hotstix Mabuse, Safirio Mazdikatire, Yellowman, Solomon Skuza,
Lovemore Majaivana and Oliver Mutukuzdi. There were at lease thirty children
engaged in dance and we would all get sweets from the owner of the store
because we attracted customers, who came to spectate, to participate when the
beat became overpoweringly irresistible and ultimately to buy beer to quench
their dance induced thirst.

Hot and tired, we would
head back home to more drinks and lots of food: Rice and chicken or goat, with
salad (coleslaw). This time each person would have their own plate and we would
eat with a spoon. It was Christmas, a special occasion which warranted special
eating etiquette. We would eat cup cakes and more drinks and eventually we
would end up lying on grass mats under a tree in a semi comatose state from
gorging ourselves. No one would speak but we would lie in a comfortable silence
absorbing the sounds around us, each in their own world. My thoughts were
always about how lucky we were to have such a huge family. Of my age group we
were about 12 of us, girls and boys and we all got along most of the time. I
would think about how perfectly we all fit together and how special we were all
made to feel by the adults. This for me was what Christmas really meant: being
with family and being made to feel special.

Christmas day would end
with more eating and dancing and invariably one or more of the grey heads would
get totally inebriated and regale us with escapades of their youth. We would be
rolling in laughter at both the stories and the story teller, who would slur
his words or repeat the same sentence three times, thanks to my grandmothers’
potent home brew. The stars would wink at us, a glittering canopy above our
heads, and the fire would jump and flicker in mirth, while the mysterious
mountains stood guard.  

The best Christmas gift
for me was watching the rapture in my 10 and 7 year old daughters’ eyes today
as I read this piece to them. I kept my 4 year old twins engaged and interested
in the story by doing the dances for them and acting out some of the
scenes…they liked the eating parts the most- they are truly their mother’s
children.

Merry Christmas to all
my friends and family who observe this special holiday. And to those who do
not, I hope the story was a good read anyway!!!

Barbs

On Roasted Bread and Fried Groundnuts- Childhood Comedy

My uncle Marufu
was the most tolerable of my father’s half brothers. His visits to our house in
Killarney were occasions for great entertainment for my brother and me. You see
uncle Marufu, as he insisted on being called, aspired to a greater social
standing, one which he envisioned as being commensurate with his educational
attainment as a primary school teacher amongst subsistence cotton farmers in
rural Gokwe. What better place to acquire the necessary social graces than  in our home and who better to teach them than
his esteemed elder brother, who was the embodiment of class and style. Our
source of amusement was my father’s source of chagrin, and father’s display of
irritation added another dimension to our live comedy shows.

Uncle Marufu (heforbade us to call him babamudini-small father) had faced many challenges in his life. He had suffered a bout of
poliomyelitis in his childhood which had bequeathed him a shorter left leg, a
shortened left arm with a curled up left hand and a left eye which was
determined to look in the direction diametrically opposed to its mate. The
result one might imagine was a bitter, perhaps self pitying individual who was
beaten down. However this was not at all the case. Uncle Marufu was the epitome
of a self assured man. He seemed totally oblivious to the negative attention
that his physical disability drew from those around him as he hobbled about his
business, shouting loudly and always in English. He also seemed unperturbed by
my father’s impatient sighs and rolling eyes when he sat with him on the
verandah asking all manner of questions which my father had absolutely no
interest in answering.

One Saturday afternoon,two days after he arrived, from Gokwe, Uncle Marufu limped his way to the
verandah where my dad sat, glass of wine in hand, legs crossed at the knees and
blowing rings of smoke from a Kingsgate cigarette. It was a warm Saturday afternoon
and my father was enjoying his time at home with no pressing appointments to
attend to. He looked relaxed in a short sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of
khakhi shorts. Otis Reading was crooning his song ‘stand by me’ through the
French doors. My brother and I were playing ‘crazy 8’, one of our favorite card
games, on the floor next to his chair.

“Tisvikewo”. My uncle
announced his presence. I looked up in time to see my father roll his eyes
upward. Uncle Marufu noisily pulled up a garden chair very close to his
brother’s and planted himself into it. I could tell from my father’s body
language that he felt his space was being invaded. However, he did not say
anything.

I suppressed a squeal
of laughter when my brother unwittingly said, “Uncle I like your tie.”

“Thanks my boy!” he
replied puffing up his chest to better show off his bright yellow tie. It was
one of those very short but wide ties and my uncle wore it against a pin
striped red and white long sleeved shirt. Tucked into the shirt pocket were a
red Afro comb and a pen. His Khakhi trousers were well ironed with knife edge
lines running down the front. There was a high polish to his ox-blood shoes and
his hair was combed into a neat 2 inch Afro with any unruly tufts of hair
patted into place. I looked up and my eyes met my father’s. He smiled
imperceptibly at me and I quickly looked away.

“Barbara, go and fill
my glass and bring your uncle a drink please.” As I got up and took the glass from my father’s outstretched hand, my
uncle’s loud voice drowned out the music.

“I will take a Scottish
with some stones please!”

I froze on the spot and
waited with baited breath for a response from my father. It came in a tightly
controlled growl through clenched teeth.

“It is Scotch on the
rocks, Marufu.”

My brother got up from
where he had been watching intently and we both ducked into the house. We got
to the kitchen and burst out laughing, falling onto the floor and soliciting a
sound scolding from my mother.

“You two are very
foolish! You are always giggling and cackling like a pair of hungry hyenas!
What is wrong with you?”

The more she scolded
the greater the loss of control on our part. I could not even pause long enough
to explain to my mother the reason why I was in the kitchen. While my brother
and I were guffawing and spluttering at my uncle’s turn of phrase, I knew that he
was out there, leaning into my father and asking a million questions earnestly.
The thought of my father’s facial expressions sent me into another bout of
hysteria. My sides ached as I lay on the kitchen floor with my brother next to
me going through rigors of his own.

Suddenly Dennis sat up
and asked, mimicking my uncle’s deep accented voice. “Eh Bhabra! May you please
make me some more roasted bread?”

At this, I let out a
squeal and rolled over onto my tummy in an effort to ease the spasms that were
mercilessly squeezing my middle. No matter how many times we told Uncle Marufu
that toast was called toast not roasted bread, he obstinately continued to
request his favorite breakfast: roasted bread with Sun jam!

My mother turned away
from us but I could see her shoulders shaking as she tried to hide her
laughter. My brother was relentless and he addressed my mother as uncle Marufu
would: “Maiguru, I see you are frying groundnuts a.k.a Arachis hypoaea!”  (My mother
dry roasted peanuts in a wok- like pan and my uncle decided she was frying them.
Nothing would make him change his mind on that).

My mother started
laughing, a deep rumbling laugh rolling out of her through the kitchen and out
through the French doors onto the verandah. My father, desperate to be saved
from my uncle’s endless chatter yelled out, “Barbara! The drinks please!”

I stood in the door way
to the verandah and was alarmed to find Uncle Marufu coughing up a lung,
clutching a cigarette in his hand with tears streaming from his blood shot
eyes. Apparently he had asked for a cigarette from my father all part of his
quest to become a cultured gentleman. He heaved and jerked in an alarming
manner and I, forgetting that I was carrying a tray of drinks, jumped back a
little in consternation. The stones in the Scottish clinked against the glass
alerting my father of my presence and of the fact that his precious whiskey
(the elixir of life as he called it) was about to be given to his plebian
brother who would not appreciate the searing heat from its amber depths. I
handed the glass of whiskey to my uncle, who took a huge gulp in an effort to
stop the coughing. I watched with pity as he gasped for air and let out a
bellow as though someone had surreptitiously pinched him. He leaned forwards
and held his hand to his chest muttering, “That is very strong stuff. Yes it is
strong for sure! One has to get used to it. Yes I will get used to it.”

One would think that my
father would have been flattered by the extent to which my uncle went to become
more like him. However he was rather contemptuous of my poor uncle and what he
saw as a fickleness of character. I understood my uncle because I too could
have been accused of wanting to be like my father. I was not allowed to indulge
in cigarettes or drink, however his taste in music became mine and the books he
read would ignite my own passion for reading. I also acquired his drive for
perfection and his discerning eye for good quality in all things from food to
clothing and furniture. I felt empathy for my uncle because, where as I had
accepted that there was no way I could ever be this man, who loomed larger than
life, my uncle had decided he would die trying to be like him at all cost. Even
if it included imbibing what he later on admitted to our gardener was the most
foul tasting, toxic smelling liquid he had ever had the misfortune to drink.
How his brother could stomach Scottish with stones was beyond him.

I thought of my uncle
as I made toast with grape jelly for my girls this morning and thought I would
pay him tribute by sharing a comedic piece about him.

Barbs

Reflections on World Aids Day

Back in Zimbabwe behind my grandparents homestead in Chivi, in the Masvingo area, there is a sacred burial ground which is named the hero’s acre. I guess this is in reference to the National Heroe’s Acre in Warren Hills, Harare, where Zimbabwe’s national heroes are buried. I guess my grandfather thinks his children and grandchildren are heroes in their own right too.

 Anyhow, the hero’s acre in Chivi is strictly devoted to our family members who have died of HIV/AIDS. In 2006 there were 22 people ranging from ages 6 months to 49 years old. To put that number into some sort of perspective, I come from a huge family, some of whom were born after I left Zimbabwe. However 22 people in the space of 10 to 15 years is pretty sizeable for only one family. It is these deaths and the devastating effects that HIV/AIDS has had in Zimbabwe that I decided to specialize in HIV research when I first came to America. Initially I was interested in HIV vaccine development and so I enrolled as a doctoral student in the department of molecular biology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of public health. After completing the didactics I wrote a proposal for my research project which would see me in Hauna district in the Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe.

There I conducted an HIV prevalence survey with a sample size of five hundred. My analysis would later reveal a 25% prevalence rate in that particular region of the country which borders Mozambique and Malawi.

While all aspects of this project were important for my thesis, the part that touched me in a transformative way was the different groups of people I got to interact with and to talk with about their perceptions of HIV/AIDS. There was a lot of denial in Zimbabwe and early on in the epidemic the denial was institutional where hospitals did not give a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS. Rather they would write the secondary infection the patient had presented at the hospital or clinic with, such as Pneumonia, or tuberculosis or cancer. At the time I went to do my study, in early 2001, the situation had changed drastically, with the influx of international aid agencies and other nongovernmental organizations spearheading prevention and education campaigns.

I lived in Hauna very close to the hospital where most of my study sample came from. I also drove to outstation clinics to conduct my interviews and do HIV tests on those participants who consented.

I met a group of commercial sex workers (15 of them) at one of the outstations. They were part of a peer education group and wore T-shirts with slogans to encourage their fellow commercial sex workers to get tested. This was one of the most vibrant, generous and wonderful group of women I have ever had the privilege to work with. They were a lively bunch who danced for us  petted my protruding belly, massaged my swollen feet and brought me yams and avocados to “feed the baby”.  I drove out to where they were based in the foothills of the lush Katiyo tea Estates and listened to story after heart breaking story. One woman in particular spoke of how she had no choice but to become a commercial sex worker and risk getting infected with HIV because she had children to feed. The thought of watching her children starve to death is what kept her going in this trade, playing Russian roulette with her life. There was no negotiation of condom use in most cases.

Because of the main road that passed through Hauna to Mozambique, I had the opportunity to meet and chat with truck drivers who ploughed the cross border route, stopping at growth points for refreshments and “adult entertainment”. Hauna was one such growth point. They were rather amused to see a heavily pregnant woman who had the audacity to question them about their sexual behavior, which was still a very hush hush subject.

What I came away with from this experience was that while an HIV vaccine was definitely worth working towards, it would be a long time in coming. I also realized that I needed to be where the people were, to try to figure out why it was that, despite knowing about HIV/AIDS, knowing also that it could easily be prevented with condom use, people continued to engage in high risk sexual behaviors. There was a fatalism that frightened me as I listened to people say they would rather not know their status and some of this was due to the fact that people knew there was no cure. Therefore the knowledge that one was HIV positive was in essence a death sentence many people did not want to live under. Drugs were available but at such exorbitant prices that only the very wealthy could afford them and even they soon succumbed to full blown AIDS when their wealth was eroded by fantastic inflation rates. At that time there were very few government programs for HIV drugs and these were mainly in the urban centers.

Women whose husbands refused to use condoms yet went around philandering were the most vulnerable. We looked on helplessly as husbands would get sick and die. A few years later the widows would succumb to AIDS and die, leaving behind orphans in the care of grandparents or other family members. Not long after this the grandparents would die of old age or fatigue or both, leaving behind child headed households. The 10 or 12 year old would drop out of school in order to fend for his or her siblings. All this was unfolding and the AIDS epidemic was ravaging the country, which was also falling apart at the seams politically and economically.

 At the peak of the epidemic Zimbabwe was experiencing hyper inflation as never before seen in history. There was a mass exodus of doctors and nurses many of whom were fed up with working under frustrating conditions. There were no drugs to treat patients. Patients had to buy their own surgical paraphernalia (sutures, medication, antibiotics, gauze) and place a huge down payment before they could be attended to.  Public health became nonexistent and those with family members in the Diaspora fared better than the rest.

I will never forget the faces of my study participants who tested HIV positive and had opted that I tell them their results. I hated what I was doing because here I was delivering such news to someone and having absolutely nothing to offer them except, that hopefully my research would advance the quest for a vaccine, and a cup of Mazoe orange crush for their time.

Often I would go home in the evening with my nurse Memory, and I would ask her how she was so adept at leaving her work out in the field.

‘We are so used to this. We are at funerals every weekend and sometimes as they are lowering the coffin in one grave you are rushing off to another graveside for another relative. We have become accustomed to the walking dead among us. You can pick them out as you walk along the streets: pink lips with blood vessels almost bursting under thin membranous skin, the huge lymph nodes behind the ears, the dull ashy skin covered in a fine rash that refuses to heal, the thinness that does not respond to any amount of food and the babies that are born but never grow and mew like kittens. I guess after a while we have become numb, desensitized from living in this society. We don’t even cry at funerals anymore. It’s so sad because it is as though we have lost our souls and we can no longer mourn. Or maybe our grief is so huge that if we allow it expression, it will annihilate us.’

Many a night I cried myself to sleep, thinking of the young woman married to a soldier deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She had come for a test, confident that she was HIV negative because she had recently delivered a healthy baby boy. She had emitted a dry hollow creepy laugh when I told her she was HIV positive. Then I saw the curtain of despair fall over her eyes. Later that week rumor circulated at the growth point that a young woman had been found hanging from a tree, behind her sleeping hut leaving a baby boy sleeping in there. Her mother in law had discovered her. Apparently her husband worked out of the country…

Today as I reflect on my own journey I realize that HIV/AIDS has touched my life and the lives of many people I know. As I write this post I am thinking of all my family members, who thanks to medication are alive today and living their lives to the fullest. I will continue my work in the field of HIV both In Zimbabwe and here in the United States where my research is within the African American community. This disease knows no borders and knows no barriers. It is no respector of persons, it is aggressive and  it will take a great deal of ingenuity, patience and great passion both in the primary prevention, the drug development field, and vaccine research to dominate it and hopefully render it a disease in our history (much like the plague), rather than in our present.

Barbs

The absurdity of school rules at the dominican convent and the tacit tension between enforcers and their wards

The absurdity of the school rules at the Dominican Convent

And the tacit tension between enforcers and their wards

Imagine if you will, a prison yard. Its perimeter is defined by a high fence with a small gate. Within the fence are men, dressed on an orange prison uniform. As the sun beats down on their shaved heads, they engage themselves in different activities. Some are sitting on benches under trees, reading. Others are gathered at an exercise bench cheering on a burly chap lying on his back, orange shirt on the ground, who is bench pressing 200lbs. Still others just stare out across the fence, probably wondering what had possessed them to commit that act that had landed them here, enclosed in a fence with a bunch of other men, like orange chickens in a coup. There are other men, dressed in uniform. Their uniform is navy blue pants with short sleeved grey shirts. Their epaulets are decorated with shiny brass buttons. Atop their heads are smart caps, with an emblem on the front. They are clean shaven, with hawk like eyes that periodically sweep across the expanse of the yard, taking in the orange clad men who seem not to notice their presence. Handcuffs dangle from loops on leather holsters carrying pistols. In their hands are truncheons. They patrol the yard in the leisurely fashion of those with nowhere else to go, strolling along the fence occasionally looking beyond it onto a road.  There is the scene, the prisoners, and the enforcers of the law, encircled by the fence. Who bears the burden of the law? Who is really free?

Those who know me know that I have an aversion to rules in general and to the school rules we were subjected to at the Dominican Convent in Bulawayo in particular. Those who know me will also recall that I was one of the enforcers of said school rules as a prefect. I thought I would share with you some of the more ridiculous restrictions of our days at the Convent and the dilemmas I sometimes experienced.

I think though I should say in fairness to the nuns and teachers who came up with these rules, most of them were meant for our own protection and the safe guarding of our virtue as young maidens who were placed by our parents into the care of the said nuns and teachers for our physical, intellectual and spiritual well being and development.  For this I will be eternally grateful. For it is this nurturing that has brought me and my fellow DC- Veritas girls to the varying points in our lives. On balance I think we have fared very well and we continue to shine a bright beacon of light wherever we are on the global stage. So it is in jest that I pick and poke holes at some of these rules and also highlight how ignorance can lead to rules that are more detrimental than utilitarian.

Rule 1- no going into town in school uniform

This rule was a very difficult one to enforce because many of the girls had to go into town in order to catch buses to and from school. The buses from the different suburbs did not drop kids off at the school gates. There was a twenty minute walk involved for many of us to the Bulawayo City Hall to catch a bus to go home. This walk involved walking through town because our school was on the perimeter of the Bulawayo Central Business District. The Bulawayo City Hall was right in the city center and this was where buses from and to Killarney, Khumalo, Barham Green, Riverside, Matshamhlope, Sunning Hill, Hillside, Bradfield, Ilanda, Northend, Parklands, Suburbs, Queenspark, Northend, Morning side, Montrose, Trenance, Four winds and Burnside. These were the once White only suburbs, until 1979-1980, with their spacious homes, manicured lawns and azure swimming pools. Dominican convent girls hailed from all these suburbs and so it was not uncommon in the morning to see a stream of blue and beige clad girls jauntily strutting along pavements headed along purple jacaranda lined streets towards Lobengula Street where our school was situated. To the west of our school was the Bulawayo Bus Terminus, which was the huge bus rank for buses in and out of the high density (western) suburbs. These were the places that had been designated black areas prior to independence. Places like Mawgegwe, Barborfields, Luveve, Phumula, Mzilikazi, Sizinda, Nketa, Pelandaba were also home to D.C girls and they would stream in on the morning commute along Lobengula street past the Cathedral and Hosea, who had elephantiasis. On a good day he would hobble, dragging his gigantic baobab trunk of a leg and politely ask for twenty cents (this is when the country still minted coins and twenty cents could buy a Coca- Cola and a bun). On a rough day he would wince in agony as he shouted “Bastards! Ngizalitshaya! Msathanyoko”! He would lunge at the closest girl and topple over as the weight of his big, puss oozing leg dragged him down. Hosea was a permanent fixture at the convent gates from the time I was in first grade till I was in fourth form after which he disappeared. No one, not even the workers who used to stand at the gate talking to him, or Sr. Luidgard who brought him food from the sister’s dining room, knew what had happened to him. Many of us were curious but relieved to no longer have to deal with Hosea’s erratic behavior as we trudged back and forth, to and from school.

The rule that we were not allowed to be in town in school uniform was ridiculous and impractical. If we were not allowed in town in school uniform, how were we supposed to get to school and to get back home?

Well the ingenuity of the Convent girls was renowned. They would bring their civilian clothes and change in the bathrooms after school then go about town without fear of detention. There, outside Haddon& Sly or the Public library, chewing and snapping gum and sporting the latest rags, they would look defiantly at the now powerless prefects, who were posted to different parts of town on ‘town duty!’ Town duty entailed literally patrolling along Main street, Selbourne Avenue,  being stationed outside Chicken Inn, the Hypermarket, Grasshut, Wimpy, Pizzagetti , Haefeli’s Bakery, Sunflower Chips, the Kine Cinemas and the City hall watching for students who looked as though they were loitering instead of getting on a bus and heading home or in school doing their homework at “study time”. Our job was to take down the names in a notebook and deal with the culprits the next day at school. Detention on Friday afternoon was the usual punishment (it was not much fun for the prefects on detention duty who had to give up a Friday afternoon to create a befitting punishment for the culprits). Now we looked like chumps walking around town in the hot sun, notebooks in hand, observing the flagrant subversion of the untouchable culprits in their civvies!  The looks were like those exchanged by two lionesses engaged in a psychological territorial battle, with one silently exuding- I dare you! Say something in your cream blazer with its blue braiding! Go on, say something so I can reduce you to a jellylike mess in front of all these people! You’re on my turf now! We’re on the open savannah, not in the zoo! Show me what you’re working with! Give me an opportunity and I will gleefully rip you to shreds!  She would look, on all senses on high alert as she monotonously chewed on her gum in exaggerated fashion, lip glossed lips curling with contempt. The prefect would look on, marinating, simmering a cauldron of anger in her belly. She would get the look, the look that said- wait till I catch your tail in school tomorrow. I will show you who is boss and you will grovel! Just breathe the wrong way and I will descend on you like a summer hailstorm! See you on my territory!

In order not to face public humiliation, the prefect would back down and walk away. Head held high, shoulders back, tummy tucked in, wearing the sickly cream blazer with the blue braiding and the numerous badges on the lapels, with wounded pride… revenge was a dish best served cold….revenge was necessary…

Rule 2- No talking to boys in school uniform

The Convent girls were not the only commuters walking along the streets of Bulawayo from the City Hall and the bus terminus. Usually we were in the company of men and women headed to work. Occasionally, we would bump into aunts, uncles and neighbors, parents’ colleagues, church members and so on and so forth. Such a “bump in” occurred one day and as my luck would have it, the person in question was none other than my obnoxious, troublesome, pain in the butt, uncle Z!! This man was the bain of my existence and he relished every opportunity he got to create some drama, with me always at the center and always having committed some major infraction that warranted a kangaroo court. On this fateful day, I was walking towards the City Hall with a couple of classmates after school. There, in front of me, like an ugly apparition of a cross between a troll and a gnome (with a darker hue of course), appeared Uncle Z. Behind us was a group of prefects walking purposefully to their various patrol posts in town. Uncle Z trained his red beady eyes on me with a hideous, brown toothed grin spread generously across his incongruous features. He stood in front of me expecting me to lower my eyes in deference, extend my right hand and curtsey like a dutiful Shona girl greeting her ‘small father’ (Uncle Z was my babamunini, small father, and his stature was very well suited to his title. At fourteen, I towered over him, which really made it difficult for me to take him seriously). Instead, I looked straight past him and continued chatting with my companions, who were oblivious to any change in the atmosphere. I felt a small amount of pleasure and I smiled to myself as I imagined him staring after me in mute horror.

“There! I thought to myself, now you can come home and create a nice storm in a teacup. I have given you some lightning!” He was so very predictable as to be boring and I knew he would be at our house to complain to my mother about my errant behavior and how generally, I was a wayward child who could only be cured of my madness by serious corporal discipline, which he would have gladly, magnanimously delivered, if only my mother would allow him to take his role as small father and of course small husband . Since my father’s death two years prior, he had been unable to disguise his desire to dis-grace my mother’s bed. Hence the frequent unannounced visits to Bulawayo all the way from Gokwe, where he left his poor wife and children on a wild goose chase. He endured three bus changes (Gokwe to Sanyathi, Sanyathi to Gweru, Gweru to Bulawayo) and 18 hours of travel every three months on his futile mission.  Some men have a very special gift, which is the inability to see their own ugliness (inside and out), and therefore the inability to assess what kind of woman they should be chasing after. Perhaps it is also because some truly believe that their one eyed trouser snake and the size of their pocket is all a woman should be concerned about, and so looks have no bearing in the matter of courtship. Small father was a primary school teacher and also a successful cotton farmer, who would come all the way to Bulawayo to cash his grain marketing board (GMB) checks after selling his bales of cotton (mabherro edonje). He was convinced that his brother’s children and their love for super kools (frozen colored sugared water), sherbert and maputi would win them over to his side and then their mother would have no choice but to welcome his advances. What he did not know is that we had a rather more sophisticated palate and  we threw away the hard, dry, salty air popped corn, gave the superkool’s to our gardener’s children but definitely ate the sherbet! May be if he had brought home some cheddar, gouda and gorgonzola cheese, some Colcom Polony and  some Cadbury Chocolate Chomps and Nut Logs, just maybe he might have stood a chance!

Anyway I digress. I arrived home before my mother, but I warned my brother that small father was on his way and he would be holding court over my treatment of him. Dennis simply laughed as he recalled the last such incident. “Well what did you do this time? Last time you did not kneel in front of him when he visited you at school and you greeted him on your feet, humiliating and disrespecting him in front of all those white children!”

“Well its worse this time, I said feeling very proud of my feat. I did not greet him at all. I walked straight past him on Main Street! If I am going to get punished for talking to a boy, let it at least be a real boy, not some bearded gnome from Gokwe!”

My mother arrived before Uncle Z did and I explained what had happened. I explained that there was a group of prefects walking behind me and that school rules were that we were not to be seen talking to boys. The only regret I felt about that whole incident was the fact that my mother would have to put up with the haranguing and badgering from small father.  To cut a long story short, Uncle Z arrived with the same exaggerated huffing and puffing and lamentations about how far he had travelled to see his brother’s children who had no regard for him as small father. Without batting an eyelid, I denied having seen him at all and told him there was no way I would have walked past him without greeting! Never! I had a glint in my eyes as I dutifully apologized with my mouth but laughed at and taunted him with my eyes. He fulminated silently, having been disarmed by my unexpected gesture of remorse and repentance!

Rule-3-No grease in your hair

This was one of those rules which, I was ready to relinquish my badge so I could actively protest against, because I found it very offensive. A meeting with Sr. Angela the headmistress soon set us on a path to better understanding of the needs of black girls in the school. This rule was directed at all the black girls who wore their hair in a perm. One of the side effects of the perms, be it the curly perm or the straight perm, was excessive dryness of the hair which was remedied by applying oil sheen. Failure to do so resulted in uneven hair breakage which left unsightly, mowed patches on the head. The complaint (and I have no idea where it originated) was that the oil that the African girls were applying to their hair was causing grease stains on the text books (which belonged to the school). I found this preposterous because firstly the implication was that African girls spent an inordinate amount time scratching their heads (probably full of lice!) and greasing up the text books. Secondly calling our hair oil grease was very offensive to me and insensitive. Third I am willing to put a wager on the possibility that grease stains on the books were the result of students eating while doing homework or setting their books on dirty kitchen and dining room tables, or even a sibling with grubby hands getting hold of said books. That our hair oil was causing mass destruction of school property was ludicrous.

 After witnessing the humiliation of a first form student by a fellow prefect, I knew I had to do something before I was overcome by my inner savage and beat someone up. This prefect had cornered a rather timid girl in the corridor as she was heading to her classroom and was rubbing her fingers in her hair, grimacing in disgust.

‘Your hair is greasy! Maybe I should march you to the sports field and wash it off with Surf (clothes detergent)!’

The poor girl looked as though she wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole. Some of her classmates hung back to snicker and giggle in shadenfreude.

 Protocol was such that I could not undermine another prefect’s authority by intervening. Instead, I marched into Sister Angela’s office, placed my badge on her desk and declared that I could no longer be a prefect. My reasons tumbled out of me like a well rehearsed speech, rendered shrill by accumulated frustration over the absurd rules, which I started to feel I could not and would no longer enforce. I told her how difficult it was to enforce something one didn’t believe in and how instilling terror into the hearts of younger students felt much like institutional bullying. What I did not tell sister was that I missed my prankster days and I missed flouting all the rules myself. By making me a prefect, the nuns and teachers had successfully terminated my spontaneous acts of mischief and the restrictions being a prefect imposed on me were chafing me like a snug necktie which I was itching to loosen. I missed taking my shoes of and sliding across the highly polished corridors. I missed the freedom that came with not having to be on guard, watching to make sure socks were clean and pulled up, shoes were polished, uniform not too short, no cardigans in town, hat put on straight. It was all quite tiresome, not to mention dealing with the resentment- filled gazes of the junior students. Some of them had been my buddies before I was a prefect. Now they scuttled for cover at the mere sight of my shadow! The heavy responsibility of being a prefect far outweighed any pride or pleasure that came with wearing the badge of honor. I was ready to give it up.

Sister listened attentively as I chronicled the impracticality of the rule against no talking to boys. I recounted for her how two weeks previously, my brother had come up to me at the City Hall while I was on patrol and swept me up in a huge bear hug in front of all the students I was supposed to be monitoring, shouting:

 ‘Look your prefect is hugging a boy while in uniform!’ Of course I was mortified and my brother vowed to do this every time he bumped into me in town until this rule was repealed (he had his eye on a pretty third form student and he was determined to get the rule scratched so he could talk to her). I explained how the rule was ridiculous and we were getting a bad reputation for being snobs even among the adults at whom we fired rapid greetings as we hurried past them so as not to be seen talking to men while in school uniform.    

I expounded on the effects that the no grease rule was having on our collective self esteem as African girls. I explained the science behind permed black hair and expounded on the different needs of our thirsty hair. I told her about the anti- parallel beta sheets our hair was made up of, which created kinks in the strands of keratin making our hair more prone to breakage. I explained how oil provided a lubricant that reduced friction between beta strands and therefore prevented breakage. Well, Sister Angela pushed my badge back across the desk towards me and told me we would hold a meeting to review the rules.  I have a feeling that Sister Angela knew what I was looking for in giving up my badge. Her instincts to any changes in my behavior were near perfect and she knew what I really yearned for. However she was also able to see that if I was relieved of my duties as a prefect there would be many a rebellion against all sorts of issues in the established order. For this was my nature and it was the reason I had been made a prefect to begin with. My behavior had been far from exemplary, however the strategy to reign me in, slow me down and mellow me out, by placing the mantle of rule enforcer on my shoulders, had worked!

So back to my earlier example- in the prison yard, who was free and who was incarcerarted?

Barbs