A cultured story

By Clem Chinyani.

Mose sat on his hunches outside his mother's hut. A wisp of white smoke twirled into the clear blue sky as a very gentle breeze blew across the lazy afternoon from the South-East. He had just come back from the Magumbe Dam where he watered the cattle and goats and now he felt pangs of hunger in his stomach. Other kitchen huts of the village had smoke too, one of them, Masvanhise's son Hama had felled a tree that was not dry for firewood. For a few years the area had been having firewood problems because all the people from the nearby villages had been pouring all to Mufakose forest to harvest wood. Everyday, ox-drawn carts would descend on the forest with less trees already. There was intense competition in the forest for trees such that people ended up marking trees they were wilting by stripping the bark off around the trunk and waiting for them to die from no water and nutrients transported to the leaves. The trees thinned out where these intruders emerged from, all three directions extending into the forest itself, once a densely populated forest now reduced to a colony of stumps and brown grass and a few miserable trees under which the animals slept to escape from the intense heat. Bells on the cows rang all over the place as the beasts either grazed or walked in search of dinner. The grass was dry thatching grass that had been left over from the harvesting by the people of the village repairing their rooves or selling it to the white farmer Mazhindu who came to buy the grass for his farm. Many people made money, toiling in the high itchy grass cutting it up, even the little children were given a sickle and a bunch of sisal ropes to make their share of the family income. Mazhindu paid cash for the grass tied in a thick bundle. Donkey drawn and ox-drawn carts were used to haul them in to the village center at the ancient Muhacha tree where every village announcement was made.

On sale days, the village headman Makumbe, an wiry old man with a permanent cigarette clenched between his stained teeth would sit on a little wooden stool near the base of the trunk flanked by his right hand man, Mazibisa and a short bald man called Spokes. This man had a loud baritone voice and he is the one who delivered speeches every time the headman had something to say.  Most of the times he drank opaque beer brewed by his third wife Mai Ndaka who ran a very successful beer place at her homestead. She sold her beer in metal cups for seven cents a cup and this price had ran for years now and everybody did not buy beer from anyone who tried to shatter the market conditions. The first day Mazhindu approached the village offering to buy their grass, just like a few years before a merchant had come and harvested the timber from the forest after building the headman a four roomed corrugated iron roof house and gave him three beasts. People had complained as the company brought in caterpillars, trucks, bulldozers, chainsaws and workmen who hacked almost a third of the forest down and they were gone before anybody knew it, into the horizon following their timber laden trucks there. A shadow fell across Mose's face, it was Hama's father, Mufakose. He was still a distance from the houses and the sun had began its descent, brightening as it did so. Masvanhise, a dark old man with an erect figure walked with the aid of a stick because he had a bad leg, the leg he hurt when he had the field accident. That morning, he had woken very early after the first crow crowed and woke up his son and nephew to ready the cattle and the plough. After a few skirmishes with the cattle, they finally had them yoked. It had just been half an hour of coercing and whipping the cattle to move on in the field, the smell of freshly turned earth filling the clear morning air when at the end of one furrow, one of the cows, Manzuma panicked after a bird fluttered in its face. The cow began running the opposite way and Masvanhise who had been handling the plough lunged forward and the plough followed him, narrowly missing his entire upper torso. It went for his leg, cutting a deep gash on his right foot. The pain was unbearable, he wriggled about in pain while the runaway cattle went on further up-field. His son and nephew were too busy trying to stop them and they did not see the gaping wound on his leg, besides, its was still a bit dark that morning.

Mose's puppy that was lying under the granary saw the limping man approaching and began to bark, charging and retreating as it did. Masvanhise reduced his pace, tucked his knobkerrie under his shoulder and began clapping his hands together to announce his arrival. The young man looked up at him and acknowledged his presence, he rose from where he was and met him. His mother emerged from the kitchen hut, shielding her eyes from the light, she called out to Masvanhise welcoming him. Mose went past her into the hut and fetched an empty tin can, turned it up-side down and gave it to the man to sit under a little lemon tree in the yard. Masvanhise stopped clapping his hands after they had exchanged greetings with Mose's mother who was kneeling by his side, clapping in return the entire time. They spoke about the weather, the likely commencement of the rain season, their preparations for the impending planting period and also about their families' health. Masvanhise had actually come to borrow the axe from this household. Mose's mother called out for him to go and fetch it in the hut where tools were. This hut, located besides the kitchen hut, to the west contained all the tools needed at this homestead. Its door was only three planks of wood held together by nails and it also served as a chicken coop to the chickens that were bullied in the main pen. Sometimes a hen would lay eggs in it and hatch them there and live there with its chicks till they were big enough to be forced to get used to the main run. Chickens laid eggs everywhere, some laid their eggs out in the fields where there were all the dangers. Dogs, cats and other critters posed a major threat to the chickens and their eggs. If found, the eggs of a chicken were brought in and the chicken showed where they were. Mose learnt to do this at a very tender age when his grandmother showed him one day after his chicken had laid eggs out in the field. She told him to wash his hands with ash before touching the eggs otherwise the hen would refuse to incubate the eggs, and he did exactly that and it worked, from that day, he knew how to handle chicken eggs. In the hut, which had part of its roof missing, a little thatch near the apex of the roof that brought in light, the tools were stained with chicken droppings. Sometimes the chickens roosted on top of the old plough kept in there for parts, or a set of hoes, or the axe or the field harrow. It was cool and dry, smelling heavily of chickens. There was one chicken inside, lying on the cool mud floor.

Another man approached the homestead, it was Mose's father. He had an axe slung over his shoulder and he was wearing car tyre sandals and a torn T-shirt walking tiredly. The puppy which had been now lying down beneath the same tree as everyone lifted its head when it saw him approaching. It sniffed the air twice, its nose twitching this way and that before it leapt and sped joyfully towards him. It approached him tail flickering its tail, licking his whitened feet and tugging at his folded pants joyfully. The man smiled and greeted it stepping carefully, making sure not to crush it with his immense foot. He announced his arrival and Mose brought out another tin can and the men exchanged greetings after which Mose's mother clapped her hands in greeting to her husband who inquired about her day. She responded asking him the same and all was well, it was figured out. She then went on ahead and excused herself to finish preparing the food. The men fell into a deeper conversation and mostly about the recent visitation by a non-governmental group that wanted to start a forest rehabilitation programme. They wanted to engage the headman in implementing a plan they had to minimize the destruction of the forest. The headman was not interested at this point because there was no financial incentive for him, in fact, all the money was going to be availed to pay for the resources needed for the rejuvenation of the forest and it was to be done through a committee that he was not in. The men liked the idea, a lot because things were beginning to get out of hand with less trees available. They were however, mainly worried about the firewood, fruit trees and hunting grounds that were fast disappearing in their sights. The sun moved lower a bit more and Mose rose to go and gather his father's livestock. Other headmen could be head cracking their whips and yelling out to each other and to their beasts whose ringing bells made them identifiable. The little puppy sprung up when Mose began to leave but the young man turned and chased it back. Reluctantly it watched him run away whistling to his friends, his bark rope whip trailing in his wake. In the forest, he stopped to listen to his cattle's bell. There were countless other bells everywhere. He picked up his bell and began walking in the direction it came from. Back at the homestead, the chickens had started to gather around the coop, the early birds were already perched on their resting places. Occasionally one chicken would run another from a spot and take it. The cock had began already its routine crowing after flapping its wings and a cockerel was frantically trying to crow too. It would flap its wings and utter a discordant crow before staggering to keep its balance. The older cock chased it around there times before the younger fowl decided to take to the tools hut where it had sought refuge many a night. The goats too had began trooping back to their pen which was next to the tools hut. It was such a bad location to place the pen because when it rained, the stench of goat droppings and urine was unbearable. It was a simple structure made of poles attached together by bark rope. Behind the goats pen was a pile of beer suds which the donkeys loved so much. Their donkeys didn't go far when this delicacy was there. They would stay there the whole day munching at them busily. The breeze changed direction and the smell of the beer came wafting across the yard, mingling with that of the smoke, goats' and chicken droppings.  Around the entire homestead were fields where the family planted groundnuts, groundnuts and some maize. The easily accessible crops were put there.

A little bit later, as half of the sun was already gone over the horizon, Mose's mother brought a plate of hot brown roasted maize seeds to the two men and a gallon containing beer brought in from the headman's third wife. The liquid was fermenting in the container from the heat and it had a sweet smell that filled the air when it was opened. The two men thanked the kneeling woman before she retreated into her kitchen and Mose's father poured the frothy white liquid into the big mug set before them. He lifted it to his mouth and set it before gulping thirstily. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he drank while his friend looked longily and when it was his turn, he took a long swig, after which they both scooped from the maize seed plate and started munching. The air had cooled by now and the sun was gone too leaving the earth to unwind and prepare for the following day. A star or two had already appeared in the clear sky.

Being a white man in Africa.

Ever seen a white African? Well, there are lots of Euro-Africans just like there is Afro-Americans, in that gist solve the equation. In my part of Africa, people generally are not xenophobic at all because you tend to fare very well if you are an out of towner, worse if you are white. White in Africa is associated with all sorts of cool, advancement and a higher level of smartness and incomparable beauty. White in Africa is pure, honest and untainted and above all else, not black. Stanlake Samkange in his book 'The Origins of Rhodhesia' talks about a man who led the Ndebele people in the past, Mzilikazi whom he says was in awe of white people. The European settlers took advantage of this and used that to implement their territorial acquisition plans and it worked like magic! Mzilikazi was friends with a Briton who was the Commandant or somebody close to that at Cape Town, the Boere-Afrikaners were posing a threat to his chiefdom and he sought help from the British who gave him terms in order to assist him. They told him not to allow any prospecting for gold in his chiefdom and not to allow any form of trophy hunting and no concession signing at all. He was to allow no guns to be carried through his chiefdom and if he breached these rules, he wouldn't be assisted in case of an attack from the Boere-Afrikaners. However when the Dutchmen attacked, the Britons did not live up to their end of the agreement Mzilikazi was let down by white men that he so adored.

My friend from the city of Bulawayo's aunt was married to an Irish man and he was loved by the family. At no point was he treated with hostility. He was regarded as the wisest, the cleanest and the most honest member of the family. People respected what he said and at first, he did not want them to treat him like that, he wanted them to treat him as normal as another human being but sooner that they continued, he saw an opportunity to pounce on this family and manipulate them in any way he liked. His wife, having crossed over to the other side changed her demeanor, she was a real Jekyll. If her family visited, she mistreated them the moment they walked into her house and they all would leave shaking their heads. She refused to speak her native language anymore and established a rule that only English was to be spoken in her house. Only English food was eaten and I believe she was just being a good wife, one who submits to her husband in all respects.

It is easier for a white man in Africa to make it than a black man. Say there are two companies, one is run by a white man and the other by a black man, people would want to do business with the white one. It is because during the colonial era, white people accumulated resources and have since built strong businesses, passed their wealth down to their children and their children and thus a black man trying to make it in the world of business he has to work extra hard to be even at the lowest rungs of business compared to his white counterparts. I have no idea why black Africans do not trust each other, to logic, this is pure propaganda of the White African who came up with a policy of dividing the black African so as to rule him. I mean it makes sense the least not to trust one person whom you know their ins and outs than he whose intentions at once were sinister and yes, you may say that was the past era but the DNA still remains. So being white in Africa has those benefits and more. People generally have this unfounded respect for white people no matter who they are. Tourists passing through the region have the times of their lives with black people opting to help them in some cases just to be seen with a white person, it makes them fashionable. I think native Africans have for over the past centuries assumed  the position of little brother to Caucasians, as Ndabaningi Sithole said in his book African Nationalism. I think this respect and fear is based on what the people went through during colonial times. People settle for being workers, not creators of work, however, lately there has been an interesting trend of Africans (black) rising to be the ones who regard (white) Africans   equally and of course there has been a few radical ones like General Amin and Cde Mugabe. In a way, one sees where these men's policies are coming from and their facade has a good look, its how they are implemented that is fundamentally wrong. Because of this stereo, it is regarded as taboo to see a begging white man in the region, and to serve a white man with ordinary food is not good at all to onlookers.He deserves a special diet to support his fragile self and his opinion goes and those that realize the gullibility of the black folks take it to their advantage.

Same thing in America, where the white man has some sort of superiority over the black man. I was in a queue at Walmart this day and two gentlemen were at a register opposite where I was. One was black and his counterpart was white. So as the register attendant called for the next person, the white American who had gotten there after the black American sped past him and the other man was not too happy about it. He launched a complaint. The other gentleman got incensed that he responded to him saying he had no time for **, meaning his 'race' of people. However the black man did not cower or pretend he confronted the man head-on and it was a heated argument with both men that went on and on as emotions were bared and socially explosive issues were poured out for the rest of the shoppers to hear.

White Africans have an unfair advantage over their black counterparts and who is to blame? The aggrieved I think because what happened occurred because they saw strangers come to their lands and they took them in and the same turned around and took their property. The point is Africans are generous people, sometimes too generous and their generosity to give the world all the resources has made them the same's laughing stock. Men also take it as an immense achievement to marry a white woman. It is for them an out of this world achievement to bring home a woman of a different culture and she again, would be very welcome among his people because, they are warm to strangers.

However, there are strangers to the African culture who genuinely become immersed in it with no need to bask in the glory that comes with it. For example a person that gives up the Western lifestyle for the easy-going village culture of Africa comes and establishes himself in the village and marries in the village, eats what the villagers eat, does the same chores as the villagers and sleeps where they sleep and most importantly, practices their rites and customs, that is a person who embraces Africa genuinely. He may look funny doing all those things, imagine how funny a white man looks when loins-clothes, how tanned he will look and out of place, yet the genuineness of his heart is all that is required. To be African one needs not a social security, but a heart that loves and is open to living and loving. People would laugh at a strange man speaking with an accent but will not discriminate against him, Africa is a home of wholesome love, not faked and welcomes all, I guess that is why some suggest it is the cradle of mankind.

Living in the United States! 1.

As an alien in this land, I stick out like the sorest finger among the natives, those who ancestry could be traced to just prior to the Declaration of Independence by the thirteen British colonies that lied along the Atlantic seaboard, that was back in the year 1776, July the fourth. I mean I distinctly stand out by the structure of my cranium, more distinctly by my way of speech, my demeanor, choice of dress among other things. Anyone from my part of the world is just the same though with varying degrees and the rest of the gang struggles to conform and look just like the native inhabitants (not the Indians, the ones who came from Europe and later Africa, forcibly). However, you are not in America until you have totally felt free, and have been assigned a number to ID you. This is your very livelihood and you have to fall into the debt grove and begin to weaken emotionally and grow physically and get enlightened by way of news and written books and other forms of media.

Life in this land is all about making it, it is a healthy capitalist society that thrives on consumerism. Making it is as easy as summoning the guts you have or not have. People can easily be swayed this or that way because everybody is constantly searching, searching for answers to life. For example many people struggle with obesity which eats away all their self confidence and men and women who are lazy to earn money via conventional ways prey on these and they sell to them plain useless products promising great results for their patients and they fill the media with miraculous results of their products or services and yes, they may work for some, but for the majority of the people, there is always a cry of foul. I mean anything goes so who cares, who does not? Characteristically, the health industry thrives a lot because there are lots of medical concerns in this land. Mental and other branches of medical assistance are on high demand because there is a high rate of illness, fortunately the medical experts are good at their jobs otherwise the death rates would be alarmingly high. Yes, there is AIDS too, just like in third world countries, difference is there is food for people to eat while ill such that the virus takes longer to eat up their patients and at the same time, medicine helps suppress its development. There is Patriotism, a lot of it and I would love every country under the sun to take a leaf out of the American page of loving one's country of birth. I am Patriotic too, not because I am a American by birth, but by Identity, I choose to identify with its constitution, all the way, no bones to chew with its components but with individuals who want to avoid it or warp it.

I love it here, because it is a multicultural society, a walk in the street you meet with hundred different cultures, Indo-America, Asian, African, Caribbean you name them, no wonder they believe there are aliens among us. You know you live in the land when during work or school break the majority of stories talked about are about pro-football, basketball, ice-hockey and people keep making references to Star Wars movies and reigning pop idols. You will be glad also to know that you still are in Arkansas, Texas, Georgia or Washington if a black person who is of Afro-American descent believes the police are out to get him and his fellas any moment and talks about his close friend or relative being put in jail or just coming out of penitentiary for a felony. Even more, some random person does not know the geographical features of the nation you come from or does not want to understand your diction.  I always smile inwardly gleefully if that happens because I do pretend too that I do not understand his/her either.

Here, things like pets, trees and flowers have a better place in a home or in people's lives than other people. People never care about people at all. Some people actually get incensed if their pets vets do not handfeed them during their stay at the animal clinics. Others bequeath their entire life savings to their canine or feline friends., well that happens.

Only in America would people do things like pray to God to find their car keys, kids' ambitions are to be Batman when they grow up and people get to work late because their dog ate their alarm clock. It is in this part of the world where emotions of adults have been so tampered with that men cry openly about anything good or bad. Their women, well it is better to leave this unsaid. And the children, well the children are untouchable, not in a that way, dummy! that even I would slap you blue, I mean they are licenced to misbehave and run over parents by the child protection rules that strip the biological mother and father of a child their responsibility to discipline them. And yet lawmakers ignore the escalating levels of violence which I think this has a lot to do with. There is also the alarming drop in intelligence, in Math. According to a Bloomberg 2010 report, US teens were ranked 25th according to a Programme for International Student Assessment. In my part of the world, when I was a kid and in school, my peers got whoppings for bad grades as, now you just can not do that here, otherwise you will be planning a trip to sing-sing. Well, there is still time to turn things around and probably make the delinquents, both adults and the kids watch endless reruns of Alo Alo!

The games and plays of the Shona.

By Clemz Chinyani.

(Singing): Amina

(Clap Clap Clap)

Amina Kadeya
(Clap Clap Clap)

Simoreya

(Clap Clap Clap)

Amina one two three.......

Those are the lyrics of a Shona play song, one that has been around for a very long time. When singing this song, two little girls will be either seated on their hunches in the sand or under a shade hitting the insides if their palms together and clapping in a pattern to the words of the song.

Music at play is an integral part and play itself is core to the society's development. Every child, when well, goes out to play. I, when I was a kid used to go out to play with friends in the dusty streets, not caring about food or anything else. Games differ between boys and girls and sometimes, they play together. In the past, my grandmother told me she was a champion at a boys' sport of throwing knobkerries. This was a male sport played when the boys were out at the pasture lands tending cattle. They would gather up while their livestock grazed and play this game where one person would throw his knobkerrie into the air and the others would try to knock it with theirs. The one who hit it first became the winner. No females would participate in this game because they would be all at home doing womanly chores. However, my great-grandfather had female children only and thus grandmother had to take his cattle out to the pastures. She played this sport and outdid many boys. She also fought them. Another favorite sport among the boys out in the forests was fighting with bare fists. Bigger boys would urge on younger boys to go head to head to see who was a better fighter and no one was supposed to say these things back at home, no matter how beaten they were. Nowadays, it is not a common practise of growing young men to go out herding cattle as people have moved to urban areas. People have a  way of calling petty business, 'magames ekumombe', meaning games played while herding cattle. 

Another game played by the Shona was 'Tsoro'. This game involved (and still does) two players seated across each other with the 'Tsoro'  board carved out on the ground. Semi-spherical holes would be dug out of the ground, usually eight of them in two by four rows. They would be filled with small round pebbles which the players move around. This was a unisex game. Then was 'Nhodo', for girls. This game was played in a shallow hole in the ground filled with round small pebbles and by two people. They would throw one stone into the air and scoop the rest of the pebbles out of the hole with the same hand that threw, before the one they threw into the air falls and they have to catch it and toss it back into the air. They would have to return all the pebbles minus one into the hole and continue to do so till the end. At the end of the game, the one with more pebbles was the winner. Then were also games children played not around the home vicinity, usually out in the forests on dwalas. A smooth dwala provided a sliding plane for them and here a pastime called 'Mutserendende' was engaged in. They would take turns to slide down the smooth surface of the rock and sometimes it would be over a water fall, in this case, it would be similar to water sliding in today's pastimes. Sometimes boys would hunt, it was their pastime and it brought meat home, so that was a productive pastime, and younger boys and girls would play house at times, getting primed for what was to come in their adult lives. There was also hide and seek, 'Chamuhwandehwande' games such as 'Mapere' whereby two camps were formed, one had to have a leader, a mother and the other had to be one of predators, usually 'hyenas' which is what 'Mapere' means in Shona. The 'people' would be on one side and their 'mother'  would call them. They would respond saying that they feared the hyenas and the mother would tell them not to worry, they would say they are afraid of the hyenas, but the mother would assure them it was OK and so, they would try to make a break for it past the hyenas. Whoever could not dodge the hyenas would be caught and placed in the hyenas den, that was the end of their participation till the next time. Let me share with you the actual words they would say during the game;

Mother

Vana Vangu!

Children

Woye!

Mother

Huyai

Children

Tinotya!

Mother

Munotyei?!

Children

Mapere!

Mother

Mapere akapera kare!

At this point, the children make a run for it and the hyenas try to capture them. The game continues until all the children are captured, otherwise it goes on and on till sunset and or sunrise (kidding).
Chisarai,
Bye Bye,                                                  Sayonara
                                                                 さようなら.