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.