Nature and the people of Zimbabwe.

By Clemz C.

Growing up, I closely followed my grandmother around, whenever I visited her. She was a love-filled old woman with a question mark poise, bent with a walking stick that always went in front of her. We took walks to inspect her crops in the fields, or to visit her neighbors for an evening chat. I cared less for what they had to say and paid more attention to the little details of nature around me, their long dark shadows dancing on the ground, the grass and weeds growing on the roadside, the smell of different types of leaves, the black ants marching across the footpath in a single file, the birds chirping in the nearby trees, the position of the sun in the sky, the surrounding hills and far-away mountains that I had dreams of climbing when I grew older.

Summer, days would be hot, Mopane beetles shrilled in the short Mopane trees and grass wilted under the stress of the heat. Locusts flew everywhere across the paths I used to go wherever I wanted to, on the yard, in the field, making clicking noises as they brushed their wings together. Some of my memorable summers were spent in the country, where the heat would drive all livestock under the sweet shade of large trees, usually around watering holes. Luckily, Spring would have set in before the intense summer heat. The sky too would look tired and blue, sometimes a deep blue and sometimes whitewashed blue. In the city, there was no difference, only the fact that life seemed harder for those who lived in the areas where there was little vegetation cover, the high density areas where shade trees were only a few fruit trees grown by families to provide mangoes, guavas and other fruits in season. In the low density areas, where mostly white people lived, and the rich black folks too, there was plenty vegetation cover to worry about walking a mile in order to evade the heat. I would feel particularly pitiful if we happened to pass through Belmont, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where tired and hungry job seekers would converge under a large tree while waves of heat wafted into their faces. Buttons half done, lips parched, they would sit in front of some large gate, usually with the sign, 'No Work, Hapana Basa, Akula Msebenzi'. Hope and despair would keep them there and probably crying children and sad wives back at the house too.

Enough of sad memories, I used to love how grandmother, ever busy, would relate every occurrence to nature, for example, after a day's work, when we would be sitting on the veranda tying vegetable seedlings to sell at the Farmer's Co-op the following day, she would glance, if it was out, at the moon and tell that the rains were not a week away. True, the rains would fall in about the time she would have predicted. This is how she saw that it was going to rain, if the moon had a halo around it, that, grandma said it was drenched in rain, a good omen it was. Usually we would get the rains, a thorough summer rain that pelted the ground heavily and thundered every time a livid flash of lightning streaked across the sky. The rain would fall in a slant, the sky dark and the earth covered in a sheet of white rain. For hours it would fall, the wind howling tearing the leaves off trees, snapping branches and sending them across everywhere. Streams of water would would start flowing alongside the roadsides, sweeping everything in their path from left clothing, shoes, twigs, dead grass, leaves, empty cans et cetera. Everyone would sit together inside, usually around an older person and some would fall asleep and after the rains, a cool breeze would blow across the earth amid the sounds of the joyous creatures and creepy crawling. Bull frogs would croak in a chorus, and little boys would make empty milk sachet boats and place them on the flowing rivulets and run along them cheering at their boats competing for the first place. The water would usually end up diving into a little bridge and under it, this is where every unretrieved boat would end up and ultimately at the sewers. After the rains, about a day or two, the earth would spring up lush green and alive. The grass would thrive, trees and shrubs do the same and everything would be jovial, including the birds of the air. The sky would be a deep blue and the sun a brilliant gold and the moon a clear white, without the rain pregnancy it had in the first place. The air would be crisp and fresh with no humidity, but just sufficient quantities for human comfort.

In the country, my maternal  grandmother had the same way of telling that the rain was around the corner, this and also another sign, the burning of Buchwa Mountain. In the ferrous region Mberengwa, in the Midlands part of the country, there is a huge mountain rich in Chrome with the aforementioned name. In summer months, just before the rains, the mountain bursts in flames, brightening areas even as far as a hundred miles away. My grandmother would sit under the Cassava shrub shelling her nuts in preparation for the planting season, she would look up with a look of satisfaction. When at one point I asked her why the mountain burned and who lighted it, she took the pleasure of answering with in detail. She said the mountain's fire was mysterious, no one set it on fire, and no one would extinguish it. Only the rains of God would extinguish it and she would tell when the rain was going to come and like she would have said, the clouds would race in and usher in the rainy season. Sometimes before it rained, strong gusts of wind would raise so much dust that people had to shield their eyes and open only  fractionally to see their way. Fowls would squawk as they rushed into huts, their coops or under the grain storage huts mounted on large stones. Other animals like cows and donkeys would gather and usually put their heads together and take the pelting of the rain. The mountain would not extinguish after the first rains, I usually saw it burning though with reduced intensity after the rains and with time, the fire would reduce to a flickering flame before it completely went out. I was fascinated by how my grandmothers knew it was time of the year for the rains to start falling by merely looking at the moon and the mountain. There are lots of things that my people consider for them to make decisions that lie in nature and I will be exploring these in the next article.

Hasta la proxima.