Writing Lives

Mbuya, My Grandmother

67 At dawn the rooster from our village compound makes the first call, others from nearby villages and across the river follow in full throat. Then a peaceful and almost serene silence falls on the soft air. I leave the village compound long before sunrise every day. I walk down the valley, then climb the kopje to the high granite rocks and listen to the morning. My grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa is buried here on the flat part of the rocks where my mother laid out her crops to dry during the harvest season. VaMandirowesa was the first of my grandfather Sekuru Dhikisoni’s five wives. We called her Mbuya VaMandirowesa , or just Mbuya. She has been dead for twenty years now. Every morning, I come here to wait for the sunrise over Simukai Mountains. I sit, think and dream. Flashbacks. The past and the present come together. Memories of the village. Visions and images merging, dissolving and blurring. At times, the past is so vivid, I hear the voice of Mbuya VaMandirowesa – laughing, talking, shouting, singing. I hear her. And I remember our lives back then, long before independence came, and we, the young ones, moved to the cities. It is the beginning of October, the end of the dry season. The smell Mbuya, My Grandmother Sekai Nzenza 68 Writing Lives of last night’s veld fires permeates the air. Smoke from the scattered village huts below shoots up to the sky. Then it spreads out, like a thin cloud, to merge with the mist from the valley. I sit waiting to see the sun rise over the mountains. The morning birds greet each other and there is the odd distant rooster’s crow – cockarookoo. I hear baboons fighting high up in the Mbire Mountains further down the Save River. I listen to the wind. It comes from the valley below and blows over the granite rocks. The big trees that used to shield this place from it are long gone. When Mbuya, Sekuru Dhikisoni and the rest of the extended family were settled here by the Southern Rhodesia government in the 1930s, this was virgin land. Lions, giraffes, elephants, buffaloes, wildebeests, elands, kudus, impalas and rhinos roamed these mountains and valleys. Sekuru Dhikisoni and his brothers used to hunt and shoot elands, wild pigs and bucks up in the Hwedza mountains and in the Save river basin. Those big animals are gone now. Some were hunted and eaten as game meat. The rest were rounded up and taken to the game parks. All that is left in these hills are baboons, rabbits, snakes, birds, squirrels, skunks and all kinds of butterflies and insects. People still slash and burn in the dry season. There are burnt axe-mutilated tree trunks everywhere: black soot and white ash blowing in the cold, early morning wind. The spring rains in September yeilded nothing but a little shower, leaving the burnt grass thirsting for more. Except for a few water holes, our two nearest rivers, Chidzikisa and Chinyika, are dry. We drink from the same spot – people, cattle, goats, and the baboons. From these high granite rocks, I have 360-degree views of the valley below and the surrounding mountains. When I was growing up, the land below the granite kopje and near the river was very productive. There was plenty to eat. The hills were full of wild fruits – a fruit for every season. But now the land is tired and produces little. I can also see our village compound from here. Although many people have left for the city and the former white-owned farms, it is still a huge old compound with several huts and granaries. It was built long before I was born in the foothills of the Simukai mountains. A few kilometres behind the mountains lies the Save River. It winds smoothly like a big snake all 69 My Grandmother by Sekai Nzenza the way to the Limpopo River bordering Zimbabwe and South Africa and then it pours its waters into the Indian Ocean. Long before I left this village, I used to sleep on the mat next to the fire with Mbuya in her kitchen hut, the hut in which I was born. In those days, Mbuya used to rule the village. A tall, formidable woman, she walked with her hands clasped behind her back. She had a roundish face and a small medium flat...