Uncertainty
It is now dusk in the arid dusty sands of Chimufombo a tiny remote village in Africa. What can only be heard is the clinking of cow bells and the smell of burning wood and charcoal as herdmen and boys drive flock of sheep and cattle home. The bleating, mooing and hoof thuds is deafening as i struggle to keep my herd home amidst hundreds of cattle marching from the pastures along the worn out village paths to our grass thatched huts. Chasing stubborn calves time and again awards my bare cracked feet with bloody stinging thorns. Swearing and whips is my wrath to these beasts not hearing my plea for them to outpace the laughing hynas scouting.
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I can smell the homecoming smell of roasted meat wafting along the valley as our breast feeding mothers light fires to cook delicacies for us after long hours of searching for a living in the mountainside moors and rivers . The dirt under my armpits and sweat is repulsive. I stink cow dung and days of dirt. A warm bath awaits me, good supper i would gobble voraciously to read my next chapter from the House of Hunger by Dambudzo marechera.
After locking the last calf and kicking her in the butt i carried my mice for the roast to mom and she ululated reciting our totem incantations to my soothing so i bring more the following day. Trapping rodents and picking grubs had become my hobby .Spider my dog did most of the chasing and killing , we danced an unseperable duet in the fields and thining forests hunting trophies for the pot.
Hope
I have been in this dreary jungle for several years now and Fanuel said i need to keep this cow wealth since it will be my breakthrough to University. i needed the fees. I needed to be educated like Malemu our school headmaster who only wore his
brown suit to preach on a low attended sunday school service. His whip was a memory for all scholars being exhorsised under his msasa tree classes. He would shout and vent and curse on ignorance to later close the day by laying his educated hands on our poor heads casting demons of poverty and telling us to confess even the sins of our ancestors. He was a Charismatic teacher who had failed his thesis to retire in our village and teach kids to this hope and legacy so that they migrate and make it in the hovels of the former tired Salisbury.
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Religion the opium of the poor has been our solace that kept us going in the droughts, pain and suffering. We used to eat grubs, worms and tree roots, buck and pods for survival. If a thin village cow starved to death it would be a good omen since we would eat the carcass like vultures for a number of days. This has been the haven and village Fanuel had come to fight his lost causes after retiring with nothing to show for it from the army.
Good Old Days
As i joined my elder brothers and fathers around the all men village fire i greeted them squatted as Gwarara the chief opened the "Dare" by clearing the throat and poking the ambers with his ragged stick. He begins a long journey as usual of the good old days when "murungu" used to pay them good wages and when they went to South Africa "wenela" and work in mines and how they used to play "korostinas" as young men courting our mothers.
Age was catching up with the white head as he got some dates wrong and drifted in lost memories which he resonated munching on his pipe. Unfortunately, times had changed. Fresh rivers are now all silted and soaked with soap, the fish are dead, dams have dried up...
Suddenly, he stopped while starring into fire as if he saw a vision from the dead and started a bout of coughing sending spasms into his weak frail body ,i just held his hand as he recovered from spluttering phlegm into the fire. He was dying, tuberclosis was taking the old man down and my dad was the only one left to keep the village together in the hope of the new black governement he had saved for so many years...
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The Unknown
As the embers turned grey and cold an owl hooted heralding the night witches hour. One by one we dispersed into the dark shadows and heat of our grass thatched huts to sleep and repeat the same day for many years to come.
To be continued ...
18 Monday September 2017 11:08am
Story By Zimleague