HomeOld_PostsIs Christmas’s home in the village?

Is Christmas’s home in the village?

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By Munhamu Pekeshe

UNOGARA paroom number ani?
Room 9B, 25th Street, Joburg Lines, Harare would be a typical answer.
Overhearing this typical conversation in the village around Christmas time sent me into imaginative wondering.
First it was a conversation by the urbane.
And for some of us who had never set foot in town, not even the neighbouring Enkeldoorn, envied the urban folk.
But a rebellious thought in me would silently probe further, “So they have numbered rooms?”
“If visitors came where would they sleep?”
Not that numbered rooms was an entirely new concept.
My maternal grandfather, who was a Muchinda waMangwende in Nhohwe country, had a huge house with numbered rooms.
It always fascinated me, each time we visited, to be asked to pick something ‘munumber one/two/three’.
The house, built in the 1950s still stands as a village historic building.
The room numbering has been maintained and reserved for this house only.
Back to the urban address conversation, I imagined with little horror the idea of owning a little room in someone’s house.
That little horror thought made me skeptical about the welcome I would get from my first visit to Harare, what is now Mbare.
I did not have to wait long.
In 1976, as reward for excellent Grade Five midyear results, I was offered an opportunity to spend August school holidays in Harare with my aunt.
I immediately fell in love with the place on arrival.
It was a four roomed house.
I was impressed by the perimeter bourganvillea hedge, the outside flush toilets, the lit bulbs, the stove, the black and white television, the double bed and the noise of vehicular traffic.
All this we did not have in Unyetu.
It was years later, on repeat visits, that I realised that the house was a one-and-half room structure consisting of just a bedroom and a kitchen.
Uncle had added two more rooms using wooden boards.
The resultant structure became a transit home for many of us relatives from Unyetu, Murehwa, Hwedza and even London.
The Harare address remained 9B, and so did our address in Dangamvura, when we left Unyetu because of the war to continue with our schooling in 1978.
Our address was Room 218T, Dangamvura, Mutare.
This was despite that father had a Council four-roomed house.
In fact as far as I can recall the smallest housing units were ‘kumatwo rooms’. Years later we caught up in society’s rebellion against the room number humiliation; our address changed to House No. 218T, Dangamvura, Mutare or simply 218T Dangamvura, Mutare.
What I found most interesting from the time was how the urban house, one room, two rooms or four rooms, was never a home.Home remained synonymous with kumusha, in my case the village plot in Unyetu. Father never lost an opportunity to remind us that home was kumusha in Unyetu. He castigated bhonirukisheni (born in an urban location) behaviour and to reinforce our cultural learning, every April and December school holiday we were shipped back to the village irrespective of the intensity of the war.
The concept of home as kumusha remained intact even after the unveiling of the Home Ownership part of Dangamvura.
Not even our acquaintance with Westwood and Marimba Park, from the radio drama adapted from Aaron Chiunduramoyo’s Zivakwawakabva would change our concept of home as
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Even with the mass conversion of Council houses to occupier owned houses, home remained kumusha.
My friends at the Registrar General’s Office have been able to hold on to this concept of permanent home as kumusha in the village of origin.
I have witnessed anguished faces of 16-year-old salads as they are made to recall village of origin and their traditional chief.
For the love of a National Identity card they end up recalling even if they have never set foot in the village since birth.
The poor souls are rudely reminded the Glen Lorne mansion is neither home nor kumusha, rather it is just a house in town.
The 16-year-olds are not the only ones saddened by this concept.
It torments many married urban women especially this Christmas time.
For most working men this is the one assured time to be with the clan in the village.
Many no longer afford the traditional month end Friday visits.
They save their bonus dollars for that annual opportunity to meet with childhood friends, village patriarchs and to show off their toys.
The latter being cellphones and for the more fortunate four-wheel drive SUVs. Christmas presents men with opportunity to show off at the beer counter, complaining about the beer temperature or that there is no Pilsner or Black Label whisky.
Villagers, just keen to taste any bottled beer, cannot understand the townspeople’s strange tastes.
For these men’s spouses however Christmas is hell.
They wake up early to sweep the yards before dividing themselves to carry out tasks like preparing breakfast, slaughtering chickens and cleaning cow or goat offals.
If the heavens are not kind it’s a very hot day and they spend hours in sweltering heat at the fireplace preparing Christmas lunch.
They are constantly being chided for being slow with the lunch and therefore delaying the men’s trip to the township.
That this is not village of origin does not help matters.
Many wives wish the urban house can become home/kumusha for Christmas to finally arrive.
Will the kumusha/home concept survive to see more Christmases?
Historically the concept is inherited from the colonial period.
The regime created the urban rural divide with urban being for whites and rural for blacks.
Urban residents, white, were the citizens and rural people, black, were the subjects. In town subjects rented accommodation while citizens owned homes.
Subjects languished under despotism while citizens enjoyed civic rights.
For blacks therefore home could only be in the village.
Kumusha/home implies owned property; real estate and livestock.
Whites could own these in urban and other designated places.
Blacks could only have these in the village.
In town property for blacks meant furniture.
To this day a lorry full of furniture junk is said to be full of property.
As urban home become misha will the village Christmas survive?
Or have our wives become Christmas’s subjects and us its citizens?

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