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A date with a living archive

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A COUPLE of weeks ago, I took my visiting brother from the Diaspora to the village.
Ever since his 2015 first visit in over a decade, my brother Tonde has re-ignited his love affair with Zimbabwe and the village.
What he sees in the village are the very things we lament for having lost. To him, the village is an embodiment of our cultural belonging.
As we walked past chikomo chaErisha, he hummed mbira tunes.
Going past the ruins of Mbuya Nduna’s homestead, his mind flashed back to the 1970s and he chatted about cattle straying into her green mealies fields, product of then abundant rains of yesteryear and this year!
But as I wrote elsewhere in my Mbuya Nduna orbituary a couple of years ago: The mikwerera ceremonies, so important for their symbolic expression of inducing rain to fall, like mbira sounds and Mbuya Nduna’s hunhu, have left the village.
To the sounds of Methodist hymns, Mbuya Nduna has bid her farewell. She leaves behind a village struggling to right its past and identify with its spirituality.
For Tonde though, this is a date with his own proud history and spirituality.
Tonde’s flashback chat with Mbuya Nduna prompted him to propose that we pay our father’s maternal uncle, sekuru aMuvhangeri a surprise visit at Govere near Gandachibvuya Mission on our way back to Harare. A worthwhile 20km detour it turned out to be.
We got there mid-morning on a Sunday.
The well-kempt homestead looked lifeless.
We knocked on the doors accompanied by a loud ‘tisvikewo,’ more out of habit.
My big sister was, however, convinced sekuru was around; at well over 100 years he could not possibly leave home.
She knocked on the windows until eventually, on one, the curtain moved. Yes sekuru was in!
We celebrated.
After a little struggle and an identity parade, he finally managed to open his window and hand us keys to the house.
Soon we were with sekuru in frenzied catch-up chatting.
Drinks flowed.
He could not hide his joy at the sight of his sister’s off spring. Eventually I restored order.
He was alone because others had gone to church.
He only leaves his bed for a few hours in the evening for supper.
But he is not bedridden.
Most of his time is spent in bed staring at empty spaces.
Talking to him, one feels for his loneliness.
Conversation is what he misses most.
Soon I took him down memory lane, starting with his childhood.
The mind is fast-emptying of crucial memories.
It needs patience and rebooting.
I am in a hurry but still manage to extract the essentials.
Is he over 100 years?
That was the question influencing my enquiry.
He does not remember when he was born.
As a boy, he went to Gweru where he worked as a ‘garden boy’ and also became a famous street boxer.
Later he came back to the village to attend St Paul’s Kuimba School, quite out of age, to do Sub-A up to Standard Three.
I shall comb the archives to date the establishment of this school.
The school then only went up to Standard Three.
He took a sabbatical until a relation in Manyene negotiated with Father Cripps at Wreningham Mission for him to be admitted into Standard Four there.
History tells us Father Cripps was at Wreningham 1901-26.
In late 1900, he travelled through Italy to Naples where he boarded the German steamer Herzog for the voyage to Beira and reached Umtali (now Mutare) on January 6 1901.
He spent two months there to get his bearings and in March was put in charge, temporarily, of Wreningham, 12 miles from Enkeldoorn (Chivhu).
He opposed Government subsidies for Church schools and when the Church accepted them, he returned to England, to his old parish of Ford End, which was once again vacant at the end of 1926 and the following year his book Africa for Africans, on the land question in Southern Rhodesia, was published.
So, even by the most conservative dating, sekuru is way over 100 years! Mission accomplished.
We later spoke about courtship, specifically how he met his late wife.
He was still at school when he met his love.
She had already been betrothed to someone else.
For the two love birds, that was no big deal.
He left school and went to teach to save for his wedding.
The parish priest was his bank.
Who would dare risk that today!
Eventually he had saved enough, including buying the wedding clothes. His father handled the traditional marriage, parting with a herd of 12 cattle as bride price (lobola).
Soon it was time to say our goodbyes.
Parting was emotional.
We had only triggered his appetite for conversation.
I had only got a snippet of his fading memories.
I will be back soon and better prepared.
Please!
Back in the city that evening I received a whatsapp message on a group platform:
“A father said to his son: Be careful where you walk
The son responded: You be careful, I walk in your footsteps.”
Moulded in the Shona adage: “Patsika remberi reshure rinotsika.”
Is this true?
If so sekuru’s father must have walked very carefully.
Him too, judging by the love and care coming his way.
Quite often we see the aged being abused and neglected.
Forgetting this is our living ancestry that we must nurture.

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