It will never cease to amaze me how the highly opinionated Zim diaspora can be. Offering no more than lip service when in +10 years they’ve never lived in it!
Now their sons - likkle mandem - walk ‘round yard wearin black, you’d think it’s uniform. The job description is uniform too!
Failures of mothers and fathers in the land of the coloniser are so apparent in lives that share nothing with them but their last name, unless of course, what they lack beyond material, is a characteristic too.
Worse still, the irony in a lack of care from the newly migrated immigrants.
I’ll pardon that as a lingering post-colonial trauma accentuated by a war in fighting to liberate selves from liberators.
Self hate can easily hate another…
Now picture this, a sombre romanticism, only difficult in its nuance unless you see the poetry!
05:00 and Gogo coming from Mbare gets onto a kombi along Simon Mazorodze headed kuFio with two days stock supply to vend. She must be about 70 at the youngest. She’s frail and slow, but she’ll pace herself joyfully if it means reaping the full rewards of what will total $50 in sales, for that week! Not for herself or children, but to take care of her children’s children. And her children?! Well… UK!
There’s an example in Rasta wepaBridge muline rana nhingi.
There’s an example in nhingi akunzi, 'Papa' akavhura church.
There’s an example in nhingi who goes from chimwana to chimhamha, asvika…
There’s an example in “nhingi uya anenge akutopenga chete.”
“Sei sei?” is met with “dhakwaz dhakwaz” or another double in the negative because nematambudziko becomes a daily salutation. Feelings are so weighted! Even responses to greetings are a generalisation of a people’s aches;
Low low
Mbichana mbichana
Padiki padiki
Kungodaro-daro
Hameno hameno
All this to say,
Kana usina kumbochinja mari. Kana usina kumboswera wakagara asi uchishanda. Kana usina kumboita, kana kufunga zvisakarurama kuti ukwanise kudya. Kana usingazive zvitsunami. Usina kumbotenga kwakotamai. Usina kumbosvika kwamupedzanhamo. Usingazive kuti Harare haisi Zimbabwe.
Wangu, dai wagara hako pasi.
The silver lining is in reactions when we say, “I’m from Zimbabwe.”
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