adminthey had to bring Petros’ body back to the village. Mika stayed in the village, while his cousins waited for 10 days before the body was given the all-clear to leave South Africa.
In the village we waited for the funeral car to travel all the way from East London, cross the Limpopo River at the Beitbridge Border Post, then to Masvingo, Chivhu, Sadza until they get to this little lone hut on the foothills of Dengedza Mountain.
The funeral car did not arrive on the day we expected it. Someone among the women mourners explained that it took a very long time to pass through customs and immigration at the border post. What with all the buses full of cross-border traders and many other passengers crossing the Limpopo River daily.
Some people even spent five days waiting to clear their goods. “But if you know a customs officer willing to take the risk of a secret incentive, you give him money and he will serve you quickly and that way jump the long queue,” the woman said and we all nodded in agreement.
When Petros finished Form Four at Svinurayi High School, he moved to Harare to look for a job like most of the young men around here. First he was a kombi driver for some years before crossing the border into South Africa where he got the licence to drive big trucks.
Our village is within walking distance from Petros’ mother’s hut. Nobody lived in that hut since Petros built it in August last year to carry out the ceremony to bring his dead mother’s spirit back home, kurova guva. The ceremony could not be done in the old pole and dagga hut built by Eugenia, Petros’ mother, long back.
The hut was just about to collapse due to white ants and lack of use. It was not well made in the first place because Eugenia was not the kind of woman who wanted to live in the village. She worked as a commercial sex worker or prostitute in Harare, from the time it was Salisbury.
She had given birth to two children, Petros and Mika. Because her work did not provide the right environment for bringing up children as a single mother, she brought the babies home and handed them over to the care of her step-mother.
In South Africa, Petros was making money as a truck driver, but he needed to ensure that the ancestors continued to protect him. Petros’ life was vulnerable to bad winds which could lead to illness or death, mweya yakaipa.
Fifteen years with your mother’s spirit wandering all over the bush waiting to be reunited with her ancestors through a kurova guva ceremony was a long time. Until Petros did the ritual, the elders said he was not protected by his mother’s spirit at all. So he came home last August to carry out the kurova guva ceremony for his mother.
First, Petros paid for the building of a bigger hut where the ceremony was to be held. When the cement floor was complete and nicely polished with wax by his uncle’s wife, Petros asked his brother Mika to help with the preparations for the kurova guva ceremony. Mika said no, he no longer participated in such rituals because he belonged to the Vatendi apostolic faith.
Such a ceremony was no longer necessary for him because Jesus had cleansed those who believed in Him from the demanding and vengeful ancestral spirits, their mother’s spirit among them.
The two brothers had a bitter confrontation and they stopped talking. With the help of his uncle and other relatives, Petros went ahead with the ceremony, hoping that his mother would be very happy with him and support all his new endeavours as well as guide him as he drove on the lonely and dangerous highways of South Africa.
But Eugenia had not done what she was meant to do. She failed to protect her son and he perished so far away from home.
My friend Beatrice and I spent the night in Petros’ hut with the others, waiting for the body’s arrival. In the morning, we excused ourselves from the rest of the mourners to go home and take a bucket shower, tea and sweet potatoes. “We the living must still eat,” Beatrice said as we walked home. “Petros has gone to sleep. If he had anything growing in his fields, we would be harvesting and plundering it now,” she laughed and I laughed too.
Death no longer gave us as much sorrow as it used to do. There was so much of it around here. I attended two of the last five funerals just this past month, all within walking distance from our village. April was a bad month.
When the kombi finally arrived towards sunset pulling the covered trailer carrying Petros’ body, we all stayed some distance away, fearing a strong smell. The cousins carried the coffin into the hut and laid it on top of wet river sand to keep it cool.
Only Mbuya VaMakumbi was allowed to go in before anyone else. She took with her zumbani, the shrub used to kill chicken fleas, and placed it inside and outside the coffin. To give double cure to the smell, she also dusted the coffin and the floor with the insecticide, gamatox. Within minutes we were able to enter the hut, mourn and dance near Petros’ coffin all night without smelling anything.
The following day, we sat on our wrap-around cloths in the afternoon heat. The younger men had been digging the grave since early morning. Still, there was no sign of getting any closer to six feet, the depth required to bury the dead.
While the grave diggers continued with their work, Petros’ cousin announced that the grave digging was taking longer than expected and it was best to save time by doing the speeches now rather than at the grave site as was normally the case. He asked the mother, mai vemunhu, father, brother, sister, cousin, friend, an in-law, an aunt and finally a workmate or friend to prepare for their speeches.
The cousin chosen to give a speech explained the full details of the accident. He said Petros met his death when a tractor he was carrying on a long trailer loosened and crushed him as he drove downhill. Petros’ three-year-old son ran around showing us the photos of the accident in which his father had died.
Thankfully, there was no blood or anything that was unsafe for anyone to see. It was just a yellow truck showing a complete destruction of the driver’s seat where Petros was sitting when the tractor crushed him.
The cousin went on to tell us about the delay at the border. He said he tried to beg the customs officers to give him preference because he was not carrying ordinary goods requiring clearance.
The officer politely told him to wait for his turn because his kombi was not the only one carrying a trailer with a coffin. He said every week, Zimbabweans die in South Africa from Aids, accidents, domestic violence or they are shot for reasons known or unknown. Death in South Africa was common.
When Mika’s turn to give a speech came, they called him from the grave-digging where he had been pleading with Petros’ spirit to remove the hard rock that was blocking the diggers from reaching six feet under.
Mika came dressed in his red and white apostolic gown, the uniform of his Vatendi apostolic faith.
He stood in the heat, shaking his shaved head and holding on to his hooked walking stick. “My brother Petros’ time came when he was on that highway in South Africa. Life is meaningless. We are dust. Hupenyu hauna maturo. Tiri guruva.” Then he paused and shed tears.
To help him gain composure, someone started a song about the place of peace called Jerusalem where we shall all go when we die. Beatrice pinched me gently to get my attention. Then she whispered to ask if it was true that there was a war in Jerusalem. Since I had not read the paper or seen the news for some days now, I could not confirm what was happening there.
Mika sang for a while then he continued with his speech: “The grave diggers have hit a rock. Mukoma Petros refuses to be buried. I have prayed all morning, but the rock will not crack to allow us to go in further. Why is my brother angry with me? He should be angry with our mother, mai vedu Eugenia for not protecting him on that highway. Mukoma did everything right by my mother. So why has she taken him? Why did I not die in Petros’ place?” Mika stopped talking and looked around.
“Because you are poor. Uri rombe. Bad spirits want the blood of those with money,” his uncle’s wife shouted. She had the liberty to say what she wanted and ease the tension of sadness. People laughed and Mika relaxed.
Then he said: “That is true. Ndiri rombe. I have nothing. Petros was like my father and he would never allow me or my family to go hungry. Now he is gone, leaving me to care for his family as well. Eight children altogether. Two wives here and the third one who lived in South Africa with him. They are all here. Stand up, my sisters-in-law, vana maiguru.”
All three young women stood up, each one from where they were sitting among us. They looked at each other uncomfortably.
“Look at the wives in their wigs. Look at the colour of their skin, unblemished by village smoke or the heat from field work. Do you think they want to be inherited by me? What do I give them? Me, a lone rabbit with nothing to offer. Ndinovapei ini tsuro yemubhuku zvayo?
“Soon after we finish burying Mukoma Petros today, these women will disappear with the children. I will let them go. But to my Mukoma Petros, I say, do not be angry with me because I did not help you with our mother’s ceremony. Blame the mother who allowed you to die. Blame the ancestors of the father we do not know.”
When the speeches were done, the elders took Mika back to the grave-digging where he apologised to Petros for any unkind words he might have spoken during their argument back in August. Then Mika prayed and sang and prayed again, until the diggers managed to go through the rock.
His face covered in deep sorrow, Mika told Petros that poverty did not allow him to travel to South Africa to see for himself where his brother had perished. But he was grateful to his cousins and also to his mother’s spirit, for allowing Petros to come and rest finally at home. In closing the funeral ceremony, Mika said he did not understand the mystery of life and our daily struggles to please both God and the ancestors.
All he knew was that his brother’s death had confirmed that as people, we did not know the time or the place where we shall die. Tinorarama nenyasha, we survive by God’s mercy.
l Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and is a consultant and director of The Simukai Development Project.
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