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The pregnant rain clouds had finally delivered, ending days of anticipation, where village elders with cotton tuft hair had spent day-after-day, casting their eyes to the sky and to the ground, on the trees and on cicadas and ants, looking for signs of rain and finding none.
Back in the village, in the proverbial land of milk, honey and dust — Guruve —raindrops spattered to a slow halt after an hour of heavy pouring.
The fragrance of the aftermath of a heavy downpour wafted across the village, with languid freshness.
Nhamoyebonde Village stood with its dotted homesteads spread on a ridge, squashed between Dande River to the east, Mvuramachena stream to the west and Shinje River to the south.
The three river channels were gracefully accompanied by vast valleys and thick riverine vegetation.
When in flood, they were aptly called the triumvirate and they indeed roared and seethed with fluid anger.
The pregnant rain clouds had finally delivered, ending days of anticipation, where village elders with cotton tuft hair had spent day-after-day, casting their eyes to the sky and to the ground, on the trees and on cicadas and ants, looking for signs of rain and finding none.
After the rains, hypochondriacs and the old remained seated close to the fireplace, but women, girls and fit men sprang to their domestic chores.
This villager, the son of a peasant, stood in the open, waiting for other boys to come out and “play”, for, the sun was still up a bit, but tilted towards its setting.
Its rays had softened from the lethargy of the long day and of course, from enduring the obstruction by the clouds and the rains.
This villager was sure the sun needed that great rest beyond the silhouette western horizon, before a fresh rise the following morning.
Soon clouds gave away to sunshine and everything, from hens to cattle came out.
Hens welcomed the end of the rainfall with darting runs, picking grasshoppers, crickets and little everything else at their disposal.
The big cock seemed too balanced on its polygamous streak, finding food and calling its hens one-by-one for pickings . . . one leg up and a drag side dance, one wing slightly dropped plus a systematic crackle, was its routine antic.
It did this again and again, and, again and again. Of course, the cock was “marinating” for future sexual favours.
Ants came out in full force too, pushed by the ancient rhythm of life to survive and the ants seemed more purposeful.
They must have been building something underground.
Two ants dragged a grasshopper in what seemed a mammoth task and they were determined. The ants sweated to drag their prey into a hole. Soon they overcame. Small bodies, big brains.
Other ants darted around picking up pieces of grass and wood and taking them in.
Soon, the village boys — my gangsters — gathered and started playing in the water.
Water flowed in the footpaths and formed poodles on the yards and in the fields.
But we were especially excited about the water flowing along the foot paths, the micro rivers and rivulets and we started damming them. We liked playing in the water, making micro dams, probably the beginning of engineering work.
Austin was one of the oldest in the group. It was not clear because there was always an argument between him and Oddo, on who was the elder.
They both claimed their birth certificates had been altered in Rhodesia due to circumstances beyond their control.
That is beside the point but Oddo, who had a slight stammer, suggested that we go to one of the three rivers to play. We liked his idea and feared him too. He was temperamental.
But from the village we could hear the three rivers frothing and seething and we were sure they had burst their banks.
We then decided that Mvuramachena, being smaller and a mere spitting distance from the village was a better place.
We decided to go upstream to its source which is by the edge of Nhamoyebonde and Mapira villages.
There it started as a superfluous wide valley, and then morphed into a channel, starting with shallows and a huge superimposing stone, named Dombo reNyenze. The combination of the bolder standing about 2 metres high as a lone ranger and the valley plus very shallow pools made it a good place for small boys to play.
For young boys it was difficult to climb this stone but it was generally used by boys to test, who was the strongest and who could climb without the aid of hands.
This particular group of boys could easily do that. They each ran up the boulder’s slope from a distance and oozed with an aura of conquest from its summit.
As we approached the verges of the valley we could hear frogs singing in disturbing discord.
They never seemed organised or gifted in the singing. A groggy voice, from a bull frog, rode roughshod over a cacophony other smaller voices.
It was difficult to understand if they were crying or celebrating or both. But there was opus.
All the same they sang, like drunkards who had taken one too many. Somehow frogs are gifted in sense of hearing they go quiet as soon as you get closer to their position. They did just that.
By the source of the river we found, Lo and Behold! catfish in abundance. They were trapping themselves in the grass after straying to the shallows. It was a rare spectacle.
We used hands and just about anything else to scoop them off the shallows.
Austin had a huge voice, he climbed up a tree and shouted for his father to bring a basket. The whole village heard and there was a stampede to the river. There were huge pickings. Men, women and children all went for the kill.
No one went home with nothing. There were bucketfuls, basketfuls, there were sacks, there were all sorts of containers.
It was grub. Free grub. Free nosh.
Things got worse as the water levels receded; more and more catfish was caught.
It was a night of long knives. Every home was busy processing the catch. Some threw away the heads, for, there is a belief in the village that a child who eats the head of catfish would become very dull in school. Elders, took the heads with mush gusto.
It was a night of drying fish. Elderly women knew how to prepare embers to dry fish.
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