adminKumbirai Shoniwa Features Correspondent
“Somewhere in This Country” is a collection of short stories written by Memory Chirere, a lecturer of English at the University of Zimbabwe. The book is currently being studied at A-Level by pupils sitting for Zimsec English Paper 2.
The stories depict a number of issues affecting Zimbabweans today, including domestic violence, poverty, HIV and Aids, and relationships in society.
In “Keresenzia” and “Sixteen”, the author portrays the lives of girls in Zimbabwe, and their response to the social environment.
From impoverished rural backgrounds to middle-class urban settings, Chirere explores how the girl has been affected by contemporary issues in Zimbabwean society.
“Keresenzia” is a story of a young orphaned girl who resides with her elderly grandmother in the rural areas.
It depicts how the young girl continually pesters her grandparent for attention, despite their impoverished situation.
Ultimately, the girl kills the old woman Matambudziko in cold blood after the latter has apparently failed to please the whims of the seemingly uncontrollable youngster.
Ruby Magosvongwe (2010) asserts that Keresenzia’s constant demands for attention are indicative of her psychic and spiritual yearning to know her roots and to belong.
From an Afrocentric point-of-view, Keresenzia’s behavior shows disrespect and contempt towards a person who rightfully deserves the opposite kind of treatment.
Her demands are all made despite the apparent poverty faced by her single guardian who says, “There is no milk child. I have no cows, you know.”
The old woman ignores her own physical discomfort to appease Keresenzia, fetching her lilies, pounding peanut butter to suit the child’s tastes, as well as going out into the night to fetch pumpkins to prepare some porridge.
In the end, when Matambudziko goes out to fetch food from some neighbours in response to another of Keresenzia’s tantrums, she returns and is fatally struck on the head by the girl. Keresenzia selfishly demands, “Where were you, you should have hurried.”
It may be argued that Matambudziko’s death at the hands of her own grandchild may have been averted if she had fostered a relationship based on traditional African values.
For example, by being too passive and lenient towards Keresenzia, Matambudziko eventually struggles to control the child when she misbehaves. Matambudziko shows a weakness which is fully exploited by emotionally unstable girl.
The grandmother’s avoidance of the issue of Keresenzia’s parenthood contributes to the latter’s mental and emotional imbalances.
The young girls’ demands for material things are a mere reflection of an unspoken demand to know and understand her own history and position in life.
She wants to know how her present situation came to be, and her identity as an individual in life.
Thus, “Keresenzia” is a story which can be used to symbolise the harsh reality facing many Zimbabweans in the wake of deaths caused by the HIV and Aids scourge in the country.
Chirere may be attempting to highlight how dangerous it is, both economically and socially, to have most adults passing away and leaving vulnerable children in an unforgiving modern world.
Girls are as important as boys, and should thus be given attention and love in order for them to grow up normal and happy.
In “Sixteen” Chirere gives a depiction of life through the narrative voice of a 16-year-old girl called Muchaneta.
Her family is threatened with disintegration due to the wayward ways of her mother and the passivity of her father.
Muchaneta is depicted as an emotionally strong girl, whose father seems too weak to save his crumbling marriage in the face of his wife’s infidelity.
Constant fights and alcoholic binges lead to the further isolation of the children from their parents.
This leads the younger siblings to seek Muchaneta as a sort of surrogate parent, feeding them and acting as a mentor to them.
When her mother runs out of the house into the streets after discovering that she is HIV positive, Muchaneta risks her own life to try and get her to return home.
In an ideal African home, the father is the authoritative voice in the house, alongside the mother who nurtures and protects her offspring from problems in their lives.
Muchaneta begins to take the role of a parent when her own behave unnaturally.
In the end, her level-headedness might lead to the rebuilding of the family as she seems to grasp issues affecting the family, more than her own parents can.
When asked where the young girl gets her maturity from, Memory Chirere answers, “It is from experience”.
At 16 African culture does not say that she is a young girl, African culture says that she is a “woman”.
Thus, in the modern setting of materialism and loss of morals in urban social environments, we find many such young people, especially girls, who struggle to keep their families together. This is as a result of having the role of family guardian thrust upon them by circumstances beyond their control.
Chirere depicts how the post-colonial environment in Zimbabwe has affected relationships between and within families.
In addition to the suffering of orphans of the Aids pandemic, the economic pressures affecting the country has led to a severe strain on the African family structure, and increasing responsibilities left to children and the girl child in par- ticular.
Nowadays it’s not unusual to see a family being led by a child especially the girl child,.
Most of these girls due to economic challenges are being forced to drop out of school at an early age, which is also a disadvantage to them and most end up in early marriages, which are usually disastrous.
Online Reporter