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engine that determines the cycle of life, defining the route taken by village politics, even.
Village Wikileaks, in a recently released cable, systematically intercepted from the chief’s information department have it that as the sun buried itself imperceptibly in yonder western horizon one wintry sunset, Mambongi, the village idiot, famed for craziness and fouling the well from which everyone drinks, and of course, deemed the epitome of what is bad in the village, was at it again.
This time around, Mambongi alighted from a bus right in the land of milk, honey and dust, hobbled behind a bush, squatting to answer to the call of nature. One thing Mambongi forgot to do was look around.
Minutes later, he redressed took off and, driven by the ancient rhythm of life to see what happens behind, he looked back and, Lo and Behold! Mambongi found this other villager taking his excreta into a plastic bag and dashing away with it.
You see, there was an instant high-speed chase, with the villager outsprinting Mambongi until he stopped.
So spirited was the chase that the story send chicken laughing throughout the village. A huffing and puffing Mambongi, couldn’t quite make of it in his mind what this villager would do with the excreta and went to report to the chief. Mambongi feared the villager would use juju and damage him somehow.
The trial date was to come and hey, Mambongi couldn’t quite convince the chief and his assessors what his real problem was. The villager who picked Mambongi’s droppings was ideologically clear, that kind of litter belonged to the toilet. Nowhere else! In the village ideological clarity is important.
“Your Worship, Mambongi did it close to my home boundary fence and I felt insulted. He fouled my vicinity. I decided to take his stool to the toilet. I cannot accept litter close to my house, worse still, this kind of litter!
“My worship what does a man have to do with that which he has deliberately thrown away? Suppose he had not seen me collect his litter, what would happen?
Your Worship, Mambongi had abandoned his litter and anyone or anything had access to it. It is my humble submission Your Worship, that I be praised for helping him put his litter in the right place. If
anything he should pay me. That is my submission your worship,” said the villager closing his defence case.
The chief, whose grey-haired assessors are a fountain of wisdom and knowledge ordered Mambongi to deposit a goat with the chief as fine for fouling his land and deposit another goat as a fine to the villager, who laboured to carry his litter to the right place, “without safety clothing.”
In the village, a goat is too expensive and that punishment was deterrent, too deterrent and a lesson to Mambongi and those of his kind. The full import of this installment dear reader is that away from the village, Zimbabwe has this problem of litter bugs. Wherever you go and whatever you do, there is lack of national discipline when it comes to disposing litter.
When driving along the highways you see this huge chicken bus spitting banana and orange peels through the windows, you see small trendy and posh cars spiting beer and drink cans through the windows and wonder what country this is. Talk of the juice cards and dear reader, the area just around the TollGate, those slips!
On street pavements, you see smartly dressed man and women, throwing litter all over the place as if there are no litter boxes and bins. Is the problem in our stars or ourselves? This villager, who was recently in the Republic of Korea, can testify that in the 14 days he stayed in the land of crabs, dogs and octopus, he did not see a single person throw away litter. There was literary no litter on the ground. In one of the nights in yonder Gyeongju City, there was this drunk, so sloshed that he staggered his way home.
He smoked but still remembered that he needed to dispose off the stub. In his drunken stupor, he staggered to the pavement until he reached the litter box and threw in his litter. He staggered on, thereafter, relieved that he had done justice to his litter. The drunk intermittently fell and rose, swearing and cursing but still remembered no litter on the ground.
But back home, how many of us even make efforts to do the same. Sober even! Look at our allays and the foul smell that wafts from there and so, what nation are we?
A nation of litter bugs? A nation of Mambongis, fouling the communal habitat? Fouling the centre of our livelihoods! There is need for a shared national vision, shared national discipline and national commitment to ring fence our cleanliness, to ring fence our humanism, to ring fence our desire to excel in creating a community of smart people, people who know where litter belongs and hence people who just cannot throw litter everywhere. Going forward, once we share that vision and discipline one does not need to be monitored to know where you throw litter. It is a culture that we have allowed to creep into our minds and this is the reason why even our women, whose bodies we so revere in the village no longer care where to drop their pants and relieve themselves, just watch when cross-border buses park by the roadside.
This warped idea, especially in Harare, where the red-dressed women are left to clean up the city and more often than not, you here a litter bug, saying it is their job. “If we don’t litter the roads they will be fired, for there will be no job for them.” That is too silly for responsible people.
We can not be worse than baboons, who know where to urinate and do it on the same spot every night that a crystal ball of dried urine gathers on the spot. Ask these men who use the urine as an aphrodisiac!
But the point is that we need to be more organised as a country and do the right things when it comes to disposing our litter.
This villager wishes this great land of Munhumutapa enacts a law that gives law enforcers options for very deterrent punishment. Our country is good, it is attractive and let us put together a national strategy to ring fence our beauty. Why should baboons be better organised than ourselves?
In our individual capacity, we should all feel obliged to ensure we have a country free of our reckless disposal of litter, for our acts reflect on our national identity and our national ethos.
Online Reporter