Power of the mother’s choice

three boys.
We grew up with my mother’s orphan speech ringing in our ears. When my father died, Munyengetero was 19 and Rumbi was just three, my mother’s reminders about the hardships faced by orphans increased. 
Sometimes when she was not around, we mimicked her saying: “If you fail in class, your future is right here in the village: weeding, ploughing, and fetching water. You will get pregnant to a husband who will beat you up. Study hard. I know about the value of education because I was an orphan!”
Then we would fall down laughing because we did not believe that our mother was an orphan at all.
How could my mother be an orphan when her mother, VaHarugovanwi and her father VaMandizha were still alive? Every one of us spent one or two school holidays per year with our maternal grandmother, VaHarugovanwi over in Mhari, near Buhera.
Sekuru VaMandizha was a tall, very light-skinned man renowned for wearing a loincloth (mufoyi) all the time. He wore a pair of borrowed trousers only once when the white native commissioner and another white man they nicknamed Chisadza came to subdivide pieces of land, giving it to all the male village heads of households.
They called him Chisadza because by giving them the land, which they already owned anyway, he was giving them sadza, food. After my father’s death and in the absence of any income, my mother was left with the task to educate us all. At the beginning of the school term, we woke up at dawn and loaded the scotchcart with trunks in preparation for the long walk to the bus stop.
The bus would then take us to our respective schools scattered all over the country. My older brothers went to Kalama, my sister to Tegwani while we went to Kwenda, Waddilove and St Francis of Assisi. 
Before the scotchcart left the village, my mother ordered us to gather inside while she asked the ancestors for guidance. My mother needed God and the ancestors’ spiritual strength to raise 11 children and send us all to boarding school.
With her eyes wide open, my mother sat next to the fire, on the usual spot she normally sat when cooking our meals everyday.
She clapped her hands together and called upon the ancestors on her side of the family and then on my father’s side. It was as if she was talking to someone she alone could see.
In gentle tones, she said: “To my grandmother VaMiti, and to you VaChakatungwa and to you VaNyandoro and to you Sekuru Dickson and the Mandizhas and Nyati and Mhofu, all of you, listen. I am sending the children away to the jungle once again to get an education so they can look after themselves tomorrow.
“Ndave kuendesa zvakare vana kumasango kuti vazviriritire vega remangwana. You looked after me, your orphan, now take care of these ones. There are lions of various types out there. Guide them. Take this message and pass it on to Mwari, vari kumusorosoro, the Most High.”
My mother ululated softly and made a chorus of praise poetry to one or two of the deceased grandmothers and grandfathers. Then, almost as an afterthought, she always raised her voice and said: “VaZviyo, there are the children, vana avo!”
We assumed that VaZviyo was one of her many ancestors. Maybe VaHarugovanwi’s mother or someone important in the line of female ancestors. When my mother finished her talk with the ancestors, we jumped into the ox-drawn scotchcart and sat on the trunks ready for the 10 kilometre ride.
Leaving the village at dawn, we were on our way to the jungle of education and the future. We forgot about VaZviyo and all the others soon as we got on to that scotchcart to the bus stop.
My mother never set foot on any of the boarding schools that we attended. Not once. She stayed home to raise our school fees by selling the clay pots she made and brewing beer to sell, vachibika ndari. Although she never met any of the missionaries, she believed that they were doing the right thing by giving us education, something the Rhodesian government was not doing.
When VaHarugovanwi died in 1989, my mother was in deep mourning. She kept on with her orphan speech.
“I am an orphan. Now my mother is gone. An orphan must look after herself,” my mother cried.  Again, we took no notice. We simply listened and did not ask questions. My mother was like a bird singing her usual song, shiri ine muririro wayo.
A few years ago, my mother asked me to drive her to visit her brothers, VaBhunu and VaCornelius. The journey to Mhari used to take us all day, but now with a car, it was only an hour’s drive away. After the usual greetings and walk from hut to hut visiting all of my mother’s nephews, cousins and nieces, we ended up at VaHarugovanwi’s grave.
My mother spoke to her mother saying: “Mhai, I am here with your grandchild.  She wanted to know where we laid you because when you died, she was away in the bush.” Overseas still remained as “the bush” to my mother, “mumasango”. She clapped her hands in respect and I did the same.
It was a small cement grave next to an anthill. Memories of my grandmother, VaHarugovanwi, flooded my mind. She was a small pretty woman who looked very much like my mother. Unlike VaMandirowesa, my paternal grandmother, VaHarugovanwi was a gentle, soft woman renowned for her cooking of traditional foods.
She made the best village “road-runner” chicken in peanut sauce with only a hind of fresh chilli. We ate the chicken with red millet sadza. Over the years, we all tried to use VaHarugovanwi’s recipes. My late sister Charity was the only one who could match VaHarugovanwi’s cooking. My grandmother was now gone, with most of her recipes, leaving only a few that have remained in my memory.
My mother turned to me and said: “This is where we put my mother VaHarugovanwi. As for her sister, my mother VaZviyo, she was buried in the valley, next to a spring that has not been without water ever since the day she died,” my mother said, walking away from VaHarugovanwi’s grave, as if this was just another ordinary conversation.
I politely asked my mother to stop and tell me more about VaZviyo. “Who was she?” I asked. My mother paused, took a deep breath and for the first time, she explained that VaHarugovanwi was her aunt and not her biological mother.  
Some time around 1900, Harugovanwi married Bako Mandizha and within a very short time they had three children, one boy called Matthias who later changed his name to Bhunu the Boer because he admired the way Boer farmers commanded power over their farm labourers on Charter Estates near Enkeldoorn (Chivhu).
Harugovanwi’s parents sent the beautiful young Zviyo to help her sister care for the children. Zviyo soon fell in love with Muchabva, Bako Mandizha’s young brother.
They got married and in no time at all, Zviyo was pregnant at the age of 15 or 16. This was some time between 1924 and 1928. Zviyo delivered twins, a boy and a girl. The girl was my mother. The midwives said twins were a bad omen, zvaishura. One child had to go. Zviyo was given a choice to choose between a boy and a girl. Given such a hard choice, Zviyo chose to keep the girl alive, because she believed that a girl would help her look after the family quicker than a boy would.
The midwives took my mother’s twin brother and either suffocated him with ash and drowned him in a big pool or they strangled him to death and secretly buried him during the night. The following day Muchabva was told that he had a baby girl only. He celebrated and hoped the next pregnancy would be a boy to carry his name.
About a year later, Zviyo was pregnant again and this time she delivered a baby boy later christened Cornelius. Then Zviyo got pregnant for the third time when my mother was barely four. Twins again. The babies’ heads got stuck in the birth canal. The midwives tried all the herbs to help the babies come out. But nothing happened.
On the third day, Zviyo could no longer push anymore, as her strength had waned and so was that of the babies. All three died and were buried in the valley, next to the water as was the custom, so the earth could nourish new births with the water of life. Zviyo’s death and that of her children was too tragic to be spoken about, ever. 
My mother was handed over to VaZviyo’s aunt who had failed to conceive after giving birth to one child. Cornelius stayed with VaHarugovanwi and was raised alongside VaBhunu. Muchabva remarried and had several children then he died at a very young age.
My mother sought work from the missionaries at Makumbe and Daramombe Mission in order to pay for her education. By the time she met my father at a concert or “konzati” in 1947, she had already passed Standard Five. My father regarded VaHarugovanwi as my mother’s mother and his mother-in-law. Not once did he tell any of us children about the story of my mother’s birth.
My mother and I continued our walk to the river in silence. I wondered what VaZviyo might have looked like. In the tall grass we found a brown rock on the edge of a spring surrounded by a thick bush.
Nearby cattle grazed and a herdboy watched us. A bird’s nest hung over the peaceful and still water. This was my grandmother’s grave, just a lone rock where people and cattle have been trampling upon since the 1920s.
I thought of all the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren scattered all over the world from here to Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and in other places only VaZviyo’s guiding spirit knows where. How many women of her era lie in unmarked graves in valleys and on anthills?
One day, we shall all go back to that small brown rock and put a stone on the grave of a beautiful woman who lies with her two children next to the spring that has never been without water. We shall celebrate her memory and thank her for the difficult choice that gave us life.

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.