Silencing the knowledge of elders

tree to inscribe the words on the back of the goatskin mats we carried to school. We sat on the mats and chorused the motto out loud.
We could feel the power of knowledge coming in slowly and leading us towards the light of Western civilisation.
Everyday at school we were taught that Western civilisation was the future and without it, we would remain in darkness, forever ignorant and primitive. Civilisation, English, Christianity, good manners, cleanliness, humility, respect and love were all part of knowledge.
Outside these values, there was no other knowledge and no other wisdom to strive for. Our teachers dressed in suits and ties, no matter the heat, because they led the way of civilised dressing by example.
At home, Mbuya VaMandirowesa did not pay any attention at all to what we were learning at school. She was busy with the affairs of the village compound. In those days, Mbuya used to rule this village. Mbuya was a tall and formidable woman, the daughter of Chief Kwenda.
With her back bent a little, she often walked with hands clasped behind her back. Her face had a deep dark brown colour. Imposing and bare foot, she walked around the village compound, inspecting and examining everything with her sharp eagle eyes.
On each of her cheek bones were two small black tattoo lines, nyora, the traditional marks of beauty. Her whole stomach was covered with these various patterns of beautiful nyora. During the days of Mbuya’s youth, a girl without nyora all over her stomach was not considered beautiful.
After the first monthly period, every girl prepared to get the intricate nyora patterns on her stomach. If she was brave enough, she had some done on her breasts. The cuts bled and the tattooist rubbed black crushed charcoal paste into each bleeding cut to stop infection and to give the nyora line its deep permanent black colour.
The girl would then give the tattooist a basket of ground millet as token of gratitude for the nyora. It gave men pleasure to look at nyora and feel the uneven stomach. At marriage, nyora was enhanced by several colourful rolls of waistline beads meant to be seen only by the husband.
Before my father sent us to school to get knowledge Mbuya gathered us all together and told us ancient stories. She taught us to count in Shona through song and dance – the way she used to count before the white man came. We could count up to ten in Shona:
Motsiro
Dendere
Ragara
Mashangwe
Mbirimbizha
Pamuromo
Pegange
Gangiridza
Marindohwe
Gumi rawa!
When we got to 10, we clapped our hands together and shouted ‘gumi rawa!’ and danced around.
Mbuya VaMandirowesa remembered everything. If she forgot something, Mbuya Chigondo, her sister-in- law and best friend was her other memory. The whole village knew that Mbuya VaMandirowesa and Mbuya Chigondo were inseparable. Mbuya Chigondo was at least ten years younger than Mbuya VaMandirowesa.
Mbuya and Mbuya Chigondo sat under the mutondo tree drinking village beer, taking snuff, talking and laughing all day. Sometimes I sneaked behind the granary near the mutondo tree and heard everything.
They often gossiped and talked about other people’s sex lives. But I understood nothing when they spoke in tsumo nemadimikira, riddles and metaphors. When I brought them pieces of roast meat and salted peanuts I saw tears of laughter in their eyes.
If they were really happy or just drunk, Mbuya Chigondo played the mbira and they sang the songs of their youth. Mbuya Chigondo was the village tsuri, well known for her beautiful singing voice.
Mbuya played the rattle, hosho and they danced, sang and laughed.
After sunset Mbuya accompanied Mbuya Chigondo to her hut three compounds away. On the way, they stopped and talked until they got to the entrance of Mbuya Chigondo’s hut.
Then they came back together again, talking, laughing and even singing until they got to Mbuya’s hut entrance. Then they went back again. They went back and forth like this three or four times until they settled in one kitchen hut and ate sadza together. After one or two songs they danced without any co-ordination at all.
The following afternoon they were under the mutondo tree again doing what they did yesterday. This happened almost everyday during the dry season. Except on days when the two of them came down to the river to bath with the women and girls.
Down at the river only women were allowed at the bathing place, pachigezero. Mbuya, Mbuya Chigondo and all the village aunts, vanatete, guided us through the school for teenage girls. They instilled in us the knowledge of womanhood. After the lessons, we swam in the river while our clothes hung on the tree branches to dry.
We played and sang garwe herisadza; crocodile here is your sadza. One person was the crocodile and everyone else teased “him” pretending to give him sadza. The crocodile danced and sang “swederera”, get closer, until he pounced on one of us and ran away to “eat” her. We learnt to swim that way, running away from the “crocodile.”
Naked, we did cartwheels in the river sand. Then we sang and danced on the rocks, swam, rolled in the river sand and jumped in the water many times. We scrubbed and massaged each other’s backs with stones and compared the sizes of our budding breasts.
We took nyungururwi – the black river insects from the water and got them to bite our nipples. The bites were sharp and painful. They would make our breasts grow big quickly. Mbuya said the more pain we felt, the bigger the breasts would become. Breasts were good for future breastfeeding, nothing else.
The river school for girls came to an end too soon for me. I was disentangled from Mbuya, Mbuya Chigondo and the village systems of knowledge. But my friend Beatrice and others stayed there. From then on, my education was overtaken by the English civilised manners of the Methodist boarding mission. No more naked swimming or rolling in the river sand.
For many years I continued the journey to the centre of knowledge while living, working and travelling in various continents. When I got to the mythical centre, I met European people looking for something different. They were tired of the fast pace of global pop culture, meaningless music, too much food, fake romance, plastic surgery and the overall materialist world of the West.
Some of them longed for New Age systems of knowledge and other spiritual centres in order to find contentment and make themselves whole.
“Tell us about Africa, about your people and your culture,” they asked. I had nothing much to tell because I had been civilised to forget my past. In my search for Western knowledge, I had succumbed to a certain type of cultural death. I was buried within a system of knowledge that had so far failed to acknowledge African values and beliefs.
The Western people and other intellectuals admiring what they knew about my culture helped me to look back and question what happened.
I realised that Western civilisation is powerful and indeed there is no escaping the value we get from it, but it is not the only knowledge. There are other forms of authentic knowledge and wisdom deeply rooted in our culture.
Though we no longer live in one huge compound, the village has not disappeared. The elders are still producing knowledge. But this knowledge continues to be assaulted and ignored by the erroneous belief that everything Western is better and more superior.
Sadly, the people are hungry because the land remains unproductive. Worse still, we have lost the knowledge to grow food that can last us until the next harvest. We rely on donor handouts for food every year.
I took Mbuya Chigondo to the donor food distribution centre to get her food handout the other day. The donor wanted widows, the elderly, the most vulnerable and the voiceless poor.
Mbuya Chigondo fitted the criteria. At the age of over eighty years old, she waited in line, under the hot sun, silent and hungry. A young man called her by first name.
The donor brought to the village yet another system of knowledge, a knowledge with the power to call an old lady by her first name, as if she was a young girl in primary school.
Walking stick in hand, she silently stepped forward and received two litres of cooking oil, five kilograms of beans and a small bag of fertiliser. Gone are the days when she had an overflowing granary and taught us what to grow. Poverty does not remember the past nor does it have the knowledge to respect the elderly.
Mbuya Chigondo no longer sings because her singing partner, Mbuya VaMandirowesa is gone. Mbuya VaMandirowesa’s grave sits on top of the granite rock overlooking the ghost village compound. She joined the ancestors many years ago.
Her spirit broods over the valley, her eagle like eyes cast in stone questioning us. Who are you now, where have you been and where are you going? Mbuya asks.
Some of our children are not able to speak back to her because they only speak English.
Almost 32 years after independence, we seem to have forgotten that our songs and languages are now susceptible to death. From where will our identity come from?
It is time to reclaim and celebrate the wisdom of the elderly before they collapse in the queue waiting for food handouts from the donors.
We have come a long way from sitting on goatskins thirsting for knowledge. We now remember the cave after the rain has beaten us. Tayeuka bako tanaiwa. But it is not too late to gather memories from the past in order to reproduce language and develop a collective Zimbabwean identity.
It will be a knowledge of power, African in its orientation yet acknowledging that which we have borrowed from our problematic relationship with Western systems of knowledge.

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.