Vusumuzi Dube
Ekasi Stories, with Clifford Kalibo
HOME is the starting place for love, hope and dreams. Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong and laughter never ends. Just like moths and craneflies are attracted to light, so it is with human beings being sentimentally attached to their place of birth and childhood.
It is against this background of sentimental attachment coupled with a deep sense of nostalgia that led to the formation of Sizinda Legends and Old Timers Social Club. Sizinda Legends and Old Timers Social Club is basically a conglomeration of members, whose ages range mostly between early 60s to late 70s, and were born and bred in Sizinda Township. Some of the members of this club are still living in Sizinda Township, while some have moved to other suburbs and others are now living abroad.
More specifically the elders of the Sizinda Legends were born in the then Number 5 Railway Compound and had to migrate with their parents to the newly-built Sizinda Township in 1962.
Sizinda Legends and Old Timers converge on Sizinda South Beer Garden at least once or twice a month on Sundays. The purpose of the meeting is just to interact and keep up that friendship of so many decades alive and burning. It has become tradition that on the Saturday preceding the Legends’ meeting that a cow head, “inhloko” and “amangqina” are boiled overnight by elder Modwell Mathe. The tasty “inhloko” and “amangqina” are enjoyed by the club members and they washdown with clear beer and others washdown with soft drinks. Other members like Davie Imboyera and Kufekisa Mathe will wash down the tasty meat with huge gulps of opaque beer.
As the Sizinda Legends interact excitedly, they look back with nostalgia on their youth during the 1960s and 1970s and explore joyful, painful, sad or treasured memories of a bygone era. Memories are rekindled of their experiences as Sizinda Township boys and girls living through a period of transition, from Southern Rhodesia to Rhodesia to an independent Zimbabwe.
The Sizinda Legends tell tales that present in the most intimate and humble of ways, their intense and intimate individual memories of decades ago. Some of the jokes that are told by the Old Timers like Daniel Mwale, are frayed and faded half-funny jokes from the 1960s, and that is exactly what makes the Legends laugh, whenever Daniel “Mulamu” Mwale throws one of his jokes!
Memories are also rekindled of the old school days at Mpopoma High School by some Sizinda Legends who were arguably the best class ever at Mpopoma High School. This class was composed of academically brilliant minds, the likes of Lovemore Tembo, Charles Mutiyeteka, Agrippa Ndlovu, George Nkomah, Panamani, Punga Zulu (late) and Josiah Jere (late).
A story has been narrated by Legend Charles Mutiyeteka, how on one cold June morning, the Science teacher Mr Dandato gave the class a surprise random Science test. All the seven aforementioned Legends passed the test with flying colours and each one of them got not less than 95 percent pass mark, much to the chagrin of other students from suburbs like Njube, who accused them of having seen the exam ahead of writing.
Sizinda Legends are on a campaign trail of educating the Sizinda youth to shun violence, avoid alcohol, avoid use of drugs, and are always urging the young people to adopt a culture of reading, and to emulate the elders by upholding the virtues of respect, moral uprightness, integrity and to be God-fearing youths. Sizinda Legends and Old Timers, whose friendships date back as far as 60 years are indeed one big happy family.
In semblance to the English idiom of “Home sweet home”, the Sizinda Legends have devised and adopted the slogan that goes by: “Sizinda sweet Sizinda, Sizinda is the place to be.” I wish to pay tribute to both the living and departed Sizinda Legends.
Feedback: Clifford Kalibo/0783856228/0719856228/ Email: [email protected]/WhatsApp: 0779146957.
Online Reporter