adminwomen were talking and laughing, waiting for a kombi. They stopped me and asked for a lift to the Methodist Mission, my old school. Since I was on my own, there was plenty of room in the car.
The mission was not exactly on my village route but I offered to make the ten kilometres detour and drop the women. They looked happy and holy. Their uniforms looked so clean and nicely ironed.
I remembered that the black skirts signified sin; red blouses meant the saving blood of Christ and white hats represented the women’s chastity and purity.
The uniforms also signified monogamous marital commitment and respectability. Misbehaving by drinking native beer or committing adultery meant the loss of the prized uniform and shame.
I wondered how the women managed to keep the starched white hats so clean, amidst the dust and the ash from the dry season fires. I was envious. Being “bloused” with the uniform, kupfekedzwa by the Methodist Mothers prayer union was a significant milestone demonstrating religious commitment and a reward for upright and virtuous living.
These women belonged to a spiritual and cultural group of African Methodists.
They were full of energy, self-confidence and ready to engage in prayer and song all night. They were going to preach about safeguarding female chastity, faithfulness in marriage and the domestic responsibilities of a wife and mother.
This could have been me, if I had stayed long enough in the Methodist church and not gone off to get closer to Jesus in Australia.
“What church do you go to?” one of the women sitting in the back asked. I hesitated and said I was looking for one. They looked at each other with surprise.
But they were too polite to ask me why I did not belong to a particular church at my age.
It would have been a normal question to ask because more and more people in Zimbabwe these days belong to a church. In fact, we are contributing to a very high percentage of Christians in Sub Saharan Africa. While church attendance in Europe is decreasing, Zimbabwe is adding more to the global Christian congregation.
I drove along and ended up in my old school grounds near the old Methodist church. Memories of missionaries flooded back into my mind.
Looking at the women’s happy faces, I could see my failure at being a good wife to a Christian man, mother of Christian children, maker of a Christian home and a preacher of Christianity to those around me.
Suddenly, I had this strong desire to put on this crisply starched uniforms to show that I too was pure and virtuous, conforming faithfully to Christian domesticity.
The women thanked me and said goodbye. They walked in pairs and disappeared behind the bright red poinsettia into the old church.
I was not one of them. Perhaps I left it too late to wear the white hat to show that my sins have been washed away. Without a uniform, I felt marginalised. I was a lesser Christian than they were.
But there was a time when I knew the Lord so well, more than these women and their smart uniforms. At this mission, nestled on the foothills overlooking the Save River and the Hwedza Mountain I found Jesus and learnt a lot about history and the world.
It was here that I learnt about England, Shakespeare, Westminster Abbey, Bismarck, Thomas Hardy and how Cecil John Rhodes found a country and named it Rhodesia after his name. Even this English that I speak and write started right here.
I even remembered the day I got saved at the mission school. Some Americans from a youth group in Dallas came to preach to us. They said the baptism and change of name we received in the village Anglican Church meant nothing.
Real baptism came when we consciously accept that we had sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Once we accept that, we then ask Jesus to cleanse away our sin and we can be born again, kuzvarwa patsva. I listened to the preaching because it talked about the end of the world and imminent hell fire.
The big American pastor asked those who were willing to accept Jesus as their personal Saviour to come forward and kneel down in front of him.
At first, I was not so sure if it really was God telling me to step forward. But I put all negative thoughts aside and knelt. At that very moment, I accepted Jesus as my personal Saviour and I put behind everything to do with ancestors and all village ceremonies.
Back in the village during school holidays, I walked with the joy of one who had been saved from my own sins and those of my forefathers, zvitadzo zvemadzitateguru angu.
I was with the Lord all the time and deep down I was a changed person, full of love and desire to help others to come to the Lord. Mbuya VaMandirowesa and others did not notice the change in me. They were blinded by the Devil.
Meanwhile, in my mother’s house on the wall was her baptism certificate. Her signature confirmed that she had been baptised and confirmed into the Anglican Mother’s Union in 1947.
She was then clothed in the Anglican uniform, vakapfekedzwa. Then she signed that she was going to teach her children about God and salvation.
Like the Methodist women, my mother made a commitment to help the church to uproot witchcraft and superstition while cultivating among her children the daily habits of praying.
But my mother did not teach us any of that.
Instead, she never stopped talking to ancestors asking them to guide us in our studies and travels. She wore the Anglican uniform at church but at home she brew the forbidden native beer, vaibika ndari, in order to send us to the very missions where we were taught about the evils of native beer.
When I left Zimbabwe and went to Australia, I looked for a church the very next day after my arrival. I wanted to belong to a group with similar spiritual values and beliefs.
The Wesleyan Methodists had already changed in 1977 and formed a merger with the Congregationalist and Presbyterian congregations to form the Uniting Church in Australia. I joined the Baptist church instead and I was the only African there.
They sang and played the piano. Some of them even moved a little and came close to dancing but they did not dance.
Every Sunday, they asked me to give a short testimony about my life with Jesus. They wanted to hear more about the village. They had many questions.
How many tribes are in Zimbabwe and which tribe do you belong to? Is there much tribal warfare there?
Is it true that some of your people still walk around naked? Do cannibalistic rituals still occur in your village? How did you get saved from such a primitive upbringing? How come you speak English so well? Do you still have a family back home in Africa? Will they be coming to live here too?
I sat there smiling, in the middle of the prayer group surrounded by older white men and women describing the village compound and the village ceremonies to honour the ancestral sprits.
I said these activities were demonic and unChristian.
I told them that polygamy and witchcraft was rife in the village. My own grandfather had several wives.
The Gospel had been preached over the years but not many had been converted. Among the most difficult to convert was my grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa and some of her drinking partners.
Mbuya took snuff; she drank native highly alcoholic beer and danced to ancestral spirits. No, she did not practice witchcraft but she knew all the poisons that could kill people.
I would have wanted very much to bring my grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa to Christ, but I was not successful.
She died without God.
People listened and some of them took notes. One woman in particular asked for the spelling of Mbuya VaMandirowesa’s name so she could pray for her salvation and be spared hell fire.
They shook my hand and said I was a miracle. I was invited to more prayer groups to talk about my escape from a primitive upbringing in Africa.
I made new white friends and they embraced me as one of them. I belonged to a family of God.
But this belonging did not last long. Gradually, my testimony became boring because I had no more miracles to tell. At the same time, I was not getting new inspiration from the church.
I lost my fellowship with Jesus in Australia and came back here many years later to find that Jesus had taken over the cities and the villages.
He was being worshipped in many cinemas and even showgrounds, hills and valleys. More new church uniforms were being worn everywhere in red, green, yellow, blue and white.
I failed to wear the bright Methodist uniform and starched hat of purity. And yet, this is not the end of my search for belonging as signified by wearing a uniform.
If I follow the procedures, and am patient enough to recite the Rosary, I could wear the Catholic cloak or maybe join the Salvation Army and wear that beautiful cream-coloured hat.
The United Methodist church red blouses and skirt is also a possibility. I could easily adorn the Johane Masowe white veil and garment or the wide skirts of the Zionists.
Since I do not have quick and easy access to a uniform enabling me to belong to a church group, I will just have to content myself with the village Burial Society uniform.
It is like a dress apron with a cross at the front. It looks more like a blue funeral overcoat and costs only ten dollars. We even created our own songs.
Our most popular song when we march in single file is this one: “Kunyangwe ukafira Bhuruwayo tinonokutora iwe takatenderana. Takatenderana kuvigana. Even if you die in Bulawayo, we will come and get you because we promised to bury each other.”
You got to belong somewhere, even if it’s an organisation whose business is to bury people and grow vegetables.
The missionaries are gone but the seeds of Christianity they planted in the traditional churchwomen’s groups have remained.
Conversion to Christ meant a major change in how to be a good mother and a wife.
The uniformed churchwomen are a religious movement with incredible influence on cultural change and identity. As family structures continue to change and we search more and more for a spiritual identity, the church uniform serves as a signifier of identity and belonging.
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.
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