Two days, two nights with Rozvi autochthon

Isdore Guvamombe and Valerie Mpundu

After putting a lot of effort to get to the sacred shrine via a bad dirt road under repair, the resilient Toyota engine got the three of us there at night when proceedings had already started.

We quietly parked our car at a safe distance and moved towards the drumbeat.

An assortment of footwear, from shoes to slippers was stashed a spitting distance from the doorway of the shrine, a sign that everyone inside had taken off their shoes. Sacred!

The sacred shrine, is a stone and grass-thatch round hut, built on a rock promontory on the foot of a mountain range in Musana communal lands, north-east of Harare.

A woman in front of us, practised a knee-breaking stance twice, knelt down and crawled inside. A man removed his hat, bowed and walked in on a stoop. We followed suit.

Inside, women sat on the right and men on the left.

Bvumavaranda, the oracle, occupied the centre back, wrapped in black traditional regalia and surrounded by a glut of Gothic traditional paraphernalia.

A cross rhythm of drums and mbira resonated through­out the shrine, shift­ing in per­cus­sion, pitch tempo and crescendo. Songs — not ordinary songs — but traditional songs that remind you that you are now in the spiritual realm, backed the instruments.

Four mbira play­ers thumped the in­stru­ment in fren­zied gait, heads tossing side­ways, back­wards, forth and lit­tle ev­ery­where else. Soon I realised it was mbira player Nyamasvisva and his team performing.

One gi­ant man stood up play­ing the shak­ers, while a slim tall man, pumped the ox-hide on the drum with open palms as if there was no to­mor­row.

The shak­ers made adrenalin rush and skip. It made blood scamper. Then there was the pulsating drumbeat. Eish that one.

The shrine ex­uded an aura which is Gothic, in­ex­pli­ca­bly eerie and pro­found; that which makes the heart beat fast; that which makes the mind, heart and soul de­pose to the world yon­der, the world of spir­its.

In­deed, be­fore you know it, you are in a spir­i­tual realm that gives life its real mean­ing.

At this mo­ment, the sit­u­a­tion de­fined for it­self the dif­fer­ence be­tween re­li­gion and re­li­gios­ity, the be­lief and the ex­e­cu­tion of the be­lief. Tra­di­tional re­li­gion, you felt, was still alive and kick­ing.

Women of all shapes and sizes, from the pen­cil slim to the chubby ones, from the yel­low-boned to the char­coal-boned up to those with long dreadlocks, came, sang and danced

The dif­fer­ence, though, is that ev­ery­one was de­cently dressed.

In the shrine, women walked on their knees from cor­ner to cor­ner, only stand­ing on their feet to dance.

Tra­di­tional beer was in abun­dance and clay pots and drink­ing gourds made the rounds to lit­tle ev­ery­where else. So, did pouches of tra­di­tional snuff. They ex­changed hands too. There was snuff­ing all over the place. Nos­trils got busy.

But that was a pream­ble, a prelude. The night was still young. Ev­ery­one was still just warm­ing up.

The medium of Bvu­mavaranda lay shiftily on a reed mat to our left, sur­rounded by his para­pher­na­lia, which in­cluded leop­ard skins, black cloth, a scullery of walk­ing sticks, pouches of to­bacco, among oth­ers.

He struck me with his com­po­sure, calm­ness and re­galia as the one the an­ces­tors anointed.

One par­tic­u­lar war song swept ev­ery­one off their feet.

“Bvumavaranda mukono…!

Bvumavaranda mukonooo!

(Chorus) yea aheye , pasi paita mhanda

Bvumavaranda Mukono, yea eheye.. pasi paita mhanda”  (x10)

The thudding feet escorted the song to finality, with thunderous aplomb.

Soon the spirit man­i­fested and the medium went on stage and danced with steady feet, but with stag­ger­ing gait.

The main of­fi­ciant, (Muzukuru) who ap­par­ently shared the same totem with me, Mhofu (the el­e­gant, ex­quis­ite and flam­boy­ant eland) lined up clay pots of beer be­fore the medium for a prayer.

We all went on our fours in affable greetings. We were greeted by our totems (much to our surprise). You cannot hide anything from the spirits. They see tomorrow, today!

Af­ter the prayer, each of the chiefs present was iden­ti­fied by totem and wel­comed through a clay pot of beer.

A small gourd full of beer was given to the chief and he ac­cepted by drink­ing. Then fol­lowed ul­u­la­tion and clap­ping.

Boy, ooh boy, it was the dif­fer­ence in greet­ing eti­quette and clap­ping rhythm that dif­fer­en­ti­ated the Rozvi autochthon. That’s the marvel of African tra­di­tion. There­after the spirit left.

Then the singing and danc­ing fi­esta took all night. So did the many people in the shrine go into trances. So, did solutions get proffered.

The mbira play­ers were at it again, this time around thump­ing our hearts and souls to a sooth­ing eter­nity. Ev­ery­one danced up and about. Some went into trances, clay pots with froth­ing beer cir­cu­lated and drink­ing gourds ex­changed hands. It was un­be­liev­able. The waist-wrig­gling dances, the deft and fancy foot­work and the melo­di­ous singing, all gave the tra­di­tional binge its cre­dence.

There was song and dance, again and again.

By 4am, the time ele­phants nor­mally bath, the spirit man­i­fested again, this time around si­lenc­ing ev­ery­one with a huge lec­ture on moral­ity, per­sonal devel­op­ment, African hu­man­ism and fam­ily re­la­tions.

By the time the lec­ture ended, it was al­most sunrise. The binge ad­journed for break­fast, amid dance and song.

Af­ter a few hours of re­lax­ing, the danc­ing and singing con­tin­ued, this time out­side the shrine. During the day, food and drink were plenty and day two was loading. Private consultations.

One would be forgiven for assuming the masses were worn out from their previous thumping and thudding the night before.

Bvumavaranda has directed for the first time in the history of Zimbabwe,  that the spirit medium should go all over the world to collect historical artefacts of its lineage.

“I am sending you to collect historical artefacts of our clan from wherever they are. My medium and his team will have to go to every place where I left any piece of thing so that the history of our clan is correctly documented.

“Even where I left the phlegm of my sputum, this time around you must go and collect,” said the spirit in sarcasm.

In the past few years, Bvumavaranda’s team has been all over the continent, going as far as Egypt, Kenya and Tanzania collecting historical artefacts, some of them as old as time.

In Zimbabwe, Bvumaranda used his ephod to identify and exhume the paraphernalia of a Rozvi autochthon, Bvumavaranda, who lived and sunk into a swamp in anger and disgust, after his trusted friend Mbauro breached longstanding taboos, way before the construction of the Great Zimbabwe National Monument.

He also unearthed a cup hidden hundreds of thousands of years in Sijahunda Mountains in Gwanda.

The spiritual journey has taken him to Cairo, Egypt, where a cup left by Bvumavaranda while working on the construction of pyramids as a young man, was brought back home two years ago, after staying on display in the museums there until it was decommissioned.

In Tanzania, Bvumavaranda sent a delegation to identify a place where his great grandfather Dembe was buried, at Mt Kilimanjaro. They indeed identified the place.

The delegation also visited Mt Meru in the heart of Arusha National Park, where the clan’s great grandmother was buried.

He has traced the routes of the Rozvi people from Lalibella, Ethiopia to Egypt down to Zimbabwe, picking relatives and artefacts.

He has also identified undiscovered minerals from a village in Ethiopia using the ephod, much to the surprise of the local people.

Bvumavaranda has built a museum adjacent to the shrine where he is keeping a collection of the clan’s artefacts. This is a first for a local spirit medium.

During his trip to these places, Bvumavaranda has linked up with relatives and friends of his clan.

He has also attended churches linked to his tribe like the Orthodox Church in Addis Ababa.

His is a calling which will set the Rozvi record straight.

The mission is good and sets records straight. Like we said, this was and is a first.

There might not be partiality in our judgment, but Bvumavaranda is real and genuine in his endeavour to write the correct Rozvi history. Do elders with cotton tuft hair not say, until lions learn to write, their story will be written from a hunter’s perspective?

So, Bvumavaranda is right, writing the correct story of his clan.