adminCharles Dube
WE are still following Fatima’s story, Joseph Takundwa’s widow. Joseph Takundwa had died and Fatima tells us how she has come to this state. She is now emaciated. The oversized black dress that she is wearing looks like a rag hanging upon the broken shoulders of a scarecrow. Her wardrobe is full of these black dresses that bear the insignia of bereavement.
Fatima is going to the courtroom today. She asks herself what chances Sofia would stand in her trial. Remember Sofia is her daughter who is to stand trial for having killed her husband. All this is too much for Fatima. She cannot stand it any longer. She is prepared to commit suicide if Sophia is found guilty. She says, “If the worst were to happen, then the bottle of pills will come to my salvation.” A lot of thoughts come into Fatima‘s mind.
She thinks her daughter, Tabitha who disappeared could have grown up to become a very good mother by now. She asks: “Did I ever truly love Takundwa? Or was the marriage to Takundwa just another one of those rebellious acts that was aimed at spiting my father? Fatima remembers how fate had sewn up their parts together. Joseph Takundwa refused to go back to school after going through his Form One.
Nothing would ever make him go to that useless place again.
This is the weird view people had about education in the pre-independence period. Going to school was a waste of money. We get it from Fatima that Takundwa said that if his father wanted to waste his money sending someone to school — then he better find someone else to pay fees for, not him. He had enough of this school business.
After all his other friends who had left were making a lot of money in the Rhodesian Army. This he could see clearly from the high-heeled shoes and the fancy clothes that they wore when they came to the “Reserves” during public holidays.
In the discussion that follows between Takundwa and Fatima we still sense that people at that time had a low opinion of education and worse still the teaching career. When Fatima says to Takundwa that she thinks he was at school supposedly doing Form Three, he responds calling it wasting time for nothing. He says he left that useless business a long time ago. He tells her that he would not be wearing expensive clothes if he was still at school. He brags that the clothes he is wearing right now cost more than a herd of cattle.
The carryover goes on as he denigrates teachers. He says not even a single teacher at Assisi can afford such expensive clothes as his. He goes on saying school is for those who want to become teachers, not him. He says right now he is earning double the salary of any teacher. Listen to this: “I can even employ my own little teacher and pay him more than what the government pays them.” Such is empty talk. We leave it here for later discussions.
Fatima realises the vanity of such talk and reflects: “What a simpleton I must have been then to be so impressed with such empty talk. It must have been those artificial colours that were hanging over him like the colours of a rainbow hanging upon an empty sky. The first thing she had noticed about Takundwa was the extraordinary colours of his clothes. She says she had never seen so many colours imprinted on one shirt before. These colours did the trick for Takundwa.
Fatima had felt so drawn to him then. His colourful exterior presented something fresh and different from the dry and dusty atmosphere that she had grown used to. In her view he had more to offer than the dusty rural boys who spent most of their afternoons loitering around the township drinking beer and picking fights. By then she had buried all those rosy dreams about going to Assisi School and becoming a nurse. Remember her father, Marume had shot down her idea of going to school and brought the subject of marriage so that he gets money from a prospective son-in-law through lobola.
All that Fatima could hope for now was nothing more than a decent working husband. None of the dusty, dagga-smoking township boys would be good for her. Joseph Takundwa was definitely a cut above the rest. This job in Salisbury, or was it the colourful clothes — or combination of the two — had helped turn the dull colourless boy who no one ever looked at into this flamboyant knight draped in shining armour. When Joseph proposed she found it difficult to say “No”.
However, like any well-bred rural girl, she took time to say “Yes”. But she made sure that there was enough encouragement to keep him interested enough to come back. Fatima had fallen for Joseph’s outside appearance like somebody attracted to a book by its cover. She had not read the script that says outside appearances are deceitful. Shortly Joseph began to show his true self.
Fatima says although she was mesmerised by Joseph’s newly acquired colours, she was, however, disturbed by his lack of respect for her when he got drunk. She thought he would grow out of the habit when they got married. Her mother had taught her that sometimes marriage helps weed out a lot of bad habits in men. Talk of tradition whereby women are encouraged to persevere in marriage regardless of any adversity including physical abuse.
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