adminthe way cultured people do, I hoped that nobody was going to ask the inevitable question: where are you from?
Once you mentioned that you came from Zimbabwe white people turned their heads. They gently came over and proceeded to do a friendly informal interview. At the end of the conversation, they often commended on how well I spoke English and how brave I was to have successfully left such a scary country. Yet they had never been there. Western journalists looking for a story did not need to go far. Zimbabwe was the mirror in which everything bad about Africa could be seen. They said Zimbabwe was one of those African countries that had seen the light during colonial Rhodesia but has slowly descended into primitive chaos again.
One researcher from America came to Zimbabwe sometime after 2008 and wrote an article featuring what he called the three D’s and a C. Death, destruction, disease and corruption.
Then a fellow Zimbabwean living in Dallas supported the views of the researcher adding that the American writer’s commentary on Zimbabwe had left an in depth analysis of another D in Zimbabwe. Depression.
This Zimbabwean said he was deeply ashamed to be associated with Zimbabwe were the majority of people were suffering from poverty and depression. There was nothing positive at all about the country and he will not return there again, the Zimbabwean said.
The image of Zimbabwe is further exacerbated by the ignorance of Westerners about Africa in general. During one of my last trip to America, I visited my friend Vanette, an African American. We were having drinks when her phone rang. She spoke loudly, as African Americans do. She said, “I’m just at home having drinks with my friend Sekai. You know her? The girl from Africa.” Vannette’s friend on the phone then asked which part of Africa Sekai was from. “She is from Kenya,”
Vannette said. Not wanting to be mistaken for a Kenyan and being called a Luo, Masai or Mukamba, I quickly shouted that I was from Zimbabwe. Vanette turned and said, “What?” Slowly, I repeated that I was from Zimbabwe. She looked a little confused then she dismissively said, “Whatever!” and continued with her conversation.
After three years of our friendship Vanette still did not know about a country called Zimbabwe. From then on, I deliberately threw in bits of information about Africa
and Zimbabwe in particular.
After a while Vannette understood that Africa was not just Kenya, (where President Obama’s father came from) or South Africa, where Mandela comes from, or
Nigeria where some people are so good at swindling money from unsuspecting people on the internet. Now she knows that somewhere below Kenya, there is a country called Zimbabwe. Like most Americans, Vanette does not have a passport because she sometimes thinks America is still a super power and that it is still the centre of the world. She sends me a text message or an email when she sees news about Zimbabwe in the American press.
The other day she said America does not like what is happening in Zimbabwe and Obama wants to do something but that would be undemocratic because Zimbabweans should make the changes themselves rather than wait for America to help them.
Then she asked if it was really true that Zimbabwe had been sitting on diamonds for a long time, not knowing what they were until some Americans came to tell them that the little stones they used to decorate clay pots were valuable. Vannette asked me to grab one diamond for her before many Africans discover their value.
The negative portrayal of Zimbabwe in the Western media is still very common — so common that some Zimbabweans have become very apologetic about being born here. Likewise, I was extremely ambivalent about settling back here a couple of years ago. What I knew about current events in Zimbabwe is what I read in the Western media and television.
We listened too easily to the noise, sensationalism, ignorance, negativity, lies, truth, anger, lost love, disappointment, pain and nostalgia of a Zimbabwe we missed and wanted to be. We did not find a channel to tell a balanced story from the inside, so the outside can see the truth. But speaking truth of ourselves is not an easy task. There is a truth we do not want to see, or speak of because it hurts to speak of one’s folly, ignorance, naivety or vulnerability.
At the same time, we have some bad experiences to be written or perhaps, stories we do not want told because they increase negative views of Zimbabwe, especially stories about what some brothers are doing on the former white owned farms. In our extended family, we have a few who were desperate for land and they left. Among the cousins was Bhudhi Shadreck, who left the village and moved to the former white owned farms near Hwedza in 2003. News in the village said
Bhudhi Shadreck was a big farmer with a new tractor growing tobacco, soya beans, sunflowers and maize. Due to his successful farming methods, Bhudhi had married a second wife and life was good on the farm.
I met Bhudhi Shadreck recently in the village and he asked me to drop him off at the farm so I could see for myself how well he was doing as a new farmer. When we arrived at the farm, the maize harvest was huge but the place was in disrepair. There were some goats running around in what used to be the white man’s tennis court. The swimming pool was empty except for some green algae right at the bottom. Inside the house, one bathtub was full of maize. One toilet was blocked and no longer in use. An old stove was the only sign that there used to be electricity here some time back.
An abandoned old washing machine sat on its side in the driveway. A chicken was hatching its eggs inside an old chair’s torn stuffing. The chair spoke of a bygone era of Victorian elegance when settlers brought British class to the colonies. This chair was antique and I wanted to rescue it from the chicken and restore it to civilisation. Bhudhi said I could have the old chair for ten dollars because he would still need to make a nest for the chicken. I could see the chair reupholstered and placed on display at the front entrance of an antique shop in Johannesburg or London with a $2,000 tag on it. One could easily use the chair to write a story on the tragic loss of Victorian elegance. I have been back in Zimbabwe from the Diaspora for more than a year now. At times it feels right for me to simply pack my bags and go back to the place where I enjoyed a good glass wine dodging conversations about Zimbabwe.
But going back to that indeterminate place in the Western world is just as painful because it is not home.
Coming back to Zimbabwe is not for the faint hearted.
Conman can use your Diaspora naivety to the maximum and within a short time you begin to think everyone you see wants to steal from you beginning with estate agents, mechanics, electricians and even doctors and lawyers. And sadly, they often want to steal from you.
Harare can be a jungle full of lions and other scavengers, quick to snatch every bit of good business ethics and morality you may have swallowed and digested very well in the Western world. Fear and the lack of knowledge kill any faith one might have in justice or fairness.
To survive in the new business cultural environment requires certain wisdom, sound moral acumen and the help of God and ancestors. Zvinotoda Mwari neVadzimu chaivo. Sometimes memory is short and we too begin to look at the negatives only. We forget that the evolving events and the picture of Zimbabwe today are not new. Such bad times have always been with us at different times from pre colonial to the present. Looking back, we can see times of influenza, war, poverty, scabies, gwembe, locusts, mhashu and now HIV and AIDS. The difference lies in the extent to which we have hope and how we develop ways to cope with the tools available, kushanda nezviripo tine tarisiro.
My aura of superiority and self importance based on having spent 25 years in the Western world is beginning to wear off. I am able to sit, listen to the sounds of the real Zimbabwe and see the beauty of the landscape that is not written by the Western press. I see the bright new bright orange and red leaves, the shape of the musasa trees, the purple flowers sprouting between rocks in the dry season, muchirimo. Soon, we will welcome the heat, the sound of the cicadas and the blooming of the jacarandas everywhere. The other day I saw a golden sunset over the mountain, followed by a big yellow moon rising in the east and the changing colours of the sky. At sunset, there was this magnificent golden glow of orange and purple — so beautiful you could eat it.
All this looked new, like I was seeing it for the first time. Yet it was always there from the time we grew up in the village to the present. We only begin to see and appreciate Zimbabwe’s landscape and episodes of rare kindness because we have new eyes or we have been alienated by faraway places we wanted to call home.
Zimbabwe is a unique country, a contrasting place where one’s experiences can be harsh, terrible and yet uplifting and inspiring. It is the place where the beauty of home still exists, where the umbilical cord will not leave the soil where it is buried, rukuvhute haruchabvizve muivhu. Good or bad publicity, Zimbabwe is home. It has a morning glory, a golden sunset and diamonds.
- 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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