A Village Romance Comes to Town

It’s a late afternoon in Mbare, and we am visiting my cousins Piri and Esina.

We are sitting on a tiny veranda of this dual roomed residence on a bustling street.

Not too distant divided from here is a Rufaro Stadium where Bob Marley played a “Peace has come to Zimbabwe” strain when he came to applaud autonomy with us in 1980. Misheki, Piri’s father has also usually arrived to revisit his wife. We gave him a usually chair in a residence given he is a masculine around here.

The chair has a damaged behind and it is blank half a stuffing from a seat. He has perched half his bottom on a cushioned partial of a seat.

Since withdrawal a encampment 3 months ago, Misheki and Piri have not lived together due to miss of accommodation in Harare.

Piri is pity this one bedroom residence with Esina and another tenant, a immature masculine who is frequency here given he imports dry fish, matemba, from Mozambique into Zimbabwe.

He pays US$50 lease for a room that is unequivocally meant to be a kitchen. Esina’s mom used to possess this residence though she has given relocated to a encampment given she pronounced a city was no place for an aged lady like her.

It’s a section house, built someday in a 1920′s when African group were entrance to work in Salisbury. The residence was built for a bachelor given a Rhodesian supervision pronounced African women had no reason to come to town.

All a aged houses along this travel from a categorical bar to Rufaro track are one bedroomed bachelor flats with a kitchen.

Further down a travel are community bathrooms and toilets.

They are clean, given a City Council is really sold about a widespread of diseases like cholera and typhoid.

Last time there was an conflict of scour and queasiness here, many donors came in large trucks and gave a people purify water.

Since then, a City Council has employed some-more people to purify a toilets and community showers daily. Because a race continues to increase, a City Council is building another community washroom and toilets about twenty metres from Esina’s house. This means she will stop regulating a bucket as a toilet, kurasa mvura, during night given a new toilet will be a lot closer and also utterly a stretch divided from a all night shebeen drinkers.

There is loud everywhere; people talking, shouting, arguing, children great or shouting and song blurring from several radios or song systems.

The song and radio sound will die out when a electricity goes though it will come behind again shortly as a energy comes back. People travel past us all a time and some of them contend “masikati” to us given they know Esina.

An evidence has erupted between Piri and her father Misheki.

After 3 months of stagnation and but a bound place to stay Misheki has come to take Piri home. He skeleton to residence a encampment train and lapse to a encampment where he hopes their intrigue will be rekindled as father and mom again.

The city has not worked for them.

What was a indicate of being married when Piri was vital here but him, pity a bed with Esina, a singular woman?

Besides, it was not correct for dual women to distortion there together, on a double bed safeguarded divided from a immature masculine tenant’s room by usually a wardrobe.

The enticement to do what was not correct could simply come from both sides.

Piri is all dressed adult to go to her new pursuit offered ethanol illegally. She is wearing a lacy white African outfit with another lacy wraparound cloth, accentuating her bottom really nicely. Her wig is usually brief adequate and it sits so ideally on her head.

It looks like genuine hair. Her face is light from a new skin lightening creams entrance out of Zambia and a Democratic Republic of Congo.

“There is no need to be dim skinned anymore, chekumirira hapana,” Piri had told me progressing when we commended on how light skinned she had become.

Piri sits impatiently on a bucket that is incited upside down. In front of her is a large basket lonesome with an African cloth.

Inside are twenty 4 bottles of punch, a bootleg suggestion smuggled from Mozambique. Each bottle has dual hundred and seventy 5 millilitres of transparent glass that looks like gin.

On a tag is a design of a white blonde lady wearing a singlet and gloves posing like she is doing flog boxing.

The punch. Her design is juxtaposed on tip of a map of Africa. The bottle is labelled 47 percent ethanol and all on it is created in Portuguese. In her handbag, Piri is also carrying twelve bottles of Zed, another bootleg collection of alcohol, also alien from Mozambique.

Misheki says he no longer drinks Punch or Zed given usually one bottle for a dollar can work on your mind so quickly.

The Mozambican things has opposite effects on people and that is given a Zimbabwean military have criminialized it here.

Within minutes, it changes your mood to dancing, articulate nonsense, or we can spin verbally or physically violent.

Some people have died from it given they splash some-more than dual bottles but diluting and also but eating anything.

“You are murdering people and destroying families by offered this ‘get me dipsomaniac quick”, form of inexpensive bootleg alcohol.

“Stop it and let us go home,” Misheki begs Piri.

She quietly reminds him that it was encampment wretchedness and a really bad collect that caused them to lapse to city and demeanour for work in a initial place.

“Why would we go behind to encampment wretchedness and craving when we can make 10 dollars per day from offered these bottles?” she asks him.

They go on arguing for a while and Esina and we do not interfere.

We both know that when couples fight, outsiders should not be concerned given a subsequent day, a same integrate will determine and we will be seen as a enemy.

Pleading his case, Misheki tells us that behind in a encampment his uncle Josiya, a one who owned a fruitful garden by a stream was passed and given he did not have a son, a skill now belonged to Misheki.

He would take Piri behind to a encampment to work in a garden, grow vegetables, beans, tomatoes, onions and honeyed potatoes for expenditure or for sale.

They would never be inspired again and will no longer wait for a rains or mount in line for donor food handouts given all-year-round, a abounding black dirt was going to give them something back.

But Piri would not hear of it. “Look during me now. Nyatsonditarisa.

“Can we see these hands, this outfit, and this head, going behind to a fume of a encampment hut, going behind to a sand in a garden and ferrying buckets to H2O a vegetables.

“You are joking. Unotamba iwe! Not me. we have finished that and that time is over.”

Since we am Piri’s comparison cousin, Misheki says it is usually felicitous that we occur to have come to Mbare to be his mediator.

“Please Maiguru, tell your sister that her residence in a encampment is still standing. Tell her that a city is no place for a good lady these days, generally a lady who sells bootleg ethanol to men.”

The half snarl on Piri’s face tells me that we would be wasting my time to remonstrate her to change her mind.

My cousin Piri fell in adore with Misheki on a day they met on a encampment train from Harare a few years ago.

They were both using divided from a Operation Murambatsvina, a clean-up Harare campaign. It was adore during initial sight. Within a few weeks, they were vital together as father and wife.

Misheki was so happy to have found a good encampment wife. His mom did not accept a daughter-in-law who had been married before with children and worse still, who was comparison than her son.

Misheki abandoned his mother’s condemnation and insisted that he desired Piri. His mom was furious, “What is love? You wish to spend a whole day eating love? Look during a poverty. Leave this lady alone and go behind to city to demeanour for work.”

The encampment intrigue between Misheki and Piri continued to blossom.

Throughout a stormy season, they were seen in a margin plowing, sowing, weeding and shouting together. They lived on really small and were nourished by love. Until they harvested really small in 3 uninterrupted seasons. Then they left a encampment and altered to a city 3 months ago.

“Tell her that my adore for her has not altered given a day we met on a encampment train and we bought her Fanta and buns,” Misheki appealed to Esina for help.

Rather than sympathise with him, Esina and Piri laughed with sarcasm.

That is when we realised that Esina was happy to have a messenger with an income in her house. Then Esina said, “Babamunini Misheki, keep on looking for a job. It is not a good thing for a masculine not to have income while his mom has money.

“Without money, no concede can be done in any marriage. Hapana dhiri.” Piri stands up, yawns and adjusts her wig and says to Esina, “Now we are talking.

“Tell your Babamunini that he should make some-more income than we am making. When that happens, we will take him back. This is Harare.”

Piri shakes Misheki’s palm initial afterwards mine. She turns to me and says, “Sis, we have seen you.Ndakuonai. Let me go to work. Kundima kwangu.”

Piri grabs her basket, touches Misheki somewhat on a shoulder and walks away. We watch her shake her backside and disappear by a Mbare crowd, a group personification pool during a shebeen spin their heads to demeanour during her.

“We used to live on love. But a city does not like adore but money. Money first, afterwards love,” Misheki says, jolt his conduct sadly.

Esina and we demeanour during any other and contend nothing. There is zero to say.

Hopefully Piri will come behind or perhaps, Misheki will find another encampment romance. One should never give adult wish on love.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a author and informative critic. She binds a PhD in International Relations and is a consultant and executive of The Simukai Development Project.

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