July 23rd, 2015
Yours,
Musaigwa,
I am not sure why I am writing you this letter. In English. We
never communicated in English. And you are dead. You did promise me that you
would be a ghost, a very ‘kandangaras’
one, were your exact words. So I know you are reading this, sitting up
there in the sky, wondering why I am communicating in a language that to all
intents and purposes we lived and breathed, yet we chose not to use when we
spoke online. I barely knew you, your life, your family – I never got to ask
your children’s names. Some would say I should not be writing this, whatever it
is. A letter? An obituary? A penance piece? But writing is the one thing that
brought us together, united us, and it is the closest thing to an
anti-depressant I am allowed to take. Writing this is my way
of trying to come to terms with the fact that you are gone. Truly gone. I never had the chance to say goodbye. I am not able to travel up for your funeral. I am deeply, deeply sad. More importantly, today is Thursday, we were supposed to be on Skype.
“Hesi zimhandara!
Uripi ko?” You burst onto my skype like that, (hello big girl! Where are you?). I still cannot figure out how you got my
contacts, why you chose to find me on skype of all places. I also do not know why you chose me. But thank you for reaching out, for being my friend in this special way. You started writing
me long messages, as if we had been speaking just the other day. No by the by,
no introductory notes. Just picking up where we had left off in 1998. Or was it
’99? Why am I lying? We had not exactly been bosom buddies. I knew you as an
older brother. The writer. The editor at Zimbabwe Publishing House, across the
street from my Women’s Action Group offices. You worked with my friend Laura
Czerniewicz. You were nice. Too nice. Always joking with me. Always calling me ‘zimhandara’, not in a condescending-put
her down sort of way. Just a matter of fact. I am a big girl, in all senses of
the word. Later, I would meet you often with Ray Mawerera, my Parade
Editor-friend. We would hang out together, an odd bunch.
I heard you had left
Zimbabwe, sometime after I did. Then there you were, on my skype, one fine
Thursday morning. I know it was a Thursday, because that is when I work from
home. Or pretend to. That day I did not work. We tried an actual call, but my
connection was too weak. So we chatted back and forth, in very long convoluted
Shona sentences, (on my part). You were having such fun! From that day on, the
pattern was set. We would always communicate in ChiKaranga. Real deep, ChiKaranga.
The way our grandparents spoke it. Not even used in any text book or novel. I barely
dream, think, or work in Shona most times. But you made me use it,
consistently. It felt good. This was the closest we could get to our home, I realize
now. Speaking ChiKaranga, made us feel
as if we were back kwaNhema, or KwaMazvihwa, chatting away on the way to the
river, the cattle dip-tank, the fields, or looking for firewood. We became each
other’s family for those few minutes. Reliving the lives that we had left
behind. Filling our souls with the joy of being Zimbabweans, conversing in our
own language, hearing each other, no explanations needed, no strange looks
given, we were just ourselves.
Mamuka sei vaChiheee! Kwakadii
ko kuWenera zvokwadi? You would cheerily write to me, whether I was online
or not. You called me VaChihee, short for Chihera. I called you Musaigwa, or Dziva Guru. Over the years, I looked forward to your
messages when I came online. I knew there would always be one from you. I soon
figured out that you were techno-challenged, so you had no idea what skype icon
showed you I was online or offline. You just wrote away. Long thoughts, ideas,
questions, whole essays. Then you would eventually realize, three or five ‘kombozishens’ later that I was not
responding. Then you would rudely sign off – ‘haa dhemeti! Muripi ko vaChihee zvokwadi? Regai ndibudevo pamukova’. You
have no idea what pleasure these conversations gave me. Or the depth of sadness
that sometimes they drove me to. We spoke about our country. Tried to decipher
the political currents. The social currents. Eventually we would get tired of
that, and come back to talking about books, writing, what we were each up to. As
usual I would talk too much about my kids, my family, my latest dramas. You enjoyed
my dramas. Like the big brother you were, you offered advice about men. Let’s
just say, you didn’t seem to understand much about your own species, except
those of the Musaigwa clan. On those you were dead accurate. Sorry, I mean very
accurate.
They say you were in something called ‘self-imposed-exile’. I
have no idea what that means. Maybe that is what they say about all of us who
left? Such a bizarre concept though. How does one impose exile on themselves? Can one
choose ‘exile’, when you have a happy, fabulous home? Your own familiar people and things?
Is it really a choice to be in some far away cold, nay frozen place? The type
of cold that freezes your blood, your hair, your nose, and brain? That is what
you told me the cold weather did to you in Norway. You said ‘vuruzvi bgangu bgagwamba kuti gwa? Kuda izvozvi
habguchimo vuruzvi bgacho?’(I am not going to keep translating all that. I realize
I may have lost our Zezuru speaking friends, but you and I understood each
other).
They have been writing a lot about your so called self-imposed-exile.
I didn’t ask why you were in Norway. It was not my business to ask. Actually, I
did not want to know. You were just there. You could not go back home you said. You wished
every day to go home. Who was I to judge or question your choices? Or anyone
else’s for that matter? We all have our demons, real and imagined. We all make
choices, good and bad. Some choices are made for us by others. We accept, or we
fight. But nobody, nobody, can ever know, understand, or judge another's reality, or that which they have never lived. I accepted it for what it was. Your life. Your
truth. Much as I, or any of your other friends may have wanted you to be
somewhere else, to do something else, this was your life, Musaigwa. Yours. As my
friend Hope Chigudu always reminds me- you can only love another human being
EJ, but you can’t live their lives for them.
We spoke about our home, Zimbabwe. A lot. Too much. Interestingly, we spoke a lot about our
rural homes. The places we were born and grew up in, as if regressing in time would make us happier. or was it that those were the places where we had been truly happy in our Zimbabwe? We were united in our
grief over the loss of our mothers. In the last six months, that is what we
mostly spoke about. You, regretting that you had not been there for your mum,
in her last days, her burial. That was eating you up. You worried that you may not
end up buried next to her. I didn’t know what to say, because I could not
relate. I buried my mum. I know where she is. If I had a choice, I would be
sitting on her bed every day for the rest of my life. In Gweru. But there is
what I wish for, then there is real life. I chose to be where I am now. An exile
of sorts. But this is not about me. This is about you, Musaigwa.
When I moved back to Zimbabwe in 2011, you were so excited
on my behalf. You wrote me long instructions about what I should do when I got
there; Find Ray, say this or that to him. Find Chirikure, talk to him about x
and q. Go to the UZ Senior Common room, (I still can’t fathom what charm that
place held for you?), see who is still there, say this and that to Dr. XX and
ask Professor XX why he is saying whatever. Go along Masvingo road, there is a
great place for roasting meat. Seriously Musaigwa? Every Thursday, again
working from home, I made time to specifically chat to you on skype. I gave you
blow by blow accounts of what I had done, who I had seen. You started living
vicariously through me, 'Hekanhi! Ndokudini paya imwi vaChihee?' You egged me on. Sometimes your enthusiasm and excitement broke my
heart. Hearing about your home, your favourite places, things that mattered to
you, interpreted and experienced by another could not have been fun. I could
hear you cheering me on. Cheering our Zimbabwe on. You even followed Zimbabwe cricket and rugby,
but as you said, ‘haa tongomirira kuvona
unosumudza mukombe, kana kubvisa nhembe, kuti tizive kuti hwahwinha ndiyani! Kungovukera
vozvangu kuvidza zuva. Rakibhi ndakaidzidzepivo Hove yangu?’ The joys of exile.
You were devastated when I moved back to Johannesburg last
year. You tried to understand. You cross examined me about the choice I had
made. Till the day you died, I don’t think you ever quite understood how a
whole grown Chihee could run away from Jesus’ earthly deputies and the now seemingly ubiquitous goblins!
My explanations seemed too frivolous, or too bizarre. This was
not the Zimbabwe you knew, or expected to hear about. So you were crushed, and
am sure, you didn’t forgive me.
In our last conversation, we spoke about me writing a book. You
asked me to come to Norway so we could write my long over-due novel. You said
you would ghost write it for me. I will take you up on that. I will just not be coming to
Norway, because you are not there anymore. I will come see you where they have
laid your body, in our home, Zimbabwe. We will continue our conversations
neChiKaranga. You, my now favourite ghost, can write that novel for me. See
you soon Musaigwa. Dziva Guru.
I miss you a lot already. Yours,
VaChihee.
