Finding a Way Home

R. Mwanaka

Description

Home is a place in ourselves where we are happy with ourselves, where we find peace with ourselves, where we are satisfied, fulfilled... The important theme coursing through all the stories in the novel, Finding a way home, is that we have to make the journey to find our homes, we have to find the path, and start walking in that path.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 06 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956762187
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Finding a Way Home Finding a Way Home  T ENDAI . R. M WANAKA

T . R. M

Finding A Way Home

Tendai Rinos Mwanaka

L a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN: 9956-762-03-2 ©Tendai Rinos Mwanaka 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

DISCLAIMER All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Langaa RPCIG.

Part I It is the feral in you that will direct you to your home. This wildness, in you, was brought into you from the outside world that you have inhabited all your life. That is why it is important to acknowledge your wildness, your environment, and the politics of that world. You will take its direction, or you will fight it, with willpower you might change it. The place in which you live is not necessarily your ‘home’. It depends on how fully you inhabit it, to change it, to shape it, to make it your home. 1

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Chapter 1 Operation MURAMBATSVINA he bus in the early morning highway road had been T gliding along like an ice skater. Nothing was challenging its stately, near silent traversing of the highway’s arteries. And then, the bus driver reduced speed instantly. He was feeling sleepy, so he had been functioning between being sleepy and being fully awake, for some couple of kilometres of the journey. They were just ahead of Mvurachena Shops on their way to Harare, where Tyson worked. Mvurachena Shops are a couple of shops, and a gas garage on one side of the stream. On the other side of the stream was a mushrooming informal industrial settlement. Its growth, for a couple of years, had been phenomenal, to say the least. To its left was the Harare International Airport and right across, a bit ahead, were the gates to Manyame Air Base. Tyson was surprised when the bus slowed down since there was no bus stop nearby. He drifted back from sleepy to fully awake. Inside the bus was warmer, though outside it was cold and chilly. It was fast approaching mid-winter, in early June. Everybody in the bus woke up. It started with those who were in the front seats saying “oh!,” “oh!,” “oh!,” and another said, “look at that!” Tyson looked at it. Another said, “What’s the matter?” Another asked, “Where are those police and army vehicles going?” Someone said, “Oh, there are a couple of bulldozers in the middle!” That’s what he was seeing, as well. The road shook as the three bulldozers in the middle groaned and screeched like angry monsters, shuddering past

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them, keeping to the right side of this four-way highway between Harare and Chitungwiza. Those bulldozers were the ones being guarded by an entourage of police and army vehicles. Another person joked, “Uncle Bob is now travelling in bulldozers these days.” People laughed for Uncle Bob jokes always made people laugh, and lift their spirits a bit. But, everyone in this bus knew that wherever that entourage of vehicles was heading towards, it had something to do with Uncle Bob in the jokes, and something that was devastating, at that. Everything to do with Uncle Bob was always like that. Tyson had argued, a couple of days before, with a workmate, Mr Marombe, about these things to do with Uncle Bob. He had asked him the question he always liked to ask people about Uncle Bob, especially those he knew supported the old man. “For how long, do you want the old man to keep messing things for us?” Tyson had asked Mr. Marombe. “He is not messing things. It’s the whites and the MDC who have been messing things here.” Mr. Marombe rejected the notion. The funny thing was to realise each and every supporter of Uncle Bob was replying that question the same way, as if they had become robots and were now functioning as a collective consciousness of some sort. Mr Marombe had always disagreed with Tyson on that. He was a C.I.O (Central Intelligence Organisation) agent, based in the president’s office. He always blindly supported the president and the ZANU-PF, against any criticism whether justified or not. The other workers at the company always wanted to provoke for that, but a lot were afraid of Mr. Marombe. Tyson enjoyed arguing with him. He knew he never took him seriously though. Mr Marombe just thought Tyson liked to disagree with him. Mr Marombe

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seemed to enjoy the arguments, as well. The two were very close at this company, ABC Motors. They covered for each other, several times, against the other managers. Mr Marombe had covered for Tyson, even with his own manager. Tyson would cover for him, doing most of Mr. Marombe’s work whilst he concentrated on his private businesses- a farm, shops and political meetings. The other managers at this company were afraid of Mr. Marombe. He played truant with them. He had a climate considered tropical and the rains may fall as an all day with him. He was also the chairman of the notorious war veterans, of Harare Province. Nobody would dare pissing him. “What have the whites done? Hey, they never stole an election. It’s Uncle Bob who did that. They never stole money, the nation’s coffers for their personal use. It’s Uncle Bob and his bunch of kleptomaniac coterie who did that, not the whites, not the MDC, no!” Tyson wasn’t scared of him, so he fought him head on. Maybe he liked the fact that Tyson was blunt and wasn’t afraid of him. “You don’t know anything about this country, young man.” He went on the defensive, and once he was set on that mode, there was nothing, no argument that could get through him. He would become very belligerent in this comments field. “We fought for this country, young man, that bunch of crooks you talked about deserves a pie of this country’s wealth, young man. We didn’t go to war so that the likes of you, young people, young kids at that, and the MDC and the whites could take our hard won independence and country from us. You have never seen anything, young man, about ZANU-PF. You are going to see what we are going to unleash, especially on the likes of you; young fools who think they know so much about life. Just wait and see, and then you will realise that it’s the ZANU-PF that run this country.”

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He had said that so confidently, even with a streak of arrogance and nonchalance. Tyson knew something huge was planned by ZANU-PF. Mr Marombe always told them things before they happened, but it was now quite obvious that he didn’t want to do that, and so, Tyson tried to probe him, a bit more. “What’s going to happen, Mr. Marombe?” “No, I am not telling this time.” “Why not?” Tyson asked. “Because, it’s a classified secret, Tyson, so you just wait and see, young man.” He knew he wasn’t going to extract more from Mr Marombe, so he left him at that. When that entourage of police, soldiers and bulldozers had passed them, people started to question each other, in the bus, whether there was a strike in Chitungwiza, which they hadn’t heard of that morning. Why were the police and army with their armoured vehicles going to Chitungwiza? Tyson didn’t know, why? Nobody in this bus journey knew anything. But, when he arrived at his workplace, it was the same story coming with workmates who were from different high density townships of Harare. And, the feeling inside him was unshiftable; it gave off fractures; of anguish, of misplacement and of a scored emptiness. So, he went to check with Mr. Marombe what those trucks had been about. Mr Marombe was in such a good mood. He laughed sardonically when Tyson asked him about that, but only replied that he had warned him before, a couple of days before. “So, what are they going to do in Chitungwiza, Mr Marombe?” “You haven’t figured that out, young man.” “No!” Tyson answered.

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Mr Marombe laughed and said that he had to wait and find out what they were going to do in Chitungwiza and, by God; he was even having fun! It was not difficult to even think that his name wasn’t Tyson, but young man, when he was talking to him for he always called him, young man. Tyson didn’t know and understand what all that meant but he said, “I see!” It was at about ten in the morning when news began to filter through from several townships of Harare and Chitungwiza. Everything became clearer and clearer by about afternoon. Those bulldozers, with the army and police protection, were destroying all the illegal structures in these townships, structures which were occupied by the poorest of the cities’ people. That mid-morning news started filtering through of the destruction of people’sBoy’s Skiesthe (that’s name they gave to those illegal shacks or brick dwellings they occupied in Harare and Chitungwiza), illegal truck shops and illegal buildings, mostly in the high density areas. That afternoon, in the news, on the radios, the government had spoken of this operation and aptly named it,Operation Murambatsvina (that is, operation clean-up), and cleaning up what? The city’s poor! Everyone knew why the operation was ongoing. These township people had voted against the president in the previous elections such that most of the cities in the country were now under the MDC rule and control. The operation was Uncle Bob’s ill-conceived idea to displace this huge swell of support for Tsvangirai and the MDC, to punish them for rejecting him. Tyson asked for the afternoon off, from his boss, Mr Rusere, so that he could go and help his wife to salvage their things before the illegal structure that they occupied was destroyed with their properties inside. Mr Rusere told him that he couldn’t give him the time off because it was affecting everyone at the company. They might as well end up closing

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