Short Writings from Bulawayo III

Description

Short Writings from Bulawayo won the Literature in English category at the 2005 Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association awards. It is a book of stories, poems and non-fiction pieces that are evocative of Zimbabwe's second city and its rural surroundings. The collection from 23 contributors tells of many things: of family and friendship, or fear and death, or witches and spirits, of hunger and drought, of dreams and aspirations, of leaving home and leaving Zimbabwe, of queues and loneliness, of football and bicycles and of growing old and of love. A unifying theme of many of the stories and poems is loss - of innocence, of purpose, of love, of culture, of belonging, and of life.

Sujets

• Literature

Informations

• Publié par: amabooks
• Date de parution: 15 août 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780797445000
• Langue: English

Extrait

Short Writings
from
Bulawayo
III
Short Writings
from
Bulawayo
III
Edited by Jane Morris
‘amaBooks
ISBN 0-7974-3131-4 ISBN 978-0-7974-4500-0
© This collection: ‘amaBooks, 2006
© Each contribution remains the copyright of the author
Published by ‘amaBooks P.O. Box AC1066, Ascot, Bulawayo [e-mail] , [e-mail]
Typeset by ‘amaBooks Printed by Automation Business Forms, Bulawayo
Cover painting: ‘We Shall Rise’ by Owen Maseko
( [e-mail] )
‘amaBooks would like to express their thanks to HIVOS for making this publication possible.
Drinking with Hitler, by Owen Sheers, was previously published in his collection Skirrid Hill, Seren, 2005. Copyright © 2005 Owen Sheers. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. This work is copyright and has been recorded for the sole use of people with print disabilities. No unauthorised broadcasting, public performance, copying or re-recording is permitted.
The Road, by Cornelus Sanders, was previously published in The Lancet, December 2005.
The Jazz Goblin, by Brian Chikwava, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Contents
The Boy with a Crooked Head
Thabisani Ndlovu
The Rhythm of Life
Bryony Rheam
Cain and Abel
Raisedon Baya
Sonnet with One Unstated Line
John Eppel
Your Burden
Farai Mpofu
The Concert
Mzana Mthimkhulu
Butterflies Drift into the Edges of our City Life
John S. Read
The Ambulance
Catherine Buckle
Paying to Die
Ignatius Mabasa
Hands
Mary Ndlovu
Ode to Departed Writers
Albert Nyathi
Jock Sherlaw
Pete Hutton
Uncle Benny
Mathew Chokuwenga
A Secret Place
Jason Emde
id i
Christopher Mlalazi
A Matter of Statistics
Wim Boswinkel
Drinking with Hitler
Owen Sheers
Forgiveness
Diana Charsley
Another Day
Albert Gumbo
Pay Day
Pentecost Mate
Native
David Goodwin
Tearing the Curtain
Bhekilizwe Dube
Home Sweet Home
John Eppel
Itekiya
Godfrey M. Sibanda
The Matriarch
Wendy Blakeley
The Harare Hermit
Tinashe Mushakavanhu
The Road
Cornelus Sanders
The Silent Prince
Pathisa Nyathi
The Request
Adrian Ashley
Metaphysica
Deon Marcus
The Jazz Goblin and His Rhythm
Brian Chikwava
One by One My Leaves Fall
Judy Maposa
Contributors
The Boy with a Crooked Head
Thabisani Ndlovu
So I sit here. I am just as useless as my Uncle Vikitha who disappeared three days ago. There were soldiers here. Soldiers with radios that went sh…sh…sh… most of the time. Then at times they spoke into them and said, “Over…over… over….” And then there was a voice and then the radios went back to saying sh…sh…sh… most of the time. And people say there are soldiers because it is a war. And others say no, it is not a war. They say it is a fight. A fighting. You see how it is? I want you to understand.
Do you know what disappearing is? No. That’s not how I want to tell you this. I think I should tell you about the smell first. I think… No no. That won’t do. Because you will ask me questions which I won’t be able to answer. Like Teacher Sibanda who ended up trembling with anger because I couldn’t get his Maths problems right. He said I should tell him what he should write on the green board and asked questions that flowed like an angry river. He said I needed to be organized. And to pay attention. Said there was something wrong with my head and whacked it with a stick. That was before I left school.
So what I learnt from school is to try to be organized. As long as you don’t ask me questions that fall fast and sting like a hailstorm or Teacher Sibanda’s cane, I can tell you what I want to tell you in an organized way.
So I sit here and watch the cattle spoil for a fight on the spot Ntombi was slaughtered yesterday. Such a fat and beautiful brown cow with a white patch on the forehead, cute little horns and smiling eyes. She looked like Noma smiling, the beautiful girl who used to sit next to me in class when I still went to school last year. I’m telling you all this because I want you to understand. I’m being organized. So I’m going to tell you everything.
Ntombi’s story is simple because she had a broken leg and bad sores with clouds of flies humming in and out. No doubt someone had broken her leg and axed her several times on her neck and left backside. She was rotting.
It must have been the work of Jamu. He is the one who hurts people’s cattle like that if they get into his field and graze his green mealies. He is cruel that man. When he dies he will burn in hell. So when Ntombi wobbled into the kraal yesterday with flies humming like an aeroplane high up in the sky and maggots wriggling like a bunch of crazy white wires in her sores, Uncle Finias, the one who has not disappeared, said, “Let’s finish her off.” With a huge sweep, the large sharp axe glinted briefly in the sun before sinking into Ntombi’s neck, just behind her head. She trembled and mooed in a tired way, tongue lolling out. The axe shone again in the sun, with some blood on it and fell again. I didn’t wait for the rest. I didn’t eat Ntombi’s meat. Her story is simpler than Uncle Vikitha’s because Uncle Vikitha disappeared. Do you understand? That’s what Teacher Sibanda would say now and again, “Do you understand?”
I don’t understand much myself. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you I don’t understand much and I’m strange and the inside of my head is funny. I beat up other children. “What do you expect from a child of war?” the adults say. That’s the reason I don’t go to school anymore. No. Actually it’s one of two reasons.
Someone must herd the cattle and Uncle Finias, my only other uncle, the one who has not disappeared like Uncle Vikitha, said I should do it because at school I couldn’t tell the difference between one letter and another. Which is not very true because I still know how the word ‘father’ looks in both English and Ndebele even though I don’t have a father. In English, the head of the first letter droops like the head of an old man or a sad person. In Ndebele ‘baba’ starts with a letter that looks like a bumless person with a big belly. The big belly men get from drinking too much beer and eating too much meat. They end up looking like pregnant women with flat backsides.
So Uncle Finias said, as reason number two for my leaving school, “Besides, this boy is very violent. His head is full of scorpions. It looks like an ancestral thing and how do we appease his ancestors if we don’t even know who his father is.” He also said he was tired of going to school to beg the headmaster to let me stay each time I beat up some of my classmates.
What Uncle Finias didn’t know is that it started with numbers. Teacher Sibanda’s Grade Five sums were playing games with me. Never mind that I was repeating Grade Five, try as hard as I could to grasp the sums, I couldn’t. The numbers did queer dances and darted in front of my face, as slippery as fish, jeering at me. When I tried to catch them, they slipped, laughing. Leaving me with Teacher Sibanda who shook with anger and let his switch cut into my legs giving me reddish welts that looked like small snakes on my legs.
So when those children, my classmates, younger than I was, made rings with their index fingers pointing at their heads to say I was mad, I chased them, caught them and beat them up. They were not as slippery or as fast as the numbers. So I caught them and when I slapped them, I also slapped into silence the jeering of the numbers. It was like spearing a fish, straight through. Flip-flap, flip-flop on the blade, surprised fish eyes and the sharp edges of the blade smiling in the sun. After beating them up, I felt peaceful. Like the feel of a crisp morning after a long good night’s sleep.
But now, I’m not feeling peaceful at all. They took Uncle Vikitha, those soldiers with radios going sh…sh…sh… most of the time. Soldiers in a war that is not a war. Who spoke our language in a funny way, like children. But not friendly like children because they didn’t smile. They were serious. Very serious and beat up some people including Grandpa and Uncle Finias. They gave them huge slaps across the face, you could have heard the flesh slap sound from across the river.
They took Uncle Vikitha, a useless person who spends his time chasing after old women. That’s what my grandmother says. Uncle Vikitha also gets very drunk and sings at the top of his voice all kinds of obscenities. But he sings them beautifully. I’m serious! So we don’t tell Gogo that the obscenities Uncle Vikitha sings are beautiful to listen to.
So you see, Uncle Vikitha is given to drink, as Gogo usually says. I think it’s true because beer has accepted him and they are good friends. “A bearded man like you,” G