Читать книгу House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe - Christina Lamb - Страница 8

AQUI STOOD IMPATIENTLY, holding the donkey and shifting from foot to foot, as her mother stopped and exchanged the traditional Shona greetings with people along the way.

‘Mangwanani.’ (Good morning.)

‘Mangwananu’

‘Marara here’? (How did you sleep?)

‘Ndarara kana mararawo’ (I have slept well if you did.)

‘Ndarara’? (I slept.)

She was eager to get to the store because for the first time she and her sisters were going to be given a share of the money from the groundnuts and allowed to buy something for themselves. Groundnuts were the only crop that was paying well in those days and her mother had divided some of their land into strips for her and her sisters each to tend their own crop. Aqui had gone to the stand every day after school to check on hers, clearing the sandy soil of weeds and keeping away kudu and whorwe birds. When they were ready it was very exciting. We collected them in small mounds on the earth. My baby brother was strapped to my back in a sling and we borrowed donkeys from the headman to take the nuts to the stores in the township.

The shopping area was ten miles away in the growth point of Sadza where the daily bus stopped for Chivhu. It was reached by a dusty path and rather grandly called the Business Centre. The main shop, to which they were headed, was Musarurwa General Stores which stocked food and clothes. Next to that was a maize-flour mill, a butcher's with giant iron hooks from which hung fly-covered carcasses that stank in the heat, and the Come Again Bottle-store where the men would hang out drinking and making gob-shop.

Aqui's mother had kept back a few groundnuts to grind into oil to rub into the girl's skins at night but all the rest were solemnly handed over to Mr Musarurwa to be weighed and the price calculated on a scrap of paper. The money was then counted out and Aqui took her few coins and began to decide what to buy. It was hard to choose from such a treasure trove. On the floor were sacks of sugar out of which the storekeeper would scoop out a paper coneful for their mother. A large jar of coloured lollipops stood on the counter next to a tray of single cigarettes. Shelves along the back held bolts of bold-patterned cottons, thick blue cakes of laundry soap, pink plastic pots of skin-lightening cream, and dusty packets of Lobells biscuits. Pans and kettles hung on strings from the ceiling.

Aqui lingered long in front of a cupboard containing bottles of Cream Soda and Ripe'n'Ready, boxes of sweet cigarettes and bags of toffees in coloured wrappers, and wondered how they tasted. On the way to the shops I had thought I would buy a torch so that when I came back late from school or went to the bush in the night to relieve myself, I could spy any snakes or tokoloshis. But my mother explained that these would need batteries. There was the same problem if I bought a kerosene lamp to give light to do my homework. So I bought a blanket for winter and my sister bought tackies [canvas tennis shoes]. It was the first time the nine-year-old had worn shoes; usually the village children went barefoot. How we laughed at her, she walked like a duck.

They returned home in festive mood that night, singing as they walked. The blanket was soft and would be cosy for sleeping, her mother had mixed up a special drink of maize and sugar, and there was even meat from the butcher's for dinner. Aqui had just taken a mouthful of the rich stew when she heard loud shouting outside. The food which had been tasting so good turned bitter in my mouth. It was my father and he had been drinking. Her mother pretended not to have heard and carried on chattering gaily. But the girls fell silent for they all knew he would soon drag her out to beat her, then leave her under the shivering stars. They cringed like the ownerless village dog as they waited for the sound of the stinging slaps they knew would follow.

Our African men have this problem-when they get money they use it not for their family but on their girlfriends, forgetting their wives and children, and on beer. My father would go insane when he was drunk. He would beat up my mother, be abusive and chase her away so she slept in the kraal with the animals even in winter when it was cold.

When he had finished beating his wife, he would return to the kitchen hut where the children all sat rooted to the spot and grab the food left untouched on their plates, smacking his lips with lusty pleasure. If they moved, he would cuss at them and sometimes beat them too. Once when I was about three, he picked me up and threw me out of the hut like a ball so hard that I still have the scar. My grandmother, the one who was a spirit medium, mixed a paste of herbs to rub in the wound which made it hurt even more. That was the year that Prime Minister Ian Smith had illegally declared Rhodesia independent from Britain. I didn't know what UDI was but from the way grown-ups talked about it I knew it was something very bad that meant that our people would never have their own country like our brothers had got in Zambia next door.

The next day as always her father was very contrite and hangdog, tickling her under her chin and calling her his little princess. The evenings when he was not drunk he would tell stories. Often they were about long-ago times when the Ndebele came and killed our men and took our beautiful women and cows, or when the whites came and drove out the black people to the hills and mountains and barren land and took away the good land.

Sometimes they were about Nehanda, the mhondoro woman from Mazowe who inspired the 1896 uprising of the Shona against the white settlers when they realized they had been cheated out of their land by the strangers. I loved those stories best of all My father said we were even descended from one of those who had led the fight with her.

The rebellion was known as the Chimurenga, a poetic Shona word which means fight or struggle, and it was one of the most violent and organized rebellions against white rule anywhere in Africa. Three hundred and seventy-two whites were killed-around 10 per cent of the settlers. Some of those scattered around on homesteads gathered together to form laagers such as that around the large thorn tree which eventually became the settlement of Enkeldoorn.

The Pioneers were taken by surprise by the revolt of natives they had seen as placid and submissive as the cattle they herded, and whom they had thought welcomed their arrival as protection against the raiding parties of the Ndebele. But the Shona were angry that not only had they lost their land but were also expected to pay hut tax which meant losing their menfolk to the mines and farms of the strangers. On top of that the year the white man arrived in 1890 coincided with a plague of locusts that returned again each year. By 1895 the numbers were so many that people said they blotted out the sun. On top of that, in 1894, a terrible drought had started. Lastly, in early 1896, an epidemic of rinderpest broke out among the cattle, leaving a trail of carcasses across the country. The authorities panicked and herded thousands more cows into kraals for slaughter.

To the superstitious Shona these were all signs that the spirits were angry and they were eager to take up their weapons and follow Nehanda in rebellion. Nehanda could summon up spirits and she instructed our people, ‘Spread yourself through the forests and fight till the stranger leaves’ She was so strong and brave, she just thought about the country, not like Lobengula who just wanted the sugar. When the whites tried to break her spirit by offering things, she just said No. The whites were very cunning but she was also cunning.

The Shona might have had numbers and spirits on their side but the settlers had guns and dynamite. The Shona chiefs were hunted down and the caves where they and their followers were hiding were blown up. In December 1897, Nehanda was eventually caught and taken to Salisbury. Father Richartz, the Jesuit priest from the Chishawasha Mission, was called for. He wrote in the mission records, ‘Nehanda began to dance, to laugh and talk so that the warders were obliged to tie her hands and watch her continually as she threatened to kill herself.’ She refused his entreaties to be taken into the Catholic faith, instead demanding to be returned to her people, and on 27 April 1898 she was hanged. Unrepentant to the last, on the scaffold she warned, ‘My bones shall rise again,’ then her body dropped through the trapdoor with a heavy thud.

Aqui lay on a rock in the long shadow of a tree, sucking on a chakata fruit and dreaming about becoming a nurse. She was supposed to be tending the mombes, which was an important job as cattle represented wealth in the village. But it was so hot that the heat rippled across the yellow plains and the cattle lumbered about slowly. As long as she gave them an occasional shoo to keep them away from the crops then she could drift off and let her thoughts dance away.

These days, she always thought about the same thing. A few years before, when she was about seven and her second brother had fallen ill, she had gone with her mother to the clinic in Sadza. Chipo Tamari had already lost one son and this time when rubbing him with pastes of ground bark from the nyanga did not work and his pupils started rolling back in their sockets, she resolved to take action, whatever the other villagers might say. She wrapped the infant in swaddling to absorb the diarrhoea, dripped some well-water on his lips which were permanently open like the beak of a small bird, and placed a knitted hat on his head to protect it from the harsh sun. Then she tied him to her back and gave Aqui a calabash of water to carry so they could keep wetting his parched mouth. By the time they had made the three-hour-long walk to the township in the blinding heat, it was too late; the child's body was limp and could not be revived. Her mother began sobbing that she would never have a son and that they must have done something to offend the spirits. But Aqui was entranced by the bustling figures in uniforms, full of purposefulness, with pens in their pockets and metal trays laid out with instruments-stethoscope, tongs and syringes. The clinic smelled of paint and disinfectant, not of death and fear, as she had imagined. It was enough for her to know she had found her dream.

I admired the nurses' uniforms, how smart they were, and saving lives, and wanted to look like them and also because being a nurse or a teacher was something very special in the community But she knew it was impossible because her body was turning into that of a woman and her parents would soon take her out of school. It was different for boys. Boys were so precious, more precious than girls, we were useless in their eyes. Her young brother Tatiwa who had been born after the death of her previous two brothers was even more precious because he was the only son to survive. He would get all the land and as much schooling as the family could afford even though he was dull and slow at learning.

As for Aqui, she might have been the brightest girl in her class but she would not go to secondary school because by the age of thirteen a girl was supposed to be married. The idea of a girl's education was just for you to be able to read the note asking for your hand, then you were fine.

At that time there were only about 150 secondary schools in the whole country and few black children did more than six years' education. But Aqui loved school, particularly English and geography. I did not want to marry one of the silly boys in the village or, worse, an old man who had lost his wife and would pay good lobola [bride price]. In times of drought, when the rivers and wells dried up, the land shimmered with heat, and people had nothing to eat but the small yellow fruits that baboons ate, families often sold their daughters to such men, some such Mr Banana, as she thought of them, who had built up good stores of crops.

I begged the missionaries to let me stay on at school with the boys but I knew my father would never agree. Her mother had not gone to school at all but she could read a little and it was clear to Aqui that she did most of the work. My father, like all the men, was just talking, talking. It was my mother who walked to the well every morning when the sun came up, a pot on her head to fetch water for tea; she who took the animals to the stand; planted and weeded the crops; mended our clothes and cooked the food. In the dry season she grew all sorts of vegetables-tomatoes, cabbages, onions and rapeseed for relish with the sadza. In the rainy season she grew maize, pumpkins and groundnuts.

Aqui's father worked as a contractor putting up wire fences on the big white farms around Chivhu, but the jobs came few and far between. I loved it best when he went hunting with his catapult and knobkerry and would bring back doves or guinea fowl or sometimes even a duiker which we would eat in thick rich gravy with the sadza. Then our bellies would be full and he would tell stories and life had never seemed so good.

But those days seemed long ago. Recently she had heard him and her mother arguing about her school fees and the cost of the new uniform she needed as her body started sprouting in all directions. ‘No man is going to want a wife with so much knowledge in her head,’ he pronounced, and the beer-drinkers enjoying some Seven Day in the yard all nodded agreement.

The pressure to get married beat like a drum on her temples until sometimes she thought her head would explode. I wished I was like the other girls in the village who just wanted to find a man to look after them, then life would be easier. Most of the time I could just busy myself with tasks and not think beyond. But then I remembered the books I had read at school and the nurses I had seen and I knew there was more out there than Zhakata's Kraal.

She hated passing the Apostolics gathered for one of their sessions, their white robes flapping around. I wasn't scared of them any more, but if they saw me one of them would point a finger and declare that I should marry this Mr Banana or that Mr Pumpkin.

At the well or washing clothes in the river, she noticed women hushing their voices as she approached and guessed they had been discussing her marriage prospects. Sometimes one of them made pointed pronouncements like, ‘An unmarried woman is a troubled woman.’ At the New Year's dancing which always took place after a small portion of each crop had been left for the spirits and the babies born that year had been blessed, a wealthy widower from the next village had tried to grab her hand. So old was he that skin hung in webs from his arms and it was all Aqui could do not to curl up her lip in revulsion. But he had cows and goats and a storeroom of maize and told her he would give her the best hut in the village and take her on the bus to Chivhu to buy a shop dress.

If she married him, her father would receive a hefty lobola of several cows. There was a proverb in the village that ‘a son-in-law is like a fruit tree; one never finishes eating from it’. I knew as the eldest I should help my family and marry a man like that with stocks for bad times, but it did not seem fair. Her only hope was if he shared the same totem as her, the animal spirit which all Mashona are given at birth as a way of safeguarding against incest. Mine was impala like my father because in Shona society men are more powerful than women so the children always take the totem of the father. It would be completely taboo for me to marry another impala.

Even Aqui's mother, who she had thought was on her side, had started saying that now she was twelve her eldest daughter should be taking more care of her appearance. One day she sat Aqui down and smeared her hair with a paste made of water and ashes from burning the dry bark of the mutsvedzabeni tree to try and tame its frizziness. I was quite sure Nehanda never did such things.

Aqui wondered about appealing to the headmaster of her school to see if there was some kind of scholarship that would let her study to be a nurse. She had always had glowing reports, which she read out to her mother, and she knew he liked her. At a sports day for schools in the area they had camped on the field of another school, St Judes, because it was too far to get back to their homes. While she and some friends were sitting round the fire they had made, a boy had come running with a message that the headmaster was calling for her. I went to him, he was standing and I knelt down because we were always taught to kneel to big people. He lunged at me and started groping. Fortunately he was so inebriated that he could hardly stand and she had managed to run away. When she got back to her friends the fire had gone out and they were already sleeping in their blankets. She huddled inside hers and shivered. I didn't sleep all night.

Under the tree, a light rustling disturbed her reverie and she watched a chameleon pause in the wind and lift its head before scuttling away. The sun had already disappeared behind the Daramombe Mountains and Aqui realized she should be moving the cattle back to their pen before the wild animals came out and she was scolded for dreaming again. As she hurried back, flicking the cows' haunches with a large twig, darkness fell and seemed to grow thick and black around her until the moon took pity and showed half its face to light her path.