The Awakened Woman

by Tererai Trent

  As the chinyamusasure dance ended, I marveled at the way in which music and dance enrich our lives and honor our deaths. My mother used to say that music feeds the soul and would always encourage us to sing when feeling happy or sad. She showed us how our people use music to lift us spiritually from the strain of dire poverty, colonial oppression, and the indignities of gender inequality.

  In deep shock, I sat in my corner, and long after the dancers stopped, the sound of music and dancing feet still played in my head, bringing me peace. The sky was now a vast blue dome with spectacular patches of red and purple. I want to hold on to this special moment as the sun sets and the air is infused with the fragrance of the zumbani herb (from the lemon bush), a smell that reminds me of my childhood.

  Once, as a small child, I suffered from whooping cough. When attacks of heavy coughing would leave me heaving and breathless, the zumbani herb would always help. In our hut, I’d watch my mother crush and burn the dense heads and leaves of the creamy white flower of this herb. I remember the strong and aromatic lemon smell as if it were yesterday. The fragrant smoke would fill my lungs while my mother would concoct another remedy, a drink made from the boiled leaves of zumbani mixed with umhlonyane (wild wormwood).

  Today, the zumbani herb serves a different purpose. After the burial, village elders will conduct a cleansing ceremony for those who have come into close contact with my mother’s body. I cannot think of my mother contaminating anyone. The elders say that the herb acts as an antibiotic and protects people from transporting the spirit of death into their homes. This belief is passed on from one generation to the next. My mother once told me this ritualized belief of body cleansing before burial is ancient, and was practiced even before the missionaries ever brought the Christian Bible to the Korekore people. While steeped in our traditions, my mother was also an enthusiastic member of the Methodist-Wesley Church. A holdover from the pre-independence colonial era of British rule, many villagers have integrated Christianity into our indigenous traditional culture.

  Many of my people struggle with the contradictions between Christianity and Shona culture and beliefs. As new denominations arise in Zimbabwe, many believe in the Bible, yet the need to hold on to ethnic roots and ties to the ancestors has led to issues of divided loyalty. I grew up knowing families who attended church during the day and practiced ancestral ceremonies at night, ceremonies considered pagan by the church. In some circles, there is a hint of shame and judgment toward those who fully practice their rituals and follow the pathway of their ancestors.

  While many believe in the power of indigenous practices, there is always fear of compromising the integrity and “purity” of their Christian beliefs. In trying to reconcile their African tradition and rituals, I have watched many of my friends and relatives struggling as they adapt to a religious heritage as a way to reconcile with their Christian faith.

  My mother attended church but she never lost touch with her cultural beliefs. She believed both the Christian faith and Shona beliefs were based in love. Just as she lived her life, she embraced what supported her soul when she attended church and left what violated her ancestors behind at the church door. For my mother, the church was a place to do good and to keep in touch with friends. If it spread love, it was part of her spirituality.

  The Bible’s Book of Psalms discusses purification rites associated with burial that support the cultural cleansing ritual: “Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean.”5 My mother loved this verse, which refers to David’s need to be cleansed of sin after an adulterous affair with Bathsheba. My mother believed very strongly in the power of forgiveness, and felt that by forgiving, both the forgiver and the one asking for forgiveness are cleansed. I take this deep into my heart and let it inform my worldview. I feel my mother’s wisdom speaking to the world: “We can only cleanse the world if we clean ourselves of hate and the hurtful things we do to each other.”

  These are the kind of spiritual faith rituals I claim for us, my sisters. I claim belief in the Great Spirit, our Mother Earth, for she is wiser and freer than any institution can fathom. She is certain in the face of our doubt and confident in the face of our fear. If we are willing to listen, she tells us of grandeur whenever we feel stuck in smallness.

  I also claim for us a vibrant sensory healing: the body moving in dance, the sound of music and dancing feet, the vast blue and red and purple sky with its sun and moon cycles, the smell of crushed and burned herbs, the taste of freshly steeped tea. I claim the power of cleansing from mind and body whatever does not sustain and elevate and heal us. I claim forgiveness for ourselves and for the world. These are the things that ground our belief.

  Zuda and his followers wanted to exorcise from me a demon because that was the only way they could understand my intelligence, my yearnings, and my power. They wanted me to be materially and physically vulnerable, afraid, and ashamed, so that I would comply. These are beliefs that demanded my smallness, a belief system based on ego: their need to make me small to make themselves feel bigger. Although I had very little at that time, I did have a source of inner power and strength that they could not take from me: my belief in myself and in the sacred connection of my soul to something greater than human limitations.

  That is the difference between these faith stories: the indigenous traditions of my people gave me strength, a sacred, spiritual ground on which to stand. They awakened my senses so that I was fully present and fully alive, in touch with the powerful life force of the blessed Mother. They grew not my ego but my soul.

  Forgiveness at the Heart of Your Belief

  One important way to grow your soul rather than your ego is to practice forgiveness, to place forgiveness at the heart of your belief. I was only nine years old when I learned the power of forgiveness from my mother, when she showed me by her actions how freeing your heart from bitterness empowers you to transcend the gnawing of the Little Hunger in favor of seeking the sacred.

  When I was nine, my father disappeared without a trace. My mother could not imagine him joining the freedom fighters, and in any event, he was too old to walk the long distance to Mozambique for training. She thinks he might have gone in search of a job at a nearby tobacco farm. We suspect this is not something he would be proud of, and worse, it would place the whole family at risk of being killed if his work status became known. The freedom fighters would consider him a traitor, the punishment for which is terrible to imagine, while the Rhodesian soldiers might torture my mother to death if they suspect her husband has joined the freedom fighters.

  As the war for Rhodesian independence intensified, so also did poverty and anxiety. Few of the villagers had the means to sustain their families, and worse, we begin to hear of increasing random acts of atrocious violence. There are almost too many horrible stories to tell: of women being gang-raped and tortured by Rhodesian soldiers, and from distant communities, we hear that soldiers raped young girls and poured hot porridge into the vaginas of older women who refused to reveal the identity of the nonfamily members who last had supper with them.

  Not long after my father’s disappearance, it is our turn to buy hiking boots for the freedom fighters. It falls upon my mother to find the money to fulfill this obligation, and because she hopes to squash any rumors about my father’s relocation, she also decides that we must find him.

  Early one morning, my mother, sister, and I leave the village under the pretense that Tariro is sick with malaria and must go to the hospital in Karoi. Playing the part of a sick child is easy for my sister because she is not as talkative as I am. A half-empty bus arrives at our terminal. While we are excited about the ride, no one talks. Fear is written on the faces of the bus driver and conductor.

  The driver’s eyes dart back and forth as he orders the conductor to get people onto the bus as quickly as possible. The conductor warns us to refrain from eating guavas or drinking water, as it is risky to make pit stops. Unfortunately, this also means that we cannot eat mutakura (boiled maize mixed with ba
mbara nuts), which our mother has prepared for the journey. Because eating mutakura makes one very thirsty, our mother hides the food.

  Halfway to our destination, a dozen men with machine guns block the road. Pointing their AK-47s at the bus driver, they order everyone off the bus. Passengers are told to show identity and government travel cards. Frisked at gunpoint, we are shaken and terribly afraid.

  We endure many hours of harassment. They ask my mother if she is carrying food for terrorists. Young mothers who cannot produce enough milk try to comfort distressed babies. The soldiers go berserk: one shoves and yells at a young woman who cannot calm her baby. The mother cowers in fear, placing both hands tightly around her head as if to protect it from bullets. Not knowing what to do, we freeze. The heavy silence turns the soldier’s attention toward the rest of the crowd. One soldier’s glittery eyes send chills down my back. My mother slowly and gently places her hands on our laps and nudges us. We understand that she wants us to avert our eyes from staring at the soldier.

  The bus conductor makes the mistake of telling the soldiers that some people on the bus are sick and in need of a hospital. A soldier asks the sick people to raise their hands. My mother cannot bring herself to say or do anything nor does anyone else. We watch in horror as the conductor is taken into a thick forest nearby. He does not return. The remaining armed men order the bus driver to continue the journey. There is deathly silence as we drive away. It is heart-wrenching to watch my mother age before our eyes.

  When we arrive in Karoi late that night, my mother decides that we will spend the night at the bus terminal. As women vegetable vendors regularly sleep there in order to guard their produce, it feels like a safe place. That night, we sit around a fire built by the women and talk about the war. These women vendors know more than we do because they gather war stories from different parts of the district from people passing through. Some even help freedom fighters penetrate the urban areas.

  My mother spots someone from our village who has recently seen my father in a beer hall. This person tells us that he works on a tobacco farm about twenty miles from Karoi, so that is where we will go. The vendors warn us that all roads to commercial farming areas are safer during the day although no buses or public transportation follow these routes.

  We begin our journey very early the next morning, walking for hours and only stopping for water and food. Even though our food is spoiling, we have no choice but to eat it. Fortunately, women at the terminal have sent us off with water in empty Orange Crush soda bottles.

  When it begins to rain, we are surprised to see white farmers pass by in open trucks with black farm workers huddled in the back while Rhodesian ridgeback dogs sit up front. The workers’ tattered clothes expose soaking wet, bare backs—what a miserable sight. I cannot understand why the dogs receive better treatment than the human beings. I later learn that some white farmers actually train this breed of dog to attack black people—the darker the skin color, the more vicious the dogs become.

  We arrive at the farm after our endless hike, tired and barefoot, our old tennis shoes now rags. We eventually locate my father’s hut, one of many in the large compound. As we approach, the setting sun saturates the sky with multiple shades of red. Nearby, barefoot boys play with a ball made of plastic bags tied together with an old bicycle tube. Later, we learn that these children attend a dilapidated one-room classroom where a teacher who only has a fifth-grade education teaches them. The school only goes up to fifth grade and the teacher is a former student of the school.

  As we head to the compound, the heavy chemical odor that fills the air is the same nasty smell of cotton fields near our village. The earthy, red soil also reminds me of home except that the soil seems thin—like powdered skim milk or sifted cornmeal—which is a stark contrast to the dense green growth bordering a nearby soccer field. Perhaps water from irrigation pipes has found its way to the bushes and trees at the edge of the field.

  In my father’s one-room hut, a light-skinned woman is cooking food. My father does not introduce her but my mother politely greets them both as my sister and I go sit quietly in a corner. With his old tobacco pipe between his front teeth, my father seethes with anger and the woman scowls and indicates that she “owns” the old man. Ignoring this hostile reception, my mother, older and “unsophisticated” in comparison, nevertheless asks the young woman about her totem. Before we know it, she has discovered that the woman’s mother and my mother share the same totem! Tensions are softened when my mother addresses my father’s girlfriend as “my child.”

  Despite our hunger, my mother tells the woman not to bother cooking for us because we have just eaten (not true!). All we need is hot water and a teaspoon of sugar. Melting the sugar over the flame and mixing it with boiling water, my mother offers us “dinner,” and warns us not to pee in bed because it will be a long cold night. My sister whispers that my father does not know how to deal with the situation and, in response, I let out a muffled laugh. One disapproving look from my mother reminds me that I’d better behave.

  The woman then ejects us from the hut and sends us to a nearby tobacco barn to sleep. She gives us empty burlap sacks so that we don’t have to sleep on the ground. Unfortunately, the bags are not thick enough to protect our malnourished bodies from the moist and rotting floors, nor do they shield us from the big rats that run amok in the barn.

  After a blackout sleep born of complete exhaustion, my sister and I wake up to long-winding red lines on our palms and fingers. We’d had no water to clean off the remains of the last meal we ate, so the big rats found us and had a feast, nibbling on our hands as we slept.

  Before my father leaves for work the next morning, my mother tells him why we have come. She says that we plan to return to the village on this day. When my father hears about the encounter with the soldiers, he softens and invites us to stay until he gets paid. The girlfriend and my father disappear at night so we have the hut to ourselves. But he returns each morning to a cup of tea and a warm bath that my mother has prepared for him.

  During our stay, my mother washes and irons my father’s clothes. She scrubs his living quarters until every bedbug is gone. After work, my father spends time with us and behaves decently before disappearing for the night. One day, our mother asks my sister and me to bring lunch to him in the tobacco fields. Knowing that the men share food, she has prepared enough sweet potatoes, cooked vegetables, and sadza to feed six men.

  We arrive to see a white boy of no more than thirteen years shouting at our father. We cannot move as the boy insults my father and demands that he refer to him as “sir.” My proud father refuses to call this child “boss.” Later we learn that he has defied other rules. For example, my father wears trousers despite an assumption that black men, known to white men as “boys,” are supposed to wear shorts.

  We cannot believe that a boy is challenging our father. But there he is, pointing a gun at his chest, demanding respect. “You bloody bastard!” screams the white boy. My father stares directly into the boy’s eyes as though daring him, which agitates the boy further. Enraged, he shouts, “You’re nothing but a fucking kaffir, boy!” My father’s response to being beaten is to point an index finger so close to the young man’s face that it almost touches him. My father yells, “I am a man, the same age as your father, and I deserve respect!”

  These words infuriate the young boy, who points his rifle straight at my father’s forehead. There is silence except for the sound of the boy beating my father and incessantly demanding that he say “Yes, sir.” Even when my father complies, the red-faced boy is not satisfied. Showing off in front of the many spectators, he hits my father across the face with the butt of his gun, breaking his nose. I am not sure what power uproots my sister and me, but we run to him and try to lift him as he searches for an old rag in his pocket to soak up the blood. Before driving away in a Land Rover, the boy spits in my father’s face. “Don’t you dare disrespect me again!”

  As my father picks himself
up, workmates rush to comfort him. With a quivering voice full of rage and tears streaming down his face, my father repeatedly pounds his chest and says, “I am a man, I am a man, I am a ma—a—an.” With blood splattering and about to faint, my father is caught by fellow workmates before he hits the ground.

  I cannot look my father in the eye. Peeing in my pants, I run back to my mother. An elderly man accompanies my sister to the hut with the food. We do not see my father again for two days. When he returns home, he is in a drunken stupor. My mother behaves as though nothing has happened and we stay as far from my father as possible. I know that my mother wants to comfort him but she realizes that to do so will humiliate him. Silence is the best way to deal with the situation.

  Although my mother and we kids experienced much abuse and violence at the hands of our father, this shameful memory remains at the forefront of my mind. The unexpected brutality—the way that the boy demeans my father—seems like a betrayal of decency. Knowing what he’s been through makes me wonder if my siblings and I have judged him too harshly.

  I intuited something then, even at a young age, about how bitterness and hatred work. My mother could have hated this other woman, but she did not. Why not? Because my mother understood that this woman was also a victim of a world in which women have more value, more food, and more protection if they are associated with a man. She did not have these words, of course, but she knew it all the same—and so she saw this woman as a daughter and a sister, not as an enemy.