Alexander Kanengoni was born in 1951, in Chivu, Rhodesia. He attended Marymount Mission in Mt. Darwin and had his secondary education at Kutama College, St. Paul’s Teacher Training College, as well as the University of Zimbabwe, where his major was English. He taught briefly before leaving the country to join the liberation war in 1974. At the time of independence in 1980, he was appointed to a position in the Ministry of Education and Culture. Currently, he heads the Television Services of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Kanengoni has published three books, the novels Vicious Circle (1983) and Echoing Silence (1996), as well as a collection of short stories, Effortless Tears (1993). He writes, he says, “to reconcile raging turmoils” inside him.
EFFORTLESS TEARS
We buried my cousin, George Pasi, one bleak windswept afternoon: one of those afternoons that seem fit for nothing but funerals. Almost everyone there knew that George had died of an AIDS-related illness but no one mentioned it. What showed was only the fear and uncertainty in people’s eyes; beyond that, silence.
Even as we traveled from Harare on that hired bus that morning, every one of us feared that at last AIDS had caught up with us. In the beginning, it was a distant, blurred phenomenon which we only came across in the newspapers and on radio and television, something peculiar to homosexuals. Then we began hearing isolated stories of people dying of AIDS in far-flung districts. After that came the rumors of sealed wards at Harare and Parirenyatwa, and of other hospitals teeming with people suffering from AIDS. But the truth is that it still seemed rather remote and did not seem to have any direct bearing on most of us.
When AIDS finally reached Highfield and Zengeza, and started claiming lives in the streets where we lived, that triggered the alarm bells inside our heads. AIDS had finally knocked on our doors.
For two months, we had watched George waste away at Harare Hospital. In desperation, his father—just like the rest of us—skeptical of the healing properties of modern medicine, had turned to traditional healers. Somehow, we just could not watch him die. We made futile journeys to all corners of the country while George wasted away. He finally died on our way home from some traditional healer in Mutare.
All the way from Harare to Wedza, the atmosphere was limp. January’s scorching sun in the naked sky and the suffocating air intensified into a sense of looming crisis that could not be expressed in words. The rains were already very late and the frequent sight of untilled fields, helplessly confronting an unfulfilling sky, created images of seasons that could no longer be understood. The crops that had been planted with the first and only rains of the season had emerged only to fight a relentless war with the sun. Most had wilted and died. The few plants that still survived were struggling in the stifling heat.
Now, as we stood forlornly round the grave, the choir sang an ominous song about death: we named the prophets yielded up to heaven while the refrain repeated: “Can you see your name? Where is your name?”
This eerie question rang again and again in our minds until it became part of one’s soul, exposing it to the nakedness of the Mutekedza communal land: land that was overcrowded, old, and tired. Interminable rows of huts stretched into the horizon, along winding roads that only seemed to lead to other funerals.
Not far away, a tattered scarecrow from some forgotten season flapped a silent dirge beneath the burning sun.
Lean cattle, their bones sticking out, their ribs moving painfully under their taut skin, nibbled at something on the dry ground: what it was, no one could make out. And around the grave the atmosphere was subdued and silent. Even the once phenomenal Save River, only a stone’s throw away to the east, lay silent. This gigantic river, reduced to puddles between heaps of sand, seemed to be brooding on its sad predicament. And behind the dying river, Wedza Mountain stared at us with resignation, as if it, too, had given up trying to understand some of the strange things that were happening.
The preacher told the parable of the Ten Virgins. He warned that when the Lord unexpectedly came and knocked on our door, like the clever five virgins, we should be found ready and waiting to receive Him.
Everyone nodded silently.
George’s grandfather mourned the strange doings of this earth. He wished it was he who had been taken away. But then such were the weird ways of witches and wizards that they preferred to pluck the youngest and plumpest—although George had grown thinner than the cattle we could see around us. We listened helplessly as the old man talked and talked until at last he broke down and cried like a small child.
George’s father talked of an invisible enemy that had sneaked into our midst and threatened the very core of our existence. He warned us that we should change our ways immediately or die.
He never mentioned the word “Aids,” the acronym AIDS.
George’s wife was beyond all weeping. She talked of a need for moral strength during such critical times. She readily admitted that she did not know where such strength could come from: it could be from the people; it could be from those gone beyond; it could be from God. But wherever it was from, she needed it. As if acting upon some invisible signal, people began to cry. We were not weeping for the dead. We were weeping for the living. And behind us, while Wedza Mountain gazed at us dejectedly, the Save River was silently dying.
The coffin was slowly lowered into the grave and we filed past, throwing in clods of soil. In the casket lay George, reduced to skin and bone. (Most people had refused a last glimpse of him.) during his heyday we had called him Mr. Bigstuff because of his fast and flashy style—that was long ago.
As we trudged back to the village, away from the wretched burial area, most of us were trying to decide which memory of George to take back with us: Mr. Bigstuff or that thread, that bundle of skin and bones which had died on our way back from some traditional healer in Mutare.
Out there, around the fire, late that Monday evening, all discussion was imbued with an a painful sense of futility, a menacing uncertainty, and an overwhelming feeling that we were going nowhere.
Drought.
“Compared to the ravaging drought of 1947, this is child’s play,” said George’s grandfather. “At that time, people survived on grass like cattle,” he concluded, looking skeptically up into the deep night sky.
No one helped him take the discussion further.
Politics.
The village chairman of the party attempted a spirited explanation of the advantages of the government’s economic reform program: “It means a general availability of goods and services and it means higher prices for the people’s agricultural produce,” he went on, looking up at the dark, cloudless sky. Then, with an inexplicable renewal of optimism peculiar to politicians, he went on to talk of programs and projects until, somehow, he, too, was overcome by the general weariness and took refuge in the silence around the dying fire.
“Aren’t these religious denominations that are daily sprouting up a sign that the end of the world is coming?” asked George’s grandfather.
“No, it’s just people out to make a quick buck, nothing else,” said George’s younger brother.
“Don’t you know that the end of the world is foretold in the Scriptures,” said the Methodist lay preacher with sharp urgency. He continued: “All these things”—he waved his arms in a large general movement—“are undoubtedly signs of the Second Coming.” Everyone looked down and sighed.
And then, inevitably, AIDS came up. It was a topic that everyone had been making a conscious effort to avoid, but then, like everything else, its turn came. Everyone referred to it in indirect terms: that animal, that phantom, that creature, that beast. It was not out of any respect for George. It was out of fear and despair.
“Whatever this scourge is”—George’s father chuckled—“it has claimed more lives than all my three years in the Imperial Army against Hitler.” He chuckled again helplessly.
“It seems as if these endless funerals have taken the place of farming.”
“They are lu
cky, the ones who are still getting decent burials,” chipped in someone from out of the dark. “Very soon, there will be no one to bury anybody.”
The last glowing ember in the collected heap of ashes grew dimmer and finally died away. George’s grandfather asked for an ox-hide drum and began playing it slowly at first and then with gathering ferocity. Something in me snapped.
Then he began to sing. The song told of an unfortunate woman’s repeated pregnancies which always ended in miscarriages. I felt trapped.
When at last the old man, my father, stood up and began to dance, stamping the dry earth with his worn-out car-tire sandals, I knew there was no escape. I edged George’s grandfather away from the drum and began a futile prayer on that moonless night. The throbbing resonance of the drum rose above our voices as we all became part of one great nothingness. Suddenly I was crying for the first time since George’s death. Tears ran from my eyes like rivers in a good season. During those years, most of us firmly believed that the mighty Save River would roll on forever, perhaps until the end of time.
But not now, not any longer.
—1993
Mzamane Nhlapo
(BORN 1960) LESOTHO
Upon completing his secondary schooling in 1981, Mzamane Nhlapo left Lesotho and worked in the South African mines for two years. He continued his education, earning a Secondary Teaching Certificate in 1988, but instead of teaching he went to work for the Highlands Water Project in the mountains of Lesotho as a site administrator. A year later, he went back to school, matriculating at the National University of Lesotho. Nhlapo completed his B.A. in education in 1993. Since that time, he has served as the headmaster of a secondary school in the Mafeteng District, while working on his writing in his free time.
According to the editors of The Kalahari Review, where “Give Me a Chance” was originally published, Nhlapo “wishes to engage in ‘the emancipation of women in the world’” in his writing. Based on an actual incident in his mother’s life, the story begs the question of what is true storytelling: fact or fiction?
About “Give Me a Chance,” Nhlapo says: “First, I wrote the story to show how bold my mother was in trying to break away from the cultural bondage in which a woman is a helpless minor who should seek permission from her husband to get—among other things—employment, even when her husband was failing to provide for the family. My mother refused to be passive and let herself and her children die of hunger. She is the voice of many women who should boldly stand up and demand their chance to determine their destiny.
“Second, in our culture boys must look after animals and do other ‘manly’ chores at a young age. This denies them a chance to be closer to their mothers. Writing the story brought me closer to my mother for the first time, since I had to talk to her to ask for details and reasons for her actions. For the first time, I felt the warmth of motherhood. I could laugh and cry with her. Like their mothers, young boys in our culture should stand up and demand their chance for a balanced and healthy growth to adulthood.”
In addition to The Kalahari Review, the author’s stories have appeared in Basali! Stories by and about Women in Lesotho (1995) and in ’Na Le Uena—Anthology of Creative Writing in Lesotho (1995).
GIVE ME A CHANCE
Mama KaZili woke up early with her eyes red and watery as though she had been crying the whole night. I suspected that something was going to happen. At the age of nine I could see and observe well. Life at home demanded as much.
That was the day when she decided never to let us die of hunger. My father had not been sending her money from the South African mines for more than a year. It was said that he had another wife in the mines. His parents refused to listen to Mama KaZili’s complaints about that. They wanted her to accept that for a husband to have numerous wives was the norm, something a “good” wife did not have to complain about. They did not seem to understand the economic realities facing her and her children.
But in a way it was understandable why my grandparents didn’t care. Now of late, if my father had to send money at all, he sent it to his mother, who was to decide whether to pass it on to Mama KaZili. And in most cases Mama KaZili never received a cent. My father knew this, but he, too, could not afford a complaining wife.
“Today we are going to Makhoakhoeng, to some relatives of your father,” my mother announced that morning after we had eaten pap mpothe (mealie pap alone, a mixture of cornmeal and water).
“Why, Mother?” I asked. She took time to answer my question. I saw her swallow something hard first.
“Because if we stay here you won’t have something to eat,” she said eventually.
Makhoakhoeng is forty kilometers from Habelo, my home village. To go there we took an old bus from Botha-Bothe, my hometown. After traveling for thirty kilometers, there was no road for the bus to go farther. The Maluti Mountains began to get rugged—steep, rocky, rough. Worse still, it was snowing that day. The air was chilly and freezing to the bone marrow, more so when we were wrapped in tattered blankets and had no shoes on our feet. A sympathetic woman must have lent my mother some money at home so that we could take the bus to those mountains. They were so white and so huge!
Slowly we began to climb those cold, slippery, and uncompromising mountains. My younger sister, Nopaseka, fell down time and again, getting more damp from the snow each time. Once I decided to carry her on my back because my mother had the youngest baby, Mkhathini, on hers. Nopaseka was too heavy for me, and we fell down together. My mother fell also, only twice or thrice. Mothers are tough; they don’t fall easily. But the last time she fell, it was heavily, and I heard her mention my father’s name in disgust: “Moshe!” She also mentioned the names of my older brother and sister, who were left at home, as if to say, “What will they do tonight?” When I walked close enough to her, her eyes were still a little red and looked like they had water in them.
We struggled up the mountains in a numbing temperature. I could not feel my toes. Our cheeks were stung by the chilling winter winds. A vicious icy snow pelted us in the face. Our bodies were bruised, hungry, and exhausted. But we were determined to reach the place of our father’s relatives, where we would eat papa before we went to sleep. The determination of Mama KaZili rekindled ours.
We wrestled endlessly with the treacherous mountains to cover the ten kilometers. I could not calculate the passage of time. My mother kept swallowing something hard. She also spoke alone, uttering words like, “I’ll go back to work hard for them … Tonight you will eat …”
When we were close to the village we were going to, we stopped. Mama KaZili wanted to breast-feed the baby. The baby did not suck her breasts as usual. He was very stiff and looked very pale. And he was not breathing. For the first time in my life, I heard my mother cry.
The death of Mkhathini reduced our number to six in the home.
It is difficult to tell in detail exactly what went on in that snowy weather. But I do remember that we were taken to the village on horseback. Observant villagers had seen that we had stopped at one spot for a long time in the snow, and they must have wondered why. Then horsemen came to fetch us. People in the mountains are more concerned about others than people in the lowlands or towns.
When we arrived at my father’s relatives’, there was a mixture of happiness and grief. They were happy to see us, children of their brother. But the sight of Mama KaZili carrying the dead child was a great shock.
They might have been struck by the sight of death, but by this time Mama KaZili was sober, clear, and determined. She was in her best poised manner. She was no longer a cold, crying woman trapped in the snow with small kids falling down numerous times behind her. I saw a mixture of anger, grit, and willpower in her. That was my mother at her best.
She was expecting the accusation: “If you respected your husband and his parents, the child wouldn’t have died.”
She knew that they, too, would be more concerned about the cultural norms and respect for the Nhlapo family than the circum
stances that compelled her to come to them. One step wrong, she knew, and she would be told she was not married from Swaziland to kill children but to “make” them for the family to grow.
After the initial shock of Mkhathini’s death was absorbed and discussion about burying him had finished, Mama KaZili had to answer a few questions, just as she had expected. The house was full of curious relatives, each one of them listening very attentively. The atmosphere was that of a serious village court case.
“You mean you didn’t ask permission to come here from your husband or from your parents?” Matweba, my father’s oldest brother, asked with serenity.
“Yes, after all, I know they would have refused,” answered Mama KaZili coolly.
“And what lesson do you think you are teaching other wives in this big Nhlapo family?”
Mama KaZili kept silent.
“Talk!” scolded Matweba, with muttered support from the group of men.
“Talk!” repeated Matweba, shouting at the top of his voice.
Mama KaZili looked at him straight in the eye and said, “I’m teaching them that when husbands don’t fulfill their duties as heads and breadwinners of families, to an extent that children die of hunger, they should not sit there and do nothing, waiting for manna from heaven. I have brought my children to you for a month or two to have something to eat while I look for employment.”
“And again without permission?”
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