LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 10

LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 10

“I have taken a doba-doba train today that keeps starting and stopping every twenty kilometres,” she said aloud. He was beside himself with laughter.

“Naomi, you never said we were going to the lake so let me take my time,” he replied.

“I wanted some form of humanity in case I get raped,” she replied.

“I don’t stoop that low.”

“Sorry, that was a joke.”

He pushed the seat back, far back to its maximum. Then he removed his sandals putting his feet against the windscreen. Music was blaring from a cassette somewhere.

“How is schooling?”

“I redid all my three subjects. I think pride let me down the first time I wrote my university entrance examinations,” she replied.

“Inexperience too. The problem is you did your first to fourth form at Glen Norah High (1) School. When you moved to Queen Elizabeth High School for your advanced levels, there was a gap.”

“I went to Girls High Schools”, she corrected.

“At GNHS you were with your ghetto crowd while at GHS you started feeling important.”

“So?”

“The gap causes you to be proud and look at your outward experience. Whether your hair or nails are done has nothing to do with an examination,” Trevor replied. “I went through what you went through. I know what it feels like to pass at a high density school where you have 55 class mates and then move to a light density school with 25 class mates. If you let pride take over, you will repeat the advanced level examinations. Added to it all, advanced level is a different kettle altogether to ordinary level.”

“Correct.”

“Instead of concentrating on your studies you concentrate on hair do, facials, nails and physical appearance. The new light density school uniform works wonders in the ghetto. But it takes studies to pass”, Trevor said. “Even if everyone salutes you for going for lower sixth, the onus is upon you to pass. People from the high density suburbs need to learn to be good pacesetters.”

“_____ and pioneers?” she asked.

“No, there were others before us so we are not pioneers. We are just setting a higher pace. What prevents someone from the ghetto having twenty points at advanced levels and having eleven “A”’s at ordinary level?”

“That is how I didn’t do well the first time. I learnt a lesson the hard way. When I went to Denmark College I attended lessons even on Saturday morning and afternoon. I did a schedule of past examination papers right down to eight years back. The lecturers were firm. There was no love hate between female students and female lecturers however. Why I don’t know. However there seems to be a lot of competition, love and hate, between lady teachers and their female students from ordinary to advanced levels, I don’t know why.”

“I know you were at Denmark College,” he replied. “I saw you with a group of girls when I was showing a client office space to let neat Total House. You were in a jean dungaree with a black t-shirt. You had trainer shoes that looked like a cross between white and blue.”

“Why didn’t you chat me up?” she asked. “I used to have that pair of jogging shoes.”

“I was working for my commission,” he replied. “Besides you looked like a tomboy in those dungarees.”

“Trevor!”

“What?”

“And your examinations?”

“I am still tearing apart at the requirements bit by bit. I am side marketing. I am pursuing a marketing management career besides the professional qualifications,” he replied.

“I thought yours was a good career,” she replied.

“You know there are careers like music teaching. If you branch out and do opera training, it costs your pocket heavily but in the music lessons you give there is a greater depth. It is I am doing more to enhance my skills not for the company to think that I am educated,” he replied. “The studies that I am undertaking help enhance me, make me a better person. It’s not for promotion, far from it, I would be over qualified or having a non-relevant qualification. Did you sit for Cambridge or ZIMSEC?”

“Both, my father gave me a tongue lash when I failed the first time. He reminded me it was the last time he would ever pay my examination fees in foreign currency,” she replied. “My mother kindly advised him that failing and passing did not change me from being one of his children and his daughter. You know you feel guilty when you come down from your own and your parent’s expectations. I get that feeling that I have to climb down a little bit from my interests in the university college qualification.”

“Really?”

“My mother defended me while dad was cross,” she replied. “I felt guilty being the cause of their rift if there was one.”

“Did you brothers do advanced levels?” he asked.

“They ended at ordinary level with good sciences passes. It’s in the family,” she replied. “I was the pioneer at advanced levels. The first one to flunk advanced levels and redo the whole year.”

He started the vehicle driving into civilised quarters near the lake shores. The lake proper shimmered and hazed in welcome appearing grey against the horizon. The huge volume of water took her breath away looking at the wonder of the creation of man by damming a river. When the winds were up the shores reacted with water running up and down eroding the pristine shores. In one way the water being pushed by the wind and moon in riptides wore the shore down in another it carried segment back to the shore from within.

The vegetation was mainly rocky outcrops with miombo or brachystegia trees. In normal times they should have seen rhinocerous, giraffe, waterbuck, kudu, wildebeest, impala, antelope, eland and other animals. Poaching had decimated some species with rhinocerous being totally removed for captive breeding programs because of high prices for ivory. They toured Kuimbashiri Bird Gardens that held more than 460 species of birds. Then they frolicked and romped in the lake, fished and had lunch at Admiral Cabin looking across at the shores of Lake Chivero. He took her on a guided boat tour. She insisted on those safety devices called life jackets.

“I learnt to swim at GHS but I did rather feel safe with a life jacket,” she said.

“I can’t say I can swim so one will do well for me,” he had agreed. “But I did visit lakes a lot including Mazowe though we never swum. There had been enough tragedies concerning boys or men trying to swim.”

“Life jackets and bottled water to drink because dehydration is a fatal enemy, just in case. The sun is hot,” the boat operator had insisted. They went cruising on the lake for an appointed hour. “If you have cotton blouses or shirts you can soak them in water to prevent dehydration. You need to drink a lot of liquid and bring a sun hat too.”

“Cotton t-shirt? I should have thought of that,” she squeezed her head more under a cape. He had picked two of them from one of the lakeshore curio shops. He liked the dark irises under the cape.

They could feel the vibration of the boat engine. The skipper took them on tour. He was up there while they sat together close but looking towards the shore watching the unfolding beauty of man’s and nature’s creation.

“I didn’t know that the lake was this fine and so large”, she snuggled close to him. “I thought it was small.”

“It is picture perfect, the last time I came here a woman in Athlone threw a surprise birthday party for her husband,” he replied. “I don’t know how she got forty people here without him smelling a rat. His friend said they were going fishing. Did they fish into a tent full of his own relatives? I didn’t know you were good in sciences.”

“I was good in sciences but at advanced level, mathematics, biology and geography are a challenge,” she had replied. “Didn’t you do sciences at advanced level?”

“I did Mathematics, Geography and Computer Science,” he replied. “It was a weird combination better than the Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry one school had offered.”

“You could have done medicine,” she said enthusiastically. “That was my dream when I was in the third and fourth form. I soon realised that advanced level was no piece of cake.”

“How free are you for the day?” he asked.

“I am still under the care of my parents,” she had replied. “You know our place in Glen Norah A?”

“Yap,” he replied. “Can I come and pick you up from the gate?”

“No picking me up we will have to agree on time and place. You can phone, we are in the landline books now.”

“Did you ever give me your surname?” he asked.

“I will certainly give you the six digits of our landline,” she had replied without answering his question.

“Then how was I supposed to go through the Harare directory without knowing your surname?” he insisted.

“You could look under President’s Office,” she replied tactfully.

“That is the best idea. Which wing?”

They had afternoon drinks before he drove them back to Harare. It took fifteen minutes in a secluded area for him to be content with her no. She had to slap him across the face. He had her legs akimbo. He had been thinking with the bulge in his trousers not with his head.

“Is this what you do with your dates, taking them for a screw?” she accused.

“I never said that.”

“I insist on an answer.”

“If you are in one of your moods again, I am not in the mood for an argument,” was all he said.

“I am sorry,” she said. “That helps us escape from the ravages of reggae music.”

They went past Snake World to the east without embarking in conversation. There was just the whine of the engine when there was a hill and the almost inaudible drone when the journey was level. The cassette or one of them had wound its ribbon against a wheel requiring removal.

“You could have brought your traditional dance music”, he shot back.

“I like house music not traditional dance type meant for schools competitions,” she replied.

“I also like calypso music from the islands near Jamaica”, he defended.

The radio was so full of local music which he didn’t dig. It was full of local musicians recording straight without serving an apprentice. The other reason he didn’t favour radio were the constant barrage of political jiggles reminding them of a protracted war and independence struggle were played.

The music was bad both instruments and voice. Life required musicians to serve under skilled masters for some years before breaking off on their own. If they did an apprentice their music and voice combined into one formidable force. The other flip side of the coin was talking a year to three years in music courses at any of the colleges dotted around the country. Music was not just a matter of rhyming words and poems without an end. Some poems did not do well with music and vice versa.

“Maybe you were expecting too much from me.”

“It's alright,” he had replied. “There is no harm done. Just don’t throw words and accusations around.”

There was a police road block along Gleneagles Road near its X junction with Mufakose. He reduced speed cruising down the hill.

“Are you sober?” she asked.

“Did I drink anything?” he asked her.

“Just don’t breathe too much when talking to the police officer. Bad breath can lead to an arrest as well as a drunken breath too,” she replied. “Mind the police man doesn’t give you a toothbrush and Colgate® toothpaste.”

“Naomi!” He couldn’t help out but laugh.

He unwound the window smarting from her rebuke. The police checked his registration and licence details and waved him off.

“Thankfully I had used Close-up® toothpaste,” he replied.

“And a mint that I gave you”, she replied. “Maybe if you had been playing reggae, the officer would have searched you and me for marijuana.”

They cruised up the railway fly over near Zimbabwe Fertiliser Industries. For a glimpse as they rode the crest, a 360º view could be had of Mufakose, Budiriro, railway infrastructure and industries to the north and down there was Highfield after the industries.

“Since it’s a he, you would have enjoyed the body search,” he stated.

“There was a lady writing tickets who would have frisked me”, she defended.

“Maybe she is a lesbian,” he suggested.

“Trevor!”

He had dropped her near two streets from her home stretch.

“Don’t drink and drive, mind those hulks calling themselves male friends who like off the beaten area drinking holes,” she said. She closed the door.

“None of my male hulks of friends are homosexuals so I am safe,” he replied leaning to pass the message.

“The sun is down I don’t want you to be the late,” she replied.

“You wouldn’t be a widow because you are single,” he replied.

“Trevor!”

He drove off heading for the nearest pub. He changed tact heading up Beatrice Road past the traffic circle that fed traffic to Chitungwiza, Glen Norah, Highfield and Masvingo. He turned right at Zingoga Shopping Centre. It was time for a pint or two and a tap dance. This was one major drinking holes within the Waterfalls area. It was because of its easy access to Beatrice Road. Criminals lurked wherever there were drinking holes to pick on the drinker who stumbled on his way home by foot and alone. Or they looked for the drinker from whom they could ask for a lift. The drinker would be left without clothes somewhere with his vehicle and valuables elsewhere. Maybe he could get sadza and beef bones.

__________________________________________

Four months later they met at a café overlooking First Street taking their drinks. He was taking Stoney ginger beer. He had both a cold and what looked like a hangover. The party had started late last night and ended in the wee hours of the morning. He had been in the flat less than an hour and a half when his alarm to go running around sounded. His run had not ejected all of the beer in his system, it had dealt with fat and excess sugar however. She sat with her back to him.

“Your results are out,” he suggested. “How did you fare and what were your responses to Harare Institute of Technology, Belvedere Technical Teachers College, Chinhoyi University, University of Zimbabwe or Bindura University of Science Education.”

“I know that.”

“So what’s happening?” he asked.

“With what?”

“With us?” he asked. “There you are sitting with your back to me. That is as much of an insult as showing Gaddafi the soles of my shoes.”

He was not sure if it was removing shoes or showing the soles which constituted an Islamic insult. Whichever way he would face the Libyan firing squad if he did either. Was it the inside of the shoe? That much he wasn’t sure. He was however certain it was not feet in stockings. Whatever!

“I heard you moved out of Highfield,” she said still with her back to him watching the traffic of people withdrawing cash at four CABS ATM machines. It was month end, salaries were in. The bank had another queue outside which was moving into the interior.

“I moved into property covered by our company in Old Mazowe Street,” he replied. “I am in the fifth floor however you never came to my place when I was in Glen Norah then Mangwende Drive in Highfield. My place is near Rosshire Heights in case you are interested much nearer to the Avenues Clinic than Parirenyatwa Hospital.”

“You always think of nothing but sex,” she replied. “I was afraid of being sodomised or raped. You guys think closing a girl inside a room with her boyfriend is kosher.”

It was Rosetta who had told her of that experience. Why was she blaming Trevor for what he didn’t know? It was Rosetta who had gone to see a date in Waterfalls whereupon the date had had the door locked from the outside leaving her and him in the two room, alone. She had screamed. Until the keys came back, one had red eyes while the other had bellowed his voice hoarse.

“I am a man” he had replied. “I need discharge what I produce every twenty-four, sometimes every twelve hours.”

“At that rate, you require to be polygamous.”

“Not really, you could do fine.”

“I am a growing woman trapped in a girl‘s body which I am shading. I maintain my virtue,” she replied. “You are close to the Avenues and its night parade of women. Take your pick. Mind that you may end up in a hearse looking lifelessly up towards the Redeemer. Then you will wonder if all the exercises you had was worth the while.”

“I thought our discussion was leading somewhere,” he complained.

“It is all that you ever think of.”

“Say what’s on your mind, you sit giving me your back,” he complained. “That is an insult in other cultures including Zulu.”

“Nothing,” she replied.

He rose, picking up his jacket and pen. He walked away. He understood her moods now. He was in his vehicle winding up the window when she came up.

“So?” he asked.

“Your magazine”, she handed him the magazine. He reversed.

© Copyright tmagorimbo 2014