LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 18

LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 18

She introduced him to her parents within a week on a Saturday. She surprised him. They had agreed to meet in Glen Norah at an appointed time, at a certain shop.

“Please, no beer,” Naomi had insisted on the telephone. “No jeans and t-shirts too.”

“Am I going to a hotel or something?”

“No, you should not wear sports attire too. Worse of all track suits. No one is interested in seeing your upper torso and its biceps.”

“Why do you hate hops or sorghum so much?” he asked. “There is a scientific formula to malt beer I tell you. If you hear it you will drink. Any Zimbabwean farmer grows hops or good barley/sorghum makes a killing I tell you. They should export the stuff, clear beer brewed in Zimbabwe using fresh farm, ingredients, well tendered hops for the clear beer and sorghum for the frothy traditional brew. Not GMO, original stuff.”

“Just a whiff and I am off”, she threatened.

“What of wine?” he asked.

“Sober, no grapes whatsoever”, she replied. "Don't even drink grape, marula or cane juice."

“Just a carafe?”

“Trevor!”

He drove into Chambati Drive coming to a stop near a series of shops waiting for her. He wore formal trousers and a sleeveless machine knit jersey. He played the radio low. She came walking fifteen minutes late wearing a flowered dress with straps which left her bare shoulders out. She honed in on his vehicle like a bee going for nectar. He lowered the window. The cheeks were strung out. She looked down on him with a banana smile. The eyes were clearly brownish black enlarging when she saw him. Those irises!

“Hi,” he said.

“We will take a walk”, she shook his hands offered through the window. “Let’s see how you look?”

“Do I lock up?” he asked.

“Park neatly and lock up,” she had replied. He did as instructed. “You look awfully smart.”

“Thanks and same to you.”

She walked with him into the periphery of houses. There were many pedestrian side lanes between streets. He found himself in a large lounge. Judging by the portraits, he was at her family home seeing hers, Rosetta and other’s pictures.

“Ah,” he whispered. “Is this de javu or something?”

“Or something”, she said. “I hadn’t taken you here before. My parents are liberals, they are harsh on me following a well behaved pattern but they are a relaxed lot.”

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Clap my palms and address them as my in-laws?”

“Just be you,” she said in a whisper. Then she raised her voice, “Abambo I am home, I brought you someone. They brought you a newspaper, the Financial Gazette.”

There was a man and a woman who moved into the lounge.

“Muli bwanji?” her father had asked after the formal handshakes.

“Ndili bwino, how are you mfumu?” he had replied.

The smile on the older man had broadened. Her mother was already somewhere in the kitchen rushing around after barely shaking his hands. Her resemblance with Naomi and Rosetta was striking.

Most of the houses that had been extended followed the same concept. The houses started near the road going back in oblong or rectangular frame. From this shape, designers then tried chipping to produce a refined and different product. This one had a large veranda looking into the street with a carport next to it. Double French doors led into/out of the veranda. There was large French window at 90 degrees to the veranda and smaller ones on both sides of a fireplace.

There was a large lounge combined with a dining room separated by a covered beam near the ceiling. To the left was the main bedroom with next to it a fitted kitchen with an outside door. On the right were two medium bedrooms with built in wardrobes with another on the left. There was a separate toilet, bath with tub and shower. On the far end was another door leading in.

“Dzina lanu ndani?”

The elder statesman asked prodding for his language.

“Dzina langu nine Trevor,” he had replied. Naomi came in.

She had wrapped a flowered loincloth around her waist. Her dressing made a swishing noise as she walked. She had hidden her hairdo underneath a doek. She and her mother came to sit on parts of the draylon settees joining him and her father. Naomi had made him sit on a two seat sofa piece. She sat next to him as much as her parents did.

“Father that is my friend _____”, Naomi began. “He is called Trevor, Trevor these two are my parents. This is our home.”

“We were getting on well,” her father replied. “I was talking to him in Chewa. He responded well. Why didn’t you tell me that he speaks Chewa?”

“Trevor, you never told me you speak Chewa!” she accused.

“You never asked,” he had replied. “And I never heard you speaking it though you hinted you were foreign.”

“We come from Malawi”, her father explained family history. “These people around us have a way of looking down on us as foreigners. They even have my identity document stamped (NCR)non-citizen resident. Their new laws bar me from voting. What language do you speak?”

“Shona, English, Chewa, Bemba and Lozi,” Trevor replied. “Alipo munthu pano alankula chizungu?”

Everyone laughed. The fact that he had spoken their language and he was aware of their culture seemed like he had removed any wall between them. The elder man shook Trevor’s hands again and welcomed him home as a son.

“When next time you want to see Naomi, please come and knock. You have my and akazi’s limpo mtwana. Mwalandiridwa ku nyumba kwathu.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now that you have been given the go ahead, father should have talked of a curfew. He will be coming at nine in the evening,” Naomi whispered to her mother.

The two slapped their hands together in humorous agreement. Her mother adjusted her daughter’s head gear.

“Where does your family come from?”

“We came from the Barotse plains,” Trevor replied. “We are Lozi people from Zambia. I think my father came from there along with his cousins, elder and younger brothers and their families. I was born here. The only time I went close to the Barotse Plains was when I went into Zambia three times including when I visited Livingstone.”

“Your totem?”

“Inambao my father,” he replied. “We are the clan of a roaring lion in the Barotse Plains taking prey as it quenches its thirst.”

“I didn’t know that he talked so much when sober,” Naomi advised her mother. “I had never asked his totem either.”

“That was the first thing you should have done,” her mother had said. “What if you marry your brother totem wise?”

“Mother, love is more important than totems. Totems just represent a certain clan. If we are the same totem then I will still marry him.”

“We are the mbidzi with its bright colours,” the elder statesman had said. “How will the female mbidzi that at times kicks the lion straight in the face and the male inambao co-habit seeing one wants to eat the other and the other one kicks a lot?”

“Did I ever speak of marrying him?” Naomi whispered to her mother.

“I want my marital costume from him,” her mother indicated with her head.

Both women sniggered laughing with their hands covering their mouths.

“I will all learn to eat fish”, he had everyone laughing. “I will be a big fish monger then. Fill the fridge with fish and green, green grass for the zebra.”

“My daughter will grow thin,” suggested her mother aloud.

“That is the only way a lion and a zebra can exist,” the father had replied.

He shared an afternoon meal with the family. Lunch was made of white rice and sausage. There was fruit salad made of apples and orange pieces. Then came lemon scented pudding, ice cream and mineral drinks. For fruit dessert there was a mixture of bananas and mango slices. Her parents saw him as far as the sliding metal gate before they left them alone.

“Where is Rosetta?” he asked.

“She is plaiting someone in old Highfield,” Naomi replied. “Do you know your way back?”

“When I drove in, it was at night. I was being told to turn left, dead ahead or turn tight or what was called a double left.”

“And now?”

“No idea though I can ask my way out.”

She led him through the maze of streets towards the shopping complex greeting people here and there in the majority Shona language fluently. One could hardly believe she spoke Chewa fluently too. Why was she fluent in all three languages when most people were only fluent in one, their mother language?

“Tidzaonana mawa Trevor.”

“I thought I would get a hug”, he ended the last in a whisper with a naught smile on his face.

He opened the vehicle door. He went in opening both windows before the heat within was like a microwave.

“Not in the township in the public glare,” she said. “I will give you a hug when appropriate. Tidzaonana mawa then.”

“Wait, I know my culture,” he said.

He rummaged in his trouser pockets and the back pockets too. He checked the glove compartment. He took her to a shop where he bought her three kilograms of meat and two 750-ml of minerals.

“Thank you Trevor shamwari.”

“Not to mention, tell mfumu I will give him his beer next time. Ndapita.”

How right she had been that he should be sober.

__________________________________________

He was scheduled to meet with Naomi in town. For six weeks now they had met every Saturday and Sunday normally around two in the afternoon. He drove her in the Nissan after which she took over cruising through Avonlea, Avenues, Greencroft and Harare Kopje to learn hill ascents. When she rang he was in Newlands on the bedroom wing on a row of town houses that he was selling off. He asked her to take a kombi to Newlands shops and wait for him there since he wasn’t far off.

He picked her up near Barclays Bank around twelve in the afternoon. She had insisted on church first. She came in a brightly flowered longer than knee dress. He had talked about booking a marriage officer. He in turn was as sober as a whistle. Somehow he had fought the temptations of the many bottle stores littered around Fife Avenue shops.

“Did you wait long?” he asked.

“I have been touring the shops up and down making friends of the security personnel,” she replied. “The gentlemen who asked for my telephone numbers I gave them yours so be kind and considerate when you answer them.”

“I was showing a would-be buyer a new set of townhouses on the market now,” he had replied. “I was to the east of Enterprise Road at a location where they are selling about 24 townhouses.”

“We are headed along Mazowe Road,” she had observed.

“I know. We will be in Bindura in thirty minutes time,” he had replied.

“You could have said so. I need a head cover and a cloth around my waist,” she had suggested. “That is a mark of respect for most of us from southern Africa. Judging by the similarities in language across from Tanzania down to Cape Town, we do have something in common.”

“We will stop at any flea market along the way.”

He stopped the vehicle fifteen kilometres from the city. He switched places with her putting ‘L’ plates. It took her fifty minutes to be within the mining zone of Bindura punctuated in two by main mineral giants, Bindura Nickel Corporation and Freda Rebecca. She stopped by the Mount Darwin road turn off. They changed places. He removed the learner plates.

“Drive through the sleepy town.”

Mining towns had a funny economy. Mine workers had no accommodation problems. There was a slump in production the number of workers employed had nosedived while mining houses had remained stagnant. Non mine workers were the ones squeezing into tight accommodation systems with little private houses.

“Okiddo.”

“There is no way we can go in empty handed,” she had replied.

He stopped in the town to let her shop. He had shown her to his parents and family members.

“I heard so much about you”, his father had shaken her hand. “He said he was bringing in Miss Glen Norah.”

“Ndate please.”

Trevor was embarrassed. He was afraid that his parents’ exuberance in meeting Naomi would be frostily met. You never knew with this girl and her thousand moods.

“Niyitumezi ndate, mumumela,” she had said. “Zikomo kwambili for the gracious welcome. I was the only one who didn’t know I was royalty.”

“You are a fine girl,” his mother had said. “I was used to seeing your photographs. I recognised you when the nose of his vehicle stranded our drive way. You are such a wonderful child.”

“I am pleased to know you,” she had said shyly.

Dimples showed on her cheeks. She was alternating on being happy and shy.

“Trevor,” his father had said. “I was afraid of the calabash you like so much.”

“Father, and you also like the calabash”, his mother had corrected. “You always sit there on the lawn under the orange tree when it is hot sharing it with your friends.”

“But I married you a good woman for over forty years now. I was worried about him and the women in Harare. Niyitumezi Nyambe akalemwa for bringing this nandila home with Trevor. You have filled our old hearts with mwangala. I always prayed for a day when my son and daughter-in-law would be in a canoe moving across the Zambezi River fleeing the rising floods. Now, Harare and your new careers were having me worried.”

“We speak Lozi,” his mother had said to Naomi. “Especially when father is very happy.”

“I know some words,” she had replied. “I have been learning.”

“He has called you both beautiful, God given and a joy. You should not disappoint when you receive elderly blessing my daughter,” his mother had said. “That is chiso, madalitso for you when elderly folk welcome you home as if you were a bride. What more of when we removed the veil?”

“Thank you njemakati,” she replied.

“Come daughter, let’s leave the men to their talk”, the elder woman offered Naomi.

If Naomi had Caucasian skin she would have blushed. They had lunch, brown rice with beef bones, cooked green and fresh garden peas and sour milk to wash down.

“This is mutozi my children. You made us happy. I dreamt being filled with mwangala two nights ago,” his mother had said.

“We have come of age mother,” Trevor said.

“What will it be?” asked the elder man.

“Customary marriage and a wedding afterwards,” he had replied.

“Is my presence required?” he asked.

“Yes father for both occasions,” Trevor replied.

“I have my elder and two younger brothers. You should either take one each or their eldest children to the customary bridal price. If my presence is required, I will require that meal you once bought me. Fish and chips, salad and that Coke which was so cold water collected outside the tin foil. It is good when you think with your head not your manhood or your frothy beer.”

“Zikomo kwambili abambo.”

“Bwanji. Now apprise us of the arrangements."

Later towards four thirty in the evening Trevor said his good byes on behalf of Naomi.

“I will definitely be out of the customary bridal price. I can be represented by your elder brother or your cousins.”

“Not a word yet to her, I am still making arrangements,” he had replied.

They said their good byes.Naomi came into the passenger’s seat and closed the door. She removed her head gear and cloth around her waist folding them together. She called his mother and handed the cloth to her.

“When you sweep, you need something good to prevent those clothes from tearing.”

The elder woman did a leg dance with her hands flaying. She ululated swinging left and right. Trevor and his father watched.

“Thank you my daughter.”

“My pleasure ma’am,” Naomi said. She turned to the elder man “Mumumela ndate”.

“Mumumela ima.”

“Ndapita ndate, ima”, Trevor said. He opened the vehicle door.

© Copyright tmagorimbo 2014