HoneyCrisp 4. Pink Lady

Mercedes has released a new vehicle brand just like the Brabus. Maybe it’s a new tuned model. I heard motoring pundits saying ‘Mercedes OMG’ [Oh My Goodness]

4. Pink lady

“Excuse me madam. Are you a youth with this ministry?”

That had been an impromptu question combined with an inquiry. Imagine standing by a tent peg. Then one is given a question. She and her compatriots were lost in communing with the Great Maker of mankind. It was mind, body and soul lost to the soft melodious scintillating sound of deep worship music. To worship or pray at times did not require words. Music is like a pain killer. It penetrates deep into the throbbing recesses of the wound/injury. Music is therapeutic.

It is a soothing medicine that pampers and permeates the soul. It awakens the senses to relax, shutting out the positive, stressful, pressurized and conscious world. Music is for meditation, therapy and hypnosis. It is a not just a song. Music is a jumble of words in poetic form. Added to it is the noise of instruments. The effects are far reaching.

Just being silent, lost in action or meditating was enough. It was a private session between a createe and their master Creator. Music has the ability to shut out the rest of the world. It leaves only it's victim caught in its spider’s web. That is why people listening to music were prone to outbursts of joy, tears or nodding their heads and stomping of feet as if a colony of black warrior ants had entered their private quarters.

She was lost in a world where her imaginations were real, her hopes were reached and her aspirations were done deals. Her eyes were closed, her thought patterns frozen, beholding only the meaning of the words she was singing. She was lost to the rest of the known world. She was in her own bubble.

She came to in a matter of seconds opening her eyes. Grey scale eye applications made her eyelids appear like they were opening half way. It was like someone opening window shutters to peer at the outside world. Her long flowery skirts swished and swashed. She had been swinging left and right in soft dance rhythm. Her hands had been raised high, elbows twisted to the limit as she worshipped. Had she been day dreaming? Probably. Someone was singing Break Every Chain by Jesus Culture. She had been singing along meaning every word that she sang. The throng of worshippers were moving in union to the beat and soft dances. She might as well have been dancing with the angels.

“Pardon?” she responded. “Sorry I was spiritually out of this world.”

"Are you with this ministry ma’am?"

The guy standing next to her wore a deep blue two piece suit. It consisted of trousers and a four button jacket. Whosoever had measured it had cut it a little bit too close. He was filling it out. He had a collared white shirt in the interior with a checked tie. The tie had several strips of colour. They alternated matching and contrasting. The shoes were honey brown. They were pointed as if for kicking errant adults in the marsh! He was very tall and strong or able bodied looking. Why was it that when someone that did not like a jacket and tie dressed up in the set, it showed?

“The ministry” she raised her eyebrows.

“I asked if you are a youth with this ministry,” he had responded anxiously.

He seemed concerned on her, almost apologetic that he had disturbed her séance or trance with the spiritual beings. Maybe angels assigned to her with her prayer answers were retreating.

“Yes there are different ministries here. I am part of one of them.”

“I am called Gerald ______,” he had said with relief in his voice.

“Keisha. May I be of assistance in any way?”

"I am a visitor."

"Welcome. Come this way"

While she started chatting him, a child brought her several clipped papers on a clipboard.

"You seem to be very busy indeed," he suggested.

"Just part of the organizers," she replied apologetically. She hugged the child with one hand while she read the papers with another before dismissing the child. She felt humbled.

"Sorry for the inconvenience."

"Do not sweat. Let me show you to the right people so I don't walk over other people's toes," she had replied. "Come this way sir."

A few minutes later she had handed him over to a male usher. She attended to another issue as an organizer. He was ceremoniously led to a plastic stacking chair. The time keeper did not take prisoners in order to fit every slotted item on the program. Good time keeping meant things moved well within the programs. Rentals of space was by the hour. Whether you had finished or not did not matter to the property owners. They just shut shop or blacklisted you.

"Sir, to the far left, which is to the south, near that yellow banner are our portable rest rooms for men. Near them are portable water dispensers for washing of hands. There are liquid soap dispensers near the taps. At the tent pegs almost, at various locations are located water dispensers for drinking purposes should you like a sip of water. Use the disposable cups and throw litter in the bins provided. Anything else you might need?" The usher had asked.

"Thank you my sister."

He did not ask if he could use the disposal cups in place of the urinary. That required someone familiar with his cracks to understand the humour. You don’t start joking with someone without first checking their humour meter. Some people were stressed up. They didn’t appreciate humour. Christians were also divided about jokes.

"Ushers are wearing yellow scarfs. Do not hesitate to ask if you have a question. Other elements of the ministry are wearing different scarfs with ministry labels should you have a query. Thank you for coming, please feel at home."

"And this visitor card?"

"When you have filled in your details, just hold it up. An usher nearest will collect it. At the end of the service we ask all visitors to follow one of our pastors for formal greetings."

"Sorry to bother. Can I have a copy of the program?"

"Certainly sir."

She met him again, during lunch break. Her scarf was visibly blue. People were queued up. She had given her place to those elder than her several times. She rejoined the queue like what most of her youths were doing giving spaces to the titled, visitors and the aged. Early in the day, ushers had missed his entry. He had come close to the tent opening following a line of parked vehicles. Female youths these days favoured high heels. The grounds were not very friendly to these. The lawn was sagging under their pointed feet. It was very wet in the morning. Morning dew and sprinklers had done night duty on it. The flowers and shrubbery had shaken off the dew and water droplets by now. They were vivid in different colours and textures. They were drawing people towards them for photo opportunities.

“I heard lunch is a fund raiser?” he asked.

“It is just the usual. We receive pledges from people. We make lunch. We sell everything to raise funds for several projects,” she had replied. "Running the church and hosting activities like this requires funds. We don’t need to appeal to the same pockets that have been helping us."

"If I want to pledge?"

"You can ask any usher. They will assist you with the details."

"I thought you were an usher too, a senior one. That was my idea when I approached you."

"Praise section rather."

That was the first time she knew she had been inducted into the praise and worship team. Where had the angelic voice come from seeing as she was singing in a voice that disturbed hibernating animals? The catering team had a steady number of volunteers who were working properly. They did not keep standing in their queue. The queue was moving a step at a time. There was an assortment of foods for sale. They included light and medium lunches, drinks, deserts and non-food items like balloons and candy for the little heads.

“The church service was great. What a sermon? Is he one of your pastors?” he queried.

“Thank God for that. Yes, from another assembly,” she had replied.

Keisha wondered how someone could teach on two verses for almost an hour without repeating what they had said before quoting other verses or paraphrasing them off head. When asked to address a home gathering or a contingent of youths, she referred to her notes cancelling out what she had said lest she repeated it. Some people were born orators who did not need notes. It was all in their head. The notes they needed was to check on time and if they were still on point.

Some people had this gift of approaching the platform without even a notepad rambling verses from somewhere within their heads quoting them correctly too. Oratory was a gift given to people like politicians as well only that these combined it with the gift of lying, threatening and cajoling their constituencies. Some humorists were in the oratory category. Where did their free lines come from?

“Have you been in this particular church for a long time?” he had asked.

“Fourteen years. We have four different churches to host this conference.”

“Wow, you have seen youths graduate to married family people. Amazing! You have seen former Sunday School pupils going to college.”

“Yeah,” she had replied. “Something like that.”

She didn't say yet she had remained in the youth ranks. Her fellow youths were some mothers of junior school children. She at times too care of these while the parents were busy elsewhere. He was getting nosy and noisy. She preferred the sound of insects and birds at certain times.

“Can I buy you lunch?” Gerald had asked as if reading her complaining mind. Were they playing mind games like Soviet era chess players facing off?

“Someone bought that for me, both the meal, sweets, yogurt and the drink to wash down with.”

She showed her meal and drink tickets. Conferences were dating platforms for youths to meet new and exciting people. They were not meant for strangers to date church folk. Maybe she was reading guerilla signs the wrong way. She was shrieking at trail signs that may be harmless. A centipede trail passing by a forest pathway could look like there had been a snake.

“I take it you are still in the youths ranks?”

“Yes, our church recognizes youths up to the age of 40 even when you are married. Some African political parties have youth leaders who are retired from different employment fields aged above 65-years.”

“Really? That would qualify me as a youth too,” he summed up. “What is your maiden name?”

What a tact way of asking if she was married! She had read sign language very well. That was a crushing point in male intelligentsia. Wherever there were church gatherings of any sort, she knew inquisitive males were not to be ruled out. All she did was listen if her heart was fluttering. When the buffaloes gathered by the watering holes, rivers or lakes, so did the lions and hyenas. Even the jackals and the wild cats came with their calling cards. That is why some churches gave time limits for strangers to come in, start to attend and then want to marry. It was serving a probation period for falling in love to prove allegiances.

“I could do with a prayerful female youth partner. I mean prayer partner,” he had suggested.

“I have many suggestions of candidates to give however you need not have a female for a prayer partner. Besides you have to be well known to be entrusted with such. We do not entrust our young and innocent girls to hyenas."

“Not anyone I haven’t talked to,” he had replied. “A prayer partner over the phone, maybe to send messages saying, hey wake up and praise the Lord.”

"Several married senior men can fit in that bracket."

Later.

They had a full complement of lunch. It was followed by heat extinguishers, drinks in different arrays and prices. There was to be the next series of workshops. He joined her in the singles youth workshop which lasted an hour. The lecture after a few questions and answer session was an eye opener. He asked that she see him off. She obliged. She saw him off to a grey sedan.

“Is there another service after this workshop?”

“Yes for business people and those who are doing their own thing seeing as it is there are more unemployed people than formally employed. Business basics do not care you are a Christian or Jew. You either follow protocol or you don't.”

“Sorry I have commitments I would have appreciated that one. I would have learnt a lot. I always learn a lot from business and management workshops. You may think yourself an expert yet learn a point or two.”

He gave her his business card. He was into the construction industry. He specialized in roadways, gate posts, pavements, precast walls and sliding electric decorative gates. His company was into a plethora of activities. Obviously to him, a work suit, safety shoe and hard hat were more palatable than a jacket and tie. No wonder why he appeared out of sorts with a suit. She guessed they should allow safety shoes in church in order to cater for the working community.

“I will see you Keisha. I look forward to lunch when you are free one time. Do you need a chaperone?”

That was a slap for being religiously conservative at the same time it was a pointed prying by a fork or hook into her personality. Did she bite at every invitation?

"I am an adult. I can make my own decisions. I never agreed to lunch. Good afternoon."

She had turned swish swashing away from his tightly parked vehicle.

“Gerald, why are you into tattoos?” Keisha had asked.

“Not much I hate the pain,” Gerald had replied.

“Where did you see these tattoos you are telling about?” she asked. “You have grown so crazy about tattoos all of a sudden. The way you describe them _____!”

They were walking the streets of Sam Levy Village in Borrowdale to the north east of the city. Private enterprise had created a beautiful shopping complex. It looked like a tourist resort. It was like creating a flower garden for bee swarms to descend on. Worker bees of both sexes descended on it day and night. They came to do assigned chores and duties. Gerald had driven all the way from his company project near corner Alpes and Harare Drive in Pomona.

“Your project you said Alpes, isn’t that close to Upper East Road?” she had asked earlier.

“Upper East is next to the university. Alpes borders the university to the north heading away from the city towards Hatcliffe extension.”

“I am still confused on the location. Maybe I need be looking at a map.”

There an office block with modern finishing was being constructed. For a man whose family company was into construction and renovation, he knew something about tattoos and body piercing. There was not even a dent on his ear or any drawing on his own body that she could see.

“It was on the arm of this oaf of a man. One could think he was a leftover of the Vikings. He is about a metre ninety-five something with a big body. He must have weighed in close to two hundred and thirty pounds. His body, height, age and wright index showed he was a link to Goliath of Damascus. The tattoos ________,” Garry was engrossed in description of tattoos.

"Gath as in Gath's Mine not Damascus of Syrian capital."

"Yes, Gath something."

"A white guy?"

"Yes. He was at his home in Sunridge in Mabelreign. We did a paving job. He was the sort of a guy who if he wore Rhodesian army regular uniform, and you met, you would start rattling out guerrilla intelligence without being asked."

"Like Hagar the Horrible?"

"Goliath in Caucasian form."

"The Rephaim descendant?"

“Exactly in those days when we ran away upon hearing the rat-tat of the Rhodesian Air Force K-car helicopter because of the guerilla insurgency.”

“Where you born when the guerilla war intensified?”

“I do not know.”

“Keith, for once be serious!”

“The sky in the background looked like a painter had used tinters. Original paint at times was bought in patches of three to four primary colours. From these tinters in various shades and mixtures created different colours. Some shades of the sky looked orange, mauve, maroon or opaque yellow contrasting with the rays of the sun sinking in its sheath. The summer heat would soon decompose into mildness then radiated towards coolness around 0200hrs. Then, a jacket, cap and socks were essential commodities for outdoors.”

“I am not into tattoos.” She had replied. “Fake nails, eye lashes or trimmed eyelashes would appear more appealing than showing off body art. Besides its very unscriptural to have tattoos and body art. I do not move around with my chest and arms bare for people to read Zodiac signs. To me that is not chic. I don’t understand how a lady can get a tattoo on their bum, above the areola or near the waist. It's a taboo.”

“Maybe done by a lady obviously yet you use male gynecologists when you are pregnant. They poke their fingers into the birth canal. Through the mouth of course if you are very religious.”

“Keith come back to the discussion at hand.”

“But it makes good art nevertheless. It’s an expression. Fake nails, eye lashes, mascara, lip gloss, black or other colour over your eyelids, bangles, neck laces, brooches are all appetizing artwork for the ladies.”

Garry certainly had command of modern lady cosmetic and costume culture. He understood it well. He read the signs like an expert.

"Not for me though."

“The Africans had body art. They had ochre paints drawn from crushed rock, roots and animal juices. When the settlers came in, we stood smart in our paintings. The settlers had the strength to call such people as us, savages. They used the Bible to quote and support."

"A lesson in colonialism from a former foreman in road construction," she muttered. "You never cease to amaze me. Are you sure you are not a political youth intelligence officer?"

"Today the opposite is true, you call savage art any expression of body art. The native Africans and some Polynesians/Brazilians too, decapitated their enemies. You called them murderers and cannibals. At least they didn't want good flesh to rot or waste away. Today the religious zealots all over the world do the same to anyone that converts people from their religion. You look the other side because of the trade surpluses.”

"Are we still talking tattoos?"

“Can I drop by your place after hours?”

He had asked suddenly changing the subject range. He was like an eagle caught in a rising thermal. Cruising hundreds of metres above the ground, the eagle was sighting the tale signs of prey using the same path like rodents. There were chances of catching something.

“I don't have a place of my own. I live with my parents. If you phone first, maybe we can sit by the veranda counting the mosquitoes. I am not an easy meat. I do not do illicit sex,” she had replied curtly.

“Are we so much into church only your hair is seen outside?”

“With every square kilometre of the city of Harare having a church, who wouldn’t?” she asked.

"It is an identification mark these days, church."

"Really?"

Where had she found the words? Had he said he had fire in his groin to quench? Maybe at times she was driving potential male suitors away by assumption or quick rebuke? Was there a vaccine for heartbreak? Whosoever would write a book on how to nail it on the first date would make millions of fans. They would play golf with the best investment managers in the world.

“Did I insinuate that?” He asked.

"Just the correct rules of engagement!"

"Noted."

She rolled her eyes. That was being caught in No Man’s Land. She was fighting an undeclared war. Call it a preemptive military strike against a perceived enemy. That was against the provisions of dating constitutional law.

“I heard and absorbed.”

“Point passed sir, take note. Even the local parson, I tell him that when he wants to visit. Just in case. He may get tempted to be in the news caught red handed with a girlfriend. A religious person is all but a human being with human weaknesses. That is why the Bible mentions temptation. The Oxford dictionary has different meanings for temptation and trails.”

“Some mothers do have them!” He mumbled under his breath.

“What?”

“Who was the leading female actress in the British hit comedy series, Some Mothers Do Have Them?”

“I just know it wasn’t you as leading male actor. Both are Caucasian or white. You and I are jet black in complexion,” she replied.

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“Do you drink?”

“I drink about 3 x 750-ml bottles of water a day when it is summer. I use more of bath water than a litre of drinking water when it is in winter. Are you answered?”

“Can you be serious?”

“What if it is either?”

“If need be, be sober. I don’t want scenes,” she had replied.

“I have some work to do. I will see you,” he had replied. "You do look like Michelle Dotrice."

"Thanks anyways."

She felt like he was brushing her off. However there were times when she needed release a date so she could recover lest she could fall into error like a rocket scientist mixing the wrong fuels.

Garry had so vividly described the tattoos that Keisha went about the afternoon thinking of what it must have been like looking at a Caucasian that looked like a cross between a Viking and an Amazonian. Two tattoos on both arms, one on the chest and another on the stomach.

She also had some home decorum to do near the shopping complex. He had telephoned her on the cue of the moment. She had been around. He had driven in.

© Copyright tmagorimbo July 2017