HoneyCrisp 6. Envy

He looked like his face had been chewed and spit by a polar bear with blunt teeth. Then his face had gone through a dry clean process. His skin was second hand shrink wrapped around him. Call him any other name. He came towering at six feet ten inches tall built like an ox. Maybe he should have been made into an Inca warrior. He weighed in at around a hundred and twenty kilograms. Most of these were muscles not loose flesh that would be hanging around like pigment dies that had refused to oxidize. He fitted into a bucket seat from whence he drove a forty-two wheeler road train through bush, dust, dirt and desert country. He didn’t need a brush for his hair. Air blasting against the vehicle brushed his hair.

6. Envy

The burial was to be held at Glen Forest cemetery. The funeral was held in Windsor Park, Ruwa. Ruwa sits near the major highway between Harare and Mutare. Originally, Ruwa was a small habitation with its own economy. It used to be a small stop over with a few shops and residences somewhere. Imagine someone saying they live in Ruwa, where? Oh, Third Street in Ruwa. Third Street? You mean a proper house in Third Street? Not anymore, suburbs were scattered all over like a spider’s web with Ruwa as the centre of authority.

Then when the metropolitan district of Harare started out growing its boundaries, many of Harare’s residents started taking up properties in Ruwa. It helped establish it as a small chic town with its own identity. The flipside was it was now a dormitory of Harare. Glen Forest is to the extreme end, north-west of the city of Harare. Going there bisects the city’s metropolitan boundaries. To avoid traffic jams, the entourage would have to use the major roads in the outer skirts of the city within the residential suburbs. A circular route, Glenara Avenue was okay. At times it could be congested by trucks from all over the south, east, south-east heading away from Harare city proper.

Glen Forest is way closer to Hatcliffe than Domboshawa. Domboshawa was clad with its mystical rocks, steamy mountains, peri-urban rural culture, small scale farming and mostly black arts superstitions. The mountains had greater fame than the residential area itself. They formed a buttress on one side. Within their foothills springs came out to provide irrigation to countless hard working farmers. Glen Forest is an exclusive cemetery for the affluent. There you lay down your relatives with dignity. One of Keisha’s close friend and confidante, Ayanda had lost her father’s younger brother to thyroid cancer.

Keisha and Ayanda went a long way backwards in their friendship and entrepreneurship connections. They had tucked their overloaded satchels together in different classes. It had been the same time from form four to upper sixth at the same school. Though Ayanda had been a clique ahead of Keisha mentality wise, she did not let that separate them. Keisha had had to struggle for entry into Lower Sixth. Ayanda was one of the first students into the Sciences section. Keisha had not liked the degree pathway she was given opting for polytechnic instead. She had shared Ayanda's sorrow at failing to qualify for the medical sciences. Her first option had been medicine proper. The second had been pharmacy or laboratory sciences. Ayanda had four points in Mathematics, a single point each in Chemistry and Physics. Keisha had encouraged Ayanda to pursue her Mathematics dream which is where she was now. She had become renowned for teaching Lower and Upper Sixth Mathematics before becoming a college lecturer. They had communicated as school mates, then as adults in different spheres of the economy.

“How are you moving to Glen Forest tomorrow?” Keisha had asked.

It was around ten thirty in the evening. She was leaving the homestead in Ruwa. The funeral was in progress. The body lay in state in the lounge. The home was on about five hundred square metres. In normal circumstances, the place was okay. Within the perimeter sat a four bed house with double lock up carport, two roomed cottage and paved drive way. With the funeral the outside was full of people while both sides of the road was clogged with different makes of vehicles.

The house was lit up like a chestnut tree at Christmas in a northern hemisphere council park so mourners could see. Lights dotted the trees and any poles that were there. The deceased was surrounded by their loved ones and those consoling the mourners. Song and dances to songs of religious themes was the in thing. The church the deceased represented and others from the community were not left out. Short speeches, scripture reading and sermons were alternating with hymns, song and dances.

Someone was playing some big drums. One person had to hold them against falling off their make shift steel enclosure. Another one played them with their palms. It was a practiced rythmatic choreography of hands, palms and feet. They produced a great sweet booming sound to compliment the singing. They were made from hollowed logs. Cattle hide was tightened over the gaping hole on one side. The other was split by chisels into a four 'legged' format with the idea that they stand on their own.

Their height varied, some were less than a metre to above a metre tall. Anything above that the drums would be played by companies of giants. The other hole was left vacant for sound purposes. Keisha had been with her two younger sisters to pay their respects to the family. Keisha had brought Ayanda home many times including overnight during weekends or the school holidays. She in turn had featured well in the opposite direction.

”Keisha, do not to worry about driving to Harare’s north west. You just drive here if you can. There is a 64-passenger Scania Marcopolo bus available as part of the funeral plan. Why do you bother driving including negotiating the traffic jams? Imagine if all the would-be 64 passengers were driving behind the hearse. What a continuous train we would create. People love to overtake. With our roads pot marked with abrasions and missing tar, that is suicide. Imagine the would-be accidents that could be created! It’s just that our political thinking is still backwards. We rush to re-elect the same inept house of representatives members. Soon after elections, if they are not hibernating or hallucinating, they are busy looking at kickbacks for deals done. Public transport should be state run, so efficient you would need a reason to drive your own vehicle. That way parking will be prime like in other countries. It reduces air, sound and ground pollution.

"I was in Krakow, Poland briefly for a workshop on teaching science to the developing countries. It was just ten working days. We were taken on tours of schools, colleges, factories and shopping precincts. Woman, we don’t compete with our potholes and tarmac that looks like they were last resurfaced when Idi Amin was Uganda’s president. They only get partially resurfaced and marked if the state president is going to visit your area or a foreign one for that matter. Despite the fact that Poland has a sad past history of being overshadowed, invaded, pulverized by both Nazi Germany and the Red Army under Stalin, then iron fist rule by the Polish Communist Party, it seems to have recovered well post-communist era. If we both drive we will clog the roads."

"Poland, I remember! I remember reading history, the Second World War. There was a black and white photograph of a Nazi panzer and commander seeing through an open hatch while a Polish farmer was ploughing with a horse. Then there was Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Movement. They made Poland the first Soviet bloc country to hold elections. Thereafter the Berlin Wall fell. We still have our sadist politicians still holding on to communist-maxist-Leninist-Stalinist-socialist theories that have been dumped through the ratchet like rabid dogs by most countries including China. Pope John Paul came from Poland too, isn't it? The first Polish pope?"

"Exactly and the infamous Warsaw ghettos for the dying Jews made so by Nazi administration. Let’s jump on board. Besides that, there will be more financially blessed relatives with 7-seaters or other bigger more modern vehicles like the Toyota Hiluxes, Land Cruisers, and Land/Range Rovers etc. going there. The church has a 32-seat bus. I don't think all of their members will fill it. The worst is being dropped in the city which is always okay. You get a ride on a kombi or you enjoy window shopping without looking at the price tags lest you get a heart attack.”

“I didn’t know you also take public transport. Had the government funded public transport as well as they do overseas, there wouldn’t be so many cars on the road,” Keisha had replied. “I hardly take public transport these days. I always have someone giving me their vehicle from a maternal uncle to my parents. People think I buy and sell second hand vehicles when there are other people's. I will be having loads of materials that I want arriving in one piece. I do not like mixing with so many people in public transport. Besides some conductors and their fellow touts take it upon themselves to describe in specific details, in public, ladies’ dressing if it is not to their liking. Embarrassing.”

There wouldn’t be the constant shortage of fuel with long queues appearing again. The advantages of a Marxist Leninist socialist economy was every time one saw a queue, it meant basics were in short supply. The temptation was to join a queue before ascertaining what it was. Even body viewing had queues!

“I don’t make it a habit. Public transport reminds you why it is necessary to have a social net to fall back on when things turn sour,” Ayanda said going behind where Keisha stood. She started picking things off her friend’s hair. “Those conductors and some passengers have uncouth language. I was well groomed. Passengers have a propensity of calling me a nose brigade. It is not my fault that I assimilated well into English culture.”

“That is very true especially if you went to a high stepping school and the others did not. We seem to have a barrier which is more of inferiority complex. Maybe we should learn to adjust to circumstances. Going rural for a few days matches our lives with reality or having church mates that come from the sandy high densities makes us see the other side of the fence. If you invite the people from the high densities home especially for church services or family socials and vice versa you learn a lot. It makes good adjustments too.”

“How is business?” Ayanda asked. “I heard some lady describing you, Karla, Keandra and your interior décor business when we were visiting the departed uncle at Parirenyatwa Hospital ward D. I almost said that is my confident you are talking of.”

Keisha liked her friend’s sincerity and compassion for other people.

“It’s going up and down. I keep busy. I stay alive at least. Business seems to be okay. I have been thinking of crossing the Limpopo to South Africa to join our constituencies and province there. The number of Zimbabweans quartered in the diaspora can create a city bigger than Harare on their own. Their finances can wipe out the national debt. A lot of ex-friends, ex-s, social contacts, church folk and customers have moved there. My heart keeps saying not yet. I am in a quandary as to the future. Time will tell.”

“How about your dating calendar?”

“I wish I could give that up like a nose job,” Keisha replied. “I wish I could just say I will forever remain a spinster. Then someone smiles and I start the process of hurting myself and them all over again. There is a country song that says something like you are heartbroken. You see someone there, you smile and chat. It starts all over again. The end result is you are on a park bench in snowy weather. You will be looking through other people at nothing. Alone and lonely! You dread those hours. When he is free enough to think of you, maybe after having marched himself to someone else's digs to fulfill their pangs against loneliness.”

“Life is very unfair most of the time,” Ayanda had breathed out. “You marry and get ditched. You don’t marry and hope the ones that ditches will marry you without you knowing you will get dumped down the line. But our God is a God of second chances.”

“There is the problem of selection. Even a roaring lion pride going for a kill has to select and separate the weak upon which they draw their successes. At times a lion pride or a hyena colony actually separate a healthy animal which they devour. At times predators take down and consume the mother of young animals which means some animals have to starve to death. It's an unfortunate unfair system of life that happens even to humans. You don’t just marry any two-penny two boy that comes around. However as we age in spinsterhood, you realize most of them that date you are hiding another woman under their armpits. I don't blame the cheating men. Women do the same, they go out with three guys without choosing anyone to be special, just time wasting. I think we should have adapted the process of arranged marriages. Straight from high school into the marital canal.”

"The problem with arranged marriages is who is arranging them? If it's the parents what then with the sceptre of divorces? To whose advantage again? Some parents can be very selfish trying to marry off their daughters to the financially or materially empowered. With time things change."

"Just musing aloud."

“Don’t stoop low to find a father for an illegitimate child. God is there. He creates equal chances. What we need is the grace and intelligence or wisdom to know when the timing is right. Maybe, these men we date are after our weak spots. You just have to know the weak spots and keep them plugged.”

“Thanks for the encouragement. Without hope we will not be a people. Hope is what pushes us beyond frontiers while pride causes us to come crushing down.”

“Neither should you make yourself a sugar mummy. It is not worthy it to have a younger man you support for romantic purposes. They end up in heart wrenching heart breaks.”

“Desperate singles or divorcees of Harare I guess,” Keisha had said sullenly. “I will have to be the organizing secretary of the club.”

“Keisha there are two issues to dating. You can end up dating men younger, older or the same age like I and Israel did. We were barely adults before we were expecting parents. We did not wait for the dowry to be paid or to sign the register. Now check the results of those study sessions in the varsity dorms which concluded with intimacy. We went in running for romance or call it kiss, touch and sex. Now we are so separate and far apart there is no mending.”

“Good point. I have tried all three without any selection on my part. I have been surprised there are men out there older than me who have not yet decided to marry. They are letting the whole clan and us down. Besides some of them are hanging on a tender economic line. They can hardly survive on their own worse with a family.”

“There is HIV/AIDS so trend with caution. There are male hyenas, pack lions and wild dogs out there for one night stand after another in different localities. You could get rabies.”

“Girl! ____ thanks for the advice.”

She wondered what was better. For the sake of love and family, should a professional lady invite a stay in lover either younger or older who was just a man of the house without marital attachments? Should one continue dating hoping for the phone to ring? Should one continue hoping every time a date put their hand in their pocket the ring will pop up in surprise? Was it worth it to be a single mother for the chance to have loved and lost?

Most of the ladies looked like they were from a team. Both Ayanda and Keisha wore black dresses. It was the day of Team Black! Ayanda’s was a crew neck cut while Keisha’s was a V-neck. Ayanda had a black poncho to cover her sleeveless dress while Keisha’s covered her armpit. Keisha had wrapped a broad cloth around her waist as was as customary like an Indian woman wearing a sari.

“How is Israel?”

“He finally moved out. The last I heard a year ago, he was rocking the nightclubs in Johannesburg,” Ayanda had replied. “I feel sorry for the unmarried ladies he takes home or who take him home. He is a con artist at most. He at times, once in some months sends food parcels for the children.”

“So where are you staying these days?”

“I stay at dad’s bedsitter flat in Norton Manor with my two kids. That way I avoid the family horde that remains in Cranborne,” Ayanda had replied.

“I do not want to tangle with my two brothers who are married and living there. There is something about us women, the brothers' wives and the sisters don't see eye to eye as if completing for the same love portions. You end up criticizing the sisters-in-law's cooking when in turn you can't cook certain foods. To avoid that I stay out as far as possible. As a result we have a good relationship. How is business?”

“We don’t want any uncles there. If they want to stay there they should provide dowry at least.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Business is painful. How are your Belvedere Technical Teacher’s College bevies of student teachers?”

“BTTC is into many spheres now more than just producing science, computer and Mathematics teachers. They are other courses on offer now, almost a third are other fields like Hotel Catering & Management. I still enjoy teaching Mathematics, Physics and General Science,” Ayanda had replied. “It pays my bill even though the state pays a pittance. What the state forks out in a salary is less than what a country like Hong Kong, Malaysia or Qatar pay out pension payment to a former civil servant. I survive by teaching private lessons.”

She had done a Bachelor of Science majoring in Mathematics with Physics and Chemistry as minor subjects. She and Israel had been an item as they concluded their college education. Israel was winning accolades as a fluent speaker. He had majored in a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree. They were both at Mount Pleasant campus of the University of Zimbabwe.

Their romantic attachment had caused both families to warn against these two flunking their studies. Was it that they were born the same year five months apart with Ayanda being older which had caused the collapse of their union? She had graduated with a lower first class Bachelor of Science in Mathematics three months before she graduated as a mother to Israel’s first child. She had been capped while wearing a wide floral dress to hide her pregnancy. It was common knowledge she was staying with Israel at his parental residence in Hatcliffe for the past three months. After that she had taught for two years in Norton proper. The advantages of their programs were they were snapped up by the civil service though its pay was below par. She went for further education doing a two Masters’ program at the same university.

Ayanda had graduated both from the university and a few months later Belvedere Maternity Hospital as a mother of a second baby. At the rate she was writing degree examinations while nursing a growing belly, she would soon draw thesis students if she had gone for a doctorate. They were the same age. Ayanda had two kids, a boy and a girl.

They looked almost the same height and weight. Ayanda was the same skin tone, lighter complexion, and light brown to fair. Ayanda was more attractive than Keisha. She had a smaller hip and bust signature to Keisha's. They had attended the same school with Ayanda from the fourth year in high school to the sixth year at Arundel Girls High. Both had been top of the range students. They were good on discipline.

“Ayanda, you and Israel had a match made in heaven. Where did it go wrong? I always wonder about that.”

“Maturity,” she had suggested. “Law made Israel make a lot of friends in different low to high places. He defended and brushed shoulders with the select few people with the finances to provide him with the whole year's living. He realized he had committed too early. They showed him those of his age who were not yet fathers or married. There is a pull to the unmarried to own a flat, a BMW 7-series, a shop or two and be an eligible someone. He wanted to play with the boys. His income ended up in smoke chasing those home boys and the women attached to them. Finances were a horror in our house. His family couldn't help either. He wasn't lending them an ear. I think it was a problem of marrying early.”

“You were mature by the time you completed college. Both of you were above twenty-one. However ladies mature faster than men in most cases. A twenty-one year old lady is more mature than her male counterpart in most respects. If a man drinks like Israel was doing, they tend to meet their single age mates and compare issues of life. The grass looks greener on the other side while the opposite is also true.”

“Maybe the adage that the men mature slower than women may be true. At twenty-two I was a graduate and a mother. At the same age he was a father. I guess his drinking mates were all single. He obviously met what he thought were their better dates forgetting a wife is more loyal than a one night stand. People fight over dates that are cheating them than defending those that are decent.”

“He made a very bad choice of company.”

“Call it Bad Boys III.”

“There is nothing as bad as a mother of two demanding toddlers to discover that the man of the house has made a secretary in a hardware company pregnant. Worse was discovering the whoring, the hit and run affairs. The breaking news part was when he stole from the law firm. He eluded the police going to Johannesburg. He ditched us, his family. They sold everything they could lay hands on. Whatever had both our names on it was sold to recover stolen funds. I went back to being both a tenant and a pedestrian. I understand he is back in law, at a lower level in South Africa. He claims his cases is political manipulation and settling of scores.”

Having said their farewells, the three sisters exited the Ruwa residence to go back home.

© Copyright tmagorimbo July 2017