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She is sitting on a rock in the middle of the bush, her head bent down, forehead touching her pregnant stomach. She is crying in hysterics. This is our 19-year old niece Shamiso, the one whose bride price was paid by Philemon six weeks ago. We are on our way to deliver Shamiso to Philemon’s people, in Bocha, way past Buhera going south east.

Although Philemon had broken the traditional rule and made Shamiso pregnant when he lived with her in Harare, he made amends by coming to pay lobola, the bride price, in our village. It was US$1 000 as a start. Given the hard times and the fact that he does not earn much selling airtime, windscreens and other gadgets in Harare, this was a pretty good effort. We promised his family that we would not deliver their bride in November, the sacred month of the goat, because no ceremonies are allowed in this month.

Doing a wedding ritual or any other ceremony would anger the ancestors because this is the month we prepare for the coming of the rainy season.

November is gone and we are well prepared for our journey to Bocha. With me are Shamiso, my cousin Piri as usual and Mainini Spiwe, Shamiso’s mother’s niece. Shamiso is seven months pregnant. She is 19 but she looks 16 because she is small. Everyone says she is very pretty, unusually light skinned with brown eyes, perhaps due to some recessive throwback of European blood in pre colonial days.  Who knows?

Shamiso will stay in Philemon’s village for a whole month or at least till after Christmas because the baby is due in February. Then we will do masungiro, the feast of the goat where the pregnant woman comes back to give birth in her maiden village. That is the custom.

We have everything required to accompany the bride. One basket or tswanda has ground millet. It is covered with a plate and tied around with a cloth so the millet flower does not spill. The other tswanda has maize meal, covered the same way as the millet one. We have a live big fat chicken. When we get there, we will kill this fat chicken and cook it for Philemon’s family along with the millet and maize meal sadza.

We will show them how well we can cook traditional food as proof that Shamiso will do the same. The fine hand ground millet will also show that Shamiso can grow millet when the rain comes, pull the weeds around it, cut it when it’s all ripe and red, dry it,  pound it with mortar and pestle, remove the husks, roast it then finally grind it, kukuya paguyo. We know Shamiso can do all that because she comes from a tradition of women hard workers.  After all, her totem is Chihera, the Eland totem. We make good wives.

Before this journey, Shamiso was excited, showing us photos of Philemon’s village   sent by Philemon through ‘WhatsApp’ on the phone.  There was Mbuya Chiseko, Philemon’s grandmother standing in front of her big kitchen hut, Mbuya Chiseko with her cattle and goats, Mbuya Chiseko cooking sadza, fetching water, feeding the chickens and sometimes talking to her neighbours or feeding one of Philemon’s orphaned nieces. Ever since they met, Philemon told Shamiso that his village was well established.  Since Philemon’s mother’s death 10 years ago, Mbuya Chiseko had longed for a companion, a wife or muroora to help her look after the family. Finally, Philemon had found the new muroora, maiguru, big mother.

As Mbuya Chiseko gets older, Shamiso was going to take over the chores and in a few years, she would run the whole homestead, cattle, fields, goats, chickens and everything. What woman would not want to get married and manage a home with such livestock wealth?  There was no reason for Shamiso not to be happy in Philemon’s village. Although this area is known for droughts and the donors come every year to feed people, Philemon’s family did not know the word hunger.

We are parked just off the road in a jungle full of mazhanje, that round yellow fruit with yellow juice and big seeds. This year the trees are literally burdened with mazhanje. In Harare they sell them from small trucks by the side of the road. But here, on this road to Bocha, this is mazhanje kingdom. Piri and Mainini Jennifer are busy collecting some mazhanje while Shamiso and I relax and enjoy the juicy wild fruit.

In between eating mazhanje, Shamiso suddenly just starts crying.  I look at her and ask what the matter was. She shrugs like a little girl. “Ah, unopenga here? What is the matter with you? You do not just start crying like that?” I ask. She heaves and pauses, “Handisikuda kuenda ku Bocha.” I do not want to go to Bocha, she blurts that out. Then she looks at  me with  red tearful eyes and says, “Tete, would you go to Bocha to live with people you have never met before? Why am I going there and not to Harare where my husband is? Why?”

“You have to accept change,” I tell her calmly and pat her on the shoulder.
“What kind of change is that when you are not taking me to my husband? What if I get ill over there?”
I console her, saying we cannot all live in the same place all the time. Life has various stages. Shamiso says she hates this stage of life and she does not like change. I look at this frightened 19-year old crying like a baby. She is scared of marriage, motherhood and the movement from her village to the other. I tell her that the fear of change is part of life.  Then she asks me if I have even been through the hardship of change.
I recall the years when we were growing up before independence and how we feared the change of ever leaving the village and going to boarding school, 40 kilometers away.  Over there, we knew that all new students were forced to go through rigorous bullying by the older students.

The bullies would make you jump over a stick, kutomuka, while singing songs of mockery to break you into boarding school life.  Not only that, the missionaries would expect you to speak in English all the time even though you had never been anywhere close to a white person.

That is life. It throws at you new challenges that you have to face.
It is unlikely that Shamiso will one day leave her husband’s village, study, get a job and rise to senior management. But who says change is only about jobs, people and management only?  In life everyone faces changes in situations of falling in and out of love, marriage, giving birth, divorce, illness, death, happiness, wealth, loss and many other cycles of life. There can be positive and negative changes. But changes all the same, requiring various mechanisms, beliefs, practices, attitudes, perceptions and wisdom to cope with it. Change is the only constant in life.  We have no choice but to embrace it positively and work with what is there. Toshanda nezviripo.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and works as a development consultant.