Sekai Nzenza

The retired policeman in the village next to ours has dementia, the disease that makes you lose your memory. He cannot remember a lot of what happened today or yesterday. MuBhunu is his name, which is a corruption to mean Boer. MuBhunu worked for many years in the Rhodesian police force and later in the Zimbabwe Republic Police before retiring and coming back home to enjoy his pension.
MuBhunu is not his real name but a nickname given to him by people around here because they said he looked like a powerful farmer of Dutch origin who lived near Enkeldoorn, the place we now call Chivhu.

They said MuBhunu behaved very much like the farmer in the way he referred to other people with names only used in the old colonial days.

During one of his rare village visits from Bulawayo, MuBhunu bought everyone beer and called a man much older than he was ‘‘boy”. Whenever he came across us, he pulled our ears gently but kindly, called us ‘‘pikininis’’ and gave us tickeys and half pennies. In those days, long before the liberation war, MuBhunu was feared and respected for his authority on many things.

His wife, Mai MuBhunu had five children, three boys and the twins, Chipo and Tsitsi. As children, we saw MuBhunu once or twice a year when he came to visit our family riding his black bicycle. He was a friend of my father.

I recall seeing them wearing suits, sitting under the mango tree discussing the affairs of the country. They drank spirits and Western beer only because they had passed Standard Six and were allowed to do so. It was the law in those days that Africans without the educational level of Standard Six should not drink bottled Western beer because alcohol would make them too wild and savage.

When drunk, we heard MuBhunu and my father singing a song called, “Pota neko tisangane nhai Nkomo, tinofira nyika yedu.” Go right round the mountain Nkomo. We shall meet there and fight for our country.

These days, MuBhunu is one of three very old people left in the villages next to ours. He should be around 88 or more. When the dementia first set in, MuBhunu wondered around the villages on his own talking to himself, even pausing and marching like a policeman the way he used to do when he was in Bulawayo.

Then one day he fell in the ditch down by the river and a herd boy found him before it got too dark. They carried him home in a wheel barrow. Since then, his eyesight has deteriorated and his wife keeps him inside the homestead with the gate locked, in case he wanders away again.

Last Saturday night, soon after my arrival here, I got a call from Mai MuBhunu, to ask if I had any sleeping tablets and pain killers by any chance. She wanted the pain killers for her backache, caused by helping MuBhunu move around to use the toilet, to wash, to dress or to lie down.  She is quite old herself, possibly almost  85.

The sleeping tablets were for MuBhunu so he can sleep without trying to get up on his own. He risked falling because his eyesight was almost gone and he was confused most times. I walked the five or so kilometres to their house with the paracetamol for the pain. MuBhunu did not recognise me or my cousin Piri. Here was the man who used to be so big, tall and scary, sitting there, looking skinny with sad confused eyes, calling us his wives.

Mai MuBhunu is the sole carer for MuBhunu. All the five children are no longer living in the village. The first son left boarding school at Mt St Mary’s in Hwedza during the liberation war. He crossed the border into Mozambique with the others and never returned.

They said he might have died during the bombings at Chimoio or Nyadzonia.
The other two sons went to study in America after independence and have since settled there. One boy in America sends money but the other one seems to have fallen on hard times or bad company because he does not communicate at all.  Chipo died a few years ago while Tsitsi is in South Africa with her family.

Although she is still alert and active, Mai MuBhunu is old and complains of backache and painful joints.  She looks after her husband, alone, without help. If MuBhunu and Mai MuBhunu lived in another country and in another place, MuBhunu would be in a nursing home for the elderly. His dementia would be well looked after. But we are in a village. Who ever heard of a nursing home in a village?

I know that MuBhunu has dementia because when I was a student in Australia, I spent five years working in a nursing home, looking after elderly people with dementia.  The work was hard but the job paid well.  There were four people per shift including the cook and cleaner. We cared for 30 people, 25 women and five men, mostly in their late 80s and 90s. I knew the residents by name, where they lived before, what they did before they came into the nursing home, the names of their spouses, including which child or relative came to visit with flowers and chocolates and those who came empty handed.

We, the Africans, Filipino, East European and others looked after old Australians who could not be looked after by anyone at home.
In the nursing home for the elderly, we followed routine. We helped the residents get out of bed at 7am, showered or bathed them and sat them on the wheel chairs or ordinary arm chairs in front of the television. They were fed toast or cereal.  At 10 o’clock they had tea and a biscuit.

Lunch was often mashed potatoes with curried sausages followed by jelly and ice-cream. At evening time we gave them a light meal of sandwiches and tomato soup. Then we returned them to bed at 5:30 until the next morning. Help was given to those who could not turn or go to the toilet by themselves.

It was our job to give the old people respect and tender loving care. This was the place the elderly people came to live in their last days. They hardly ever left.  Because most of them who could still walk suffered from dementia, we kept them locked inside the home in case they got out and risked getting lost or being run over by a car.

For many years, the residents lived here and never returned home until they died. Even if they felt better and were quite normal and ready to go home, we kept them inside because in most cases, there was no one to look after them back home.

I used to sit in the staff room and tell the other nursing staff that in Africa, we never put our elders in a nursing home like this one.  It was totally unacceptable to treat the elders with such disrespect. Western society was cruel to old age, I said. Back home where I came from, we respected our elders because they were the custodians of our culture.

They carried the wisdom of our oral traditions including proverbs, riddles, tales, nursery rhymes, legends, and myths, the epic songs of our ancestors, poems, dramatic performances and more.  Through story telling they also carried the social values and our collective memory and kept our cultures alive. I sat there and told them that the respect and reverence of the elderly was a practice followed in most parts of Africa.

My colleagues listened and admired everything about the way we cared for our old people in the village.
I recalled the days when we were growing up in the village and how we badly wanted to be older than all the others because there were benefits in being older. The older you were, the more respect you got. When we shared the same plates of meat and sadza, the older child always picked the biggest piece of meat first.

Mbuya VaMandirowesa and Sekuru were the oldest.  Mbuya was always among other old people with white hair, bare foot and hardly any missing teeth.

As she got older, Mbuya stayed home and did not travel to faraway villages for ceremonies the way she used to do.  She was still active, singing, dancing and working in the fields until she was well over 80. She died one night quietly.  Sekuru Dickson lived longer.
He had a younger fifth wife who looked after him until he could no longer see or perform any of the manly duties. She cared for him until he died.

Twenty five years after my nursing home experience and lecturing others on how we Africans care for our elderly people, I came back and realised that the village had not been static. It had changed.   My mother and most people of her generation had become old and frail.  They were alone or living with paid help or maids.

Like MuBhunu’s children, we had all left the village. We were now scattered all over the cities and living overseas, looking for jobs and a better life than we had in the village.  In my case, one day, there was a shock realisation that I had to let go of my Western lifestyle and its pleasures and return to look after the mother who gave birth to us, following tradition. It was by no means easy, economically or otherwise. In life, some sacrifices must be made.

When my mother died at home last year, her people, those of the Buffalo, Nyati totem and many others came, vakakoromoka, to pay their respects. They shook hands with us and said, ‘‘Makatanda botso renyu vanangu,” meaning that my sisters, brothers and I had done well to care for our mother in her old age. They said, at 84 the Buffalo had finally rested, Nyati yakazorora, surrounded by her people and her children.

Our grandparents and parents belonged to a whole generation of people who saw colonialism, the liberation war, freedom and the fruits of independence.  Most of them are in their late 70s, 80s and 90s. Some of them have been forced to leave their village and follow the children to the city, the farms and even as far as the Diaspora.  Over there, they are lonely and isolated, without the support of their friends.

Today, as with so much of African society, times are changing for the elderly. Without the support of the extended family, our village elders have become ‘orphans.’  As a result of our civilised lifestyles, education, free market economics and rapid migration, the traditional extended family is under enormous strain and most people’s ability to care for the elderly is under pressure.

Without support from the government and other institutions, what will happen to the lonely elders suffering from dementia and other illnesses as they remain stuck in the village?

One by one, elders like MuBhunu and Mai MuBhunu who have remained in the village are going being taken by illnesses such as diabetes, blindness, dementia and other diseases. They are afflicted by the common illnesses of old age. It is the passing of time.

Our elders used to say, chirere chigozokurerawo, meaning look after the child because one day, that child will grow up to be an adult and look after you in your old age. That was the belief and the practice back then before we knew that one by one we will move to the city, leaving the elderly people back in the village. As times continue to change, chirere chigozokurerawo is not necessarily the case.

As years continue to tick and age creeps in, we want to remain younger and younger as if we are meant to live forever. Western civilisation and upbringing has given us some good benefits, but it has also taught us to fear ageing. We get stressed with a few gray hairs and wrinkles here and there because getting old is seen as quite  unattractive, unintelligent,  not at all sexual, unemployable and progressively senile. Zvakambobvepiko izvozvo?

And yet, ageing is a cycle of life. We cannot reject getting old, no matter how much plastic surgery, breast implants, Botox or face lifts are done to maintain youth. Someday, if we are lucky to live longer, our generation is heading for the nursing home too or some other kind of retirement place surrounded by strangers. We do not know what that home will look like.

But jelly and ice cream will definitely be there, including tomato soup, curried sausages and pea nut butter sandwiches.  As for me, I hope to return to this village permanently one day, grow tomatoes and smell the rain. Hopefully there will be others here to help me cook derere, okra soup, mashed pumpkin and sweet potatoes.

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

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