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Dr Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday I recalled the lost language of love, when love was close to nature. The songs of ancestors, long before the white man came, when men and women spoke of real love and they did not write or text about it.
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Sekai Nzenza On Wednesday “Kana murume asingaoni, oitwa sei nhai?” asked my cousin Piri, meaning, what can be done to help a man who cannot see? The three of us, including my sisters from the village, Mai Kiri and Mai Marshal, smiled awkwardly and said nothing.
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Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday Honde Valley: the beauty, generosity of our people. Last Saturday, we arrived in Honde Valley at sunset. We were on a mission to present Rufaro, a nine-month-old girl, to our in-laws.
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Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday “That old man is beating up his wife,” says my cousin Piri. Then she bursts out laughing. It is 6 am on a very misty and chilly morning. Winter seems to have come early. We are at the traffic light on Golden Stairs Road in Harare. We are on our way […]
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Sekai Nzena on Wednesday JUST before we drove past the “Zimbabwe Independence 1980” monument on the way from the Harare International Airport, my cousin Piri touched our nephew Tinashe on the knee gently and said he was fat.
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Sekai Nzenza On Wednesday HERE, in this village, we are bound to each other by family ties based on blood, marriages and totems. In the hierarchy of our family relationships, pahukama hwedu, we all know our place. We are very careful not to disrupt the rules of respect.
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In churches, particularly in the Catholic ones, Jesus’ body hangs on that terrible wooden cross, nails dug straight into his feet, his hands and on his forehead. You can see the shape of his ribs. During his crucifixion, the Jews dressed Jesus with a crown of thorns, to mock him because he had repeatedly told […]
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Sekai Nzenza On Wednesday During the days when this country was called Rhodesia, my mother lied to government people a lot. She was not the only one who did this. Most people in the village and all over the country lied. In those days, it seemed perfectly normal to do so.
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Sekai Nzenza On Wednesday There was a time, during our growing up days in the village, when we thought those who did not go to school were uneducated. We pointed at them and said, “Havana kufunda”, meaning that they did not go to school. Over the years, I had not given much thought to this […]
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It was mid morning on a Sunday back in the village. Shamiso, my pretty niece, the one who gave birth to a boy called Prince a few weeks ago, sat on a mat breastfeeding
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Dr Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday AT the village primary school before independence, we did not just learn how to speak English; we were introduced to English food even though it was not there. The food was described in the English books donated to us by the Anglican missionaries. Our teacher, Miss Rwodzi read the
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Once, there was a lazy man who lived across the river from us. His name was Isaya. He sat on his hands or used them for scratching or eating.
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Dr Sekai Nzenza Beaming with the joy, Philemon held his baby and announced that his Shona name was Nhamo, meaning poverty and his Christian name, rechiKristu, was Claudius. “Both these names belong to my late father. He died when I was only five and today, he has been reborn.” We all clapped hands and ululated. […]
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Dr Sekai Nzenza When we were growing up in the village, we hardly saw a married couple walking, laughing, working or even eating together. My grandmother, Mbuya VaMandirowesa, said it was not natural for a married couple to spend too much time together during the day.
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Sekai Nzenza One time, in my mother’s village, my maternal grandfather fell in love with a woman from another village not so far away. That was in the late 1930’s, long before Christianity came to my mother’s village.