Zimpapers Logo

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.
Because we have been living here and marrying among ourselves since our great grandparents were settled here during the Southern Rhodesia days, there is hardly any stranger among us.

When I see an elder, I quickly determine how I am related to him or her.
Then I must ask about his or her health to show respect. Likewise, other people do the same to me, depending on the nature of our family ties, pahukama hwedu.
This means I can enjoy multiple identities to various people.

I can be a sister, mukoma or munin’na, daughter-in-law or muroora, an aunt or tete, young mother or mainini, big mother or maiguru, muramu or sister-in-law.
As I grow older, I automatically become a grandmother to my children’s children or other people’s children by virtue of my age.

I wish these relationships based on respect could stay like this so that I can be more powerful and command this whole village in due time.
Being tete gives me and my cousin Piri a lot of power.

But, if some of these new evangelical churches keep coming here to preach a gospel that shows no respect for history or cultural ties, then, we will soon be nobodies in this village.

Family ties, hukama, are continuously being challenged and disrupted by strangers from various churches and other outside influences that we cannot control. We saw this happen right here in the village, over the Easter breaks.

Last Wednesday, my niece Kilda died at Karanda Hospital in Mt Darwin. She had a rare malignant cancer, something the doctors called peritoneal megalobastoma.
She was unwell for three years and had chemotherapy and lots of other traditional herbs. Her parents tried everything and took her to prophets and other faith healers, hoping for a miracle cure. But nothing helped.

Her stomach kept on getting bigger from the tumor.
Last year in August, Tsikamutanda, that traditional healer who came in the dry season claiming to cleanse the village of all witchcraft said he had powers to remove the tumor or the “animal” that was growing inside Kilda. Before he could perform his miracle cure, Tsikamutanda demanded a whole ox from Kilda’s parents.

Kilda’s father said no, because this was the ox that was already engaged in the winter ploughing of the fields alongside a weaker one on the yoke.
Besides, there was no proof that the illness could be cured by Tsikamutanda.

But Kilda begged her father to let the big ox go so she can be healed. Tsikamutanda took the beast off the yoke and tethered it to a tree.
Then he demanded $20 consultation fee to start the job. Tsikamutanda supposedly removed the frog-like “animal” that was eating Kilda. Then he drove the ox away. We never heard from Tsikamutanda or the whereabouts of the ox again.

But Kilda did not get better. Why take a whole beast, rakabata musha, from a couple who are desperate to get a cure for their only daughter? People shook their heads and said Tsikamutanda was not ashamed to have done that to Kilda’s family because he was not related to us, pahukama. Only strangers without respect for family ties do that.

Kilda died last Wednesday at the age of 23; too young to die.
When we heard that Kilda was no more, the extended family, vese vehukama, gathered at our nephew Marshal’s two-roomed rented house in Highfield.
We put our heads together and started calculating how much it was going to cost us to bring Kilda’s body to the village.

We were going to hire a car to travel to Karanda, way past Harare, all the way to Bindura, then Mt Darwin and drive further on to Karanda Hospital.
It is approximately 450 kilometres from Karanda to our village. Where was the money going to come from?

Then, to everyone’s surprise, Marshal announced that he had purchased funeral insurance at Nyaradzo for Kilda and it had just been confirmed that the policy was valid and it would cover all funeral expenses for Kilda.

Marshal is the son of my cousin Elizabeth, the daughter of my uncle Mujubheki. We all looked at each other and said Marshal’s sense of respect and his love for the ties that bind us, hukama hwedu, goes beyond the call of duty, especially in these hard economic times.

By midday on Good Friday, we were in a long convoy with the hearse, going to the village in Hwedza. We arrived home before sunset. When the wailing and the grief had calmed down, Kilda’s body was safely placed in her mother kitchen hut. I sat at the head of the coffin next to Marshal’s mother, with Kilda’s mother between us.

Next to me were our aunts, vanatete and Kilda’s maternal grandmother. All seven of us sat next to the coffin according to the hierarchy determined by our ages and role as mothers.

My cousin Piri did not come anywhere near where we sat because she is still too low in the hierarchy of mothers and older aunts who guard and care for the dead within our family. Instead, she stayed mostly outside, ensuring that every a key relative was fed and looked after.

Throughout the night the burial societies and various churches danced and sang sad beautiful songs to celebrate Kilda’s young life and send her spirit to the world of the ancestors.

By Saturday morning, many people had arrived, including a young pastor and a group of people from Kilda’s evangelical church in Kwekwe, where she used to live.
We did not know most of the church people but that did not matter.

They were our relatives, by virtue of being here with us. The elders said the young pastor from Kwekwe could preach.
Given the platform, the pastor took the stage with energy and spiritual vigour, sometimes mixing Shona with English.
Once or twice he added verses on judgment and sin.

He said one day we shall all end up dead in the big pit like Kilda, meaning the grave.
This means we should turn to God now before death approached. Some of us looked at him impassively and untouched. We had heard this sermon before.

Piri pinched me gently and asked when the young pastor was going to stop and give the older relatives from the traditional churches a chance to say something.
I told her that these young pastors from new evangelical churches often carry a programme. Out of respect for Kilda’s church, we should let him have a say.

Around 11am, the young pastor from Kilda’s church accompanied by two other shy looking men came straight in to the kitchen hut where we the council of women elders were sitting. Without greeting us as is the protocol, the pastor told us that it was time for body viewing.

Since when did a stranger tell us what to do with our dead? The women elders all looked at each other and asked how we were related to this muzukuru or nephew pastor, who was so arrogant and disrespectful of the elders in this space of grief. We said he was not one of us but one from the church.

Talking to each other, the women said that in the old days, when we relied very much on the traditional churches started by missionaries, we still respected the hierarchy of the elders. Did this young pastor not come from a village like ours too?

Piri then took him outside along with his companions and told him to abide by our traditions.
She said we did not bury anyone before 2pm. The young pastor said he needed to bury Kilda quickly because he had another function in the evening and the very next day, he had a wedding to go to.

I was the one to step up to him and say that the pastor was welcome to view the body with his team then leave us to carry on with the burial.
He then told Marshal that he would leave everything in protest, kuramwa chaiko. We said that was fine too.

After all this was our child. In the end the young pastor waited for 2 pm exactly.
He briefly preached about the something to do with graves again. Then he left the burial site abruptly without saying good bye and jumped into his van taking his group of mostly women along with him.

Few kilometres after leaving the village, we heard that his van broke down in the middle of the road and he left it there. Piri said it was God’s punishment for his lack of respect for the elders and how we carry out rituals around here.

No doubt, the church has a role to play in weddings, funerals and other ceremonies but the church must acknowledge the hierarchy of our old traditions, pahukama, and respect the family ties that bind us to one another in this life and the one after.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is Chief Executive Officer of Rio Zim Foundation. She writes in her personal capacity.