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Sekai Nzenza On Wednesday
THERE was a time, back in the village, when getting older was very important. We all wanted to be older than the other person. Being older also came with responsibilities. “Ndiani mukuru pakati penyu?” meaning, who is the eldest among you, was a common question whenever we met someone who did not know us well. We gave respect based on age. People fought for the right to be older. One time when we were herding cattle there was a big fight over who was the eldest between this boy called Panichi and another one called Kizito from across the river. It was the worst fight we had ever seen because there was blood. Panichi won even though we all knew that he was not older than Kizito. But Panichi was like that. He was a bully. After he won the fight, he made himself the king of all the herd boys. We respected his age and obeyed him.

On the odd occasion that there was meat in the village, Mbuya VaMandirowesa always cut the meat in small, medium and big pieces. Three, four or five of us sat on the bare mud floor, cross-legged around the mountain of sadza and a plate with equal number of meat pieces which were uneven in size. The eldest child got to pick the biggest piece of meat in a plate. We looked at the eldest child with envy, asking why we were not the eldest as well.

In every ritual or ceremony, age was respected. One time, there was a ceremony to drink to the thirst of our ancestors. Elderly men sat on the bench according to the hierarchy of their ages with my grandfather, Sekuru Dickson, sitting on a stool right at the top end of the kitchen hut. On the left side, my grandmother, Mbuya VaMandirowesa sat on the other side, facing him. We, the children, sat almost at the entrance and watched the process. Muzukuru Mukono, the nephew, knelt like a young man on the ground and offered Sekuru Dickson a calabash of beer, saying, “Sekuru, this is the beer we are offering to the ancestors.” Sekuru Dickson took a sip and gave the calabash back to his younger brother, Sekuru Magosito, who was also an elder. The calabash was then passed further down until it reached the youngest uncle, Babamunini Peter.

And yet, Babamunini Peter was not the youngest of the uncles because there was Babamunini Nyika, who had since migrated to Malawi and did not come back for many years. People said Babamunini Nyika had lost his position in the village by choosing to stay away for that long. Years later, when Babamunini Nyika turned up after independence and almost all the elders were dead; everyone struggled to place him on the hierarchy determined by age. Although he was old and he deserved to be treated with respect, his age was not accompanied by responsibilities of a man, a father, a husband and an elder. He looked like an aging little man, always dressed in a suit and tie wandering around in the village.

We clapped hands and asked about his health and that was about it. He had forgotten how to command respect as an elder.
That respect for age is disappearing but it is not all gone yet. Even today, when we are back in the village, my age is respected. Piri is the youngest among all the sisters and cousins and she respects me. During greetings, she claps hands and asks about my health as she should. In the village, Piri wants to be older so she can make decisions.

But most of the time, she wants to behave and look young.
Last weekend, Piri and I stopped at Hwedza Growth Point and met the same hwindi, the kombi conductor who helped fix a flat tyre for us last November. “Ah, sistas, ndimi! How come you have changed? You look so young! And you have put on weight Sistas, haa, and you look good mhani? What is happening in your life?”

Hwindi, was still wearing the same singlet he had last year. His six pack muscles looked even more defined. He kept on holding Piri’s hand for a while. He pulled her a little closer. Piri was wearing a tight jean skirt, white T-shirt and a yellow scarf to match the yellow shoes. She leaned against the car and smiled, looking at hwindi with eyes to say, I have moved up the ladder. Hwindi called his driver friend, a different one from the one we met before. He introduced us to Ziggy the driver, who immediately asked for Piri’s phone number. He said he would not mind having such a young fat woman as a daughter-in-law for his mother.

Passengers in the kombi listened and smiled, admiring Piri. Was this the same girl who used to be so poor, living in the village a few years ago?
Then we saw Yuna, a distant cousin from another village, going in the same direction. She immediately left her spot in the kombi and demanded room in our car.

As we drove down towards Save River, Yuna held her grandson in her lap and smiling, baring a few missing teeth, she said, “Hey, Sis Piri, can you believe this is my grandson?” Piri turned and offered her hand to the little boy with ringworms all over his head. He was four but he looked more like a two year old. ‘Ndatove Mbuya,” Yuna said, smiling and looking very proud to be a grandmother. “And to think I am younger than you Sis Piri.”

“Ah, Yuna, you are proud to be a grandmother before you even reach 40. What is the matter with you?”
“What is wrong in getting old?” asked Yuna. “You, Sis Piri, you want to stay young forever ever. For what?” Yuna asked, peeling a banana and feeding the little boy. “It’s God’s mercy for me to be this age and to see my grandchild. How many of us have died from HIV and other diseases? We should celebrate age. Is that not right Sis?” Yuna asked me. I nodded and said that was true, we should appreciate our age.

“I will not be old, Yuna. Not me. Who cares about age and respect for the elderly anymore?” Piri asked.
I drove on ahead, quietly, as if this conversation about age and the future did not occupy a priority place in my bucket list of things to do and things to work on in life. Coping with age was one of them.

I could see myself with a walking stick, white hair and looking for a nursing home that did not exist in the village. By the time I get to 70 or more, the village will probably be gone. Already, I am fighting to maintain the tone of my muscles through walking and running. As the body changes, I look at it and think, ah, there was a time when this little wrinkle was not there and my backside was not so huge. Then I long for that time of my youth, when I was young and energetic and some men thought I looked young and beautiful. They would often add that I should accept my kind of beauty, even though my skin was dark. I was dark skinned, young and youthful. And I longed to be older. Not anymore. This occasional fear of seeing my body change comes back and it can be overpowering, as if getting older is new. Then I often ask myself, this question: will I, one day, choose to deny age and look to technology to help me look younger?

There is a whole industry, worth billions of dollars, of companies making money from anti-ageing creams. In the Western world, we want to look younger, youthful and sexy. Daily, people fight with their bodies to make them look younger. Women pay money for surgical face lifts. A wrinkled neck can go under the knife and come out so smooth. Small lines around the mouth and lips can be filled up with Botox so they look full. Some film stars have had that done. But this does not stop there. You can get you breasts enlarged, so they do not look like zvitorobho, or leather straps we use when yoking cattle. With money, you can do anything.

We stopped at the bus stop near Yuna’s village. Piri gave two dollars to the grandson and Yuna thanked her. Then Yuna stood there, laughing, showing a few missing teeth, “Keep getting younger Piri, one day you will marry my grandson!”

“Ah, she is crazy but she is right. In the end, the circle of life moves on. We still get old. So, why not celebrate age?” said Piri.
Dr Sekai Nzenza is CEO of Rio Zim Foundation. She writes in her personal capacity.