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Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday
Every family has embarrassing secrets. Back in the village, we had many. But the most well-known secret was that of our uncle, Babamunini Nyika, who was an irresponsible young man who left the village and was not heard from for many years. Around the village, it was whispered that he was possibly killed by crocodiles while crossing the Limpopo into South Africa. Or perhaps he was killed by the Zulu or the Xhosa miners in the hostel where they all lived in Egoli, Johannesburg.

When people asked my grandmother, Mbuya VaMandirowesa, how many sons she had, she always said she had my father David and my uncle John. She deliberately left out Nelson, whose other name was Nyika.

She only acknowledged him when reminded that Nyika was the mad one who had given the back of his head to the village and forgotten his roots. Akapa gotsi kumusha.

Babamunini Nyika was a shame to us all. How could he have left the whole village with so many relatives, ceremonies, laughter, full granaries and potential beautiful women ready for marriage only to get lost across the Zambezi? We feared that the spirit that possessed Babamunini Nyika to migrate, might also take control of us all, then we would forget where we came from.

In those colonial days, they said a man could go away and look for work but he must always return to the place of his birth. It was the man’s role to stay, find a good wife who gave birth to many children, preferably sons.
Sons kept the village going from one generation to the other.

The elders feared kurova, meaning to completely disappear in another place or country and never to be heard from again. That is why when someone died far away, they sent relatives to go and collect the body and bury them home.

If the body was never found, a ceremony was performed and the head of a goat was buried. That way the spirit of the dead was appeased even if in his grave it was only a goat’s head. The man had come home to be an ancestor among his people.

Just when we were getting used to not mentioning Babamunini Nyika’s name, my father received a letter from him saying he had left South Africa many years before. He now lived in Blantyre, Malawi. He planned to come back home in a few months. But for another 25 years, Babamunini Nyika was silent.

They said, this time he was dead for sure. A few years after independence, Babamunini Nyika made an appearance to my mother one evening in Glen Norah, Harare.

Apart from the suit he was wearing and nice black shoes, Babamunini Nyika came back home with nothing. Not even a brief case.
He said President Kamuzu Banda of Malawi had deported him for reasons never explained.

We were embarrassed of his poverty. Babamunini Nyika died of malaria in Muzarabani, north of Zimbabwe. He is buried there. We hoped that the spirit that took Babamunini Nyika away for so long would not come back to possess someone in our generation. The shame has remained and Babamunini Nyika’s name is hardly mentioned.

Sometimes, you try and not remember such family stories. Then, when you least expect to think about that past, it just rears its head. This is what happened to me when I was in Japan two weeks ago for work.

I was with a group of work friends and we went out to see Tokyo at night, as you do when you go to a foreign country. We found ourselves in a very busy street with many Japanese people dressed up to go and dance, drink and smoke. There were rows of bars and outside each bar, you could see a black man, standing there inviting passers-by to come into the open bar.

Where did all these African men in Tokyo come from?
One brother saw me and the look on his face was like the one you give when you recognise a long lost friend or relative. The brother smiled and the gap between his teeth immediately reminded me of Babamunini Nyika. Standing there in Rappong, on the streets of Tokyo in Japan, all I could see was Babamunini Nyika. For that very moment, I believed in reincarnation.

The smile, the gap between his teeth, the style of his hair cut, the smartness. Babamunini Nyika zvavo pavagere. It was him. We Africans can look alike, but this brother looked like my real brother, same blood, and same totem.

“Hello sister from Africa. Which country are you from?”
“Zimbabwe,” I said. He laughed out loud, shook my hand and said how happy he was to meet me. He was from Ghana and the other black bouncers along the street were from various countries in Africa. He even knew one Zimbabwean bouncer in another part of Tokyo and if I wanted to meet him, he would arrange it for me.

“How long have you been here, brother?” I asked. He smiled, showing his gold tooth and said, “Many years sister. Many years. This is my home. My wife is Japanese.”

That night in Japan two weeks ago, as we walked along, leaving the African brothers doing their bouncer work, I kept on turning to look back at them, wanting to go back and say to them, hey, varume, stop standing outside bars like pimps. Go back home to Africa because there is work for you to do.

There are some women desperately looking for husbands, children waiting to be born, fields to be ploughed, governments to be run, hospitals looking for doctors. Africa needs you. But I kept walking on because, these African brothers, like my uncle Babamunini Nyika, are migrants who left home for a reason.

Over the years our brothers have been forced to leave home and look for work overseas and some of them never come back. They probably want to go back, but as time goes on, the situation back home changes for better or for worse. The brothers are not keen to face the change.

They stay in a foreign country and find new lives, new wives, new beliefs or no belief at all. There are many brothers living like that in Europe and everywhere outside Africa in the Diaspora.

Many years ago my friend Alison and I were part of a large group of people attending an African Studies conference in Adelaide, Australia. We took a stroll along the city on a very hot night. We came across some people standing around a shirtless black brother who was beating a drum.
He wore colourful baggy pants with a draw string, barefoot with a big Rastafarian dreadlocks sitting over his shoulders. He had a bag in front of him for collecting money. In Australia, they call this practice of playing an instrument for money, basking.

This brother was basking. People stopped for a while, commented on his natural ability to beat the drum so hard then threw some money in the bag and moved on.

When the brother saw me, he waved and beat the drum even stronger, showing off, zvemawara chaizvo. Alison was captivated. She said she knew him. This was the guy they all called Shumba, the lion because that was his totem. Alison told me Shumba’s story. It was a common migration story, so similar to the one I had heard before. Here is how it goes:

A young guy somewhere in Africa preys on tourists to buy his sculptures and African crafts. He is so charming and speaks English well. An older European tourist falls in love with the young man. She wants to help him come to Australia or to the European country where she comes from.

The young man falls in love too. In a few months, the young man is in a Western country. Everything is provided. He should go to school. But, quite often he does not. The good life takes over. Years later that first marriage ends in divorce. Later on he finds more love and fathers a few children here and there.

By the time he is 40, our brother has no skill and no job. Sometimes he works as a bouncer at night. But the money is not enough. Because he is an African, new girlfriends tell him he can dance, sing and he can play the drum. Our brother becomes an artiste.
If that makes money, why not? If women love him for his dance moves, what is wrong with that?

I told Alison that Shumba’s story was like a template, with variations in age and circumstances.
Alison threw in US$10 into Shumba’s bag. Shumba recognised her immediately. Vakamboona havashayane. I looked for some notes in my bag so I could make a contribution and promote my brother’s work on the streets of Adelaide. I found a five dollar note, then I hesitated a little.

A voice seemed to say to me, “Sei kumukurudzira kuita rombe?” meaning, why are you encouraging him to be a beggar? I felt the urge to stop the drumming and give a speech, telling everyone the Zimbabwean or African story of poverty and how it has caused the brothers to migrate in search of everything from love, education and prosperity.

All over Europe, Japan, America, and Canada and throughout the Diaspora, there are brothers who left the village like my uncle Babamunini Nyika. Life has not been so kind to them, nor have they been kind to themselves. Back home, they are not mentioned much during village gatherings. One day, we hope, these brothers might come back, even if they have nothing to show for their years of standing in front of bars or playing the drum for a few coins.

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