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The late writer Penny

Elliot Ziwira @the Bookstore
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once,” so says Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, for “death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

Yes, gentle reader in life we live with death, for the two are ever juxtaposed, like love and hatred, for to love is to be prepared to hate, and birth is acceptance of death. Such is the nature of life; nature of death perchance. But will there ever be a time that one gets used to death? Will there ever be a time that we get cushioned from death, because we know that death is forever ensconced in life?

I have lost many loved ones, my brother Andrew, my father Kenneth and my cousin Pascoe included, but the devastation on the loss of a kinsman, or friend, remains a new experience. Like when my friend, Rangarirai Mamvura told me of the passing on of a longtime lawyer friend of ours, Chandavengerwa Chopamba on December 4, 2017. He was such a great legal brain with whom I clicked in many ways, although he was much older than me. You probably know him gentle reader as the “Diesel N’anga”, the late Rotina Mavhunga’s lawyer. He once told my mother that when it comes to relationships, biological ties, though unbreakable, are not of our own making, but friendships are our choices, and he has chosen me as a friend. May his dear soul rest in eternal peace!

December was such a devastating month for me, especially so when the festive season was at its promising high, with the coming in of a new political dispensation in our Motherland. It was in early December 2017 that I got to my workplace to find a parcel waiting for me at the reception, and it dawned on me that “officially” the spirit of gifting and receiving was upon us. The gift was a copy of “Outside the Garden of Eden: An Anthology of Short Stories” (2017) from Forteworx Press with the words: “Good Day Elliot. Read and enjoy — Forteworx”. There was no name, but I knew that if it wasn’t Brian Tafadzwa Penny, then it could be Milton Chitsime (C.J Milton).

I didn’t have to let my mind wander long, as a message was waiting for me on Facebook. It was from Brian alright, asking me if I was already enthusing myself in Eden. I thanked him profusely and told him that I had a lot on my plate, but would soon indulge myself in Eden, as he said. I kept thinking of Eden for many days, but time seemed to conspire with my workload to deny me access to Paradise. A week before Christmas Day, Brian asked me again if I had not forgotten about Eden, and I told him that in two days’ time I would be free to take a tour of the garden. We agreed that we would have an interview on the verges of the beautiful garden.

The metaphor of Eden kept nagging at me and true to my word, I enmeshed myself in Forteworx’s latest publication “Outside the Garden of Eden”, and I felt I should have taken the journey earlier. On December 22, I was ready to interview T-Penny for my Christmas Day Column, but I realised that it was a holiday; Unity Day, so I reasoned that he might be busy. I was about to make arrangements to meet him on Saturday December 23, 2017 when news started filtering in from fellow writers and friends that T-Penny was no more. I didn’t want to believe it; what with social media fake news going haywire. So I called Milton, but his mobile number was unreachable. I then texted Tinashe Muchuri on WhatApps, and he confirmed that indeed T-Penny was involved in car accident at Wengezi turn-off, 68km peg along Mutare-Chimanimani Highway when his young brother lost control of their vehicle, after hitting a pothole and collided head-on with an oncoming vehicle, on their way to their rural home in Chimanimani, and he died on the spot. The crash also claimed the wife and daughter of the writer’s young brother and left T-Penny’s wife and two daughters injured.

He was laid to rest on December 26, 2017 in Chimanimani.

I couldn’t swallow it and as a result there was no Christmas Day column at the Bookstore. T-Penny, how I so much wanted to talk to you about Eden; that metaphor of Eden that you referred to in our conversations; and the way you kept on asking me if I was done! There was so much impatience and urgency in your tone, but it never occurred to me that you probably felt that another home was beckoning you on the other side.

I was late my dear friend, late by a day; but how could I have known? We mortals believe that we have all the time in the world, but do we really have time? Is this the Eden that you were referring to T-Penny? How I wanted you to tell me more about “Memory” in your short story “Memory”, and Tobias in “Mayhem”! Now am left here in this mayhem, with so many memories of your contribution to the Bookstore, and a lot of questions burden me.

Only a day, yet a day is such a long time. Maybe I should have contacted you earlier, or maybe I should have interviewed you when you brought the book, but you didn’t tell me that you were coming. But why T-Penny? Why did you have to depart at 36, and two days before Christmas Day? Eden! Eden! Eden! Did Eden keep calling on you?

Well as they say, artists do not die; they simply pass on to the other side, leaving the best of themselves with the living. The Bookstore is left poorer without you, yet richer. The writing fraternity is left a mighty pen poorer, yet a Penny richer.

Gentle reader, friend countryman, Brian Tafadzwa Penny, or T-Penny remains one of the emerging crop of writers that have impressed upon me immensely with their fresh insights into the suffering of humanity in the wake of new gods. T-Penny as a co-director at Forteworx Press, with C.J Milton, believed in giving an outlet to gagged voices of upcoming writers, whose zeal for life remains a driving force behind their aspirations.

T-Penny’s ambidexterity saw him contributing to both Shona and English publications with the same finesse and detail. He contributed in “True Lies” (2015) and “The Flowers of a Dry Season” (2016), which were reviewed on this column, and “Outside the Garden of Eden” (2017), which pains me to review posthumously.

The “Flowers of a Dry Season” (2015) edited by Beaven Tapureta and Brian Tafadzwa Penny (T.P Brian or T-Penny), is a product of the convergence of 14 hilarious, toddling, yearning, scathing, exhorting, soothing and infectious voices, on the poetic landscape of hope, as the African dream, or pertinently the Zimbabwean reverie, is under threat from a blazing internal and external inferno.

Oozing the ebullience of youth and seemingly inexperienced, yet well-schooled in the voyeuristic nature of Man, the poets articulate their own experiences in a world that places so much emphasis on material acquisitions as a milestone to glory, giving scanty considerations to familial, communal and national ethos that shape the individual. Caught up in the race, the individual struggles to locate himself or herself in the national discourse as a result of suffering, toil, deceit and avarice.

The yearning voices implore Man to own up to his foibles, so as to redeem society from the jaws of the monster that creeps from its belly — an orgy of its own creation. Society has become a deathbed; and a furnace where dreams are barbecued, and the nostalgia of a gleeful yesterday attempt to throttle today’s aspirations, as in T-Penny’s “If Today were Yesterday”.

Indeed, T-Penny if “Today were Yesterday” I would have wanted to talk to you one more time, to share with you what I felt about Eden, and all the journeys that we dream of, but fail to undertake, seeing that we are mere mortal beings.

Go well Comrade! Our “Pay Day” in this “Mayhem” remains a “Memory” as we gloat over what could be, or should have been as opposed to what is “Outside the Garden of Eden”.