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David Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts
“Dudzai” is one of Leonard Dembo’s most unforgettable songs. It comes with hard-hitting poetic metaphors like “Gezatidye” and an attractive melody expressed through expert instrumentation and vocals. Gezatidye is a derogatory nickname given to any lay-about, whose major concern in life is being invited to wash his hands and join in the meal.

This makes Gezatidye a rascal and a parasite.

The melody of Dembo’s “Dudzai” is unforgettable and in talking about lay-abouts, he is devastatingly honest in portraying the uselessness of the clueless, beer-guzzling, unwashed fellow called Gezatidye — a wild person with multitudes of parasites in his hair and a literally foul mouth that knows no toothbrush.

His unshaven beard is host to colonies of lice and fleas as is his thick matted hair.

Gezatidye’s teeth are yellow from lack of attention.

It would not be surprising if some of the plaque on his teeth were from cumulative meals across the weeks.

He is the exact opposite or antithesis of the well-groomed country gentleman in a well-pressed suit and shining shoes.

Where this gentleman exhibits habits acquired long ago from his sojourn in the city (a modern cigarette or pipe filled with aromatic tobacco), Gezatidye is like a chimney puffing out fumes from uncouth home-made cigarettes.

Gezatidye is typically male and is rough and rude when he does not get his way.

Artistes like Dembo and System Tazvida created songs that are in many respects defiantly rural.

You can’t play them and not feel nostalgic.

There was a lovely coincidence between my playing the music of these two artistes and my visit to my roots out in the country.

I was at the memorial service for one of my fathers.

Where I come from, you do not call a brother of your father, uncle. That is alien to us and we have many fathers and mothers. We belong to an iconic clan of expert hunters from Manhize in Mhondoro.

We are descendants of the legendary Samambwa Kashava (man with many dogs), so vividly portrayed by Charles Mungoshi in “Waiting for the Rain”.

Being out in the countryside is always so liberating.

Out there you become somewhat more adventurous than usual and a little more accommodating as well.

You begin to appreciate the strides rural folk are making in the communal areas. There is hardly a home where you cannot find at least two mobile phones these days and the networks are good.

WhatsApp is no longer just an urban thing. The smell of wood smoke and cow dung is everywhere and everyone this year has a considerable store of sweet potatoes.

It is a year of plenty, without doubt, and even those who are normally mean and stingy can afford a little more generosity without suffering any prejudice.

Some of the characters in the communal areas are reminiscent of the rustics described by Wordsworth in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” published in the year 1800.

Wordsworth was of the view that any poet wanting to create authentic poems, so to speak, was well-advised to emulate the language of rural folk in moments of animation.

In other words, the language of rural people when angry, happy, excited, and sad and so on, is likely to be closest to the real feelings and emotions of people without affectation or pretence.

One of my late grandmothers was a woman with a poetic turn of phrase, who could conjure up all sorts of images with her evocative words.

I remember her talking with pride about her funeral and how she would lie in her coffin looking pretty and regal and be completely unmoved by all the whimpering and wailing around her.

She would be like an oracle and be interpreted by concerned others.

The smile on her face was blissful as she said this.

There is a side to rural life that most of us are strangers to.

We mistakenly think that life in the rural areas is static and dull. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The variety of character types in the rural areas is unbelievable: the astute and the obtuse, all lending colour to life out there.

A friend of mine from many years ago never shook hands with peasants.

He was convinced that their unwashed hands were likely to have any number of foreign bodies clinging to them.

He gave a somewhat nauseating description characterised by minute details of how after shaking hands with a grinning old man he was left with small pieces of creamy viscous stuff we normally see in people’s noses.

Reader, you had better not dwell on this if you value the sanctity of your breakfast or lunch, depending on when you read this article.

Some readers may be wondering what it is that fascinates me in the countryside. Truly, there is so much out there to make life sweet and interesting.

Can you imagine anything more intriguing, for example, than a young man on the drum in a church service, playing it like his life depended on it, and spotting a shirt with a picture of Che Guevara on the front?

Contradiction is the very fabric of life itself, some might say. The irony of Che in a catholic service is for believers is quite fascinating.

At the back of his shirt, the young man had pictures of Josiah Magama Tongogara and Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, military strategists of the armed struggle during the Second Chimurenga in Zimbabwe.

It is probably not difficult to guess where his vote will go when the time comes.

Young people are always coming up with innovations in their language and speech. But this is not unique to them.

If you are one of the uninitiated, you will probably miss out on certain shades of meaning.

For example, Comrade Chinx may not have been aware just how much his “Chikopokopo” song had impacted on the rural population.

It became very popular at funeral wakes with women executing virtuoso performances of the song.

The song’s lyrics have also become a kind of secret code these days, with the antagonism between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law captured in the line “Chauya chikopokopo. Chirikunwa dhiziri” (The chopper has landed. It is fuelling).

This is a remark against a visiting mother-in-law perceived to have descended upon her son’s household without prior notice.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, (between the 11th and 13th centuries) the troubadour, a male poet and singer travelled around mostly in southern France and northern Italy, entertaining rich people.

The equivalent of the troubadour in our times would be the small gangs of travelling musicians in the rural areas, who move from ritual to ritual in the villages, singing, dancing and drinking.

It is not unusual for such people to be away from home for days on end.

They usually have an itinerary. They know who is having a memorial service conducted or has some other ritual planned and they go from the one to the next until the cycle is broken.

These rural experiences are a mixture of things typically Zimbabwean and traditional with things alien and assumed to be modern and therefore desirable.

In the cold evenings of my recent trip to my rural home, we sat around fires and spoke endlessly about everything while inside the central hut the music and the dance and the gospel reached their peak.

The women gave tea to those who wanted it.

Hot sweet tea with lots of milk and a surfeit of sugar.

Some of the guzzlers surprisingly also wanted their share of the tea.

The conversation ranged from the scarcity of the popular brew to this year’s harvests.

A tall man in a beige-coloured suit and sideburns was the centre of attraction around our fire.

He dazzled his audience with Oxford English that he claimed to be a master of and used words like “irredeemable” to further mystify his captive audience.

As the fire began to glow ever redder, sleep had the better of him and he was soon snoring lustily inside his sleeping bag.

In the morning, the women gave us hot water to drive away the sleep from our faces and eyes.

When everyone had done their ablutions, they brought pots of tea and slices of bread with jam and margarine for everyone.

A jolly old lady I had not seen before and who was introduced to me as an aunt (vatete), sang a Jim Reeves rendition of “Don’t Let me Cross Over” in exotic tones and recited the “Girl Guide” law, promising to be faithful to God and the Queen. Old habits die hard.

Not just hers but everyone’s.

The inevitable mouse-trapper was there and made enough for his beer for a week. The unique roll of the drum seemed to applaud his exploits.

Going away felt like being wrenched from a thing of great value.

David Mungoshi is a writer, a social commentator, an editor and a retired teacher.