Zimpapers Logo

song just starts playing in my head. If I keep listening to it, I end up humming the tune or even dance a little to it.
The other day I was in a workshop and there was this man from Germany talking about the failure of development aid in Africa. I should have been listening attentively all the time because donors, poverty and humanitarian aid is my area of work, ndiko kubasa kwangu.
Instead, a song arrived in my head. It came from nowhere. This is how it went: “Ndinotenderera nenyika yese yese, ndichitsvaga mbiri yetsiga! I move around the whole country, carrying my log in search of fame!” I hummed the tune in my head over and over again.
For a few seconds, I came back to the presentation and this time the German was talking about corruption and the lack of transparency, not only in Zimbabwe, but in Africa as a whole. He seemed to focus his blue eyes on me and I nodded. Then his eyes moved on to someone else. The song came back more strongly and I was scribbling stuff on paper while humming inside and gently moving my head in rhythm to the tune. Where did this silly song come from? 
On my way home, the log song was still with me. It was not going away. Then the following morning I was walking through the msasa trees and the cicadas shrilled, spoiling the rhythm and tune of my log song. I suddenly remembered that the log song belonged to a story called “Mbiri ye chitsiga” (Fame of the log) featuring Gudo the baboon and Tsuro, the rabbit.
This story must have been stored in my memory for years, since the time mbuya told us stories in the village. For whatever reason, it had popped up in my head now and I remembered it well.
Once upon a time, Gudo was troubled by his lack of fame. Every animal was known for something they could do, hunyanzvi hwavo. Shumba, the lion, was the hunter and king of the jungle. Nzou, the elephant, was so powerful that he could trample upon anything in his path.
Twiza, the giraffe, had such a beautiful graceful walk and his long neck could reach out to the leaves high up on the tree. Mvuu, the hippo, was a great swimmer and he owned the rivers and the big lakes. And Tsuro, the rabbit, was not only the wisest of the animals, he was famous for being a trickster.
One early morning, Gudo went over to visit Tsuro. Tsuro called Gudo “sekuru”, meaning grandpa or possibly uncle. They were probably related somehow. Gudo was troubled. He sat on a log and said, “Listen, Tsuro, everyone says you are famous. You are small but you command a lot of respect throughout the jungle. You are clever, you are fast and good looking. You have a nice smooth fur skin. I also want to be as famous as you are. Can you give me advice on how I can be famous? Tell me, nephew. Ndiudzewo, muzukuru.” Tsuro, was in deep thought for a while.
Then he took a walk with Gudo in the bush. They found a big heavy log, half burnt and eaten by ants.  Tsuro told Gudo that he should take the big log, place it on his shoulder and walk around the country, over rivers, mountains and valleys singing, “Ndinotenderera  nenyika yese yese, ndichitsvaga mbiri yechitsiga!” Gudo thought it was a brilliant idea.
With such a big heavy log on his shoulder, someone was bound to see him and give him praise. Within a short time, he was going to be famous as the log-carrying baboon. Gudo did as he was told. When the animals saw him, they pointed fingers, jeered and laughed at him. He abandoned the log in shame.
The Gudo and Tsuro stories were among the many stories Mbuya VaMandirowesa, my mother and all the other elders, told us. After the evening meal, mbuya often sat cross-legged with snuff in the palm of one hand. With her head shaved, big earrings, and a quilt tied on the top of one shoulder, she began, “Paivepo, once upon a time”.
Once she said that, we would all move closer to her around the fire and tell each other to keep quiet. With our skinny knees touching, we sat looking at mbuya. In the dim firelight, we listened. She would speak a whole sentence or just half of it and pause, waiting for us to answer back saying “dzepfunde,” in agreement. 
Occasionally, sekuru came to sit and listen. Mbuya gave him his special piece of meat from her small pot, kambiya. If there was a song in the story, sekuru added his big voice, explained the moral of the story to all                of us.
Sometimes we got up and danced to the song with the rhythm of sadness or joy, depending on the story.
Years later, the story of Gudo and the log was in my head, just like that. I remembered that while it really was a funny story and we used to walk around the village courtyard carrying logs and singing, it was not just a story. The moral of the story was to teach us that fame is not something you look for. Fame was based on what  good things you do in the community as a person.
When mbuya told us stories and spoke in riddles and metaphors, we did not see it as education at that time. Many years later, when the memory of the song and the story arrive in the head, I remember its meaning.
Instead of just humming to the song, I start singing it loud. Then I wondered how many other people get these flashbacks of songs and stories with lessons from the past. What makes me think of images, songs and stores from a past that is long gone? So I asked my friend Mercy if she gets the same kind of popping in and popping out of songs at the most inappropriate times like I do.
Mercy said that happens to her all the time. Then she also said that our minds can be like computers. Deep inside the brain, we have stored experiences, events, stories, songs, metaphors and riddles to help us find meaning in the present day. If we grew up in the village, kumusha, like she did, we shall always have memories and flashbacks of that past.
That is how we learnt a lot about some meanings in life, through the stories and songs of our grandmothers. Such knowledge helps us navigate the present world, even when we live far away in the Diaspora, those teachings we learnt in village stories do not leave us. And yet, we are not able to pass this on to our children, nephews, relatives and others.
My nephew Joshua is 16 and he has since stopped talking to his mother or to anyone of the adults at home or anywhere because he says there is really nothing to talk to us about. He will grunt a yes or no. Although he speaks Shona sometimes to Sis the maid and to Godfrey the gardener, he has few words to his mother.
Even when I visit them, he might just manage to say, “how you are, tete, makadii, tete?” and then he disappears. You have to look for him to say goodbye. Most times, when he is not watching television, he is playing on his computer or texting to all his 50 friends and acquaintances on this new mode of communication called WhatsApp.
The other day I just wanted to tease him so I said, “Hey, Joshua, so what is happening in your world?” He looked at me with a sly smile as if to say, do you really think I will tell you? I insisted on getting an answer. After all, I am tete, his aunt, his father’s sister. Tete has as much power and role as his father.
Joshua said nothing was happening in his world. Going to school, studying for his A-level exams,                    playing cricket, spending hours on the Internet was nothing?
Then I pushed my teasing a little further and said, “Joshua, would you care for a lesson from a story or a riddle?” He laughed and said, “What riddles?” I tried to explain what it was like in the past when mbuya told us stories and metaphors.
Joshua looked puzzled. Then he waved, dismissing me away and said, “Whatever.” He staggered away, his pants hanging around his bottom, revealing his Superman red underwear. Why do boys think displaying their underwear to adults is a cool thing to do?
I have all these riddles and metaphors in my head. They are rotting in there and nobody hears them because there is no young space to deposit it to. What mbuya left in my head must be passed on to someone else. I am not alone carrying this burden of memory. All those women you see walking down the street or carrying Bibles to church carry the stories and the morals we learnt back in the village.
Even those women in the Diaspora getting up at 4am walking on the snow to work in Toronto, London or New York remember the stories and the songs. They sing them in their heads like I do. Who else can they sing them to?
At another workshop the other day, a man mentioned how he has seen a woman trader travel on the bus all the way from Harare to Johannesburg and back, sleeping. He said this sleeping woman should be reading and learning something. Although I agreed with the man, I was quick to point out that the woman on the long bus ride is not just sleeping.
In that quiet mind, she is thinking, remembering, singing, talking and dancing.  She has stories and songs, too, popping up in her head, but there is no one to tell them. Who wants to listen to her?
When we all gathered around the fire, mbuya and others passed on artistic wisdom and knowledge. All those narratives, riddles and metaphors were meant to test our intelligence and challenge us to think of a problem and solve it. If we failed to find a solution, the elders stepped in and gave us meaning.
When we look back to that flickering of fire coming out of the village hut, we know that there was nothing primitive or backward about that gathering of children and elders. A story, a song and a lesson was being passed on to the next generation.
We received that knowledge and now all we do is sit on it. As long as we have memory, that era is not totally gone. We should now capture the stories from the past, rekindle, revive and find ways to retell it to our children.
There is a lot of wisdom in those past songs to help us navigate our present situations. We may very well learn that carrying a log or standing on top of a hill asking to be seen does not bring us fame. The good that we do as people to people brings us fame.
Unless we capture the knowledge through writing it and recording it, it will die with us when we die.
That will be the end. We should look back to the heritage of stories or ngano, riddles or zvirahwe and metaphors or madimikira and reclaim the knowledge, then package it differently so the children can read it.  Let us not kill the knowledge passed on to us by our grandmothers.
It must be passed on because such knowledge in stories helps us to discover more of who we are, where we have been and where we should be going.
Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and is a consultant.