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An artwork depicting a lost child

Sekai Nzena on Wednesday
JUST before we drove past the “Zimbabwe Independence 1980”  monument on the way from the Harare International Airport,  my cousin Piri touched our   nephew Tinashe on the knee gently and said he was fat. It was not meant to be an insult.

Piri is just like that. Sometimes, when she speaks in Shona as she does all the time, she misses some basic etiquette. You do not tell someone that they are fat.
This is what she said to Tinashe: “Heyi, muzukuru,  hindava kuita fatso so. Uri kudyei?”

“What did you say? You know I do not speak Shona, don’t you know?” Tinashe said, chewing and swirling his tongue around a pink gum in his mouth.  Piri clapped her hands  in the air the way she often does when she hears strange news.

Then she leaned towards Tinashe  and speaking  loudly in English, Piri said, “You speak not Shona muzukuru. So you speak what?”

I could see Tinashe  from the rear view mirror.

He  looked at Piri and with an annoyed look on his face said, “English, of course. What else?”

Piri said this on Sunday last week when my cousin Reuben arrived at Harare International Airport from Australia where he has been living for almost 13 years.
With him was Tinashe, his 15-year- old son. Its school holidays here and in Australia too. I was driving and Reuben sat in the passenger seat saying how glad he was to be back home with Tinashe.

Piri sat at the back making curious  smiling glances at Tinashe. She had not seen him since he was three years old.

Tinashe  pulled  a big bar of Toberone chocolate from  his back pack, the type you buy at duty free shops at airports.  Slowly, he peeled the yellow packaging with red writing and broke one cube of chocolate. He leaned against the window and took a big bite.  Reuben turned and slapped Tinashe on the thigh but not roughly. “What did we agree on Tinashe? One cube of chocolate per day. And what are you doing now?” Tinashe  grunted something and kept on eating his cube of chocolate for a while.

“Come on Dad, I am on holiday,” he said.

“So what if you are on holiday? Does it mean you pig out on chocolate like that?”
“If you did not want me to eat it, why did you buy it then?” Tinashe asked.

“It’s already here in my bag. What is the point of not eating it? Next time, do not buy chocolates unless you expect them to be eaten. Okay Dad?”
“Do not talk to your father like that,” Piri jumped to Reuben’s defence against his son.
“It’s not a crime that your father gave birth to you, buys you clothes, feeds you until you are this fat. Then he even buys an expensive air ticket for you to come home,” said Piri.

I translated for Tinashe, leaving the ‘fat’ part  and he laughed.

“He is my dad. It is his job to look after me.” Tinashe broke another cube of chocolate and munched it loudly.
“I am up to here with this kid,” Rueben pointed to his chin. There is a war between Tinashe and his mother back in Australia. Tinashe talks to his mother like she is his maid. Ask him. Say, Tinashe, why don’t you obey your mother.”

“Is that true Tinashe?” I asked.
Tinashe replied, “Tete, my mother behaves like she is not my mother.  She says, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that. Come home at eight.’  She gives me little pocket money. She hates my hair style and does not like me to hang out with  my Sudanese friends. Mum is difficult. Full stop. Dad knows that.”

Reuben  said there was nothing difficult about Mai Tinashe. She was a mother trying to bring up a teenage son in a very difficult environment where everything was determined by  peer pressure.

“Why don’t you just get a stick and beat Tinashe up thoroughly when he misbehaves?” Piri asked.
Tinashe understood the reference to being beaten. He laughed with sarcasm and said, “If Dad dares to try that he will be arrested.  Beating up children is abuse and it is against the law in Australia, in America, in Canada, the UK and many other civilised countries. I wrote an essay on that last year and got an A.”

“Listen to that my sisters. This kid is giving me a headache daily. He will not listen to me or to anyone,” said Reuben.
“That is why I have brought him here with me this time so he can learn something about life besides computers and junk food. What do you think?”
I have seen this parental desperation before. So I shrugged, laughed a little and kept my eyes on the road. But I was not laughing at all.

I was embarrassed by our common Zimbabwean story which seems to rear its head so often.
Here is the story: There are Zimbabweans, Africans like me who grew up with very little in the village before independence.

They dreamt of a better affluent life one day. After independence, they migrated to the Diaspora in search of education, work and better economic opportunities.
Over there,  they applied  for permanent residency as skilled migrants or political refugees.

They made Australia, Canada, UK, US, Germany  or any of the European countries their  home. When they looked  back at Zimbabwe, it appeared  to be what the Western media said it was.

The papers and the television said Zimbabwe was a very bad country and one of the worst places to live in the whole world.
It was not true. But when you are overseas and you do not think beyond the image on the television, you can be tempted to believe everything the media say.

Due to embarrassment or to being carried away by nice things, nezvinonaka, we turned our back on Zimbabwe and temporarily forgot where we came from.
Then one day, like my cousin Reuben, we woke up to discover that we were getting older. The kids we  taught to speak English in order to be accepted and fit in Western societies do not  know where home is. Neither do we.   Besides, we could no longer use the same method used by our parents to discipline us on our children. These teenage kids speak of freedom from their own parents. What kind of freedom is that? They answer back in English and can use rude sophisticated and  colourful  swear words that do not exist in any English dictionary.

“You did well Bhudhi by bringing Tinashe here. This is the right time. Send him to a rural boarding school  where he will eat sadza and boiled beans daily,” Piri said.
“After three months, he will know where he came from and what it means to respect the elders and behave like a human being,”

Tinashe was no longer listening. He was busy checking if his new sim card was working so he could go on WhatsApp and Facebook to tell his friends around the world that he was finally back in Africa, the motherland.

Once we got home from the airport, Reuben sat  down to enjoy his favourite dish: ox trotters and a village organic road runner chicken with red millet sadza.
He sat there, feasting away with his hands. Tinashe took one look at  mazondo, frowned and picked a chicken drum stick. He took one bite  and then he threw it into the bin because it was too tough.

Piri gave him rice and beef stew. He finished it in no time at all and came back for a second serving.

“Why else do you think I came back with Tinashe? I will want to take him to the village for three solid days. Over there, he will have no iPad, iPhone, comic books or computer games. This will force him  to hold a proper conversation with adults,” said Reuben.

“Which adult is Tinashe going to talk to in the village? About what?” Piri asked.

“The kid does not speak Shona.”

Before Reuben could  answer back, Piri said something about Tinashe being black only in skin colour but  was otherwise, a white boy in the way he spoke English.

“Mwana uyu, mutema zvake, asi muvheti.”
“That is not fair to say that Sis. Not fair at all,” Reuben looked distressed. Piri came and sat down on the sofa next to him.
“You are not the only one who has produced a son who does not speak your language, does not know his totem and has no knowledge of where he came from.
“Diaspora or no Diaspora, the whole of Zimbabwe is full of many confused parents like you. They have raised confused kids.”

Piri pointed to Tinashe who was now sound asleep due to the jet lag. He snored softly, his baby like face looking so innocent, fragile and lost.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is the CEO of RioZim Foundation. She writes in her personal capacity.