Village secrets, love affairs

AFRICANVILLAGESekai Nzenza
One time, in my mother’s village, my maternal grandfather fell in love with a woman from another village not so far away. That was in the late 1930’s, long before Christianity came to my mother’s village.
The story, as told by my mother when we were growing up, is that the woman was single but she had an adult daughter who happened to become quite ill and was dying.

In the old days, they did not allow someone who was critically ill to die at home.

They made a camp, musasa, away from the village compound, somewhere in the bush. Over there, close relatives nursed the ill person until he or she died peacefully. And so my grandfather’s lover took her daughter to the musasa. He announced to my grandmother, Mbuya VaHarugovanwi, that he was going to stay at the musasa with his lover. She accepted his departure and wished him well.
After a few days, my grandfather came back and took a whole beast or an ox to the musasa and killed it, as a present to his lover.

He then took a whole leg, bandauko rese, including the hoof and carried it to my grandmother. At the door step, he offered her the leg and said he was not going to be home until the problem, dambudziko, confronting his lover was over.

My grandmother clapped her hands, received the meat and let him go. “What could she have done?” my mother often asked whenever she told us this story. “When love comes, it cannot be stopped.”

My grandfather only returned home when his lover’s daughter was dead and had been buried with peaceful dignity. “Ah, your grandfather loved that woman,” my mother often said, smiling and shaking her head.

In those days, such love between a married man and a single woman was an open secret. If my grandfather knew about Jesus Christ and Christian morals, he might not have been so open about his love affair.

Over the years, Christianity has taken a strong hold here. The Gospel preachers say people who cheat on their partners are sinners and will burn in hell.

And yet, despite the number of people who go to church these days, adulterous love affairs in the village still surface. If you look, listen and stay here as often as I do at weekends, you will hear so much village gossip about who is secretly in love with who.

It’s human nature. People fall in love with people you would never expect. Love or lust is like that. It crosses boundaries simply because it is love. Or maybe it is lust. There is no real formula to it.

This rainy season, adulterous love is in the air, here in the village and even as far as my mother’s maternal home. Some married people have fallen in love with people that they are not married to. I heard this village gossip from my cousin Piri.

She heard it from someone else. That is the way of village gossip. You will never trace the origin to the story. Usually, there is truth in each story and the people are real.

Except the events get altered as the news move from one mouth to another, one ear to the other. Sometimes, the news might just end with one person who will say, this news should have been for the eyes only, the mouth must keep quiet. Ndezve meso, muromo nyarara.

But not in our village. Even when I was growing up here, we heard so much gossip about adults falling in love with men or women who they were not married to. There were secret places where married lovers could meet and easily hide away from passers-by.

The big mutsamvi tree near the anthill where they met in broad day light or in the moonlight is gone now. These days we have deep gulleys or ditches caused by soil erosion.

There are many secret enclaves where lovers can hide when it’s not raining. Here in the secret valleys, the sand is warm, moist and dry.

Piri told me that a couple of weeks ago, a married man from behind Dengedza Mountain fell in love with a married woman from across the river. The two lovers had a rendezvous in the valley enclaves, shielded away by the thick bushes near the river. Then the lovers were caught by a passer-by who simply grabbed their pile of clothes and ran away with them.

The passer-by then delivered the man’s clothes to his wife. And the woman’s clothes he delivered to her husband. And nothing was said about the reaction of the respective man and woman who received the clothes of their cheating partners. This is breaking news in the village.

If there was a tabloid paper, this news would be on the front page. But we do not have a paper here. There has never been one. Everything is by word of mouth and when people here get a little airtime, they use mobile phones but usually not to tell gossip because gossip on the phone is too expensive.

I asked Piri why the husband of the woman had not complained to the village headman, as should be the case. After all, his wife had been taken by another man. Traditionally, the lover should pay compensation to the woman’s husband. “Why would he want to embarrass himself among other men?” asked Piri. “These days, such secrets should always be kept as secrets even if they are not secrets.”

“What if the woman gets pregnant from her lover?” I asked. And Piri said, “What does it matter? The lover does not have children.”

Gomba harina mwana. That was the tradition then. If you are a man and you happen to father your married lover’s child, you can never claim the child as yours because lovers are just lovers; they did no own children born out of a secret love affair. It is quite possible that there are some children being raised by fathers who are not their fathers, right here in this village. Genetic tests for paternity would bring the truth into the open. But, is that necessary? Is gomba harina mwana, the lover has no child, not enough?

Piri says all these secret love affairs are fuelled or inspired by the rain and the unusual greenery around.

It’s been years since we saw the villages looking so abundantly full of life. Almost every tree is green and down the valley, we can eat hute, the olive like fruit and the yellow juice, maroro is still there.

On Saturday morning, when we were on our way to the chief’s village, we found three different varieties of mushrooms including tsvuke tsvuke, chihombiro and nhedzi. According to Piri, when the ground is so fertile, and mushrooms sprout from everywhere, people are happier and they easily fall in love. The chief also echoed Piri’s words when he tried to explain to us why there had been three adulterous love related cases at his court in just one week.

I was there, at the chief’s court, seeking permission to sink another borehole for the Simukai Project. Last time we sank one funded by the Australian Ambassador. We did that without the chief’s permission. So we were fined US$150 for our lack of respect to the protocols of tradition. This time, Piri and I said we will do what is right by the chief. While we waited to present our request to him, we witnessed one case in which a man was accused of committing adultery with a married woman. The woman did not deny that she had a relationship with the man outside her Christian marriage. She was a young woman, with hair worn in locks but nicely covered with a head scarf. She stood there and said, “But how can you blame me? My lover paid the bus fare for my husband to go and order goods for sale from South Africa. That money helped me and my husband to make some profit. We are grateful to my lover for the help.” The chief said he had never dealt with such a case, where a woman who is traditionally meant to be a victim, is the one claiming that no crime was committed.

He sent all three away and said there was no formula or rules to secret village love affairs any more.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is the Chief Executive Officer of RioZim Foundation.

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