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as much as the place where the very first sin, that sacrilege when Eve was tempted into eating of the forbidden fruit, occurred.
Interestingly, women of the conservative Johane Marange Apostolic sect in Sapa area in yonder Dande communal lands are turning their vegetable gardens into mini-Edens.
The sect is as known for its white flowing robes and long wooden staffs, and the practice of polygamy, as it is for its controversial policy against conventional medicinal practices, including contraceptives.
This latter attribute has led to the criminalisation of the sect by the secular world, on one hand, and the digging in of the sect on the other, with the tragic result of the stand-off being the death of young children from “preventable” diseases like measles, tuberculosis and polio, etc.
Talk of BCG vaccine at birth, pentavalent and polio vaccines at three, four and five months, measles vaccine at nine months, DPT at 18 months and DT at five years and what have you. They won’t allow them!
Even conventional family planning methods are outlawed here, which might account for the hordes of children that characterise the church’s membership.
But some women of this patriarchal society have had enough of child-bearing and are willing to do the taboo and risk the ire of their goatee-bearded husbands and status quo.
Tired of dropping one child after another, the women now connive with village health workers and get the family planning pill at the village gardens. With a cool password, the distributor is told under which stone at the gardens she places the pills, from which the women of white cloth clandestinely pick them up and take them.
But behold! This villager is told the pills don’t get anywhere nearer home and are taken under the silhouette shadow of sunset. The health worker does not give clinic cards but keeps the record book. A small piece of paper is torn off from the main book and a review date inscribed. This villager understands that the “special paper” is carefully placed under that stone at the garden, known only by the woman concerned.
The more daring ones of those women of white cloths and doeks craft deals with nurses and go to the clinic pretending to be selling vegetables to get their required three-monthly depo-provera injections, which is handy.
The hubbies can’t quite understand why the women are now obsessed with going to their gardens towards sunset. The garden has assumed a new status. Surely, the women have beaten the men to the game and this villager now understands that the same women ironically accuse their hubbies of firing blanks.
The men must surely be taking more sacred waters and praying hard to counter what they know not, given that their success in marriage is measured by the number of wives married and children fathered. Even the prophets are lost in the latest bedroom matrix!
The village soothsayer says the church will not hold on to its hardline stance for too long. The women have spoken. “Is silence not a form of speech? Kunyarara hakusi kutaura?” asks the village soothsayer!
A good hunt
Until the lions learn to write down their own stories, the story of the hunt will always be told from the hunter’s perspective. Until and until then, the hunter will always have his way of telling it.
This villager found himself in a far away land called Shurugwi, Tongogara High School to be precise, itself, the venue of a community-based natural resources conservation and management workshop, doubling up as a people-centred family empowerment fora.
This villager will be forgiven to say there was a national-rally-size-crowd there, singing, dancing, clapping and dramatising for the prosperity and goodwill of Shurugwi North constituency.
The gathering, which this villager learnt, has become the norm, has cemented the people of that constituency. This villager will not take away anything from Francis Nhema, the Minister and MP of the area for the good work.
This villager wishes all MPs were like him. Cool as a cucumber and soft like cotton wool, but touching base all the time and identifying with the people and their needs, opportunities, problems and solutions. The gravel roads had also been repaired, inspiring this villager.
With more than 6 000 people gathered for a good three days, an ecstatic Nhema could not help but smile at the people who made him what he is. He has ploughed back, and runs a multifarious array of constituency development projects, including an annual soccer tournament, conservation and self-help projects, among others.
This villager saw Nhema personally take pictures and record the event. Nhema being of the Shumba, the lion totem, was a lion attempting to write its own story. The village soothsayer says Nhema will win the next election. “If he loses, then the devil might as well win an election in heaven,” rumbled the soothsayer. If all MPs were just like him, dealing with issues, issues and issues, no politicking!
Drum-drilling at Zesa, Noczim
We know that back in the village wisdom abounds.
Suffice to say, we do not need a soothsayer to tell us that a very taut drum, whose sound reverberates at places afar, is very close to sounding its last.
You will soon hear it no more!
It is a common phenomenon, as such communal knowledge always is: shared among and between generations and eons. Kangoma karirisi ndiko kaparuki, you often hear villagers remarking.
And this villager finds this wisdom handy in this city of lights, once the Sunshine City before the councillors made it to Corruption House, sorry Town House.
Is there not some Government official whose name sounds like the drum of yonder in the village? Some ngoma!
Events unfolding recently seem to tell of an over-taut drum playing to shrillness and we can guess with a degree of precision that the end, if not hastened by the end of the dance called GPA, is well nigh.
Otherwise there is reason enough to believe that the man is shoring a lot on himself that he won’t even be able to emerge from thereunder, unscathed.
And there won’t be talk of “maboora ngoma” when one drum so stretches itself to a breaking point. The people want electricity and fuel but somehow Elton Mangoma has found a way of drilling holes into the system.
Recently it was one metering and billing firm, having fulfilled tender procedures and only awaiting approval and award, who was slighted when for some unclear reason Mangoma halted the process and instead entertained a presentation from another company, typical of village drum-drilling tactics.
In the process Mangoma allegedly usurped the powers of the relevant authority. Hardly have the reverberations of this incident died down and we now hear of another vexatious story. Yes, another drum-drilling antic!
This time, as in the first, all the tender (and a taut drum is not) protocol is flouted.
And a little known South African company is awarded tender and with tragic consequences to show for it especially so when the dirty-looking precious liquid is so critically needed.
This one incident we hear has opened a can of worms with suspicious unbundling of the mother supplier of the precious dirty liquid. Call in Noczim if you want.
Of course, we are told the boss has the final say and it’s been a story of rottenness at the parastatal. Ironically so!
And let’s not forget the boss tried to stop rottenness at Zesa albeit via suspicious-looking reasoning.
At this rate this villager fears, only time will tell just when this taut drum will sound its last. In the village, the drum sounds in highest tempo and crescendo, a few moments before it goes burst. Then the night gig is spoiled for everyone.
The soothsayer’s birthday
On a lighter note, this villager has been wondering what happens to those of us who, like this mystic figure of the soothsayer, were born on the 29th of February.
By the look of things there won’t be his birthday this year, will there be? Maybe next year, but three years thereafter there won’t be any.
This might explain why the soothsayer is ageless and wise; he is of not this our everyday, banal world! His birthday is once in four years!
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