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Elliot Ziwira-At the Bookstore

“Hunting in Foreign Lands and Other Stories”, edited by Muchadei Alex Nyota, Barbara Chiedza Manyarara and Rosemary Moyana, depicts the problematic nature of nation building in the absence of collective responsibility. 

If individuals are obsessed with material gain through corruption, they think only of themselves and no one else. 

As a result, the moral fabric that is supposed to hold national consciousness is shred, since the individual is too busy thinking of his or her own skin to fret about the well-being of his or her fellow countrymen. 

In the rat race that ensues, a new breed of hunter is born; one who invariably hunts with the hounds and runs with the hares. 

Published by Priority Projects, stories in “Hunting in Foreign Lands and Other Stories” are set in Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, the SADC region as well as Asian and Arab countries. 

In their multiplicity, the hunting grounds portrayed highlight the extent to which the quarry at home has depleted, and how desperation forces hunters: both female and male, to look beyond their own landscape. 

To capture the extent to which despondency, frustration and desperation affect the hunters and their families, the stories are also divided into sections. 

The authors highlight the preparation for the hunt, the journey, the hunting itself and the home front, culminating in neurosis, paralysis and malaise at the centre of the family unit, community and nation.

As posited by Boeree (2002), anxiety, dejection, desperation, disturbing thoughts, obsession, fantasizing and cynicism; all aspects of neurosis, take the better of the hunters and their families.

Deception, avarice, materialism, corruption, opportunism and selfishness are in vogue, as brother throttle brother’s throat in a new race devoid of medals for second place. 

According to Transparency Ethiopia, corruption has “political, economic and social effects”. 

Graft causes intolerance and economic meltdown manifesting in a collapsed social system.

On the social platform, corruption discourages people from working together for the common good. 

Downheartedness, disillusionment and general apathy among the people result in a weak civil society. 

Demanding and offering bribes become a culture, as everyone feels obliged to honour his or her end of the bargain. 

Corruption leads to social inequality and widens the gap between the rich and the poor. Civil strife, increased poverty and lack of basic needs like water, jealousy, hatred and insecurity, are all consequences of the vice. 

The Bible lambasts corruption in Isaiah 1v4 when it says: “Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evil doers, sons who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.”

Corruption, therefore, is a vice that impacts negatively on the national psyche. 

Since it spares no one, it is a form of affliction that has far-reaching consequences.

Everyone becomes involved in one way or the other.

When local hunting grounds are in recession as a result of avarice, materialism and individualism, the Diaspora offers respite because of the allure of the seemingly greener pastures. 

Desperate to make it to the Diaspora, individuals are willing to part with any amount, as is the case in Aaron Mupondi’s “Conned”, and “My Mother’s Beads” by Barbara Manyarara. With everybody culturally ensconced in it, corruption draws in everyone, consciously or unconsciously. 

In “Conned”, Tendai’s desperation to go to London makes him lower his guard—all he can think of is a visa. The desire to change his family’s lifestyle and extricate himself from debt exposes his vulnerability. The intricate web of corruption ensnares him. 

In the guise of an agent with connections in London, Diva Makomo sells him a dummy. Tendai’s belief that one has to grease someone’s hand to get something exposes him as he loses his hard-earned $2 million (Zimbabwean dollars). 

He “thought about the pieces of gold and the mountains of pounds in his dream and wryly smiled to himself.” 

Conmen thrive on the knowledge that society has been accustomed to shortcuts availed through corruption. In the end it is not only the perpetrators, or instigators of the vice who suffer the psychological trauma that comes with it, but their innocent family members too.

 Tendai’s family suffers more as his depression does not only distance himself from his wife and children, but it strangles their dream, aggravating the malaise of the family unit.

 Manyarara’s “My Mother’s Beads” also examines how the preparation for hunting is as nerve-wrecking as the hunting itself, leaving individuals hopeless and frustrated. 

The narrator’s mother, Gogo, is despondent because she has not seen her children who left for the Diaspora in 10 years, and have since married. 

Though the story is in the section on the preparations to go to the Diaspora, it also highlights how the family unit suffers as a result of hunting in foreign lands, because the reason for her neurosis is the neuroses that the entire family suffers. 

Gogo has lost faith in everything. One of the traits of neurosis as pointed out by Jung (1964) is loss of faith. 

Gogo’s decision not to go to church, notwithstanding that she could have easily done so, is a cause for concern.

 Her lack of appetite points to depression; another neurotic trait. 

Her escape through the beads, also points to the condition. 

In the end, as the narrator says, the whole family is sucked in. Gogo’s gripe is that in four attempts she fails to secure a UK visa, even though her daughter availed all that was required. 

The deeper she sinks into depression, the more she drags her family into it.

Unlike Tendai in “Conned”, who starts with shortcuts and loses, Gogo’s family decides to follow the proper channels and they still lose, until they give in to corruption, and agree that they “needed to annex the help of a cousin who ‘knew’ someone.” In two days’ time the visa is ready. 

Corruption, like quicksand, has a way of pulling in people, and in the end it is society that loses. 

Although the narrator does not say how the cousin is connected and how much is involved, one can speculate that it cost them an arm and a leg, since it involves staff from the British embassy. 

Corruption in high places is the worst form of moral decadence, because sages say a fish rots from the head first.

 Stories that depict corruption in high places and how it causes discontent, paralysis, jealousy, betrayal, enmity and hatred are Barbara Manyarara’s “Femmes Sans Frontieres”, “Fire Fighting”, “Tauya’s Arrival” and “Name Any Price” by Ruby Magosvongwe. 

When those higher up in the political and social echelons are corrupt, then the contagious malignant disease spreads as they are linked to everyone’s source of livelihood. 

In “Femmes Sans Frontieres”, Manyarara purveys the destructive nature of corruption on the psyche leading to social neurosis in the same way that Magosvongwe does in “Fire Fighting” and “Name Any Price”, as the hunt for material gains intensifies. 

The protagonist in Manyarara’s story, Ruzai Makiwa, is caught up in a drug dealing syndicate whose powerbrokers are nameless powerful dons. 

Told in the first person voice, the story explores the way petty misdemeanours can degenerate into detrimental neurotic tendencies. 

The narrator’s portrayal exposes the bane of putting so much faith in personality cults, whose traits are scantly understood, as well as oppression in all its forms; physical, emotional and psychological. 

Physically, Ruzai is exploited by the company she works for as a cash handler for 10 years which affects her health. She is also exploited by the men who sired her two children and the nameless characters behind her drug trafficking escapades. 

Emotionally, she suffers the trauma of one who lives on borrowed identities, anxiety and the fear of the unknown. 

As a result of the societal pressure exerted on her, Ruzai finds the elixir in drug trafficking, alcohol, sex and pilferage which impedes regeneration and scuttles hope. 

Everyone is intoxicated metaphorically and literally in the neuroses of his/her existence, as he/ she grapples to keep his/her sanity in check in a society that has lost its own marbles.