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Stanely Mushava : Features  Correspondent

Chizanhi Madombwe, perhaps Mbuya Nehanda’s longest surviving handmaid, was not a mere mortal. A living repository of Zimbabwean history, she witnessed not only the two struggles that won independence and the intervening world wars, but lived to be a luddite-style cultural commentator in the age of WhatsApp.Madombwe, also known as Mbuya Hiki, died on July 17 this year, at the estimated age of 130.

She probably was the world’s oldest person but without paper trail or scientific age, her actual age was left to guesswork.

In Second Chimurenga lingo, Chizanhi would be a “chimbwido” (female collaborator).

She was one of the teenage virgins and post-menopause women who ministered to Charwe, the spirit medium and First Chimurenga heroine commonly known as Mbuya Nehanda.

Two years ago, relatives requested assistance from the Registrar-General’s Office to have her entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest living person.

However, authentication costs proved prohibiting.

From childhood recollections of the coming of “a race without knees,” cooking for Mbuya Nehanda and being a teenager at the time of reprisal hangings and be-headings of First Chimurenga leaders, however, her family reached 130 as the most conservative estimate for her age.

Her family tree, consisting of nine children, 35 grandchildren, 99 great-grandchildren and nine great-great grandchildren, also compensates for the lack of paper trail of her pilgrimage through time.

“She lived a full life. We are grateful for the time allowed her to be with us. They were rewarding years for the great personality that she was,” Alexander Mushavatu, a nephew who had taken to calling the deceased “Mbuya” (grandmother) like everyone else in appreciation of her “super-seniority.”

Mbuya Hiki complained of fatigue on a Friday and died on Sunday (July 17).

“When you say you are mourning, it means you had future expectations of the person. But Mbuya Hiki had seen everything and fulfilled the mission of her life with distinction.

“She built one big family on wise counsel and her death was preceded by colourful experiences.

“We believe she is in a good place now, having done her duty during her lifetime,” Mushavatu said.

Despite several leads, however, no definitive age could be reached.

A plaque prepared by family members proclaimed her to be 120 while Mushavatu insisted that the figure was rushed.

The age 120 was reached on, being 10 less years than the age of Mbuya Hiki’s late husband, Mutovongerwa.

The name Chizanhi means “leaf.”

Just how this particular leaf stayed connected to the source for more than a century is a formula many mortals dream of mastering.

Mushavatu attributes Mbuya Hiki’s longevity to healthy habits which went as far as regularly sweeping her garden.

She was obsessed with cleanliness and it became the only fault line between her and elderly tolerance.

“I do not know anyone who observed hygiene nearly as much as Mbuya Hiki.

She was a warm personality but she could not stand short-cuts when it came to hygiene,” Mushavatu said.

Mbuya Hiki, he said, always had a Shona equivalent for “cleanliness is next to godliness” at hand to censure anyone who did not seem to be up to her demanding standards.

Equally important was her particular taste for wholesome, nutritionally rounded and properly cooked food.

She would prepare stew “forever,” reminding impatient family members that: “Do you not know that partially cooked food swells the belly?”

“She was an exceptionally good woman and always insisted on preparing her own food as long as she was able. She attended women’s clubs and won trophies for her cooking in the 1970s,” Mushawatu said.

Refined food was a no-go area for the First Chimurenga “chimbwido.”

“In the beginning, she prepared her mealie-meal by pestle and mortar, carrying over an old tradition. Everything was to be natural,” the nephew said.

The fact that she never attended school and was never formally employed, maintaining a home-builder role throughout her active years, conspired against the documentation of her age.

“The Lion and the Jewel” type teacher, who introduced the white man’s education to her native Domboshava had her eyes on a crush-worthy village beauty.

The affair was found out at a time when the Shona maintained uncompromising emphasis on customs around courtship, marriage and family, which shunned underground liaisons and prescribed transparency.

The star-crossed teacher, failing to blend into the moral background, was kicked out of the village in disgrace, leaving a sour impression of the white man’s education in the minds of prospective recruits.

Young Chizanhi was among the disillusioned. Locating no value in such a subversive education, she opted for a career in tradition.

Such work was a preserve for girls who had not been with a man or old women past the age of menopause.

Chizanhi would have been somewhere between 10 and 13 when she started this work.

“Her duties consisted of cooking for Charwe, helping with the brewing of ritual beer and attending to her logistical needs. She remembered the indignation shared by her people for the settlers at the time.

“Black people were already being displaced and committed to ‘chibharo’ (forced labour). Charwe and other wartime leaders like Kaguva mobilised resistance. She used to say that our people were shot from afar because whites used lethal weapons,” Mushawatu recalled.

But the spiritual charisma of the wartime leaders and the indignation of the children of tribulation urged more soldiers to the battlefront.

Chizanhi was not present at the hanging but remorsefully told of a number of leaders being beheaded, having been killed by the Rhodesians with creative inhumanity.

First Chimurenga leaders including Mapondera, Chingaira Makoni, Chiwashira and Nehanda were some of the leaders whose heads were carried as trophies to Britain.

The name Mbuya Hiki was a variant of Mbuya VaHicks (Hicks’s grandmother).

Hicks was Madombwe’s first grandson, and grew up under her care.

One of Mbuya Hiki’s memories of the early years of European occupation was the outbreak of influenza, which she said claimed hundreds.

Her long-run memories of the past made her somewhat futuristic.

She thought of the past as tending to self-replication.

One of her more optimistic predictions was the end of HIV and Aids.

“She used to say: ‘You are worrying about Aids? It will end. There was fruenza (influenza), which killed many people within a short period but it ended. These things you are crying about will end,’” Mushavatu recalled.

Chizanhi later found a spiritual home in the Mbuya Anna Guild of the Roman Catholic Church, where she was also noted for her wisdom.

She was particularly noted as a relationships specialist.

Her advice to girls included keeping suitor waiting (for around the period it takes to negotiate a Global Political Agreement) just to prove his authenticity.

She was a stickler for fidelity and pre-marital purity and bemoaned the downgrading of family values, and donor-bankrolled abominations such as sodomy.