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Claude Maredza Correspondent

So before we look at the harurwa practices proper, let’s for a while tell each other some home truths so that hopefully we can put into motion values that will make us all enjoy our Zimbabwe.

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK…

Far from the truth. The explanation lies in this insect which may have retained its acid. And this doesn’t happen all the time at all.

So it is absolutely incorrect to say that harurwa insects are eaten while one is crying.

They merely cause a teary sensation similar to the one you get when you are eating a lemon and this only happens if you have met with a harurwa whose acidic juice has not been removed before frying the insect for consumption. It doesn’t happen all the time as people are erroneously meant to believe.

Such a sour harurwa insect is called a FUVE in the Karanga vernacular language (pronounced as spelt) of the area and its identified by its distinctly more darker brown belly than the rest of the harurwa insect which will be a light crispy brown.

In fact when eating the harurwa insects, you are actually warned to be careful of the FUVES, so you can select those harurwas with the dark brown belly and you throw them away as they are the fuves and you only eat the ones without the dark brown belly to avoid the sour taste.

We hope this puts an end to the incorrect debate particularly in Harare and other places far from Bikita. It is in these far flung places where some people who know nothing about it have gone on to mislead people into believing that harurwa are insects that are eaten when people are crying. Good God! There is absolutely no truth in that.

But we must still ask, why is it that Zimbabweans are so unaware and unknowledgeable about such fundamental heritages like harurwa that make us a unique people?

So before we look at the harurwa practices proper, let’s for a while tell each other some home truths so that hopefully we can put into motion values that will make us all enjoy our Zimbabwe.

This digression is absolutely necessary if we really have to be ourselves and own this, our Zimbabwe for real. So let’s talk about it truthfully here and now before we go back to the harurwa practices.

You look at a place like Victoria Falls or Lake Kariba or Great Zimbabwe Monuments. A lot of Zimbabweans don’t know these places. They hear about them rumourly like some far off unimaginable idea and place when these places are right in their back yard!

It is actually a shame that a tourist from distant Germany or USA or Australia will come and tell a Zimbabwean who has spent the rest of his life in Zimbabwe about Victoria falls and or Great Zimbabwe!

We have to ask ourselves why it is like that. Why don’t we know our country?

It is true that during colonial days, the coloniser wanted to enjoy our country alone and to his benefit and that of his kith and kin alone. So the situation resulted in us not even being allowed in tourist centres such as Great Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls as a result of racial discrimination as this racism dictated that the only black people you could see in these places were servants who would be serving the white tourists.

Besides, the slave wages we used to earn during the colonial days could have never ever allowed us to have spare money to spend at tourist resorts.

But why must it continue like that today in 2019?

We and our children still continue to read about these places but we still can’t afford to go to these places. Why?

The answer lies in the fact that we are not creating in our people’s minds a recreational psyche which is coupled with them having to relax in their own great relaxation places such as Nyanga, Great Zimbabwe, Kariba, Victoria Falls, etc.

Somehow by not creating this psyche, our people have instead carried on into independence with the psyche that they are only workers and such tourist places are not for them but for white tourists.

As a result, our people never ever think about taking a holiday even in their own land.

Even those that can afford it have the mental software that does not make them see the need for going on holiday thanks to the remnants of colonial discrimination in our people’s mental software which continues to organically haunt our people.

So the majority of our people continue to associate these tourist places with white tourists and they still psychologically continue to think that these places are not for them.

And because this thinking is embedded psychologically as a mind set, it applies right across the board to include those of our people who can afford such places.

We still have a mindset psyched up on, ‘Rhodes and Founders’, ‘Christmas’ and ‘Easter’ with our own new additions or substitutions like our independence day and Heroes days as the only times we can leave work and go to the rural areas to see our people in the village and our tourist places still remain detached from us mentally as we continue to think that they are not for us.

Therefore, those of us managing the tourism industry have a real heavy task to change our people’s thinking and make them realise that tourism is for them as well not just for foreign tourists.

This can be achieved through the children.

Schools must organise tours to the tourist places and they must ensure that all school children go on these tours.

This will mean that our children will grow up with a mindset of going on holiday and that way we can start a new generation which begins to see going on holiday as a necessity rather than as a preserve of white tourists only.

This can then be carried to the next generations and in the process organically create a new Zimbabwean who naturally goes on holiday rather than what presently obtains.

To be continued…