I Am a Girl from Africa Page 2

  Now, as the plane comes to a halt at the gate and the flight attendants crack open the doors, I suddenly feel how far away from home I truly am. I feel lonely and panicked—even fearful. Can I do this? I am thousands of miles away from everyone and everything I have ever known, here on British soil with a single intention. My dream is to become the girl in the blue uniform. But what if I can’t? What if I fail? I stand to file out of the plane with the other passengers, my heart on fire in my chest. As I prepare to make my way in a new country, I feel a hollow pit of anxiety in my stomach. I have read about Britain in books, but the very first time I learned about the existence of the nation in which I’m about to set foot was when Gogo told me the story of Chimurenga.

  * * *

  I am six years old, sitting on the small stoop at the entrance of Gogo’s hut in Goromonzi. I am busy-busy, shelling the maize harvested from Gogo’s field. The wooden door of the hut is a bit rickety, so I lean against it gently, slowly stretching out my ashy shins to soak up the sun, while the hut’s small roof shields my face from the scorching heat. In the distance I can hear the clucking of chickens in the neighbor’s yard. I smile, fill my lungs with warm, earthy air and cluck back. I pick up a cob of dried maize from the ground and shell its seeds into the clay pot balanced between my thighs, which Gogo cleans with a palmful of dry sand every morning. I place the seedless cob on the ground to my right, then reach to my left for another cob. It is the middle of the day; I am all alone and entirely in charge of Gogo’s house and goats, and I know just what to do.

  This morning, like most mornings, Gogo left to work in the field, leaving me with plenty-plenty things to do. First, I must tie up the goats in the bush, then sweep the yard, wash the dirty dishes from last night’s supper, and finally shell enough maize for tonight’s meal. Once all of this is done, I will join Gogo in the field. I am nearly finished with my last task; I shell another maize cob into the clay pot, then another one, and another one.

  I am happily lost in my thoughts. I’m thinking about how tonight I will pile the cobs in the fire pit in the center of our clean hut; how I will light the match and create fire; how I will place the clay pot full of seeds over the fire and then add water, salt, okra, and sliced tomatoes from our large garden, making a nice-nice supper for Gogo and me. As always, the thick, fragrant smoke will fill the hut, making me cough and my eyes water, and I’ll say, “Eeee, too much smoke,” as I wipe tears from my cheeks, and Gogo will say, “Eeee, open the door,” as I blow the dark smoke away from me. “Aaaa, the door is already open,” I’ll respond, tasting the bitter smoke as it moves down my throat.

  My wandering thoughts are interrupted by a scream. I stop and listen. Nothing. I return to shelling maize. I hear the scream again. I can’t make out the words, but I can tell it’s a woman’s voice. My heart pounds in my chest. “Who is it?” I ask quietly, as if I’m speaking to myself and not to the person screaming.

  The woman screams again, much louder this time. I’m startled, because it is Gogo’s voice. What is wrong? I jump off the stoop and send the clay pot flying through the air; it crashes to the ground and shatters into tiny pieces, scattering our dinner everywhere. Panicking, I drop to my knees and scoop up as much maize as I can into my tiny palms. I feel frantic as I look around the yard, searching for an empty container.

  Gogo screams again, and this time she sounds even more distressed. I abandon the maize to the ground and take off running as fast as I can. I run behind the hut, past the maize bin set up on wooden stilts to protect the food from mice, even though the mice always find a way in. I run harder, my breath coming fast and quick, past the colorful guava and mango trees and past the neighbors’ yards. I run and run until I reach the edge of the village. I see Gogo charging toward me through the open cow pastures. It’s as if the wind is pushing her forward, her feet practically flying off the ground, dust trailing behind her on the narrow dirt path. I don’t know what is happening, but Gogo is clearly upset. Her sarong is barely hanging around her waist. I have never seen Gogo outside without a head scarf, and now it is bunched up in one hand, the sun bouncing off her white hair.

  Everything is happening so fast. I forget about the stabbing pain from the sharp stones underneath my bare feet. My heart is beating hard, as if trying to break free of my body. Arms spread wide, I reach out for Gogo and throw myself into her embrace. She wraps me in her arms and lifts me off the ground. My face is pressed to her sweat-drenched cheek. Now that Gogo is holding me, I can see that she is crying. Sobbing, actually; her eyes overflow with tears that blend with her sweat; it’s as if a river of water is running down her face. I’m so confused. My Gogo is crying. I have never seen her cry before. Because she is crying, I cry with her.

  “Tasununguka,” Gogo says, her voice thick with tears. I have no idea what she’s talking about, so I cry even harder.

  In the middle of the hot day, we stand alone next to the empty cow kraals, the cows having long gone to their pastures with the sekurus, and the ambuyas now busy working their fields at the bottom of the village while their children help with chores or go to school. It is as if Gogo and I are alone in the world, but Gogo is crying. I don’t know what to do.

  Gogo’s knees buckle beneath her. She is gripping me in her arms like a baby, she will not let go, and so we land together on the ground with a thump. My face is pressed against her breasts and my legs stretch out on the ground. I hear Gogo’s heartbeat in my ear, da dhum, da dhum, da dhum, faster and faster, trying to catch her breath as it keeps tumbling away from her. I want to say something, but I don’t know what to say. Instead I throw my tiny arms across her shoulders, trying to comfort her without words, praying silently to God. I want Gogo to stop crying, but instead she opens her mouth and wails. She is sobbing, freeing herself from her sorrow, wailing like a child. I don’t understand what has happened, but I want to take Gogo’s pain away, the way she always takes my pain away, protecting me from sickness and hunger and every sadness. I press myself against her and pray: God, please heal her.

  Gogo says again, more clearly this time, “The radio announced Tasununguka.”

  I still do not understand her meaning, but she is no longer crying and I want to keep it that way, so I nod and repeat the word into her shoulder, “Tasununguka.” This is the word Gogo has heard on her small-small radio, which she takes to the field when there is enough money for batteries. We listen to music and weather and news as we work together.

  I pull away from Gogo and smile at her. She smiles back, then lets out a huge laugh, rumbling from deep within her chest, that feels as loud as thunder. Still laughing, she lifts me off her lap, sets me on the ground, and begins to sing and dance like a madwoman. Her bare feet stomp the ground with tremendous force, and her arms flap in the air like the powerful birds that soar over the Good Forest and drop down to steal fish from our river. Gogo’s loud laughter calls the light back into her eyes. She is absolutely ecstatic; I think she sounds as hysterical as the hyenas in the Hyena Forest.

  Gogo’s sudden happiness confuses me as much as her crying did, but I am relieved she is happy, and so I join her madwoman dance, following her feet in their one-two, one-two, one-two pattern. We dance in a wild circle as dust swirls around us, panting as our lungs run out of air. We are laughing with our souls, emptying out all of our pain like water being poured into the ground.

  When Gogo abruptly stops singing, I stop with her. Fat beads of sweat mix with dried tears on our faces. I search Gogo’s face for answers. What is happening? She says nothing. Instead, she bends down, locks her hands under my arms, and lifts me off the ground until my feet are dangling in the air. Looking directly into my eyes, she smiles and proclaims loudly, “Tasununguka—We Are Free! We are free, my dear child. We are free.”

  What does she mean? What has just happened? Why was Gogo crying, then happy, then dancing? What does it mean? I wonder. We are free? I want to ask questions, but I do not, because Gogo is laughing and I want her to stay happy. Gogo always tells
me, You ask too many questions for a child, and this does not seem like the time for questions. I smile and nod as she lowers me to the ground.

  We walk back home in silence, up the narrow dirt path and through the village, my hand inside Gogo’s. She is smiling, but my mind is full of questions. Tasununguka, I repeat silently in my head. When we reach Gogo’s yard, the shattered clay pot is still in pieces on the ground. I drop down to pick it up, looking at Gogo anxiously, waiting for her to ask me why I thought it was okay to throw food on the ground, because food is never to be wasted, not in our village where we share our bounty with everyone. But she says nothing; she simply swipes the maize off the stoop with her foot and sits down. I pick up the scattered maize, blow off the sand, and place it in her lap. Gogo looks far away, lost in her thoughts.

  “Tomorrow,” she says finally, “we will celebrate.” A smile on her face, the head scarf back on her head, and her sorrow gone, she shells maize without a care.

  She is so happy, so I ask, “What is tasununguka?”

  Gogo’s hands are still busy-busy with the maize as she begins, “A long, long time ago, the vapambepfumi—white oppressors—came to our country of Zimbabwe. They came from Britain, a country far-far away.”

  Where is Britain? I wonder. But I know this is an important story, I want to hear all of it.

  “We welcomed them,” Gogo explains. “We gave them our blackest cows and said, ‘This is the meat with which we greet you.’ ”

  Legs folded neatly beneath me, elbows resting on my thighs, face cupped in my palms, I train my eyes on Gogo’s face and listen.

  “But us, we didn’t know. We didn’t know that the vapambepfumi were not nice people. They were not kind to us. They took our land, then forced us to work on it without pay. They kept all the crops for themselves, giving us very little in return.”

  Gogo’s shelling pace picks up together with the speed of her voice. “They killed our elephants, our buffaloes, our giraffes, and our lions. They stole nice stones from our mines. They made us call them Sir or Madam, demanding our respect. Yet they referred to us as monkeys.” She sighs and looks out into the distance, still shelling maize. I watch the sadness return to her eyes, like the shadow of a cloud hiding a patch of sunlight.

  “Uuuu, we suffered so much from the way they treated us. We wanted the pain to go away. So one day, we asked them nicely to leave. But the vapambepfumi refused.”

  Gogo closes her eyes and continues. “We prayed to God, but God did not hear our prayers. The vapambepfumi did not leave our country. They did not give back our land. So in 1896, we started a war and we called it our Chimurenga—the Liberation Struggle. We called ourselves the rebels and we fought the vapambepfumi.”

  I do not know what war is, but Gogo’s voice is sad, her eyes still closed.

  “We wanted to be free,” she says. “Free to have our own country back from the colonizers. Free to grow our own crops, on our own farms, and to feed our own children. Free to own our land.”

  Gogo stops shelling and talking, and hangs her head, shaking it from side to side as if emptying her mind of troubling memories. She places her palms over her eyes and opens her mouth, but no words come out. Her sorrow consumes her again. I reach out, place my hand on her knee, and squeeze as tightly as I can.

  “Huhhh,” Gogo finally says. “But the vapambepfumi won the war. They killed so many of our people.” Gogo has taught me that when good people die, their souls go to a better place called heaven. I say a silent prayer to God to take care of all the souls of our people.

  Gogo’s hands slowly leave her eyes and I can see her face again. “In 1966,” she continues, “we started the second Chimurenga. This time we would never give up. Us, we had nowhere else to go and nothing left. The vapambepfumi could go back to Britain. They had a choice; a choice we never had. All we had was the land and the pain and the burden that came with fighting for it.”

  I watch fire return to Gogo’s eyes, replacing the sadness, and I want my eyes to look just like hers. She looks focused and determined. She will never give up. She will always fight for what’s right. That is exactly what I want to do. This is exactly what she has taught me.

  “So this time, we got more serious. We got more rebels and weapons and we fought with everything we had. We fought with our lives. We fought for the lives of our sisis and hanzwadzis from the first Chimurenga. We fought for our freedom.”

  Finally, I interrupt, because I must know. “Did you fight the vapambepfumi, Gogo?” I imagine her fighting—her fierce glare, her absolute determination to win freedom for her people. Who would dare to cross my Gogo?

  Gogo is crying again. There is no wailing or sobbing this time, just a waterfall of tears that cleanses her face.

  “Eeee, yes, we all did, my dear child. All the women took care of the rebels. Some of us cooked. Some of us carried their weapons. Some of us fought the vapambepfumi with our own weapons. We all did our part to help in the second Chimurenga.”

  “Rebels?” I ask softly. “What is a rebel?”

  She doesn’t answer my question, but continues the story. “And then all my sons, your sekurus, joined the other rebels to fight the vapambepfumi in the forest in the second Chimurenga.”

  Rebels. I know the word. I think-think and then remember that I once met a rebel. One day he emerged suddenly from the Good Forest unannounced, and found me pulling weeds in Gogo’s field. I was hunched over, but I felt his presence behind me. I stood up and took in this tall, serious sekuru with no light in his eyes, which were red as if he had been crying. His hair was twisted in knots and needed to be combed. His skin was dark and glistened in the sun. He did not smile. He did not say, Hello, or God bless you. He stood silently before me in his matching trousers and shirt, wearing big heavy boots on his feet, a brown bag on his back, and a big weapon strapped to his shoulder. He was in a hurry and did not have time to waste. He asked, “Une mvura?” I did not have water, so I shook my head. His response was quick: “Ko, chikafu?” I did have food. I had boiled sweet potatoes in the clay pot under the tree. “Me, I cooked them myself,” I added, as I led him to the tree, happy to help this sad-looking sekuru.

  Suddenly I felt Gogo’s hand yanking me away from the sekuru. She shoved me behind her back, still holding her hoe in the other hand. She dropped her hoe and handed the sekuru a sweet potato, still gripping me tightly with her other hand. He took the food and walked away. He did not say thank you. He did not ask about Gogo’s crops or ask her for God’s blessing. This was all so strange. We always asked each other for God’s blessings in our village. Gogo explained that this sekuru was not from our village. “He’s a rebel,” she told me before I could even ask the question. The sekuru had disappeared back into the forest, but there was still terror in Gogo’s eyes.

  “The rebels are looking for useful young children to cook for them and carry their guns,” she added.

  I was useful. I could cook and carry heavy things. “I can help!” I announced to Gogo, lifting the big pot of sweet potatoes over my head.

  My words visibly startled her. Gogo yanked the pot out of my hands and threw it to the ground, sending sweet potatoes flying.

  “The rebels are dangerous. Do you hear me?” She shook my shoulders hard. “They take our children and never bring them back!” She was fuming. Up to this point, the rebel had not frightened me. To me, he was just another sekuru: a sad one, perhaps, lost in the forest, searching for food. But now I was terrified; a sekuru that could take me away from my Gogo? I never saw the rebel again.

  Now I look up at Gogo on the stoop and say, “But you said rebels were dangerous.”

  She does not answer.

  “Gogo, you said the rebels were dangerous, remember?”

  Gogo ignores my question as if she hasn’t heard it and continues, as if reliving the story for the first time. “Eeee, God knows how much I prayed. Me, I prayed every day and every night for your sekurus, worried I would never see my sons again. I worried they would never retu
rn to me, that they would die in the bush without a good burial. But God answered my prayers. He brought all your sekurus home to me.” Now I remember that Gogo’s three sons who live in Goromonzi were always gone for long periods of time when I was young-young. But now they have all been back home since Christmas, back from the second Chimurenga. I have so many questions, but I let Gogo continue.

  She lets out a sigh of relief and says, “Aaaa, your sekurus and all the other rebels defeated the vapambepfumi.” She pauses, smiles, and says, “And now, us, we are free. Free to take back our land. Free to call our country Zimbabwe, instead of the colonizer’s Rhodesia. Today is an important day. Today is our Independence Day. Never forget that, my dear child. Never forget.” Her face is glowing and light returns to her eyes, the burden of Chimurenga finally lifted from her shoulders. She is proud of herself and her sons for demanding respect for our people, proud of the rebels for winning back our land, and because she is proud, I am proud too.

  I am still sitting with my legs crossed, my body soaking up the sun, my hand still squeezing Gogo’s knee, when she finishes her Chimurenga story. We are both crying, but we are not sad.

  “Tasununguka,” I say, feeling proud of the things I still do not yet fully understand.

  “Yes, we are free,” Gogo says, a big smile on her face. She pauses, looks into my eyes, reaches for my hand, and says, “And you, my dear child, you are now Mwana Wevhu.”

  I smile and say, “I am Mwana Wevhu.” What this means, I am not certain, but deep down I feel—I know—that everything has changed.