The Keresenzia Effect: Child Killers in Memory Chirere & Valerie Tagwira’s Fiction
When a society’s structures fall, when its economy crumbles and there are high levels of unemployment and unimaginable suffering, its children face the highest levels of danger such a society of presents. The whole fabric of this society is endangered, and its future plunges into uncertainty. This has been true to the Zimbabwean situation, whose effects have begun to reverbrate through the country’s new literature, which shows how the children are responding to the woes of their environment. The works of Memory Chirere and Valerie Tagwira shed some light on this issue, which this study presents as the Keresenzia Effect.
In 2007, Valerie Tagwira shocked us with “Mainini Grace’s Promises”, a powerful story about the ravages of HIV/Aids, in which the child character kills her aunt at the end. The reader can see the frustration in the girl, her anger at the broken promise of Mainini Grace, whose betrayal to the family is that she has fallen victim of the pandemic that has killed other members of the girl’s family. If Mainini should be the source of hope, why has she allowed herself to be a victim? In a fit of rage, her niece pushes her to the ground, killing her in the process.
A similar scenario is covered in Memory Chirere’s “Keresenzia”, which was orginally published in 2001, where a little girl kills her grandmother. Chirere is an expert in portraying the child character, something aptly noted by Ruby Magosvongwe in her recent review of Somewhere in this Country. According to Magosvongwe, Chirere’s collection of stories ”offers refreshing and complex insights into the psyche of African memory, largely from a children’s perspective. Set in both the pastoral and cityscapes of Zimbabwe, the collection of twenty-one short stories in all, takes one onto the road to explore and discover the world and challenges of a burning desire for belonging.”
Keresenzia’s demands show a child’s (any child's) desire for attention. That she is an orphan compounds the situation, ultimately leading to her murdering of her grandmother. You finish reading the story and the question that rings in your head is “What has happened to these children?” I had the same question after the Tagwira shocker, but it got me thinking: the child in Zimbabwe has suffered the highest degree of injustice, her freedom to be a child having been robbed by irresponsible politics and empty international bickering. Everyone has failed the Zimbawean child, whether it is a democtratic country that slaps sanctions on Zimbabwe, or the singers of indefatigable songs of sovereignty, or the selfish hoarders of basic goods on the black market.
So we have children becoming carers of AIDS-torn or jobless parents; we witness them pairing with grandparents to take care of what’s left of the family. Look at Keresenzia and Matambudziko, both helpless in the face of squalor, but the latter is expected by the former to have answers about…everything: about what happened to the girl’s parents, about how to get fresh milk, about preparing the creamest butter, about pumpkin porridge one can enjoy, and, of course, grandmother, I want more lilies in my hair. It’s an endless list of needs, which the grandmother cannot meet. The grandmother, almost like a child herself, has her needs too, which is why she cries; she cries for a reason no one knows. Would anyone listen? If you have families run by either children or the very old grandmother, you almost have nothing being run; it’s a helpess state of affairs, drawing us closest to the basic of all instincts for survival, and when any balance is lost, anything is possible, hence the Keresenzia effect. It is about anything bad being possible because everything good has become impossible. It is this surreal, playing-with-life situation hinted at in Christopher Mlalazi’s story "Playing with Life", but where it involves what children can be pushed to do or not do, it is an indication of catastrophe.
In Tagwira’s story, Sarai has dropped out of school to take care of her mother. There is no one else to help except Mainini Grace who sends money and letters full of promises from Botswana. When the promises are not fulfilled we see the increasing degree of helplessness and anxiety in the child character. The highest form of betrayal Sarai sees in her Mainini is when the latter turns up emaciated by AIDS, the same disease that is killing Sarai’s mother, and has already claimed the father and other members of the family. Mainini had been the only hope, full of promise. Here we see the same dynamic presented in Chirere, of the adult dealing with her own problems, so the helper is presented as helpless as well, but that does not relieve her of her duties. In rage, Sarai kills her aunt, who has defaulted on her role of being the beacon of the family: “Why you too? Why you too, Mainini Grace?” Sarai’s word echo those of Keresenzia as she kills her grandmother: “Where were you? Where were you? You should have hurried!”
Discussing child characters like Keresenzia, Magosvongwe asks, “Should they kill in order to discover themselves?” No child should ever be associated with killing, should not be put in a position to kill; in fact, the words “children” and “kill” should never be put in the same sentence. But these children kill.
They kill in desparation, when the outcome is driven by the most basic of instincts: protection. They kill to punish the adult society that has failed to take care of their needs; somehow in this killing, they mete out a kind of justice only imaginable in an environment where they are not allowed to be children anymore; they kill to show their disappointment with an adult world that has failed to deliver on its promise of a meaningful existence, has failed to deliver even a blank check; they kill to catch a semblance of meaning out of the rubble that has become their existence.
When adults participate in costly political (especially) conflicts, and when they allow the national structures to crumble, leading to extreme suffering for the citizens, the most affected members of that society are the children. When we take away hope from children, and when we break their shoots of ambition, we endanger not only our survival, but also our humanity.
In 2007, Valerie Tagwira shocked us with “Mainini Grace’s Promises”, a powerful story about the ravages of HIV/Aids, in which the child character kills her aunt at the end. The reader can see the frustration in the girl, her anger at the broken promise of Mainini Grace, whose betrayal to the family is that she has fallen victim of the pandemic that has killed other members of the girl’s family. If Mainini should be the source of hope, why has she allowed herself to be a victim? In a fit of rage, her niece pushes her to the ground, killing her in the process.
A similar scenario is covered in Memory Chirere’s “Keresenzia”, which was orginally published in 2001, where a little girl kills her grandmother. Chirere is an expert in portraying the child character, something aptly noted by Ruby Magosvongwe in her recent review of Somewhere in this Country. According to Magosvongwe, Chirere’s collection of stories ”offers refreshing and complex insights into the psyche of African memory, largely from a children’s perspective. Set in both the pastoral and cityscapes of Zimbabwe, the collection of twenty-one short stories in all, takes one onto the road to explore and discover the world and challenges of a burning desire for belonging.”
Keresenzia’s demands show a child’s (any child's) desire for attention. That she is an orphan compounds the situation, ultimately leading to her murdering of her grandmother. You finish reading the story and the question that rings in your head is “What has happened to these children?” I had the same question after the Tagwira shocker, but it got me thinking: the child in Zimbabwe has suffered the highest degree of injustice, her freedom to be a child having been robbed by irresponsible politics and empty international bickering. Everyone has failed the Zimbawean child, whether it is a democtratic country that slaps sanctions on Zimbabwe, or the singers of indefatigable songs of sovereignty, or the selfish hoarders of basic goods on the black market.
So we have children becoming carers of AIDS-torn or jobless parents; we witness them pairing with grandparents to take care of what’s left of the family. Look at Keresenzia and Matambudziko, both helpless in the face of squalor, but the latter is expected by the former to have answers about…everything: about what happened to the girl’s parents, about how to get fresh milk, about preparing the creamest butter, about pumpkin porridge one can enjoy, and, of course, grandmother, I want more lilies in my hair. It’s an endless list of needs, which the grandmother cannot meet. The grandmother, almost like a child herself, has her needs too, which is why she cries; she cries for a reason no one knows. Would anyone listen? If you have families run by either children or the very old grandmother, you almost have nothing being run; it’s a helpess state of affairs, drawing us closest to the basic of all instincts for survival, and when any balance is lost, anything is possible, hence the Keresenzia effect. It is about anything bad being possible because everything good has become impossible. It is this surreal, playing-with-life situation hinted at in Christopher Mlalazi’s story "Playing with Life", but where it involves what children can be pushed to do or not do, it is an indication of catastrophe.
In Tagwira’s story, Sarai has dropped out of school to take care of her mother. There is no one else to help except Mainini Grace who sends money and letters full of promises from Botswana. When the promises are not fulfilled we see the increasing degree of helplessness and anxiety in the child character. The highest form of betrayal Sarai sees in her Mainini is when the latter turns up emaciated by AIDS, the same disease that is killing Sarai’s mother, and has already claimed the father and other members of the family. Mainini had been the only hope, full of promise. Here we see the same dynamic presented in Chirere, of the adult dealing with her own problems, so the helper is presented as helpless as well, but that does not relieve her of her duties. In rage, Sarai kills her aunt, who has defaulted on her role of being the beacon of the family: “Why you too? Why you too, Mainini Grace?” Sarai’s word echo those of Keresenzia as she kills her grandmother: “Where were you? Where were you? You should have hurried!”
Discussing child characters like Keresenzia, Magosvongwe asks, “Should they kill in order to discover themselves?” No child should ever be associated with killing, should not be put in a position to kill; in fact, the words “children” and “kill” should never be put in the same sentence. But these children kill.
They kill in desparation, when the outcome is driven by the most basic of instincts: protection. They kill to punish the adult society that has failed to take care of their needs; somehow in this killing, they mete out a kind of justice only imaginable in an environment where they are not allowed to be children anymore; they kill to show their disappointment with an adult world that has failed to deliver on its promise of a meaningful existence, has failed to deliver even a blank check; they kill to catch a semblance of meaning out of the rubble that has become their existence.
When adults participate in costly political (especially) conflicts, and when they allow the national structures to crumble, leading to extreme suffering for the citizens, the most affected members of that society are the children. When we take away hope from children, and when we break their shoots of ambition, we endanger not only our survival, but also our humanity.
Comments
so, yes, however troubling and horrifying, our writers have to give birth to these heart-breaking children on the page. to me it also speaks to the fact that we are moving away from problematic silences that characterize, firstly, our culture, and therefore inevitably, everything else. Writers are also speaking for children who can't write their own stories, which is what literature should be doing, among other things. i'm with the program on this one.