Reading Others in Order to Write
I am recycling a post I did on this blog in 2007 because I think it has the potential to become a nice reflective essay:
Reading a powerful writer, even a not-so-powerful one, may inspire you to start to write or to conquer the writer's block; you may finding yourself typing away, courageously, typing something that may become a substantial creation. Slow reading -which I like to do, because I get a chance to reflect on the narrative in relation to my experience or is beneficial.
When I read any work of fiction, I connect the setting to places I know, places I have lived in, the rich terrain of the Zimbabwean countryside, the beautiful chaos of High Field, the shimmering presence of Glen View, the green and jagged presence of Chimanimani and Chipinge, the stubborn there-ness of Bupwa (some called it Butchwa). Let's say I am reading John Steibeck's "The Chrysanthemums", in which he introduces the story by describing fog that closes on the California Salinas Valley like a lid, I am taken back to Chipinge or Rusitu and I am reminded of the morning fog there, especially on that day when I arrived at Chipinge bus terminus and found out that all the day's buses had already left and the next troupe of buses would not arrive until the next day.
I was a new teacher in the Rusitu Valley (at Ndima Secondary Secondary school), having been "deployed" there by the Mutare Education office, despite my repeated requests for a school in Mutare, which were answered with laughter, accompanied by words such as, "You, new from university, mwana wazuro uno, you think you can get preference for the city? Ha ha ha..." Of course, I ended up smiling and saying I loved the idea of teaching in Chimanimani, which turned out to be the most beautiful place I have lived in.
But travelling to work was always a challenge, a trip that could easily take up to three days. One day I decided to travel by train from Harare to Mutare, but the train broke down in Rusape, a sudden stop, then clouds of smoke. Afraid of further delays,I just took my things and ran to the highway where, aafter thirty minutes, I got on a bus. By the time I arrived in Mutare, the bus to Chimanimani had already left, so I pulled out Marechera's Black Sunlight and read while waiting for a Chipinge bus that would depart in two hours.
That Chipinge-bound bus died at the Birchenough Bridge Growth Point, but they were going to fix it, so that meant more reading of Black Sunlight, between brief glances at the bridge that I had always wanted to see up-close. The bus was fixed within two hours, so we resumed our journey, but the bus was so slow that, again, I was able to pull out Black Sunlight and got lost in the story. I hated delays, but they were golden opportunities for reading angry fiction.
We reached Chipinge at sunset and found out that all the Rusitu buses had left.
I slept at the bus rank, in the rain. All night I shivered; all night I shared a talk about life with a vendor from Bulawayo who had slept at this place too many times to worry about a little bit of rain.
So here is another connection I can make. Yvonne Vera, in The Stone Virgins, talks about a man from Chimanimani who brought mazhanje fruits to Kezi, the man who followed Thenjiwe home. The Rusitu Valley was the source of many varieties of fruits, so vendors from across the country came here. There was something Edenic about the place too, this abundance of fruit; banana shrubs everywhere, the endless stretches of green terrain,the mountains rolling into Mozambique.... But to get here, you had to travel first and sometime get stuck at Chipinge, like I did on that night in the downpour. We tried to fit in one of the little tin shacks scattered at the market, but that did not bring any comfort, except words shared among shivering strangers.
The fog is what I remember most about the morning of the night the rain pounded me at Chipinge. To the east of the town lie mountain ranges which seem to guard the town from some possible intrusion. That morning the fog veiled the ranges, these sleeping lions, then the veil rose to cover the whole valley like the lid Steinbeck describes. It gets better; when the sun rose, the fog vanished, but then some low-lying beastly clouds settled on the peaks and spent some hours feasting on the mountain ranges. The longer I looked at the white beasts, the longer the bus delay seemed to stretch.
I did not leave Chipinge until a day later, after spending another night at the open terminus, soaked outside, arid inside. Then from somewhere between insistent night rain and greedy beastly clouds, the self harvested new hope, the beginning of a new journey. Arrival became something worth celebrating, something to document, something to remember, even now, twelve years later.
Reading a powerful writer, even a not-so-powerful one, may inspire you to start to write or to conquer the writer's block; you may finding yourself typing away, courageously, typing something that may become a substantial creation. Slow reading -which I like to do, because I get a chance to reflect on the narrative in relation to my experience or is beneficial.
When I read any work of fiction, I connect the setting to places I know, places I have lived in, the rich terrain of the Zimbabwean countryside, the beautiful chaos of High Field, the shimmering presence of Glen View, the green and jagged presence of Chimanimani and Chipinge, the stubborn there-ness of Bupwa (some called it Butchwa). Let's say I am reading John Steibeck's "The Chrysanthemums", in which he introduces the story by describing fog that closes on the California Salinas Valley like a lid, I am taken back to Chipinge or Rusitu and I am reminded of the morning fog there, especially on that day when I arrived at Chipinge bus terminus and found out that all the day's buses had already left and the next troupe of buses would not arrive until the next day.
I was a new teacher in the Rusitu Valley (at Ndima Secondary Secondary school), having been "deployed" there by the Mutare Education office, despite my repeated requests for a school in Mutare, which were answered with laughter, accompanied by words such as, "You, new from university, mwana wazuro uno, you think you can get preference for the city? Ha ha ha..." Of course, I ended up smiling and saying I loved the idea of teaching in Chimanimani, which turned out to be the most beautiful place I have lived in.
But travelling to work was always a challenge, a trip that could easily take up to three days. One day I decided to travel by train from Harare to Mutare, but the train broke down in Rusape, a sudden stop, then clouds of smoke. Afraid of further delays,I just took my things and ran to the highway where, aafter thirty minutes, I got on a bus. By the time I arrived in Mutare, the bus to Chimanimani had already left, so I pulled out Marechera's Black Sunlight and read while waiting for a Chipinge bus that would depart in two hours.
That Chipinge-bound bus died at the Birchenough Bridge Growth Point, but they were going to fix it, so that meant more reading of Black Sunlight, between brief glances at the bridge that I had always wanted to see up-close. The bus was fixed within two hours, so we resumed our journey, but the bus was so slow that, again, I was able to pull out Black Sunlight and got lost in the story. I hated delays, but they were golden opportunities for reading angry fiction.
We reached Chipinge at sunset and found out that all the Rusitu buses had left.
I slept at the bus rank, in the rain. All night I shivered; all night I shared a talk about life with a vendor from Bulawayo who had slept at this place too many times to worry about a little bit of rain.
So here is another connection I can make. Yvonne Vera, in The Stone Virgins, talks about a man from Chimanimani who brought mazhanje fruits to Kezi, the man who followed Thenjiwe home. The Rusitu Valley was the source of many varieties of fruits, so vendors from across the country came here. There was something Edenic about the place too, this abundance of fruit; banana shrubs everywhere, the endless stretches of green terrain,the mountains rolling into Mozambique.... But to get here, you had to travel first and sometime get stuck at Chipinge, like I did on that night in the downpour. We tried to fit in one of the little tin shacks scattered at the market, but that did not bring any comfort, except words shared among shivering strangers.
The fog is what I remember most about the morning of the night the rain pounded me at Chipinge. To the east of the town lie mountain ranges which seem to guard the town from some possible intrusion. That morning the fog veiled the ranges, these sleeping lions, then the veil rose to cover the whole valley like the lid Steinbeck describes. It gets better; when the sun rose, the fog vanished, but then some low-lying beastly clouds settled on the peaks and spent some hours feasting on the mountain ranges. The longer I looked at the white beasts, the longer the bus delay seemed to stretch.
I did not leave Chipinge until a day later, after spending another night at the open terminus, soaked outside, arid inside. Then from somewhere between insistent night rain and greedy beastly clouds, the self harvested new hope, the beginning of a new journey. Arrival became something worth celebrating, something to document, something to remember, even now, twelve years later.
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