Stories in a Time of War: a memoir attempt
Since it's my birthday, I thought I should share a childhood memory. This is one of those small steps towards memoir....
In 1978, we were little boys and girls living in the war-torn village of Mototi. We were not child soldiers, but we all knew the war, we knew the slogans, knew the enemy, based on what the comrades had told us, or what we observed. And we observed a lot...
During those all-night meetings with the comrades, one adult in my extended family stayed home with us. She was one of my big brothers' wives (I was little but already had married big brothers, and brother meant distant cousins, half brothers, brothers of half brothers, etc,twenty, thirty years older. She was a storyteller who kept us awake for hours, telling us stories that showed hare's skills, baboon's stupidity, stories of revenge, of violent animals doing cruel things to other animals. Stories featuring snakes that always swallowed goats, calves, and people.
On other nights the stories featured sinister human characters, husbands causing wives to turn into some kinds of animals, such as pigs that the husbands then killed, et cetra. Grostesque narratives that sent us huddling together in fear. However scary the stories got, we still wanted to hear them, and the Maiguru, animated,rendered them expertly, but one by one, soaking in the fear of the night, we would drift to sleep, as if that's where we found our escape.
Now why did she tell us stories in a time of war? Was she allaying her fears (because all adults had fears; the war had finally siezed Mazvihwa, and anything could happen at the base, like that one night when the Smith soldiers ambushed pungwe participants, but thanks to the escape skills the people had been taught, no one was killed...wait, one boy, a little older than we were, a twelve or thirteen-year-old, stood up from the recommended escape crawl to check how "Vanamukoma" --the comrades-- were doing, and a bullet caught him. This was to be the much-talked-about loss that infuriated the villagers and brought them in the center of the patriotism the comrades had been trying to force on them all along: war was real, you could lose the innocent).
She told us stories to give us courage through exposing the potential evils of the characters that populated her stories, yet we kept asking for more of those stories for our nightly fix, as if before we faced the world of dreams, we wanted to be scared out of our regular world. She entranced us with those stories, and we learned to forget about the dangers our parents faced at the base, were they said they were told not to fear anything because the comrades were protectors....but we saw their fear and the exhausted joy they brought back home in the morning.
She told stories well. I don't what effect the stories had on the other children, but they touched me deeply. And I remember them vividly to this day, the stories that I can't separate from the war, stories of pain, of joy.
Daytime was a different matter. If there was a day meeting with the comrades, or of the villagers talking about future base meetings, or discussing other matters of strategy, like what to tell the soldiers when they came to the village inquirying about the presence of the comrades, the storyteller went too. Often, we were left in the care of old man VaBhunga, so old no one would give him a hard time about why he was watching a bunch of children, which simply meant that he would sit dozing but listening. The memories about afternoons with VaBhunga are different, they are memories of playing by the river side, or sometimes of swimming for hours on end, swimming in Runde river without a sense of time progression. We didn't have the word then, but it could say VaBhunga was cool, the way he watched us without paying attention to us, the way he talked about war without causing us to worry, and so we thought because he did not make us fear war with any stories, the war too did not bother him.
Stories at night, in a time of war; afternoons with VaBhunga in Runde river, the oftentimes roaring presence, which always accomodated us fully in the dry season, when it kept a few of its pools dense. Those swimming moments,now rich memory. Afternoons of stories told in silence(it was as if by not telling us stories VaBhunga assigned much to our imagination); nights of stories that filled us with fear (it was as if by telling us the stories Maiguru was diverting our attention from what was incomprehensible about the war). Now, looking back, Maiguru and VaBhunga shared their stories with us, the told stories of Maiguru preparing us for the untold stories of VaBhunga...and because we did not ask him to tell us the stories when he was still alive, we have to imagine them now.
In 1978, we were little boys and girls living in the war-torn village of Mototi. We were not child soldiers, but we all knew the war, we knew the slogans, knew the enemy, based on what the comrades had told us, or what we observed. And we observed a lot...
During those all-night meetings with the comrades, one adult in my extended family stayed home with us. She was one of my big brothers' wives (I was little but already had married big brothers, and brother meant distant cousins, half brothers, brothers of half brothers, etc,twenty, thirty years older. She was a storyteller who kept us awake for hours, telling us stories that showed hare's skills, baboon's stupidity, stories of revenge, of violent animals doing cruel things to other animals. Stories featuring snakes that always swallowed goats, calves, and people.
On other nights the stories featured sinister human characters, husbands causing wives to turn into some kinds of animals, such as pigs that the husbands then killed, et cetra. Grostesque narratives that sent us huddling together in fear. However scary the stories got, we still wanted to hear them, and the Maiguru, animated,rendered them expertly, but one by one, soaking in the fear of the night, we would drift to sleep, as if that's where we found our escape.
Now why did she tell us stories in a time of war? Was she allaying her fears (because all adults had fears; the war had finally siezed Mazvihwa, and anything could happen at the base, like that one night when the Smith soldiers ambushed pungwe participants, but thanks to the escape skills the people had been taught, no one was killed...wait, one boy, a little older than we were, a twelve or thirteen-year-old, stood up from the recommended escape crawl to check how "Vanamukoma" --the comrades-- were doing, and a bullet caught him. This was to be the much-talked-about loss that infuriated the villagers and brought them in the center of the patriotism the comrades had been trying to force on them all along: war was real, you could lose the innocent).
She told us stories to give us courage through exposing the potential evils of the characters that populated her stories, yet we kept asking for more of those stories for our nightly fix, as if before we faced the world of dreams, we wanted to be scared out of our regular world. She entranced us with those stories, and we learned to forget about the dangers our parents faced at the base, were they said they were told not to fear anything because the comrades were protectors....but we saw their fear and the exhausted joy they brought back home in the morning.
She told stories well. I don't what effect the stories had on the other children, but they touched me deeply. And I remember them vividly to this day, the stories that I can't separate from the war, stories of pain, of joy.
Daytime was a different matter. If there was a day meeting with the comrades, or of the villagers talking about future base meetings, or discussing other matters of strategy, like what to tell the soldiers when they came to the village inquirying about the presence of the comrades, the storyteller went too. Often, we were left in the care of old man VaBhunga, so old no one would give him a hard time about why he was watching a bunch of children, which simply meant that he would sit dozing but listening. The memories about afternoons with VaBhunga are different, they are memories of playing by the river side, or sometimes of swimming for hours on end, swimming in Runde river without a sense of time progression. We didn't have the word then, but it could say VaBhunga was cool, the way he watched us without paying attention to us, the way he talked about war without causing us to worry, and so we thought because he did not make us fear war with any stories, the war too did not bother him.
Stories at night, in a time of war; afternoons with VaBhunga in Runde river, the oftentimes roaring presence, which always accomodated us fully in the dry season, when it kept a few of its pools dense. Those swimming moments,now rich memory. Afternoons of stories told in silence(it was as if by not telling us stories VaBhunga assigned much to our imagination); nights of stories that filled us with fear (it was as if by telling us the stories Maiguru was diverting our attention from what was incomprehensible about the war). Now, looking back, Maiguru and VaBhunga shared their stories with us, the told stories of Maiguru preparing us for the untold stories of VaBhunga...and because we did not ask him to tell us the stories when he was still alive, we have to imagine them now.
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