Memoirizing Mototi: An Encounter with the Setting

Chisiya Hill in Mototi. This was my view as I grew up. Our home was on the foot of Chisiya, and when the sun rose in the eastern mountain ranges, its light first greeted these rocks. Going to school meant walking along a path that followed the base of the hill, which often would be overgrown with dew-dampened grass. We watched early-morning fist fights along this path as we walked to school; the hill was a convenient barrier from parents and guardians, but sometimes our cries of excitement would easily carry as echoes that could sell us out to the adults. It was nice seeing Chisiya again, but I didn't have the kind of excitment I had in my youth, or the kind I had imagined when I thought of Chisiya from a distance.  Even as I took the photo, I was driven by a sense of duty, not so much by the magic I once associated with the hill. I was in too much of a hurry to even try the symbolic climb I had  planned. I was in a hurry to go to Runder River, another place which I associated with magic, the place in which I had read many books.

My trip to Zimbabwe was full of interesting moments. All of the moments, including my falling ill at the end, were of great interest: the mini journeys on public transportation (buses, Kombis, lorries), the shopping on street corners, the non-stop purchases of airtime (because I could never seem to have enough of it), the occasional visits to internet cafes (and only two really worked well for me; the one at Joina City and the other in Gweru, near the bookless Kingstones Bookstore), meeting friends and family, and hanging out at the township at Vazhure --these activities made the trip memorable. Aware I had no time to accomplish much, I utilized my camera, captured the soul of each place I visited (That's how I thought of the places, in terms of souls and depths of meaning!). Although I didn't get to visit many of the places I had put on my itenerary--Bulawayo, Chimanimani, Chiredzi--those I visited were symbolic. Of these, Mototi, in Mazvihwa, was the most significant--it is the ultimate setting, the place that most of my stories have defaulted to (the whole collection of Mukoma stories, stories set at Mototi and Gwavachemai schools, other stories, my novel-in-progress, set in the Chisiya area, Runde, Vhazhure township, etc).

Then the other place, Gudo, where I visited a clinic for flu treatment, where they gave me UNICEFtablets and some pain killers. I spent a good four hours in Gudo, first at the home where my niece is married (it was nice to be a "father-in-law" here); then at the clinic, where I ran into the Maiguru (sister-in-law) who practically raised, the wife of the brother who was my guardian, the brother who used to tell me, "There are only two of us on this earth,; no one else, only the two us," which I understood to mean that we might have been part of a large extended family, we had a different last name, connected only to the other brothers and sisters through our mother, a situation further complicated by the fact that I had a different mother as well, a mother different from the mother who connected us to the extended family. The extended family; I call it this, but it too had its own divisions, a fact that became apparent again in Gudo, when I met one of the only remaining Patriarchy of the family, who said, "You, who is different from us, has shown us so much love." In short, the Gudo trip gave more than I had expected; it unearthed out of the past life's ironies and contradictions; it was a gift to a writer.

Now, this travelogue is really about Mototi. Two things have happened ever since I returned to the "moonlight" (as my short stories in African Roar 1 predicted): One, the return seems to have had the influence to demystifying the setting: I feel the original magic is gone, that magic that would lead to spurts of creativity; what I am feeling, though, is not a writer's block, but a resetting of creative perspectives. I have gained a different understanding of the role the setting is playing in my stories. Two, the return to Mototi ascertained the reality of how old I have grown (which I should have expected, returning the place after sixteen years, but somehow I had been trapped--my imaginative self--in the depths (if such can be determined) of creative youth, so that the first person narrator in my Mototi stories has predominently been young. Trapped is the word, because there really shouldn't have been a reason to trap the imagination thus, but it was a necessary phase. And now, I see some change coming. And to help it make its progress, here is the journey in pictures:

A Mototi home: For as long as I can remember, this home, which belongs to the family of my Grade 7 teacher, Mr. Nduna, has always been there. But what I never noticed before was the beauty of its location; the Gwavachemai hill in the background. This is the hill after which my high school was named. I remember when the school conceived, when the villagers were told the government was introducing an upper top in the village. I was in Grade 7 then, and I knew this was the school I was going to attend.  Of the several locations, one was an open space near our home at Chisiya Hill. The argument for this location was that it was near a source of water, Runde River, and that if the location was chosen, the school would be named Chisiya Secondary School. I did not like the idea of the school coming to my home; I did not want people to know where I lived; so I was happy when the Gwavachemai location was selected. Soon the work to build the school began; I remember how we molded and "baked" bricks, how we helped mix concrete as the builders worked. In the meantime we were attending our classes at Mototi Primary School across the stream. That meant that I kept in close contact with my favorite primary school teachers, Mr. Nduna and Mr. Mukamuri in particular, who supported my creative writing.

Mototi has always been, and remains , a place of many meanings to me, but most, its most memorable features is the layout of homes, the familiar landscape of my childhood. Very simple set up: our Chisiya home was in the Muzenza Ruka/Manhivi Line (a line of homes following a path that runs from Magetsi in the North to Gwen'ombe in the South. The idea of lines, of course, is a colonial creation, for easy administration of colonial regulations. The line also was generally followed Runder River, at a safe distance, far from the flood plain. Sometime after the war, the lines were maintained but shifted to the other side of the path: this was meant to move people people further away from the river, to  reduce erosion and siltation, and for some "health" reasons. For some, it was an opportunity to build better-looking homes, for others, it was a serious disadvantage, sometimes even a separation of family units. The lines still generally exist, running from North to South, ending in the general area of VhaZhure Township. So it's possible to walk the span of the whole line of homes and end up at the township, and one feature that's quite visible now if of the electrical wires running from Chivi to the  Mototi home lines to the township and all the way to Murowa Diamond mine, which has additional parallel electrical connections which power the mine, a clinic in the Mapaire area, extending all the way to Gwavachemai Secondary School, which they are now developing.

Still on the layout of Mototi. My extended family had two branches, one in the Chisiya area, the other in the Zvemhuhwa area on the other side of the Gwavachemai/Mototi ranges. So to visit each other, there was a good walk to the what each branch of the family called seri, which means "on the other side" (of the mountain ranges). For me, seri was also the place I went to school, and so it was a great part of my childhood. Extended families, expecially ones as complex as ours, which included sub-branches like mine "from a different father", didn't always seem quite united, but I was fortunate, a moment came in my life when I became a darling for both sides of the extended family, and when I was in secondary school, I would just walk to the "seri" side of the family and eat sadza. During this visit I talked with the sister-in-law, the Maiguru who always guaranteed sadza during the school lunch break. She was one of the few people who pointed out, honestly, that staying outside of the country for sixteen years (for almost no real reason, like war, forced exile) was not particularly a good thing, and yes, I showed my agreement by showing her "A Return to the Moonlight", part of which she read.  Let's post another picture:

Above is the kitchen shelf in a hut in Mototi. The hut belongs to one of my Maigurus (I had stopped by on my way to see my childhood home area. We sat in the kitchen for roughly one hour, and I commended Maiguru for her beautiful display, which if she didn't mind, I was going to capture with my camera.
    "Some donor workers already took some snaps," she said. "They were all over the place, gathering by the shelf to admire the work."

And, indeed, the work is admirable, and the shelf is unique,  (although it is a common feature in Mototi kitchens). The shelf itself is made out of specially prepared and durable mud, which is smoothened to give the look of furniture. That some donor workers had been here and had taken photos put me in the competitive urge, and I told Maiguru she didn't have to wait for some donor workers from Europe to take photos of her masterpiece; I was here, someone she knew (someone without a hidden agenda--yes, I said it, I went political on the issue) to take the photos. So, snap-snap, I took quite a few shots of the shelf. And the one above is one of the most representative, and it attests of the pride both of its maker and of the photographer.

So then we ate sadza with matemba fish and off we went, this time headed for the place I couldn't wait to see again, Runde River.

Runde River: the river didn't have much water, partially because it's the dry season, and because of siltation. The first impression I got from observing the river again after many years is that it had lost much of its magic. The deep pools we used to swim in are gone, now silted over. Some of the rock outcrops that used to be imposing are now sunk into the sand, so there is a plainness to the river that never use to be there. That was a solid mark of change, something that has happened on a large scale. This photo of a place called Mabhunu. It was where we crossed the river, even when it had a lot of water, and it was also the bathing place for women, as women always washed at public crossing points, as a form of protection. We always used to shout, "Touya!" when we were getting close to the crossing, to make sure that there were no women bathing, or if they were there doing laundry, to make sure they were naked. Often, they would just sink into the water and tell us to go ahead and pass. There was a certain harmony in all that, but as I saw this place again, I could see a certain sense of loss.

The bend in the river was always a source of fascination when we were young boys--some of those trees are misumha, whose fruits drew us in numbers. So we would mix games and gathering of fruits, could spend the whole day here, because this too was the place where men bathed or swam. The sumha fruits were ripe in August, mostly, a time when we didn't have to do field work or care for the cattle; a time of freedom, and a lot of playing. This bend in the river could be dangerous, and we were always alert when we were here. Lots of memories associated with the place: fishing with my brother, fishing and catching nothing, or occassionally substantial numbers of fish; it just depended on...luck, or how hungry the fish already were. But these were fish too used to people and soap. Given that they were between two bathing places, their school trooped either to the north or to the south, and they would make a stab--literally, at people's bare feet; feet in water attracted fish, and such fish increasingly became difficult to catch, except in those times when the water was drying, and the fish were stuck in mud; we could catch them with bare (or shall we say bear) hands.