Why Setting Matters
I was in Zimbabwe at the beginning of the year. I travelled cross-country by car, and this was my first time driving in Zimbabwe, a vantage point quite different from the bus or combi journeys. I was also with nearly all the members of my US-based family, an experience which put us in situations of thinking we were meeting for the first time, or perhaps it was just that I excited by this whole thing of being back in Zimbabwe with family, with my American kids, so to speak. And we travelled, we lived the different Zimbabwes I grew up through . I use the word "through" because each stage of my life in Zimbabwe was like a passage to another stage. We were tired, but each stage of the journey was worth the effort. The word effort works here too; the condition of the roads made the travel or ride a bit bumpy. That road from Mandamabwe through Chivi, then the Beitbridge road itself too the fun out of the journey somewhat, but one we go on the road from Ngundu to Chiredzi, our spirits were lifted. They say that road is the original one from the Rhodesia days, and it has lasted all these years to show the amount of good work put in road construction by the Smith regime. Those who are old enough to remember the days praise the work, praise it so much you look at the roads by the new government with shame...
As I drove from Harare to Gweru to Zvishavane to Chiredzi to Gutu to Chivhu back to Harare, it was as if I was charting new territory for the world of my characters. Characters, yes, because I can't help think of stories when I am exploring Zimbabwe, the place where most of my stories happen. I had never been to Chiredzi before, or Zaka, or Gutu-Mupandawana, and this time around, I visited these places in one sweep. It was all beauty, that little road from Chiredzi to Chivhu, the terrain it makes you see once you reach Zaka and as you drive towards the Masvingo-Mutare road, then when you cross, as you anticipate reaching Gutu and so on. There were potholes here and there, but by this time I had learned to do a better job dodging them.
The setting possibilities for my stories have expanded. Perhaps going forward, I am going to attempt Diaspora stories (I better), but these are going to be stories with connections to stories in Zimbabwe, which means the reader is going to make these journeys that are similar to some I have taken.
We write because we want to immortalize things: it could be the place you grew up, or someone you knew, or an experience someone or you had. Once you create art that depicts it, and if you do a good job of it, you have immortalized the place, the person, the experience. When I visited Mupandawana, I couldn't help but think of Petina Gappah's "The Dancing Champion of Mupandawana." In fact, it was the reason I left the main road and traveled a kilometer or so to the actual Mupandawana growth point. To think of the story while I was in its setting.
Two days earlier I had been in Zvishavane. I was in the area most of the stories in my collection, "Mukoma's Marriage and other Stories" are set. I had planned to take my kids to the places that triggered some of the stories, or to my childhood haunts, but time was not our side. We were overwhelmed by all the travelling we had to do. The closest I came to focus on the settings in my book was when I went to Gwavachemai and addressed all the teachers, when I mentioned my book, and told them that one of the stories happened on school grounds. Later, in Harare, I would be invited to Glen View 2 High school to address a group of young writers. I read part of my story "The Soldier Lodger", which is set in Glen View. These are places which are now part of literature, and can be read anywhere in the world, including places where readers will have to supplement the visual for the setting with their imagination, a process which often transfers the picture from one intended by the writer to the one invented in the reader's imagination. In fact, readers often don't invent the place, the just replace the unknown place with one they know, one in their immediate environment. That's the beauty of it all.
As I drove from Harare to Gweru to Zvishavane to Chiredzi to Gutu to Chivhu back to Harare, it was as if I was charting new territory for the world of my characters. Characters, yes, because I can't help think of stories when I am exploring Zimbabwe, the place where most of my stories happen. I had never been to Chiredzi before, or Zaka, or Gutu-Mupandawana, and this time around, I visited these places in one sweep. It was all beauty, that little road from Chiredzi to Chivhu, the terrain it makes you see once you reach Zaka and as you drive towards the Masvingo-Mutare road, then when you cross, as you anticipate reaching Gutu and so on. There were potholes here and there, but by this time I had learned to do a better job dodging them.
The setting possibilities for my stories have expanded. Perhaps going forward, I am going to attempt Diaspora stories (I better), but these are going to be stories with connections to stories in Zimbabwe, which means the reader is going to make these journeys that are similar to some I have taken.
We write because we want to immortalize things: it could be the place you grew up, or someone you knew, or an experience someone or you had. Once you create art that depicts it, and if you do a good job of it, you have immortalized the place, the person, the experience. When I visited Mupandawana, I couldn't help but think of Petina Gappah's "The Dancing Champion of Mupandawana." In fact, it was the reason I left the main road and traveled a kilometer or so to the actual Mupandawana growth point. To think of the story while I was in its setting.
Two days earlier I had been in Zvishavane. I was in the area most of the stories in my collection, "Mukoma's Marriage and other Stories" are set. I had planned to take my kids to the places that triggered some of the stories, or to my childhood haunts, but time was not our side. We were overwhelmed by all the travelling we had to do. The closest I came to focus on the settings in my book was when I went to Gwavachemai and addressed all the teachers, when I mentioned my book, and told them that one of the stories happened on school grounds. Later, in Harare, I would be invited to Glen View 2 High school to address a group of young writers. I read part of my story "The Soldier Lodger", which is set in Glen View. These are places which are now part of literature, and can be read anywhere in the world, including places where readers will have to supplement the visual for the setting with their imagination, a process which often transfers the picture from one intended by the writer to the one invented in the reader's imagination. In fact, readers often don't invent the place, the just replace the unknown place with one they know, one in their immediate environment. That's the beauty of it all.
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