From Dust An African Story

From Dust: An African Story

I have always intended to write a biography of my life in chronology. So many attempts I have made, in poetry and prose but emotions have always got the better of me. Why must I write it now, what have I achieved in life, what legacy would I leave behind if tomorrow never comes for me, and who would want to know about my life and read this trash. These are some of the questions that have always discouraged me from writing. Be as it may, a poem I wrote some years back on a stashed piece of paper, as a 20 year old entitled ‘Why Do l Write’ gives me the courage to write and to endeavor to put pen to paper with words that will defy and scorn time. I wrote, ‘Death shall come a day and these words shall be the immortal me’.

So the story goes and the dream lives on, this time without pen to paper but keyboard to screen. How times change!

In the follicles of my hair and the ventricles of my heart, one question that I have always had in mind, is what does it take to be successful in life because is there a place for failures in life. Who recognizes their efforts when society at its macro and micro levels casts into eternal damnation those who are failures and perceived to be failures? The reason these questions will always linger in my mind is because, who would want to read a book by a failure in life? Which journalist will ignore the winner of a race to rush and question the last finisher? Which prudent Professor would make an opportunity cost of his or her time to peruse pages by a school drop-out? Which wise parent would purchase and give his/her child a book by a loser in life? A Professor in a Bollywood Movie remarks, ‘no-one remembers the one who comes second in life!

With such questions in mind, l realize that this self interrogation is a mental discouragement that demoralizes millions of people. The personal background that lays the base for mental strength and self belief is a yard stick measure of how someone chooses to pursue a dream in life. Talking with a friend (I only remember it now) I once stated that our backgrounds are the major force that downtrods people. Shakespeare wrote some are born great, some achieve greatness and have greatness thrust upon them. For those who are born great, the efforts for a better life are far less and different from those who struggle to achieve greatness and those who fight for greatness to be thrust upon them.

Frankly, I have always heard stories of young people with great academic potential but at the end of the day all the brilliance comes to none as the background will work against the individuals. Why do l talk about academic brilliance? For those whose lives are stuck in the dreaded forests, deep into the vleis and plains of the African plateaus and panoramas, far from the tarred roads and the sounds of the modern society, in between the valleys that never dry and rivers whose sand flood them in dry seasons, education has always been the salvation rope ever since the days of Lucifer Mandengu in Charles Mungoshi’s Waiting for the Rain.

My Grandma, as old as she is, has always told me of how she wanted to attain education only to drop out within the first year. She has always lamented how pained she was, when her children shunned school. Even my mother, she has always regretted her father’s decision to let her drop out due his patriarchal values that the girl child was meant only for the kitchen. Education as l have understood it, offers redemption from the realities and hardships of life. Kilometers and kilometers away from the villages, has always been the set up of schools that some of us attended (though well after independence), this being a metaphor. For you to attain education, you have to strive hard and face the challenges. For those who choose to sleep until sunset and abscond, neglect to write homework, heading cattle will always be the first and last option!

This in mind, has taken me thus far, though my sun is still is rising. The people I have met in my life, the journeys I have walked, the books l have read, the life l have lived and these words lm writing, are all because of Grade 7, Form 4, Form 6, college and university. My friends from Grade One, who chose to shun education and the contemporary entrepreneurship gospel, are in the doldrums at the mercy of the economy. I’m reminded of a classmate when I was in Form 2. He made a decision that, instead of pursuing school up to Form 4, its better he starts “looking for money” and in 2years time when we will be finishing Form 4, he would have made enough monies to live a good life. So sad, when some of us were going for Form 4, the classmate was going for Border Gezi Training. What became of him, both we know.

Why do l write so inclined to education, l write for those who share the same background with me, those born disadvantaged with only one option for total emancipation from penury and damnation. Those who if they are not at school, the sounds of bells, birds and whistles are what their ears are subjected to. Those who can’t sleep when Busvumani has disappeared in the jungles, those who know what it means when the rains do not come,  those who see no hope for a better life without being literate to comprehend the Queen’s language! So is my story, the story of a black man whose hopes for  a better life lay at the detriment of history orated by Grandma, the story of a black man’s heritage whose inheritance is nothing but a piece of land with a few round huts and a head of cattle (to be shared).

 

TO BE CONTINUED