A girl eloping to you is one of the hardest thing to deal with for a man

Guys by now you know I like writing so I can neither confirm nor deny that the following events actually happened, I will also not put names of people in my story. Anyway here is the story. End of 1997, I hit a jackpot, I got a permanent job with a South African owned insurance company  in Harare city centre earning $3 000 Zimbabwean dollars with benefits such as pension contributions, medical aid, study loans, housing loans, car loans etc. In Zimbabwe many companies contribute 50% or 100% of your medical aid. So in 1997, I went to consult a private medical doctor for the very first time in my life. My future was very bright, if I concentrated on my studies I would rise through the ranks. In the Zimbabwean insurance industry if you need to get into management you must at least pass Associateship exams. After failing to get into the University of Zimbabwe and then going for temporary teaching, the clearest path for me was to go to a teacher’s college and train either as a science or a mathematics teacher. I had also done a 5 months stint as an apprentice and I felt it was a waste of my brains. I could also train as a Radiographer but I never even applied after one of my former school mate who had also done science subjects at A'Level told me that the job did not pay very well. I missed the Cuban science teachers' training program by a year or so, obviously if the opportunity had presented I would have gone to Cuba without question. After the collapse of Soviet Union, Cuba could no longer afford the generosity of sponsoring students from Zimbabwe. I had also applied to UK universities and at that time they were giving full scholarships for nursing courses. I knew I would never go to UK as it was time to look for a job and help my mother to raise my four siblings and my nephew.

After teaching for a year, I knew teaching was not for me. By mid 1998, I had passed my Certificate of Proficiency exams with the Insurance Institute of Zimbabwe and I was now a permanent employee though still on training and my employer was assisting me with study loans for my studies with the Insurance Institute of South Africa towards my Associateship studies which was payable in Rands. Zimbabwean dollar had devalued sharply at the end of 1997 and it was hard to contribute almost 40% of my salary to service the study loan but I had to persevere. I was not in any serious relationship, anyway how can you worry too much about girls when you are not sure if you could be moving back home the next month. So when I joined Eagle Insurance Company in 1997, there was this girl who had joined a year earlier and was training me and she was very beautiful and I was really interested until we had the Christmas party. The Christmas party was held on the top floor of our office building. The party started very well for me when I won during the raffle one of those iconic Zimbabwe brass watches. As the evening progressed, I saw the girl getting drunk and I saw something going on with one of the bosses and I immediately cancelled her from the register. We would later become very close friends the same way I had male friends and nothing else and we would even go out for movies  and hangout just as 'boys'.


 In 1998, two guys who were in the claims section resigned immediately and the Head of department ordered that I be moved to claims from the underwriting department . When I was now in claims a younger girl joined and I would also assist in training her and we became very good friends first and we started sort of dating. I had been stayed with my aunt and her family in Sunningdale and I was moving out. The new girl’s parents had a house in a low to medium density suburb not very far from the city and she told me I could rent their staff quarters. I am told this suburb had been mainly reserved for citizens of Portuguese origins during the days of segregation and it was not as affluent as other suburbs. So I moved in to the suburbs. Zimbabwean economy can be funny, even as a professional working for a multinational company I could not afford to buy a bed cash, luckily our company had an arrangement with Nyore Nyore Zimbabwe Furnishers (I am told it was the first shop to give credit to Africans during the colonial days) where you could go and buy furniture on credit and payroll would deduct the instalments from your salary and pay the credit store. I went to select a bed and later kitchen chairs and a table as I needed a desk to study from as I was busy with my insurance studies. On my payslip the deduction would appear as, Sounds Kufara. which I am told was the old name for Nyore Nyore Furnishers.

 With the new girl, it was a very emotionally draining, one day we would be happy and the next day we would fight. We worked together and stayed at the same house and we would see each other everyday. When the movie Titanic was released in 1998 it was hard to get tickets and eventually I went to queue at Ster Kinekor Cinemas at Westgate Shopping centre on the outskirts of Harare and bought two tickets. On a happy weekend we went to watch the movie. For some reason my mother got to know about the relationship. I do not know how my mother always got to know about my business even though she was staying 80km away in Marondera, maybe she worked for the FBI. On one of my visit home my mother said, "Your girlfriend is too skinny". I did not want to continue with the discussion, I just kept quiet. The relationship with this girl was very complicated. She worried too much about what other people thought about us. She was Catholic and I even attended a few Catholic church services with her. I did not see any future with this girl. Most of the time her parents would be at the village where they were farming. Her older sister and her brother stayed at the house. The older sister was very strict and I never crossed her path and we were very civil to each other. She girl would later attend my mother's funeral when she passed on in 2002.


Sometime in 1998 I decided to visit my mukoma (cousin) in Mutoko at the shop where he was working for my uncle. I met this girl and what happened happened. Two of this girl's cousins where married to my cousins. It was before we had cellphones, three weeks later I received a letter  from the girl with a serious message. My mother had been clear to me all my life and the message had always been the same, "Dabbie if you make any woman pregnant no matter who she is, you will marry her. You won't go around having babies everywhere". In the Zimbabwe schooling system they were also very strict, whenever a school girl got pregnant, that would be the end of schooling for both the girl and the boy. By the time I finished O'Level a number of girls in my class had already dropped out of school due to this. I also had a practical example closer home. My father's only brother had left school in form 3 (grade 10)  around 1983 after her girlfriend fell pregnant. My uncle used to get very good grades but after dropping out of school his life was never the same. In my final O' Level year, I had a dream that my girlfriend had eloped to me and the next morning I told her it was over. I would meet her again in 1999 when I moved to Chitungwiza and she was looking really fine and had grown into a beautiful young woman, she was still cross with me  6 years later and any attempt to convince her was dead on arrival.


So I took a bus to Mutoko and visited the girl's home and she told me she was pregnant. I was not street smart then and very innocent, I accepted what she said without demanding any pregnancy tests. I went back to Harare and two weeks later she came to Harare with a letter from my mukoma. The letter went something like this, "my young brother, you are now a family man, be strong". A girl eloping to you is one of the hardest thing to deal with as a boy. I had seen it happening many times back in the village and I had no idea it was this difficult. I had a few difficult few days. I had to explain to the girl whom I was supposed to be dating how I had ended up knocking up someone else when we were supposed to be dating. Life can be funny this girl at whose house I was lodging and working with still saw a future for us together and I didn't but not because of the girl that had eloped. I was not ready for marriage, earlier that year another girl I had met during 1997 Christmas holiday back in the village had she asked me when would I  be ready to settle down and I said maybe in 8 years time and the following week she eloped to some other guy. I was still at that stage where you even question the idea of paying lobola for someone else when now in the modern times men and women are supposed to be equal. The girl had come with only the clothes she wearing and the next evening after work I found myself in Edgars store along Robert Mugabe road. I had no clue what size she wore and luckily I found a shop attendant who wore the same size with her and I explained to the attendant that I was looking for clothing for someone her size and she showed me around.

My friend at work, the girl from the work Christmas party asked me why I seemed troubled those days and I explained to her that a girl had eloped. She then asked me if I was in love with her and I said no but since she was pregnant I had no choice but marry her. She then told me that I could only marry her if I really wanted to but not because she was pregnant. I had never thought of it that way. The next day I phoned my older sister at home and I asked her to come and fetch the girl and take her to our grandmother back at the village. I needed more time to process this, I just thought that maybe by the time the baby would be born I would have come around. My favourite song those days was Remember Me by Lucky Dube. My sister came to fetch the girl and instead she took her to my mother. My mother phoned me and told me that I would marry the girl and knowing my mother I knew I would have to do like I was told. My mother then said her daughter in law would not go to my grand mother and she would stay with her in Marondera. Luckily Marondera is only an hours drive away from Harare and I would go to my mother's house early in the morning and leave in the afternoon as I did not want to sleep at home due to the presence of the girl. The few times I slept over at the house I refused to sleep in the same bed with the girl. My mother remarked that it seemed this girl was her wife and not mine.

On 1 January 1999, I went to Mbare musika and hired a bakkie (pick-up truck) and I arrived at my lodging. I then went to the main house and told the girl and her older sister that I was moving out that day. It was obvious that the girl still saw a future with me but I did not. She tried to convince me but I had made up my mind. I knew that day I as walking away from some of the troubles in my life. I loaded my belongings with the help of the bakkie driver and left the suburbs and we drove to my mother's elder sisters house in unit D Chitungwiza just opposite the Old Mutual owned Chitungwiza Town Centre Shopping mall. I stayed there for 2 days and I got a room to rent in Unit J. My mother came to my house and she wanted me to buy some stuff for my younger sister who was now a boarder at girls' Catholic school, Nagle House. The following month my mother came to work and said it was time for me to buy clothing for the baby and we went together to Miekles Departmental stores and I did not have cash and I had to buy on account. I did not know that baby clothing could be that expensive but I had no choice.

I only stayed in Chitungwiza for five months and I met my future wife in Chitungwiza. In May 1999 I got a new job at Diamond Insurance company and I had received an offer that would pay me double my then current salary. It was a welcome relief as I needed a new environment to get away from the girl on whose house I used to rent as we were no longer in good books although we remained civil to each other. I responded to an accommodation advert in The Herald newspaper. I went to view the place in Avondale just behind St Annes hospital. The block of flat had belonged to the state broadcaster Zimbabwe Broadcasting  Corporation and they had now sold the flats to employees. At the back of one of the garden flats there was two rooms that used to be staff quarters and they would now rent them out. A lot of people had come to view the flat before I came, I was fortunate that the lady decided to lease the place to me. Avondale was very close to town and very convenient as there was plenty of public transport and transport was very cheap. I would easily walk to Avondale shopping centre to watch a movie during weekends. Transport in Chitungwiza was very expensive and during peak hours you would stand in queues for hours and hours. I told my future wife that I would be moving to Avondale and she said she envied me. To those who remember 2000 when Jonathan Moyo took over as the minister of information and turned the state media into a propaganda channels, most of my neighbours were responsible for churning out that vile and my house was next to the producer of the 8pm news bulletin on ZTV.

After I just moved to Avondale, I was phoned by mother mother to come home on the next day that was a Saturday. I was told by my sisters that my mother's youngest sister had travelled all the way from Shurugwi about 300km away. On the way home, I was wondering if I had done something wrong to warranty my mother to get her sister to travel that huge distance. When I got home and greeted everyone I was surprised that the girl was not wearing maternity clothing that I had last seen her wearing on my last visit and she appeared not pregnant. My aunt then started the discussion by asking the girl to tell me what had happened. The girl did not look at me and she said she was never pregnant. I started thinking about everything I had gone through emotionally and financially up to this point and it was all because of a lie. I asked her why a young woman would leave school and jeopardize her future. I took her to her relative in Murewa Centre and then caught a bus back to Harare. I arrived in Harare and went straight to a flat that my friend Cornelius Takawira was renting. Cornelius had briefly came back from United Kingdom and I remember telling him and his cousin that I felt like I had been given a second chance in life and I would never blow that chance ever again. Back at the village the girl told everyone a different story and for years I did not get along with my uncle. luckily my aunt knew the true story.

 

The right information is worth much more than money

Comparing notes in Pretoria

 

I took this photo this past Saturday at a piggery project being run by a black South African sister at her plot outside Pretoria. The sister is raising around 1 000 pigs per year. What I have learnt in about 19 years of trying out new ventures is that the right information can be worth much more than money because with the right information you can make money and with the wrong information you can lose all your money. On 2 October 2017, I resigned from my job here in South Africa after 10 years of working at the same level and I wanted a change. I took a bus from Pretoria to Harare that same evening. My idea was to try and manage my piggery project hands-on, we had already invested over $20 000 in the project. I also wanted to grow tobacco on my own since I was not happy with how my cousin had managed my tobacco crop in the previous farming season. I got home in Harare the following evening. On the next morning, I went with Mr. Mereka Maruwira to my piggery project in Chivhu. I have known Mereka since 2002, when I first employed him as a shop-keeper on my very second ever shop that I opened at the farm where his parents had been working in Virginia commercial farming area of Macheke next to our village in Mukarakate communal lands in Murehwa. Around 2001-2002 the farm was allocated to black farmers during the land reform exercise. I would be the first person to open the farm shop after the exit of the white farmer.


Mereka is now a brother to me as over the years, he has been involved in almost all ventures I have tried from managing my lorry, buying and selling cattle for me, going to open and managing my market gardening project at a plot in Kensington, Bulawayo, also coming to South Africa and we have started new ventures, helping to construct our house in 2009, staying at my house in Zimbabwe after we kicked out the last lodger for non payment of rent and now assisting with managing my piggery project. When we got to my piggery project in Chivhu, the worker a son of my wife's cousin was not expecting us. I have also learnt that when it comes to business it is better to deal with strangers and not relatives as it always end badly. The worker told me that feed had run out the previous day and I asked why I had not been told before hand. Around 100 pigs were almost starving, luckily I had brought a sack of vegetables that I had taken from my garden at our house in Zimre Park. I let Mereka do the talking as I was already agitated due to lack of sleep. When Mereka asked if we could get makireshi (maize bran) at the local grinding mill, the worker said there was none and the nearest place we could buy was about 15km away. We then walked to the nearby business centre and we managed to buy 2 sacks of makireshi for about $4 a bucket and that was going to be enough for a day.

 

We then went back to Harare, the following morning we boarded a bus to Mutoko to see my cousin. 3 years ago when I became a partner in the piggery project before taking over full ownership of the project in January 2017, I had spent almost $2 000 to buy and transport a grinding mill machine and left it with my cousin in Mutoko. All I was interested in was to get cheap maize to feed my pigs. Most farmers cannot afford the $1 or 50cents charged to crush a bucket of maize so they rely on batter trade where they will give you a 5 litre tin filled with maize in exchange for the grinding services. During harvest season when maize is in abundance you can increase the charge to 2 tins and you can easily get more than 100kgs of maize per day. When I got to my cousin's place and I asked how much of my maize he had, he told me he had none and he told me some story. I was livid and I kept my emotions in check and decided to take a nap for a few hours and calmed down. It did not make sense that after a whole year, I would be getting such an answer from him. 

Ready to leave Mutoko

At Siyaso, Mbare

Along Mutoko road at Corner Store

 

In my experience ever since I left Zimbabwe in August 2007, when it comes to investing in projects in Zimbabwe,the biggest challenge has been dealing with relatives and workers and not necessarily the economic situation in Zimbabwe. Initially when I started working in South Africa, I was disappointed in the lack of career advancement. South Africa is a complex place where due to racism even black African citizens struggle to get ahead however black citizens can at least benefit due to employment equity. As a black foreigner, I do not qualify for employment equity and many established companies would not consider a foreigner. At times, I would go to the so called interviews where interviewers would not even talk about your qualifications and you would be wondering why you were called in for the interview in the first place. Coupled with the lack of prospects as well as the nightmares that came with dealing with Home Affairs department in trying to renew work permits, I realized within three months that I had to work on sorting out my stuff back home starting by building a house. Towards the end of 2009, I had managed to save some money to begin building our home. I took leave from work and drove to Zimbabwe, pitched up a tent at our stand and started buying building materials and interviewing potential builders.Luckily my first job after High School was as a building studies school teacher at secondary school level.

Around 2001 before we got married, both me and my wife we were working for separate financial institutions in Harare and our employers where assisting with housing loans. We then identified two separate houses in Glen View high density suburb in Harare that we needed to get mortgage finance on. When the valuators from the two banks went to inspect the properties, both properties did not pass the test as construction quality was so poor and both banks refused to bond the properties. I have seen many people based outside the country, they send money to their relatives in Zimbabwe. Some of them misuse the money completely and others will still do construction but use sub standard material. I monitored the construction during my leave and left when the house was above window level. My wife and kids then went back to Zimbabwe in early 2010 to monitor the rest of the construction. In January 2011, we started renting out the house and I also constructed started running a tuck shop at our house and my wife and I would alternate travelling to Harare to monitor the shop.




End of 2011, I started a broiler project at the house and I would visit Harare every weekend of December 2011 to monitor the project. On 25 December 2011, I arrived in Harare and the workers told me that they were battling to find market. I then drove to Mbare Musika and I came with guys who bought 300 birds cash. I then went to Chitungwiza and secured market for the rest of the almost 300 birds and the customer wanted them dressed. I was going to be on duty on 27 December and I instructed the workers to slaughter the chicken and deliver to the customer and I drove back to South Africa on Boxing Day. Unfortunately they did a hurried job in preparing the chicken that all the chicken went bad and we had to throw them away and I lost a lot of money. I then stopped the project.


The business environment in Zimbabwe is very challenging for example the shortage of cash but that can be managed.The high prices in Zimbabwe cushions you when you have to convert your money into hard currency. The current high prices are as a result of the Bond note currency which in my view is causing more problems for the economy and must be discontinued, in December 2017 I wrote the following article and I still stand by those views. http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/12/why-zimbabwe-needs-to-discard-bond-note.html. For example the prices of maize being offered in Zimbabwe to farmers is $390 per tonne and compare that with approximately R2 086.00 being offered in South Africa according to Grain SA. Soyabean producer price in Zimbabwe is pegged at $780 per tonne compare that with R4 460.00 in South Africa. The price of fertilizer in Zimbabwe is about twice the price in South Africa however the other inputs especially labour is much cheaper in Zimbabwe. Over the weekend when I was discussing with South African sister and she was complaining that the producer price per kilogram for pork was around R20 and I was telling her in Zimbabwe the producer price can be almost $4 and it is easier to open your butchery where you can sell for up to $6 or more depending on supply and demand. Also in South Africa, they have to buy all the feed from the shops as there are no communal farmers selling maize cheaply. I mean most South Africans have not seen chigayo (grinding mill) in their life. When I told her that in Zimbabwe you can buy sunflower cake for around $100 per tonne from villagers, I really gave her an idea.

In my experience the biggest challenge has been dealing with relatives in Zimbabwe when it comes to money. Towards the end of 2010, my wife left $1 000.00 with a relative in order to pay for plumbing as well as our sons' school fees. The next week, we got a phone call that our sons then aged 8 and 6 where left on their own and they were not going to school and the relative had ran away with the money. Then end of 2011, there was the problem with almost 300 chicken going bad because people did not care. That is the reason why at least one of us has to go to Zimbabwe every two weeks so that we would buy feed on our own as it becomes difficult to trust anyone with money. Towards end of 2016 almost $2 000 was paid to a relative from the butchery that had bought pork from us and when I went to Zimbabwe in December wanting to buy fertilizer for my tobacco and the money had been used and I had to swipe my SA bank card to buy fertilizer. I don't want to talk about how badly the tobacco was managed from the word go. Many people in Zimbabwe are short sighted in that if they could manage funds well we could mutually benefit in that in countries with better economies, the salaries are much higher and also it is easy to get credit at much better terms and we can fund even bigger projects back home. The idea is that you need to have a working project back home before you decide to relocate and to do that you need to raise as much capital as possible for the business.



Anyway back to my story of October 2017. We then walked about 4kms back to the business centre where I used to run one of my three shops from 2004 until I left for South Africa in August 2007 during the infamous price control blitz of 2007 and then resuscitated the shop again in early 2008 before realising that it was difficult to run a shop all the way from Pretoria. I started to enquire and I managed to buy makireshi for $1.5 per pucket and this was much better than $4 that was being charged in Chivhu. That evening I managed to buy 2 tonnes and also some sunflower cake. The next day, my brother in-law came with his two tonne truck and we managed to carry the feed to Chivhu. I then went back to Mutoko and I spent almost a week walking from one grinding mill owner to the other and managed to buy another 4 tonnes of the feed and a friend offered to transport for me for free to Corner store along Mutoko road. A Malawian truck driver on his way to Masvingo Province agreed to carry the feed for me to Chivhu for R500. I had enough feed to last 6 weeks so I started looking at tobacco farming. In October 2017, the bond note was devaluing very quickly and the price of fertilizer was going up. I went to Mutoko and I was offered seedlings enough for 2 hectares. I was sceptical of sending more money to Zimbabwe. I decided to skip growing tobacco this past season. In December 2017, I went back to Mutoko and bought another load of makireshi again and transported it to Chivhu.

Price of fertilizer in October 2017, Harare, Zimbabwe

 

Towards the end of October 2017, I had about two dozen pigs ready for market and I struggled to get buyers for the pigs. The economic prospects in Zimbabwe were very bleak. I came back to South Africa and the next week Robert Mugabe fired his deputy and I thought things can't get any worse. In early November 2017 we visited my brother in law outside Pretoria where he is doing market gardening growing vegetables normally bought by Zimbabweans in Pretoria and Johannesburg. I told him that I was considering establishing a piggery project in South Africa and then close the one in Zimbabwe and he took me to this plot to see what the South African sister was doing. At the plot, I was stuck by the housing that she had for the sows (female breeding stock), back home we were struggling with housing for soars because if you put more than two together they started attacking each other but this lady could put almost 40 soars in one pen. When Robert Mugabe resigned around mid November 2017 things started looking-up back home, another day I got a phone call from a guy who wanted to buy all my pigs and I said no I was no longer selling.

 

 Last weekend we were in Zimbabwe and we had sent fencing the previous week and we tried to explain the kind of pen they must now construct since number of our breeders has also gone up. The more we explained what kind of pen we wanted for the breeders the more people got confused. So mid last week, I bought a bus ticket for Mereka to come to Pretoria and on Saturday we went to the plot so that he could see the plan. We had a very fruitful day as the lady managed to share with us a lot of practical information. When you are running a project or want to start running a project, it is very important to read a lot of information about the project and also visiting those who are already running a similar project as  you will get insight. In English there is a saying, "You do not need to re-invent the wheel", in Shona we have similar sayings such, "Kugara nhaka huwona dzevamwe" , or "Nherera teerera panorayirwa mwana wamambo".

To show the value of information. In early 2007, I was working as a branch manager for an insurance company in Bulawayo. Due to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, which can be traced back to 1997, for a long time salaries could no longer match inflation and a lot of people already had side businesses that ended up paying more than their salaries. At that time, I was running three general dealer shops in the resettlement areas of Mutoko and Virginia Macheke. The Zimbabwean manufacturing industry was already on its knees and most of the goods we were selling in the shop was coming from Musina, South Africa. On this particular weekend, I had left work on Friday after lunch and drove to Francistown in Botswana where I would buy clothing and shoes for resale. On the Saturday  morning, I had gone to Musina to buy cartoons of cooking oil, soap, petroleum jelly etc. I left my house in Bulawayo around 3am on Sunday morning driving to Mutoko about 600km away and I would come back during the night as I would be on duty the next day. I gave a lift to a number of people whom I gathered were coming from shopping in Botswana.



During the trip, we started talking about a number of things, I always like to discuss with strangers as I get to learn a lot. Before we got to Gweru a guy was going to drop off and he asked me in passing if sugar beans was available in Mutoko as that year there was a big shortage in Bulawayo due to the fact that the irrigation schemes in Masvingo that normally supplied Bulawayo had been hit by a drought. He then gave me his numbers. When I reached my shop in Mutoko that morning, I remembered the conversation and farmers would come around the shops selling their sugar beans and I managed to buy about 4, 50kg sacks. The following day when I was back in Bulawayo, I contacted the guy to say I had brought him the sugar beans and he started giving me the run around. I then started researching the market and I could see that some companies were offering me about 6 times what I had bought the sugar beans for. I finally settled for a company called Quality Foods and this company was supplying the in-house brands for the major retailers such as OK Zimbabwe and TM supermarkets.The following week, I took leave from work and spent a week buying sugar beans in Mutoko and I managed to get about 5 tonnes and I was able to borrow a trailer and with my company issued Toyota Hilux double cab, I transported the sugar beans in three trips.
 

By the time we went for the Easter Holidays, I had made around R100 000 from thin air and I managed to use about $3 000 to buy myself an Isuzu pick up and the rest against the advice of my wife who warned me about putting all my eggs in one basket,  I invested into my shops and once every month, I would drive to Johannesburg and buy expensive stock wanted by farmers eg solar panels, radios, batteries, kitchenware etc. Every week, I was now making sales of around R25 000.00 and that was a lot of money in Zimbabwe. My salary as a branch manager was only averaging about R1 000.00 even though we were getting monthly increments, however the salaries could no longer match inflation. One of the reasons I had kept on going to work was that I had the use of the company bakkie and now that I had now bought my own bakkie, I decided to resign from my job and start serving the three months notice. I was going to concentrate on my shops, my minibus taxi, my 7 tonne truck that was contracted to carry cotton crop and my market gardening that I was pursuing in Kensington Bulawayo.



Whilst I was serving my notice, the government introduced the price control blitz to try and tame inflation and overnight we incurred heavy losses and the lady managing my businesses was also arrested and she was fined. At that time many people were applying for work permits to come to South Africa at first I was reluctant and my wife encouraged me to apply. The day I collected my work permit at South Afrian embassy Harare, we drove overnight to our house in Bulawayo to collect my certificates and we immediately left for Pretoria and within a week, I started working in South Africa and I opened a new chapter in my life.



Some people have said the current time we are living is one of the best throughout human history and I tend to agree. I remember when I was in high school during the early 90s we did not have internet, if you wanted information you would need to read the whole book just to get a concept. Nowadays there is so much information for example you can go to Youtube and you will see a practical example on how to do something. In the past you needed to physically engage with a mentor but now with the internet and social media, you can easily follow an accomplished business leader such as Strive Masiyiwa and you can begin to learn a lot from him even though you might never meet him in person. Another important issue is to learn as much as you can about business management. In late 2005, my employer funded for my studies in order to pursue the three year program that would lead towards an MBA through Open Learning Centre in Harare. I managed to complete one module before I dropped out. What I learnt in that module when it came to competitive advantage was so life changing in that I managed to apply it to my own personal business and it grew.  



Back to my current situation with our piggery project, I get to visit farmers who have successful projects and I learn practical examples from housing, markets, getting lower feeds etc.

 

My Facebook post on the eve of 2017 Comrades Marathon

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This year I am running my 3rd consecutive Comrades. Towards the end of 2010 I found myself visiting the doctor and I did not understand what was happening to my body, I was weighing over 95kgs. The doctor told me my BP was too high and I had hypertension. I had to wait for a few days for some of the blood test results on cholesterol level, diabetes etc. The doctor advised me to change my diet and also to walk during weekends. I work in a call centre where I would sit from about 7:30am and would work overtime up to 6pm most of the days. In October 2010, I moved to a complex approximately 2.5km from my work place. Around that time construction began at our work campus and it meant that we had to park off site and take a shuttle to work or just walk to the office during peak time. This situation turned to be a blessing in disguise for me. I then decided to park my car at home and I started walking to work. Sometimes when I was late, I would run to work and whenever I wanted to go up or down to the flat I would take the stairs instead of the lift. A guard at the complex at home asked me, why I would park two cars and then walk every day to work and I just laughed. This is the second time I started running. To me running was the cheapest form of exercise and if you want you can even run without shoes. To be honest running also has it occupational hazards, In 2015 I was mugged and my cellphone was stolen when I was jogging in Pretoria Central and also I was once nearly run over by a taxi which started to reverse when I was passing behind it.


At school I was never an athlete for most of my schooling until when I was in O’level. I started running by accident. I realised that any study material I found difficult, I could study and understand the material better If I read it first thing in the morning. My school Nyameni Secondary School was just under 6km from my mother’s home. I would then run most of the way to school just to make it in time. Getting late to school was out of the question as corporal punishment was acceptable at that time. In my final O’level year, during the athletics season, everyone was forced to run the marathon. I came first in my age category and my sister who was two grades behind me also did very well. My mother did not encourage our running as she wanted us to concentrate on academics. Our school athletics team was also invited to the affluent Peterhouse College (we used to call it Cakehouse) for a marathon run. I went on to represent my school at Dairibord Zimbabwe sponsored provincial marathon and I did not make it to the provincial team.

For my A ‘level studies I was accepted at Marondera High School a former group A school (equivalence of a model C school in South Africa). The new school was just over 7km from home. At that time this was the only day formal school that could accept boys for A ‘level in the whole town. When the lower 6 form started the Athletics season was over. At group A schools sports were a big thing. The following year in my final A ‘level year it was also voluntary-compulsory for everyone to run. The very first marathon, I ran faster and after a few kilometres I realised that no one was following me and I was lost. I was called in for punishment, if I remember correctly the teacher who was in charge of sports was Mr Madhiri. I explained to him that I had participated but I got lost and by some luck he believed me. I went on to run another marathon at school and came first, ran inter-house competitions and ran anything from 400metres relay and upwards. We had about 7 other Group A schools that we would compete with in our group. I remember boarding our school bus to Lomagundi College and Watershed College for athletics. The final event I participated in was the Dairibord Zimbabwe provincial marathon that was hosted at our school and I did not make the cut into the provincial team.

 In 1999 during the Insurance Institute of Zimbabwe annual sporting weekend in Harare, there was a 10km road race sponsored by AIG Zimbabwe. I practised for a few weeks and I ran the race and came third and I got $500 Zimbabwean dollars and it was a decent amount back then. So I visited AIG’s new offices at Westgate Shopping centre to have my cheque opened and I was impressed. One of the managers who signed my cheque was Mr Taffy Mathews who would become my future claims manager the following year when I joined AIG. I did not run again for many years to come.
In 2014 I joined the running club at work. My very first race was the Denel 21.1km race in Centurion. I ran well for the first 5km and I walked most of the race. I wanted to quit on the 10km mark but I kept on running and walking and I completed the race in under 3 hours. Towards the end of 2014 I decided to enter for the 2015 Comrades uphill race. Going into my first Comrades, I only ran one qualifying race in January 2015 and my time for the 42.2km at the Akasia race was around 4 hours 56 minutes. I only did a couple of 25 km trainings. Most of the runs I did were 15km and below. On the evening of 20 March 2015 I ended up at Unitas Hospital Emergency rooms after a nasty fall when I tripped on small rocks early in the evening luckily the doctor said I did not need any stiches on my mouth.

I do not trust experts that much, I was not worried that I did not practice the recommended distance or practised on hills. The day before my first comrades was scary, I started expressing self- doubt if I could do this and I barely slept that night. I arrived early at the starting line. I met this guy from Canada who told me that he had barely practiced outdoors due to the cold weather in Canada. This conversation was very important to me, I was feeling sorry for myself but here was a guy who had barely practiced and had flown thousands of miles just to be part of this event. By the time we sang Shosholoza I was in the race. My last two races I have started in the last seeding. So 20 years after I finished High School, I ran my first Comrades race. When we started running I did not stop at the first 3 water points and I had to be careful not to fall, Imagine almost 20 000 runners ahead of you dropping plastics with water on the tarmac which became very slippery. I ran well for the first plus or minus 25km up to the first serious hill out of Pinetown. I kept on saying to myself “keep on moving”. What I normally do when I run up hill, I do not look all the way up, and I just look just a few meters ahead so that I do not get intimidated. It was such a good feeling to overtake runners that were in the seedings ahead of me and this motivated me to keep on going. After about 45km I was exhausted and even small up runs felt like I was running up the Vumba Mountains or Inyanga Mountains and I started walking all uphills and ran whenever it was flat or when it was downhill. I made it in just over 10 hours 38 minutes.


In 2016 I was better prepared, I ran four qualifying races and I improved my qualifying time to about 4 hours 20 minutes however I forgot to upgrade my qualifying time with Comrades so they took the Soweto 2015 marathon result that was 5 hours so I was in the last seeding again. Exactly two weeks before the 2016 comrades, I picked up an injury on my left knee. On the race day, I ran the first half very well and I thought I would make it in just over 9 hours. After that everything went south as I started feeling pain on the left knee and I could only run when it was flat or downhill and walk uphill. I started stopping at all medics along the way and this lady bandaged my left knee to support it and I kept on going. About 10km to go, the pain was so much. I could no longer run even downhill and I started limping towards the finish line and it seemed like everyone was now overtaking me. I realised that I could no longer make it within 11 hours for the bronze medal. With about 2km to go this guy started telling me something crazy, he said that even if he could no longer make it in 11 hours, if I started jogging now, I could still make it in less than 11 hours. I said to myself can't he see that I am limping. Instead of feeling sorry for me he was planting this crazy idea in my mind that I could still make it. This guy became my hero, my unknown soldier for the 2016 Comrades run. He reminds me of my late mum who would always keep on believing in me and telling me that I could pass those national exams and be someone in life. I started jogging and I felt the pain on the knee was not too bad. After about 500 metres I met my team mate who had also given up on making it less than 11 hours, I do not know how I convinced him and we started running and all the while busy looking at our watches. When I entered the stadium, the pain came back again and I wanted to stop and my team mate kept on encouraging me to keep on going. We made it to the finish line in 10 hours 58 minutes. If you saw us at the finishing line hugging you could think we had won lotto. It was okay to cry and feel sorry for one self after crossing finishing line.


My advice to novice Comrades runners on this eve, today is not the time for self-doubt. Today is the time for believing in oneself.  Only for today it’s okay to be a bit delusional and picture yourself as the best runner that was ever seen on this earth and have a good night sleep. Your training might not have gone the way you anticipated, it rarely never goes according to plan. Do not think too much about the hills that you have to go through even myself I do not know the height of all those hills, what I know is that I have to go through them one way or the other even if it means walking most of the hills. Remember like eating an elephant which is one bite at a time, going up those hills is about putting your best foot forward one step at a time. Keep on moving and listen to your body, talk to your fellow comrades especially if you do not feel well along the race. In my view running Comrades imitates life itself; you start the race very light with almost nothing except your positive attitude that you will cross the finish line on time. Along the way there are 45 water points and countless strangers who will cheer you along the way and some will even massage your legs and keep on encouraging you. I do not wish to dispute with what my excellent A ‘Level Chemistry teacher Mr Rimbi taught me 22 years ago, running Comrades has taught me that diamonds are not the strongest natural substance. Human determination and human endurance are the strongest “substances” in this world. Good luck to everyone for tomorrow. Thank you for joining the Comrades way of life.