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.