At times I get overwhelmed with the situation and I have to go back
to my foundation. In the claims environment in the Insurance industry it is
normally extremely busy this time of the year. I am glad I survived this week. The
story starts with my mother a daughter of a farmer. My mum believed that a
person should be out of bed before the sun came up and so every morning at dawn
she would start calling my name and my sister’s name instructing us to wake up.
She would tell us the same story, “My father taught me that a person should be
up by the time the sun comes out”, and we would argue that the situation was
different as we were growing up in an urban environment and not in the farming
area as she grew up. My mum would ask you for about three times and after that
she could either come with a bucket full of water or with a cane to discipline
you. As a result, I do not use an alarm
as I am always up around 5am even if I go to bed late.
My mum also believed every child had to learn to cook, clean
the house, wash dishes as well as wash their own clothes even if you were a
boy. Her philosophy was simple, “you must learn to cook for yourself, clean
after yourself, wash and iron your own cloths otherwise if you never learn to
do so you will be so desperate when you start living on your own and you will immediately
marry an old woman just to get someone to do chores for you”. I think I did
okay as I only got married exactly 5 years after I left my mother’s house. My
mum detested a lazy person and sometimes I would squabble with my sister on how
she was getting fewer chores than me. It’s funny how even now at work when I
start to complain that I have too much work, I check myself on whether I am
just being lazy.
My mum never stopped believing that our situation would be
turned around. I remembered how tough life became after the death of my father.
At times, I would lose hope of our situation but she kept on painting a picture
of how things would improve through hard work. She would encourage me to study
all those big science books even though she could not help me with my school
work. I owe my mum a load of gratitude. My mum having gone to school during the
colonial era when the education of Africans was not a priority for the racial
regime of Ian Smith and also her father had stopped paying for her school fees
when she was at Murewa Mission school as he considered it a waste of time to
educate a girl child. My mum only went as far as standard six.
The other big influence in my life was Mrs Chizano my grade
1 teacher in 1983 at Amaveni Primary School, Kwekwe. I am from the generation
that never went to pre-school and at that time many houses did not have TVs. My
first English words I learnt them in grade 1. Mrs Chizano taught me about
Christianity. One of the most important lessons she taught me is about always
striving to do the right thing. She went on to explain that it is not always
easy to do the right thing but it always pays in the end. Anyway it was easier
for her to say that as she always kept that rope that she would not hesitate to
use on naughty kids.
My grade 3 and 4 teacher was Mrs Chirimuta, she was soft
spoken and kind. In grade 4, I had an anxiety attack and she called my mum to
the school and told my mum about it and she thought there was something more to
it maybe evil spirits. My mum said she did not believe about such stuff and
that was the end of the story. http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/08/dear-mama-my-hero.html
My other influence was my cousin. In Shona, the definition
of close family is much wider. My mother’s sister is not my aunt but simply my
mother, my cousin is simply my brother or my sister. I would follow my cousin brother
Remembrance to the hills to look for cattle, hunt or get honey from beehives.
That was when I learnt the definition of team work. In the village some elders
would not get along as they accused each other of witchcraft but for us boys we
relied on one another. At times our cattle would stray as far as Mutoko
resettlement areas, Chiendambuya, Tanda-Mayo, Virginia commercial farms
distances of up to 30kms during the dry season. You would rely on other boys to
bring your cattle or tell you where they were. Back at home if you did not find
the cattle you would not bother to come back home that night as the fate that awaited
you was much worse than sleeping in the hills.
My mother’s sister Mrs Konde, she taught me something
profound when I was about 14 which is in the same line with Karma. She said if
you did something bad, you should not worry about judgement in the afterlife as
you would most certainly enjoy the fruits still in this life time. I remember
talking to someone close to me a few years ago about former first lady Grace
Mugabe. Can you imagine a whole first lady ended up assaulting and causing horrific
injuries to a young lady when she was visiting South Africa? What causes a person
to stoop to such low level, maybe it’s payback for their deeds?
I know that even at my age, there is so much that I still do
not know and I still learn every day. I have had a lot of mentors and I still
get a lot of mentors. http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/09/what-i-have-learnt-in-my-21-years-of.html
