WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2019

For my generation in Zimbabwe we grew up learning that men do not talk about their feelings; men don’t cry. Whatever happened away from home especially whilst herding cattle stayed there. My parents come from neighboring villages in Murewa. On my mother’s side I would be in the company of my older cousin mukoma Rememberance Mukarakate and on my father’s side it was my uncle who is now late Babamunini Masimba Tsiga. These men saved me from a lot of bullying in the 80s whilst herding cattle.

It was around 2006-2007 when I had gone to Mater Dei hospital when I saw what the doctor who had been treating was writing down; Anxiety Attack. The first time I had an anxiety attack was in 1986 in class at Amaveni Primary School in Kwekwe. I had been seated playing with my pen, the next moment I had swallowed the ink. Teachers must have told us that ink was poisonous. I had a panic attack and let out a secret that no one should have known.

I had a crash🙈 on Moleen whom I always competed with for the top spot as well as Martha Phiri who was always very lively in class. I stood up and shouted, “ndakufa ndichisiya mukadzi wangu Moleen na Martha”(I am dying leaving my wives Moleen and Martha). The teacher then called my mum and suggested to my mum that it must be evil spirits(chivanhu) so they must take me to a witch doctor.  My mum then answered her nah she did not believe in that stuff and if I ever did that again I must get a beating. My mum somehow believed that any mischief could be solved by a thorough beating. We never spoke about that incident at home.

A few weeks later Moleen came to ask me, I just jumped from the verandah and ran away. After we finished high school, I met Martha in 1995 and we laughed about it. I then had another anxiety attack in 2002, I then discovered that every time I was on antibiotics it could trigger an anxiety attack. I have come to know the triggers and how to cope with it and remain calm. I almost had a panic attack at work around 2010, I went outside the office I was sweating and feeling very nervous. I then called Viksha and she came to sit with me until I felt better. 

It’s important for a person to seek help and talk to someone about your problems and also seek professional help. I found this Ted talk video from Mel Robbins helpful in managing anxiety https://www.ted.com/talks/mel_robbins_how_to_stop_screwing_yourself_over/up-next?language=en. Please don’t suffer in silence.

Let us all help to remove the stigma around mental illness. Many people are committing suicide when they could have got help🙏🏿

CHALLENGES CAN MAKE YOU GROW: LESSONS AS A FOREIGNER

In June 2007 as the Bulawayo Branch Manager for Zimnat Lion Insurance Company my family was staying in a cozy 3 bedroom company house in the low density suburb of Burnside, the swimming pool was not working, who cares about a swimming pool? who swims?By 1 September 2007, we were renting a room in a 2 bedroom flat in Sunnyside, Pretoria. Life will humble you. We were starting right at the bottom again. By January 2008 my family went back to Zimbabwe and I started sharing a room with 2 other Zimbabweans. 

I found being a foreigner tough and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. As a foreigner I learnt an important lesson that all of us must learn before it is too late:- THE WORLD DOES NOT OWE YOU ANYTHING. I found myself with limited career prospects as compared to 1997 when I joined the insurance industry back in Zimbabwe. From a middle level manager, I was starting right at the bottom. 

In Zimbabwe qualifications matter but not in South Africa they don’t matter at all, a lot of companies will not employ a foreigner. I was hoping to go back to Zimbabwe for good after March 2008 elections. 2008 turned to be a horrible year in Zimbabwe from political murders and an imploding economy. When my family eventually came back, I was really depressed and I had given up applying for jobs or any promotions. My wife despite her experience in a banking environment back home in Zimbabwe, the only job she got was that of a waitress. 

We decided she was better off staying at home and studying. My first work permit was expiring at the end of 2012. This always kept me awake at night as I asked myself where would we stay when we eventually got back home. We started sharing a flat again and saving around R5 000.00. per month. Around 2008-2009, we saw a very cheap 3 bedroom apartment in Centurion through FNB Quicksell website. We put in an offer of R400 000 and it was accepted. We then applied for a home loan through FNB and the answer was for foreigners they needed 50% deposit and we couldn’t afford to raise such a huge deposit, When you are a foreigner the constant answer is NO and you get used to it.

At the end of 2009 MaNyoni and I wrote our first exams through UNISA for our accounting degrees. I had set my sight on qualifying as a Chartered Accountant as I saw a dead end in my insurance career. By that time we had saved almost R40 000.00. A month before MaNyoni’s friend, Catherine Nyati had visited us from Harare and we asked her to renew our building plan. The day I wrote my final exam in November 2009, I took two weeks leave and left for Harare that day.

My first job after high school was a building studies teacher. I bought four wheel barrows disassembled them and put then in the back of my Toyota Tazz. I bought many building tools from shovels, trowels, spirit level. I also bought brickforce, DPC etc. A work friend Evelyn Botha had kindly lent me a tent. I got to Harare the next morning looked for Mereka Maruwira and pitched up a tent at our stand in Zimre Park.

At that time for every R100 we were getting over $US12.50. We went to Mount Hamden and bought 10 000 bricks and they were loaded onto the truck. I interviewed builders and settled for a middle aged guy who came with his family and I told him I didn’t have much time. I bought sand and concrete stones. I would buy about 10 bags of cement at a time and carry with my Toyota Tazz. I went to buy more bricks. By the time my two weeks leave was up, the 2 bedroom was almost at roof level and I left Mereka and Phillip at the house.

When I got my annual bonus that December we bought all the doors, door frames, window frames, IBR roofing sheets, toilet systems, sewerage pipes etc. In early 2010 on a Friday evening we hired a pick-up truck from a Malawian guy who was sharing a flat with my brother in law in Pretoria. We loaded all the building materials and he carried MaNyoni and I to the Truck Stop at Pienaars River 60kms from Pretoria. We slept outside and early on Saturday morning we started negotiating with truck drivers. A Zambian bound truck agreed to carry us for R1000 to Beitbridge.

We arrived at Beitbridge around 5pm and hired a Zimbabwean registered Bakkie, within an hour we had cleared both borders. Mereka was waiting for us on the Zimbabwean side. That evening Mereka boarded a Harare bound truck with all the materials. In April 2010 MaNyoni and kids went back to Zimbabwe( imba haivakwe usipo). I started staying in the dining roomand rented out all the bedrooms. It was tough as students I was staying with would come late in the night from the bar and I would wake up, some of them would steal my food. Almost all the money I was making was going home to finish the construction. I was working overtime as usual at work.

Around September 2010, I met Zimbabwean guys on the lift and I assumed they were looking for a room as I had one available. The one guy said no he was selling the flat next door to us. I told him that I also wanted to buy but I couldn’t raise the 50% deposit. He assured me that I could get a home loan for 10% deposit. When MaNyoni came to collect money end of that month, we went to view the unit. We put in our application and only  Nedbank approved the loan with 10% deposit.

December 2010 I spent it in Zimbabwe we were painting the house, fitting window panes, putting on burglar bars and connecting ZESA. When I got my annual bonus we paid the deposit and transfer fees for the place in South Africa. We got a tenant in Zimbabwe. In January 2011 when we came back to South Africa and we were so broke and I don’t know how we managed to make it to pay day.

Why I write this?, a lot of people in Zimbabwe and South Africa are struggling and don’t know what to do. If you are faced with a challenge please don’t give up. Sacrifice where you have to. Maybe you are in a dead end job, reduce your expenses and go back home if you have to. I believe zvirinani kuwomerwa nehupenyu for a year and sort out your life. 

You won’t believe how resilient you are until you have tried. This world does not owe you anything, make each and every paycheck count. We all worry about other people’s judgements, the truth is that all of us are going through our own stuff.

I wish you the best.

SUPERSTITION IS A BIG PROBLEM IN AFRICA

I also followed the funeral of Robert Mugabe as it played out. I could not help but conclude that even with his 7 university degrees, Robert Mugabe was as superstitious as some of the villagers I met growing up in Murewa. The guy genuinely believed that his former comrades would use his body parts for muti. Why didn’t his muti save him from the 2017 coup? Around 1989 my father became seriously ill and he was diagnosed with AIDS/HIV. My mother had been attending Methodist church. We started going to an Apostolic church (Madzibaba church) and we would spend many nights at church and the whole day on Sundays and Fridays during school holidays. In this church we were not allowed to read the bible as it was considered stale information and instead we relied on the prophets to give us real time prophets. White people were not allowed to become members of that church because it was them who killed Jesus.

In 1990, my father was transferred from the town of Kwekwe to the town of Marondera which is nearer our village in Murewa. The prophets always told my parents that my father had been bewitched. If one wanted to travel, write exams or make any decision in your life you were supposed to go and kneel in front of a prophet for a prophesy or blessings. During the August 1990 school holiday my father decided to visit his mother in Murewa without consulting the prophet, I suspect he felt his time was nearly up and he wanted to go home one last time. When he came back he was seriously ill and the prophet said it was because he had gone to the village without the prophet’s anointing. My father died after his 36^th Birthday in November 1990.

We continued going to the Madzibaba church after my father’s death, I never liked the church. My mother would only serve you breakfast on Sundays after you had put on the church garment. I would get to church and run away soon after and other days after eating breakfast I would remove the church cloths and tell my mother that I was not going to church. By the time I got to O’ Level I started questioning a lot of things. How can a prophet who never passed grade 7 bless me to pass O’ Level? Even after getting blessing from the prophet a number of bad things were happening to church members and the prophet seemed to have an answer for everything. By the time I went for A-levels I stopped completely and went back to Methodist Church. My A-levels science education helped me to put a lot of things into perspective. My mother would later on clash with the prophet over an issue involving my sister and the whole family stopped going to that church.

When I went back to the village, I had already started dealing with facts and my cousins told me that I was brave as I was no longer bothered with things they believed in e.g. ghosts etc. I was scared of real things like snakes and not ghosts etc. In the village my cousins believed that dead people could come up at night and appear as flames and they had tales to tell. I never saw what they saw. At school I was exposed to people of different religions for example in 1983 at Amaveni Primary School my friend Abulu Phiri was a Muslim. Within the majority Christian communities of Zimbabwe there were people attending different church organisations from Seventh Day Adventist, Anglican, Dutch Reformed Church, Apostolic Churches etc. It is surprising in my experience the most judgemental people I found were Christians. When I joined Zimbabwe Insurance Brokers as a junior manager in November 2002 all managers had to go to Kadoma Ranch Motel about 140kms from Harare. Two of the managers did not attend because as members of SDA church the strategy session clashed with their Sabbath on a Saturday. Those two managers were pushed out. With my next employer I saw the same problem again.

My uncle who died in February this year was a member of the Marange Apostolic Church. My uncle would tell us that he believed that only members of his church were righteous. His church members where his true relatives. When my mother died in 2002, he and my other cousins only arrived two days after my mum had been buried. My eldest cousin who is a member of ZCC church was the one who came to bury my mother. In Zimbabwe I try to steer clear of any political or religious debates even with fellow Christians.

I also remember my other friend in primary school we called him Zed whom everyone knew was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. Zed did almost everything that girls did, he stretched his hair, he liked to play netball and we accepted him as he was. It’s no secret that in Zimbabwe Christians are at the forefront of homophobia. Even our evil former president the late Robert Mugabe himself a devout catholic was at the forefront of heaping insults on the gay community. Many times homosexuality would become an election issue. I never understood why people worry too much on what two consenting adults do in their bedroom whether they are of the same sex or not. In my experience I have been treated better by gays than some Christians. People believe in what they believe in depending on their background. Somehow it is lost on a lot of people that your current religion is a circumstances of your birth e.g. if one is born in Middle East chances are he or she will be a Muslim, if one is born in Zimbabwe chances are that you will be Christian. I have interacted with people practising different branches of Christianity and also other religions from non-believers, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, African religion etc. You will be surprised that most of these people despite having different backgrounds they seem to have the same aspirations and similar values. Many people across different backgrounds value hard work, fairness, education, opportunity for themselves and their children and equity.

I have learnt to give each and every person that I meet the benefit of doubt no matter their background. You should never judge a person based on what society tells you. As we grew up we were fed with stereotypes on different religions, tribes, gender, races, social status etc. I remember in early 2008 when the first Xenophobic attack happened in South Africa, a colleague of mine a white Afrikaner begged me to come and stay with his family in Centurion as he genuinely feared for my safety. I assured him that I felt safe where I was with my Nigerian, South African, Zimbabwean, Somali, Pakistani, Congolese and Ethiopian neighbours.

In an African family set up anything that happens, people believes there is an explanation behind it. You might lose your job due to the failing economy or your employer going out of business and it does not mean someone has bewitched you. I have worked in the insurance industry since end of 1997, I have seen people of different races, faith, social classes etc. having to deal with misfortunes. A guy can buy a car today and tomorrow it is stolen. In my view it is not a question of someone bewitching you, it is a question of chance. It can happen to anyone of any race, religions, gender, sexual orientation. You can do so much to prevent it however what is key is what do you do if it happens. For example you might be diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, what you can do is to make sure you can at least afford the treatment. You might wake up tomorrow and be told that your employer is closing down or you have been fired, the key is that you are prepared for that i.e. how much savings do you have to carry you throw, do you have a plan B?

My issue is that once you just believe that I have been bewitched, you sort of lose control of how you respond. Life can kick you in the teeth and for sure it is going to shake you up, the key is that you stand up and keep on moving and deal with situation to the best of your knowledge and don’t just say why me? You should always deal with facts and always ask for help when you need it.

A lot of people will not agree with my views and that is okay, at times I don’t agree with myself.