Monday, November 30, 2009

poetry galore

i used to love writing poetry in my younger days. i dont know how i lost the touch. anyway i have decided to upload my earlier works in a seperate blog. they are nothing fancy, mostly a product of an overactive young mind which was constantly in "love"! lol i think ever since i entered the teenage years i had a crush on one guy or another all the time. anyway will find that i entered the age at which i was when i wrote each poem. if you can be into that sort of thing, feel free to check them out here

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

waist-watching






I had a good start to my day today. I managed to fit into an outfit that had been relegated to the back of the wardrobe in the vain hope that one day I would lose some pounds and fit into it again! Ladies y’all know what I am talking about, there is always that special outfit that suddenly refuses to go over the ever-increasing curves but you just cant bring yourself to get rid of it. actually come to think of it, who ever gets rid of clothes? I certainly don’t I just keep pushing them at the back of the wardrobe until it almost bursts. Then I gingerly remove them from inside the wardrobe and pack them in a suitcase and put it ON TOP of the wardrobe! This lady right here needs to learn how to donate to charity. (note to self: go and distribute that pile you are stashing away!) it’s a habit I guess, unless someone actively makes the call at church or something to donate, I just never think of it! shame on me!

Anyway in case you are wondering my secret, I know this is going to be WTMI but ladies, know that myth that contraception makes you fat? Well its not a myth and that is all I am saying!

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And in other news we are a few weeks away from that time of the year that I love so much, holiday yay! And out of their generosity (and desire for us to expend our leave days so that they won’t have to pay for them) we are going on a month’s vacation! From 11 Dec to 11 Jan! Yep I am so looking forward to it! so Sandton here I come, I am going to shop til I drop (literally somehow I always do drop!)

What up for the holidays my munchkins?

Friday, November 20, 2009

important "contacts"


A few weeks ago I was so excited about getting contact lenses I still am but this little beloved motherland of mine has just made me throw spears down (he he kukanda mapfumo pasi!) I went up and down, high and low looking for just one optician who would be able to dispense contact lenses for me and guess what noone does. NOONE! I must have been to 6 practices in one afternoon and all of them give me the same line, well we are not doing them at the moment. Come on! How hard can it be? Does noone in Zimbabwe wear contacts? Is there no market whatsoever for this sort of thing? Ah I still cant believe it.

Lucky for me though the last practice I went I was referred to what they called “the best in the field” and guess what it turned out it was my old school mate! So I called him up and he casually said I can come in next week and see him and he can hook me up! Ah to have “contacts” in high places!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Of fried chicken and man-braids



So I had this huge, uncontrollable craving for fried chicken today! I swear it was uncontrollable I couldn’t stop myself, so I looked around to see if anyone I know was in the area and I dashed into the fried chicken place. Once or twice I almost chickened out (he he excuse the pun) and almost left before I made the order but that smell of greasy fries and coated chicken kept wooing me. It won of course and I purchased my box and left in a hurry.

So as I am walking back to the office (read sprinting) with my loot, I stop at the traffic lights and I recognize a familiar scent. I swing around to see which lady standing next to me has such exquisite taste in perfume (like me) I get a shocker. Next to me is a dude, no man, gently shaking his braids out of his eyes. I do mean braids not dreads, the proper plaited on ones, neatly done in a short bob style, and he is wearing Elizabeth Arden! I could have excused the perfume (maybe he sprayed his wife’s perfume by mistake, it happens you know, I once walked around all day smiling to myself coz I smelt like my hubby! Ok I digress) and maybe the graceful gait was simply his way of walking ( I deliberately walked behind him to see how he walked) but the man-braids??? Come on! To top it all off he had what suspiciously looked like a wedding band on the appropriate finger on the appropriate hand!

Now before anyone starts judging me for being homophobic, I just think my friend at the traffic light just looked plain funny and too old to be sitting down for hours getting his hair braided. And he made me forget for a while all the shame of the bright red box I clutched in my hand!

p.s the fried chicken and greasy fries were divine, thanks for asking!

Friday, November 13, 2009

Last week i was on a roll, blogging like its going out of fashion and this week i just couldnt get myself to write anything. mostly coz i got bit by a suspicious bug, the details of which i am not at liberty to dsclose ( he he its open for all those imaginative minds in blogville to explore and guess!) anyway because its a Friday afternoon and i self-conditioned myself to think that noone as a rule should work on a Friday afternoon, so i found myself floating on blogville. and just as well i came i have been tagged! yay! my first time (thanks Vim) so here goes:

Here are the rules:

1. You can only use one word!
2. Pass this along to 6 of your favorite bloggers.
3. Alert them that you have given them this award!
4. Have Fun!

The Survey

1. Where is your cell phone? Desk
2. Your hair? Braided
3. Your mother? Nurturing
4. Your father? Loud
5. Your favorite food? Chinese
6. Your dream last night? Superhero
7. Your favorite drink? Cosmo
8. Your dream/goal? wealthy
9. What room are you in? Office
10. Your hobby? TV
11. Your fear? Rats
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Top
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. Something that you aren’t? quiet
15. Muffins? Marble
16. Wish list item? Baby
17. Where did you grow up? Masvingo
18. Last thing you did? Work
19. What are you wearing? Tunic
20. Your TV? Soulmate
21. Your pets? None
22. Friends? Loyal
23. Your life? Renovations
24. Your mood? Bored
25. Missing someone? Much
26. Vehicle? Spacio
27. Something you’re not wearing? Earrings
28. Your favorite store? Game (lol)
29. Your favorite color? Brown
30. When was the last time you laughed? days
31. Last time you cried? August
32. Your best friend? Amazing
33. One place that I go to over and over? Office
34. One person who e-mails me regularly? Several
35. Favorite place to eat? St Zita

My list of bloggers is very modest so i shall only nominate the following:
Talitha Koum

Thursday, November 5, 2009

excited!

Am excited today, and its not even that big of a deal. But anyway for the last 16 years I have been wearing glasses because I have rather poor eyesight. Lots of people have told me I look prettier without them, and I am inclined to believe them. Anyway I have finally plucked up enough courage to go for contact lenses. So in about a month from now I will be having them! Yay! The funny thing is the one thing that I am most excited about is that for the first time in my life I am FINALLY going to be able to wear sunglasses! Ah the simple pleasures of life! And when the new exercise regime starts to pay off I am gonna be looking smoking hot! 2010, say hello to brand spanking new yummy mummy!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

guilty as charged

I was in Kenya a few months ago and I met a guy. Now before you go off jumping to conclusions not in that way. He was a chef at the hotel I was staying in Mombasa. He was a cheerful fellow, always smiling. He asked for my African name, I told him and he loved it, he asked if I had kids and I said I had a little boy and he smiled coz he has a little boy too. Everyday at mealtimes he would look for me and everyday I learnt something about kiSwahili culture through their food and his cheerfulness. Soon the whole kitchen staff knew me and they smiled at me and told me if my friend was off-duty. One said she loved my dreadlocks and another said she loved the gap between my front teeth. She said in Kenya it epitomized beauty. I had forgotten all about that, here at home I believe I have heard it being said at one point. On the last day before my departure, my friend gave me his email address, I was touched. I didn’t have my card with me at the time so I didn’t leave him anything. I am sad now coz I cant even remember his name, and I lost the little piece of paper with his email address. I lost that precious link to Kenya. I feel ashamed as well, because I think my subconscious deliberately let me forget him. My elitist mind, embarrassed to befriend kitchen staff, refused to be friends with this genuine warm person. Never mind the fact that it was a 5-star establishment, a tourist resort and he might have been a world acclaimed chef. He could have been I never let my myself find out. Shame on me, I really ought to kick this bourgeois mentality. I am writing this as I am sitting in the coffee spot of a hotel and I have taken time to observe the staff serving me. They are genuine people, brilliant even and I swear from now on I shall look beyond someone’s uniform!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

submitted but not a servant!

I have suddenly been bitten by this bloggerville bug and it won’t let me rest til I scratch it to the full. One of the things that I never wrote about in my posts is the institute of marriage and today I had a revelation which wouldn’t let go of me. Today I saw my husband in a different light, funny thing is he wasn’t even with me when I had it. I realized that I am his, his companion, his friend, his lover and I realized that his life depends on me in a way that I never realized before. I saw my husband as this constant, the voice that is always there even when we are thousands of miles apart, the voice that always gives me that valuable advice that I always run to him for. I saw my role as a helper just the way God intended it to be, and I saw my vocation to love, and be submissive to him.

Now the whole issue of submission has always been controversial, and I for one am a testimony in flesh. It is a biblical principle and the emancipated modern woman thinks it is an archaic form of oppressing women, but that’s only because they never understood it. I am learning new stuff everyday as I grow and one of the most valuable lessons I have learnt in this ministry of marriage is that being submissive is not the same as being made a servant. I will be honest, I am modern in every sense, I am a professional woman who strongly believes in girl power, I always said to myself it would have been very easy for me to become totally feministic. I am headstrong and for 20+ years of my life I was used to doing things my own way, even my mother had problems with me sometimes. A guy once dumped me because he couldn’t handle the fact that “I always wanted to be in the driver’s seat!” (his words not mine). So you can imagine how much trouble I got into when I finally decided to venture into the institute of marriage.

What I have learnt however is that, we are equal yes, but God intends for him to be Head of the house. But in the same vein the head cannot function without the heart, and I am the Heart of the home. Mind you if the heart stopped pumping blood to the head then all systems shut, so even though he is up there, I am the one who really holds it together. I pump the blood that keeps my home safe, my in-laws happy, our finances secure, my children healthy and our love alive. So I let him be in control, after all the head determines what the hand should do, but the hand still needs the blood from the heart to do it. This is the way I see it and this is the way I keep my home together. Even if we are to move away from the bible, lets face it our men have egos THIS BIG! And we all know what happens when those egos are messed up with. Its how they are made, and for the sake of everyone concerned, why tip a perfectly balanced scale.

So no matter how educated, enlightened, emancipated or how much you earn, if you wanna keep the devil away from your home, give that brother the respect he craves. You certainly won’t lose anything. And one of the things my mother taught is at the end of the day, just make sure he thinks that all the good ideas you come up with are his, and everyone is happy!

Far above rubies!

Something interesting happened the other day. One of the interns in my office came up to me and told me something that really caught my attention. She says one of her friends in Law School is always saying she admires me. I mean ME, Enchante! She apparently has all the low down on me, where I work etc. she has seen me at church with my husband and child, she has looked at the way I dress and carry myself. To her I am the epitome of a woman, and she even says she hopes that one day she will turn out like me! And by the way I absolutely have no idea who this young woman is, I have never met her but she knows me. Now let me tell you that really caught me off guard and that really got me thinking. I mean here I am going about my life complaining yet I have all these blessings that God has so generously poured in my hands. I have them in my hands but I am busy trying to shake my hands out so I can reach for stuff that is not even in my quota. It reminds me of what my pastor always says that sometimes you are the only bible that someone ever gets to read and the way you lead your life has that sort of impact on them.

Now believe me, all my insecurities about my weight, my frustrations with my job etc pale in light of the person that I really I am. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I have beauty far above rubies. I love and I am surrounded by love. And its time I remembered the basics and appreciated the life that I have. I am a strong African woman, and I was blessed with a heart that’s big and nurturing. I delight in my child’s laughter and my husband looks at me like I am Eve’s twin, precious and pure. I am blessed to be surrounded by strong beautiful women, my cousins and my friends. And its time I appreciated it more, and celebrated their lives more. I am a princess, a queen, a diva, an angel and I dare anyone to tell me any different!

Untitled

I have just been having a conversation with a friend of mine, actually my best friend. She is really going places, she is successful, determined and raring to go. And in all frankness I am really so proud of her, she is an amazing, hardworking person she deserves it. On the other hand I will be frank again and say I couldn’t completely curb the slimy green monster that was threatening to come out. I mean lets face it, we both went to the same Law School and now almost 5 years later she has a Masters degree, and has set up an office and is on the go. And what do I have? Am stuck at a dead end job which is not giving me any valuable advancement of my career and I absolutely hate it. i am keeping the job now because it pays the bills and I do so need the bills to be paid at this particular juncture.

Instead of being ambitious and venturing into the big world all I can think of right now is having a second child. I have no interest in being a lawyer if anything I am more interested in writing than in lawyering. My only problem is I keep telling myself I am not good enough to write something worth reading and I have used this as an excuse. I suppose its time that I embraced the fact that we are all different, what drives us is different and definitely our destinies are different. In fact if anyone would ask me where I see myself in 5-10 years I would say that my law degree would most likely be buried in the back of beyond, I would be shuttling to all my kids’ school functions and I would be a writer, working from an office at the back of the 4 bed roomed house which I shall buy. This is it for me you know, that is what I want to do and I am done feeling bad and guilty about it. I think one of the things that has actually pulled me back is the fact that it’s not the right thing to do, I should be passionate about my career blah blah blah. Well that is I had a career to talk about. So here is my game plan and I will stick to it. I will most likely keep this job for another year or two but after that, I am done baby. In the mean time I better get those creative juices flowing! Maybe I will become a famous writer, maybe I wont, but I certainly plan to enjoy doing it!

Oh and by the way I am totally looking forward to having my hubby taking care of most of the bills while I figure out what to do, I am gonna be a kept woman, sue me!

Monday, November 2, 2009

memoirs from a time past

Part 2

Its amazing how much you bury deep in your subconscious for one reason or another. This morning I just happened to be dusting some inner recesses of my archived thoughts and I found myself humming some song that was sang in my childhood at sports games. It brought back a plethora of memories which I just had to record. You see I grew up as “mwana waHeadmaster” (The Headmaster’s daughter) and that came along with a lot of priviledges mostly, any negatives my still-developing child mind did not immediately decipher I can explore those another day. Anyone who grew up and learnt at a rural school will know that the “teachers’ children” are always treated differently at least that’s what happened where I grew up. For starters, most of the other kids would clamor to be your friend thus they will bring you wild fruits which they picked on their way to school, they brought you delicacies during harvest time. And they would generally be nice to you because they thought that (1) that would make them get liked by the parents a.k.a teachers (2) that you would share with them the luxury items your parents could afford that they could only dream of. Well of course that never worked I will tell you why.

Looking back now I realize that in our own innocent way we were major snobs. You would find that no matter how much the other kids tried to impress you, invariably your friends would be other teachers’ kids, if not then you would choose your friends among the “smart kids”. I shall define those, they were the kids whose parents (mostly just the father) was working in the city so they had nice (clean) uniforms and proper school shoes and socks. That also meant they had been to the city at some point so you had stuff in common like television programs. Besides it was just better to play with the clean kids! Secondly the reason why most of my friends were the teachers’ kids was because when school ended at 4 I still had a lot of energy to play and the only people available to play with were the teachers’ kids who stayed at the same compound with me, same goes for weekends as everyone else went home. It all sounds very cruel and nasty but I am just telling it like I remember, I guess class divisions one way or the other come out no matter where you are.

The other advantage that being a teacher’s kid had was this; during the “general work” period when everyone would engage in manual labour, the teachers would always give the lighter, easier and less dirty jobs to the teachers’ kids, even those that did not have kids themselves. It was like an unwritten code, though I must admit that once or twice I would run into a teacher who had a bone to chew with my mother or father and they would give me hard labour. But those were rare occasions, after all I was the headmaster’s daughter and everyone wanted to suck up to the headmaster one way or the other.

I grew up in a rural setting but I must say I had a very sheltered childhood, not very much different from my urban peers in more than one way. Of course I had the typical rural bit like the following: my mother would always make sure that my brothers and I helped in the strips of fields that she had such that during the appropriate seasons most Saturdays you would be woken up very early to go and cultivate the field. Of course because I was the only girl sometimes (only sometimes) I would get spared and have some extra hour or two of sleep. Also, we did not have electricity so by the time I was 8 I knew how to light a good fire and cook over it, something which my urban peers never mastered even up to now. That also meant that on occasion I would go with the other girls in the compound to look for firewood (my mother was always uneasy about me going but I did go enough times). That was an adventure in itself it meant that you could climb the mountain and fetch various wild fruits while you are at it. Another thing was we always had to go and fetch water at the borehole. Now this is one chore that I would rather have been spared. You had to go at least twice a day or more if mama wanted to do her laundry. You had to carefully balance a bucket of water on your head and be careful not to let it splash all over your clothes. I don’t believe I ever learnt how to do the proper balancing without holding on to your bucket. It was only fun when you were going there to do the laundry because that meant two hours or more of gossip and listening to stories from the other girls.

As I said before a lot of the things that happened made me feel no different from my urban peers. My parents always made sure they bought us plenty of toys (well they seemed plenty then) in fact more than most of our friends. We would watch cartoons after school or during the weekends so as a result I can happily join in when my urban brewed friends get into reminiscent convos about TV back in the day. I would go into town a lot with my parents, my dad had a nice Renault 12 and the nearest town was only 37km away. We always had new clothes especially around Christmas. Speaking of Christmas every year my parents would buy us the ever popular “lucky dip” which my mom always hid until Christmas morning together with our new clothes even though we had seen them being offloaded from the car! The funniest bit was when she would ask us to try on some new clothes just in case they needed to be returned for size. Then she would say “I am not saying they are yours, just for some other girl your size!” duh I was the only girl in my family! Then she would proceed to hide the clothes only to produce them on Christmas morning! And we always had a huge feast on Christmas and New Year’s Day complete with cakes and lots of meat and those Choice Assorted biscuits!

Ah life was good then!

memoirs from a time past

Part 1
The house we lived in last is the one that I remember vividly, but we will come to the house later. Just next to it stood a big chicken run built into a small house complete with an asbestos roof. A fence surrounded it and it had a nice cement “yard” because you see, years back there used to stand a little two-roomed “flat”(In Zimbabwe it is common for any small dwelling house with an asbestos roof to be called a “flat”) which was used as teacher’s accommodation but it had been demolished. I remember I used to hate sweeping out the chicken droppings but the again I had big brothers who did all the literally “dirty” work for me. Behind the chicken run was a garage where my dad used to park, firstly his lovely sky blue Renault 12, then later the truck that I never quite warmed up to. Right next to the garage was a cage with four compartments which was hoisted up on long poles and I could swear by the time we moved away I still could not be at eye level with the lowest compartment. We used to keep rabbits in there.

In front of the house was a little patch where my mother grew roundnuts. Oh how we used to harvest in that patch, it was tiny but it must have had good soil because it sure produced a lot of roundnuts. As we progressed further there were two other patches which other teachers used to grow their crop. What divided the patches was a path that always used to fascinate me. It was man-made but it comprised of two neat strips divided by grass. In the green months the grass between the two strips would grow so tall that my modest grade 4 height could be hidden completely. Therein my friends and I would set-up booby traps by tying together two strong grass stalks and then wait to see people trip over and fall.

Where the patches ended the school yard began. There was a big Msasa tree which had old logs neatly arranged underneath it to form benches. This place we used to call “kumatanda”(loosely translated- at the logs) and a lot of outdoor school activities would take place under the shade of that tree. The wood of the logs over time had grown very smooth and lovely from all the little bottoms that had fidgeted on them. Right next to the tree was a picturesque Roman Catholic Church. Wow that church was beautiful, it was built of large blocks of stones and it must have been hundreds of years old. My favorite part was the side of the church where the bell was, maybe because we were never allowed to play there. In front of the church was a big yard full of sand where people used to congregate after church and discuss the mass or simply just gossip. Come to think of it I am glad I was too young to have been wearing heels because I can’t imagine how the pretty young ladies with their stretched hair and glass shoes (In the early 90s patent leather shoes were all the rage and they were called “glass shoes” because of their shiny glassy look) used to walk in all that sand.

Immediately after the church was the Grade 1 Block where yours truly spent her first year of formal learning. It comprised of two classrooms side by side and well lets just say all that I remember of it was that it was a classroom block. Behind it was an area where many hours were spent playing. Underneath a Syringa tree (What do you know my research actually shows that that is the correct name for it!) was a concrete block at least one metre high, one metre wide and 8 or 9 metres long. Now believe I have no idea up to this day what those missionaries were thinking when they built that thing because it did not look like anything meant for kids to play at. My mother would always scream is she heard that I had been playing there. The last straw was when one of the teachers’ kids fell and broke his arm; I was forever banished from that “thing”. We used to call it “kuchiblock”, well it did look like just a block.

There is not much to say about the rest of the classrooms but I will give a special mention the grotto and my father’s office. The grotto (I will confess before I started writing this article I didn’t think this was a real word until I looked it up) had the statue of the Virgin Mary in front of it. It was man-made and comprised of long thickly knit trees whose density was never penetrated by the sun. We were utterly and totally forbidden to play in there, but we did not need much persuasion, the place just looked spooky on its own. Now the only problem is it housed the prickly yet surprisingly much sought after delicacy in the form of madhorofiya (Prickly-pear cactus fruit). Now I will not even be ashamed to admit that in all my childhood years I never had the guts to pick that prickly fruit and rub off the thorns myself. The few times that I tasted it (it was not even particularly nice, full of seed inside) was because someone else had rubbed off the prickly bit for me.

My father’s office was the prime building at the school. It was nestled between (and attached to) two classroom blocks. Its roof was higher than all the other buildings at the school thus meaning that you could see it from a distance. Have I not told you? My father was the headmaster! I recall on one wall of the office was a line-up of the legendary great African statesmen. I remember seeing Kenneth Kaunda, Eduardo Dos Antos, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela ( when he spotted his pre-detention side parting that never ceased to amuse me) I recall I always used to go stand by that wall and look at the stately poses and wonder if my father would one day end up on that wall. Wishful thinking perhaps but a young girl always sees her father as the ultimate hero.

I did say I would come back to the house, but not today. That’s about it about the place where I spend most of my childhood years. But that’s only about the school and its buildings, what went on in there and the friendships I made, is a story for another day. For today I shall rest my carpal afflicted hands.