Scribbles

I really want to type, and dispel the gloom of yesterday's post . This for some reason a lot of people found creepy. Lord knows why because whilst I was writing I took a minute to read what I had put on paper and actually smiled. Yes I did. So imagine my surprise when someone took the time to email me and tell me how disturbed they had been by my blog. Oh well win some you lose some, I always say. Ok I never say that. So my stomach is grumbling and I am starting to see things. Little gnomes dancing on tables, and wait are there two of him, really? Twins? Somewhere in the hunger induced fog of my brain I know that there is only one of him. I think. Would you believe that I can actually taste my insides? Maybe my stomach is eating away at my intestines. Imagine that? Eating away at yourself, and then when you eat something ,because you don't have a gut to hold it in, all of it settles in your feet. Neat take on what you eating going straight to your fee...

  I have seen the future.  We are faster, faster than pain We are a nerve ending without a brain we have evolved; we have no feeling at all It is a brave new world . Ok maybe not really but I have an idea of what will be going through my mind if I die from a car accident. Understand that these thoughts are based on what I was I thinking every time I almost had an accident. They provide a brief insight into how my scatological mind will become still and focused. Notice that I have changed the meaning of the word to suit my mood, in this illustration it means scattered as those of you who do not know the original meaning may have surmised. So anyway, I have had three almost accidents, the first time was when the car I was in went off road, and I said to myself, “Oh dear” and that was my only reaction. The driver merely woke up and corrected the car. He had fallen asleep at the wheel.               The second time...

My pint sized aunt finally gave birth. I have to tell you there was a time i thought her tummy was going to rip open. It looked so big; she was surprisingly nonplussed whilst the rest of us vicariously became her worried husbands. Since the culprit in question is safely cocooned in the backwoods of Zambia. I wanted her to give birth on my birthday. She missed it. She gave birth a week later. I missed it. Which is no cause for tears, i was glad. The last time i was around when she gave birth was just plain awful. For one, she went into labour in the morning, dreadful for her husband, who was around at the time. I daresay the experiences of that day drove him away. The poor man was slapped bitten and even had a clay mug hurled at him, lucky for his eye it missed.  It’s safe to conclude that his trip to Zambia was contrived.  (There Mr. Mr. i said it you can come back now). He escaped the horrors of her labour by going to work. I was ...

It's a bit too long for me to be putting on blogger, but well I got bored with seeing it on my screen and decided to post anyway. I don't think much of it. But I figured if I practised maybe one day I  could become really, truly good at this fiction stuff.

My family is messed up, so messed up the very thought of it sends me into fits and stutters, they are just plain embarrassing. Or maybe the word for it is uncouth. I don’t mean the immediate , I mean the others. So I thank God every time a holiday comes and goes and I don't see hide nor hair of the fat ones, the skinny ones, the tall ones, the short ones, the dark ones, the light ones all of them. I strongly suspect though, that my please-do-not-come-again vibe has something to do with it because quite frankly everything I do for them is punctuated by please-do-not-come-again. Because Zimbabweans, Africans, we black people are wont to go holiday in other people’s homes We show up unannounced, lugging great big suitcases and in some cases, like this tall dark skinny one did, we even bring dirty laundry. To a house, by a house I mean my house, that doesn't have a maid where city council water shyly drips out of the taps after midnight, and the h...

I spent a great deal of time nibbling on what’s left of my pen trying to come up with the perfect moniker for my blog. The Kombi Chronicles,   no, too confining, I would have to stick to writing about my daily bus rides. This would prove very difficult because sometimes I am lucky enough to get a ride in a car. Why just the other day I was in a taxi, paid $8.00 for it. Quite a lot for a girl who complains about a $1.00 innit? The Life and Times of V, a bit childish, well that’s because I got it from The Life and Times of Juniper Lee that fabled children’s classic. I like it. And that’s why I dropped it. Something that fantastic is bound to get boring after a time.  These two titles popped into my head, in rapid fire succession and then after that which is now...absolutely nothing. Not so much as a squeak from that brain of mine which never seems to run out of thoughts. Oh well I’m sure someone else will come up with something. And when that happens I wi...

N asked me the other day why it is that I never write fiction, “I write best about the things I know,” I said to her. Although this is true, it is not the entire truth, but I left it at that. “You should try writing fiction,” L said to me the other day. Hearing this in a space of two days got me thinking as to why I never tried. “I don’t lie well,” “I just can’t.” “It’s not about lying it’s about your imagination,’ Funny how this never occurred to me but I got to think about it. One thing I am very good at is blabbing about nothing, going on and on and not saying anything. So I started a fresh page on my laptop and began, in jumps and starts and full stops and commas, I started this story about nothing. I do not know if it is very good. I am just going where each word takes me. The ands, wes and therefores take me to a new sentence. I do not think I would work well with a plot. Not that I cannot follow rules but that would mean being stuck sooner.   I have writ...

People in Masvingo are slow and naive. Slow because no one seems to be in a hurry, and it seems that time for them has been set on slow. I looked at this perhaps like a frustrated hummingbird looking on the rest of the world. Even the wind seemed in on it, Blowing somewhat hesitantly against my face. Lifting my hair tentatively and then leaving it, done for the day i suppose. Naive because perhaps they trust too much, in Harare everyone is wary and on constant guard, your own neighbour could steal from you. Their naïveté doesn’t end there, it is made worse by an annoying familiarity sure to grate on the nerves of the most patient soul. “Hold my bag,” who gives a stranger their handbag to hold? I took the handbag and held it at arm’s length. I did this for my own good. If anything went missing nobody would accuse me of any wrong doing, my eyes are shifty and my face mobile, nobody would believe that i hadn’t done it. “Make sure my maputi’s don’t fall, in fact please ...

Disposition of a battered woman, Rightness of a woman uncherished, You have endured, you have survived. Still you wait. For that redeemer who will not die, For that saviour who will not come. “Die!” you urge “Leave us!” you beg To a life anew, A life renewed. Where lays this elixir that gives you life? This elixir that keeps you amongst us? Take me to it; Let me pour your life out, Let me free dreams, beckon freedom. Heal the wounds you have left opened, Patch the pockets that lay ripped in the wake of your reign. That sneer that patch, That doctor’s fix. That anger in your eyes, that resentment, That pharaoh of my people. What colour that makes you charge? That white that makes you gnash, The yellow you envy the black you seek to destroy. Let them destroy you, Let them come for you. Let me see you flee, “Go!” I charge To a place faraway, A place I have not seen, A place they lock us from “Leave!”

I was out of ideas today, and thought of all possibilities to chase for my blog. My relationships. My workout sessions. Mum. I am kidding about the workout, I quit that ages ago. As for my mum, well I suppose it’s enough that I told you about how she exiled me and relationships are not meant for blogs. Especially mine unless I want it to end, which I do not. So really, I was out of ideas before I even looked at the keyboard. Another no blog day, I despaired. A glooming predicament not having anything to blog is, especially for me since I always feel obliged to. Two minutes after this thought and a concurrent chat with N. N who by the way has it in her head that my head can wrap itself around anything non-flippant. N who I love so much because she lets me talk about myself. Anyway it occurred to me that, chronicling my Kombi odyssey as I am prone to do these days. It’s not so much that they are all I have to write about, but the introspection they afford allows...

I have a neighbour whose hatred for P and me is almost sociopathic, neurotic even. His wife however, loves us. A typical conversation with her sounds like this. “When you take your weave out, can I have it?” “No, it’s booked.”  “You need anything washed? I could do it for a dollar.”  “No.” “Do you have a dollar? I desperately need a dollar.”  “No.” “I can go fetch water for you for a buck, whilst you watch my baby for me.” I consider this for a while but the prospect of being saddled with an infant for an hour plus, fills me with dread. “No.” “If you give me a dollar I will give it back tomorrow.” My experience with my cheery neighbor where money is concerned has been that she doesn’t pay back. “Mai Dzika, you can ask me all you want, I really don’t have.” In her I have found a determined ‘pestimism’. Driven by a need to feed an ever growing family, five kids and counting. Three of them hers, but she takes care of the other two in a way no other w...

It seems to me that my country folk have learnt to stand up and raise their voices for all the wrong reasons, again like the incident with the conductor, the officer and the bespectacled woman, this incident happened when my pockets had no money to spare. No extra money to give over, but like everyone around me, I wage a silent rebellion. Broken on the inside, and smiling on the incident. Again like on that other day I paid a dollar and got in with a smile. There was one amongst us, he who chose to rise against the oppression of the sweat covered man and his clutch pressing fellow. Having gone 200 metres in contemplative silence which involved taking my phone out and sliding it up and down so my fellow passengers could see what an impressive little gadget my HTC was (I am telling you the brand dear reader because for so long I had relied on the charity of my father who chose to loan me his utility phones but never to buy them for you-once again I am showing the world that I am comi...

Zimbabweans it seems, are becoming more conniving and dishonest by the day. Gone are the days when the only people you couldn't trust were bus drivers and their conductor s. Never mind that you pushed bucked and squirmed to get into their buses. its been said that we no longer know how to get into a bus in a neat single file and  that we wait till we are crowded around the door to begin shoving and heaving. I now have a 'pressure bag.' a sturdy grey Hoola handbag my best friend got for me some two years ago, it is deep enough to demotivate any pick pocket no matter how determined, and in a country flooded with Chinese products (from Dode and Kabana to Gogo Armani), my bag is very original. many a time have I pushed my way through a wall of stale armpits, thighs crossed in front of me, loose clothing wrapped around my face with my handbag in tow (jammed between a very fleshy woman, mind you, here the word fat is used loosely and sparingly), jammed, as I ...