Scribbles

  Waiting (Pt. 1) For a long time, we only had the veranda. When the sun rose, we would polish it, and when we were younger, my mother would polish it. She always woke up earlier than my sister and me, and by the time the sun was high in the sky, the veranda would gleam. Dazzling with a silvery glare. We would sit on the edge, drinking tea, having lunch, or watch the neighbours go by. Sometimes we would watch the peddlers sell their wares, " Bhodhoro zai! Bhodhoro puti!" But we were not allowed to sit, but merely perch on the edge, for fear it would undo all of my mother's hard work. I perched on it when I waited for the boy from down the way. The boy with the broad shoulders, tapered waist, and white shining teeth. He lived five, six, seven houses down and made me wait. For a glimpse of him as he came back from school, as he came back home from boarding school, from the university. Made me wait to see him, but most of all to grow up from when I was seven to the day I t...

  Auntie grew up in a far-off communal land, the youngest in her family. Her parents were past their fifties when she was born. Old and past the age of chasing after a newborn and changing napkins. The moment she arrived, her mother passed her on to her older sister, Chido, who was twenty at the time and ready to start her own family.  Save for the occasional drop-ins to breastfeed her child, her mother remained a distant stranger whose sustenance flowed full and rich into Auntie’s eagerly suckling mouth. Auntie was a pitiful looking child always hungry. Hungry for her mother’s milk, for her visits were few and far in between, hungry for a mother she never truly knew. A mother who until the day she died remained a stranger a mother she never knew. At the time of her death, she had been dead to Auntie for a while. She had been dead for twenty-two years exactly.   To Mai Chido, the day Auntie was born was as far as she was concerned, an unburdening. It was not that she did ...

  I grew up a lot. I have memories of growing up. Of marking time as the year I grew up. I grew up in the year I went to high school. I grew up in the year I left that high school for another high school. I grew up when my parents got divorced. I grew up when I found out the reason for my parent’s divorce. I grew up again in the year I truly found out the reason for their divorce. In the year, my father died I grew up. In that year, we marked time. We dreamt of Paris. We dreamt of my driver’s license, my marriage and my career. We had big dreams. The spaces around us were small and limited. On the horizon you could see those that had let go of their dreams. Walking listless and jubilant. Shouting greetings and acknowledgments from sunup to sundown. Crowded around something, always something. A ball, a game of draft, a game of something. Life an endless game that they had lost. A game that started from sunup to sundown. And still, we dreamt, we plotted. I see that now. I didn’...

I think I write about fulfillment a lot, and if not the writing of it. The thinking of it. what does it take to get to the place of happiness? For me and for you? Is it in transient things? A lingering look from a lover. The clutch of a baby’s thumb around your finger. The smell of freshly cut grass on a rainy day. Or is it in the things that stay with you? The feeling of contentment that comes with a good relationship? The ability to raise your hand in a meeting and articulate your thoughts. I have constantly said that I struggle with self-expression and this struggle has led me to a place where I struggle with self-actualisation. What I have never asked myself was the why behind this. I have been seeing a woman. A delightful old woman that reminds me of my grade 3 teacher. A woman whose kindness has stayed with me through the years. Her impression of kindness eases the feeling of wretchedness and unworthiness that followed me as I snaked my way to school. I say snaked becau...

I have long battled with the concept of being understood, of fitting in, of knowing who I was. I don't think I ever quite fit in anywhere. Writing this I fear that perhaps you will see me painting myself as a victim and feel sorry for me. Anger towards me or even saddened, but I grapple with emotion because emotions have long been my friend and foe. They stay close and at the same time so distant. They sit in my throat waiting to burst out. but sometimes, they wait so long I swallow them and hurl them out at the most inopportune time. But they come and they go. Alien and unnoticed. Growing up I was different. A kid in a township, living a double life. Shackled to the dreams of my father and my mother's incessant search for something different. Shuttled to and from private school surrounded by pale glowing skin and golden tresses endless in their length and shedding everywhere. Or so it seemed. A childhood of watching brunettes happily munching at thick braids and endless Sa...