Andrew’s departure

Sketch by Joan Robertson

While I was away staying with my son Richard and his wife Fiona and their family in Marondera, a country down about an hour’s drive from my home in Harare, I received a phone call. 
It was Sophie.

“Medem!” She said. “Andrew is dead!”

 I know a few Andrews and said in confusion, “Andrew?”

“Yes!” said Sophie. “Andrew – Dingaan’s brother, Andrew!”

“Oh,” I said, “Andrew!”  - and hope she did not hear the relief in my voice when I realised it was not one of the Andrews I knew. How insensitive we can be to other people’s pain.

“The police are there and then they are coming to take Andrew to the morgue. We want to go and make a funeral,” she added.

“Go at once Sophie!” I said, “I’ll see you when I get back next week.”

When I returned home come Tuesday, I found two very sad helpers waiting for me - Sophie (a very large and majestic woman of 59) and her thin dignified little husband of 82. In the cool quiet of the evening when Sophie and I sat down together on the verandah for a chat I asked her to tell me about the funeral.

 “It was horrible,” she said. “Horrible!”

Secret places

Andrew had lived in a room of a house he shared with eight other tenants in a high density suburb of Harare. He was an asthmatic and had confided in Dingaan that should he die, his money could be found in a secret place in his room. The landlord had been given the key of the room “in case”.

When Sophie and Dingaan arrived they were shown into Andrew’s room and Dingaan looked for the money, only to find that it had disappeared.

....family and friends gathered ....by Pauline Battigelli

They were then escorted to a large tree to greet arriving family members and friends, who gathered and sat comfortably there. They were also served lunch by the church ladies. “Andrew was a Roma,” said Sophie.

Andrew’s three brothers went to visit the morgue and were satisfied with the very smart coffin bought by his “medem”. She also arranged a bus to collect the mourners and take them to the burial ground.

Funeral wait

The funeral took a long time. Evidently once the coffin was placed in the ground, cement was packed around its sides.

“They put the cement around – and around – around - and around – around,” Sophie paused as she recalled. “Then we had to wait for it to dry.”

This took time of course. “Then they take corrugated iron, put it on top and then more cement to cover,” said Sophie.

“Why do they do that?” I asked amazed.

"...we had to wait for it to dry"  J.R.

“That was a very smart coffin,” continued Sophie. It had white curtains inside and a pillow - ‘medem’ had paid US$1,000 for it. They say that when a coffin is smart like that people come at night, take up the coffin and cut out the nice material.

When these proceedings were finally over the bus returned the mourners to Andrew’s home and they all began to leave.

“That landlord,” said Sophie, “that man, he told us the next day we had to clear Andrew’s room. He did not want to see anything. Everything out! He wanted to let that room at once.”

“I went to sleep in a bed in Andrew’s room with a sister and the men stayed outside to talk. The landlord, so fat, he wears trousers low low at the back and when he bends down you can see half his backside. I told Dingaan to say something to him but Dingaan said it was not his business.”

Grass bed

When the talking of the men finished outside the landlord stood up, went inside and locked the door of his house. “He left those men outside and they had to sleep there on the grass,” she said. “That landlord was Andrew’s friend. Andrew got him here from Malawi and then that landlord made lots of money and bought a house. Now he’s got money he’s dishonourable.”

Dingaan also got an upset stomach from the Roma food or the bad water and on top of that, a bad cough.

Early next morning the landlord chided and chivvied the family to hurry up and clear the room. The family shared out the belongings and moved heavy furniture onto the grass where a brother who knew someone who had a truck, would take it away.

A hungry, depressed group took their share of Andrew’s belongings in their arms and sat outside. “Now we have all the stuff,” said Sophie, “what do we do now? How can we carry it home?”

One woman had the idea that she could hire a trolley for $1 from the local supermarket, so she went off to do just that. As the others sat there in despair, a commuter bus passed by slowly and then stopped. The driver jumped out and called to the group. “Can I help you?” They explained that they had a very big problem and he said simply, “I will help you.”

Photo Cheryl Robertson

Everyone bundled into the commuter bus and the driver took them to their addresses and dropped each of them off right at their homes, with all their katundu (baggage).

“That driver, he was a very, very good man,” Sophie smiled. “For nothing he did that – not like the landlord.”           

                                                  J.R.

Sophie's Holiday

Sophie is a woman of ample proportion, just like these in
this Verandah  Gallery, Harare, greetings card

After a year’s hard work Sophie decided to take a month-long holiday in 2008 and visit her daughter Fiona and her grand children in Rusape.

Her only means of getting there was to take the bus which makes a run there and back once a week.

No-one knew what the bus fare was except that it was in the billions or even zillions and as withdrawals from banks are only Z$500 per day it would have taken her a couple of lifetimes to withdraw enough money for her bus fare.

The only answer was forex, money bought in from outside Zimbabwe, and then she felt afraid that she might be beaten up at the bus stop and the money stolen.

She managed to extract quite a lot of rand from me and some US dollars from the tenants in the main house, which she fearfully tucked away for her impending “fagash” or holiday.

Fortunately the whole matter was resolved for her. A relative died – another relative travelled from Rusape for the funeral in Harare. He offered Sophie a lift in his truck. Sophie is a woman of ample proportions (although not nearly as ample as they used to be), so the back of the truck might not have been too comfortable for her. She took with her a grandson born out of wedlock aged four and called Blessing.

On her return she told me the story of her holiday.

Truck to Tanda

They passed through Rusape and took the Nyanga road for some miles before turning off left onto a dust road which she said was very bad. The truck lurched and bumped and bounced its way to a little spread out village called Tanda, from which you walked towards the mountains of Nyanga.

The people of Tanda are poor but very
welcoming (pic by Pauline Battigelli)

The people of Tanda are very welcoming and whatever they have they share. The children are given their food first and the mothers eat the leftovers by scraping a finger over the plate or pot and licking off any little bits.

The mothers walk to Nyanga to work in the potato fields. For a morning’s work they receive about two kilogrammes of potatoes which they take home to their families, carrying their potatoes on their heads. If they work a full day they may take more potatoes.

“How far is Tanda from Nyanga?” I asked Sophie. “I don’t know,” she said, “I did not walk there but you go up the hills – and down the hills.”

The people are bent over from carrying loads, especially the elderly. One woman told Sophie that if you tie a tight belt around your middle you do not feel so hungry as your “matumbas” are squeezed.

The people of Tanda pray and sing praises to God and they say that when things are very bad you must stand still and say “Jesus” and he will help you. They say that he is like a very hot frying pan. He makes you sizzle.

The people of Tanda share their food

 Sophie managed to get a lift back to Harare and so she did not have to spend the forex.

“I gave it to my grandmother,” she said.

Having spent a week with her family she is now back in Harare planting mealies in any little spare space of ground she can find having brought the seed back with her from Rusape. She will have her own crop of mealies if it rains, so the remainder of the holiday will be spent tilling the fields round the Cresta Hotel.

She showed me her hands which were swollen. “Look at my hands,” she said. “I had to hang on to the truck with both hands so I did not fall out on that terrible road!”

“And what about Blessing?” I asked.

“Oh Blessing,” she said, “He was asleep!”