Kumusha Tales

Photos by John Watkins

On Jan. 8, 1998 -- my birthday, as it happens -- I greeted 24 tired and slightly scared undergraduates from the United States as they stood in line awaiting immigration and customs clearance at the Harare airport. I had taken a semester off from my job as math professor at Colorado College to direct the Associated Colleges of the Midwest program in Zimbabwe. I had no more idea what our joint experience in Zimbabwe would bring than they did so I, too, was nervous with anticipation.

Near the end of our stay in April, some were eager to be going home, others wished they could stay forever. All became old-hands in Zimbabwe, speaking a good bit of Shona and even a little Ndebele. They traveled most of the country, enjoyed its people, and marveled at its wildlife. They studied the politics, economics, and culture. They came to care deeply about Zimbabwe, about its past, and especially about its future.

One of their many writing assignments was to describe their rural stay, a week when we got away from the city and lived with families out in the country. Since our essays would be a modest attempt to capture the flavor of rural life, we decided to call them Kumusha Tales. Kumusha is a Shona word that means "at home," or the place from which one comes.

Their response to this assignment was so extraordinary that it seemed a shame that I would be the only person ever to read these fine essays. What follows are two essays by CC student participants.
--JOHN WATKINS

Satellite TV and a Chamber Pot

By REBECCA BLOND

I walk down a dirt road cluttered with broken stones and discarded fruit peels, and lined on each side by small, slightly shabby, yet colorful houses. The street is filled with children kicking cans and playing football with a plastic bag full of paper on the concrete slabs they call front yards. From somewhere deep inside a house Hip-Hop music blares. The sound mingles with the children’s lyrical voices and gets mixed up with the smells of roasting mealies and omnibus exhaust in the hot summer afternoon. The sun shines down brightly on my back and, through the lens of my video camera, the street is a brilliant motif of brown dirt and colored houses and quickly moving children.

I cap the lens on the camera and stop at a fruit stall on the side of the road. "Salibonani," I say to the woman sitting behind a pile of oranges and mangos. "Yebo," she replies in surprise. "Linjani." "Sikhona singabuza lina, you speak Ndebele?" "Well, just the greetings. I’m learning," I say. "Where are you living?" she asks. "Just down the road there," I reply and point at a house on the corner of the street, then smile as another look of surprise crosses her face.

Surprise had crossed my face too when the Nyathi’s car had pulled into their driveway with me inside the first night I arrived in Luveve. I had specifically asked to be placed in a "low-density" neighborhood. I wanted the comforts I had grown used to in Harare to follow me to Bulawayo, the large houses, big yards, TV sets and the other Western amenities that had implanted themselves in the households of well-to-do Africans. Yet when I arrived at the Nyathi’s home that evening I learned I had been placed in the "high-density" suburbs. At first I was angry. Was this someone’s idea of a joke? Did the ACM feel I needed to broaden my experiences here? Was I too narrow-minded? Did they feel I needed to immerse myself in more parts of the society to get a better understanding of the culture as a whole?

In reality I did need to learn all these things, except I didn’t know it at the time. But the mysterious twist of fate that brought me to the high-density area for two weeks gave me new insights into the way of life in Zimbabwe. Most important, it gave me new insights about myself.

I learned that people will stare as you walk by. The children will shout "Khiwa, Khiwa" and point, then run away.

Their adult counterparts will not use such words but simply stare, and although they say nothing, the questioning look in their eyes will reveal their thoughts -- "What is this white kid doing in my neighborhood?" But these stares are not hostile. Like the woman at the mango stand, they are simply curious. They are genuinely amazed, but then incredibly excited, that a white American would want to take the time to live in their neighborhood, to get to know their way of life, and to compromise their sheltered comfortable lives to come and live in slightly less posh and more cramped confinements.

I am embarrassed to tell these people that I didn’t choose this, that I originally wanted those ‘comfortable posh accommodations,’ although now I would never give up this experience. I am embarrassed to tell them that I once thought I would be miserable living in a high-density area for two weeks, and I am embarrassed to say that I had a preconceived picture in my mind that high-density meant large rats, and reeking streets, and cardboard shacks. Instead I tell them what I have now learned, that I am happy living here. How easy it was to slip into the way of life. How kind and open and easy to talk to I found the people in the neighborhood to be. There are some things I keep to myself, however, like the nightly ritual that goes on at my house.

Each night without fail Mrs. Nyathi brings in a little blue plastic pot and places it by my bed. "Here is your pot," she says. Each night I stare at it in ghastly horror and shove it deep into the closet then stumble blindly through the darkened kitchen and unlock the triple barred door to make my way to the latrine outside at 3 a.m. Each morning the pot is removed unused, but by bedtime it has returned, pushed a little closer to the bed with each successive night. Each night as I push the pot deeper into the closet I ponder the bizarre situation. I live in a house with satellite TV and a chamber pot. This family has become so influenced by Western values that they find it necessary to pay a cable TV bill each month, yet at night they have to relieve themselves into a chamber pot. It makes me sad to think that no part of the world is safe from the media feeding frenzy of the West, not even those too poor to pay for indoor plumbing. Or perhaps it isn’t that, perhaps it's an issue of priorities -- at this point in time they find it more important to pay for TV than toilets.

But whatever their reasons, I am immensely glad I have had the chance to live in this neighborhood. Glad to have been able to walk down the streets and listen to the children shouting "Khiwa" to my receding figure, glad to walk the half mile to the bus-stop each morning with a pack of dogs in tow, listening to the music blaring out of different houses, and even glad to live in a house with satellite TV and a chamber pot.

Stretching

By EMMY McNEIL

It is hot here in Africa in April. If you catch this Zimbabwean autumn at midday, you feel like a stuffed turkey on the top rack of the oven, on broil. No breeze. Only heat waves. So it is only at the end of the day, when the sun is near the horizon, that I voluntarily get myself outside to enjoy an evening stroll. As the sun is going down, the chorus of crickets becomes louder, and my shadow stretches. A tall, skinny cartoon stumbling down the dusty road. It reminds me of one of those wooden giraffe souvenirs, carved so disproportionately lengthy, found along the side of every tourist-driven road here in Zimbabwe.

My shadow is a new one, since coming to Africa, where the horizons are low, the sky is clear, and the sun is bright. The light doesn’t usually hit me at this horizontal angle. Not at home with the mountains and clouds. Home is where you sit comfortably in your own shade, you move securely with your shadow close. Traveling to Zimbabwe, my limbs stretch my limits, my comfort zone, my perspective. My shadow stays far from me, on down the road, in unfamiliar territory. I can assure you, as can the giraffe, the view is much better from up here. A bigger picture.

I came to challenge the stereotypes. To invalidate or support. I came to break down this all-encompassing, vague, impersonal, foreign "Africa" entity, to begin by knowing Zimbabwe as an individual. I now can put a face to that name. I paint my own picture.

Yes, there is a woman carrying a jug of water on her head, with a baby strapped on her back. There are huts in this picture. And also Mercedes. My host mom sells Tupperware. My host sister listens to the Spice Girls on the radio. I sip Coke from the bottle and munch buttered popcorn at the movie theater. In the city center, there are riots protesting inflation and high food prices. There are hungry people. There are white people. There are satellite dishes and cellular phones. I ride my bicycle to and from the university every day and get caught in the "rainy season" downpour in the afternoon. There is a permanent mud stripe up my back. There are safari hats and elephants. And giraffes, and lions, and zebras and monkeys and hippopotamuses. There are beautiful sunsets, exotic brightly colored birds and flowers. There are snakes and frogs and big strange bugs, in your bed even. The jungle is part of this picture, the rainforest, for which you have to pay $5 to enter at Victoria Falls.

Eating sadza, every meal with my hands, is a lesson in the value of simplicity. It’s going to be hard for me to go back to the fork and knife at home.

Listening to my host brother and sister worship the television programs -- "Is that what it’s really like?" they ask me. They’ve never been to the beach. They’ve seen the ocean on "Baywatch." Listening to my sister imagine how she will react when she touches snow for the first time, I am reminded to cherish knowing something firsthand. I am reminded to cherish experience and sensation, no matter how ordinary it may seem.

The Zimbabwe concept of time has taught me patience and flexibility. My struggling experience here with organization, scheduling, and commitment has given me a new respect for accountability.

Moving from host family to host family and traveling in between, I’ve learned that although my family and friends and community in the states will always be truest to my heart, "home" can be anywhere, anybody, for any length of time. Two weeks in Bulawayo, or four months in Harare. It’s always nice to get back there. Moving back "home," living with a family again after being away at college for three years, has reminded me how nice it is to be an independent almost-adult the other eight months of the year.

And it all boils down to one idea. Don’t take any of it for granted. Not the simple pleasures, not the ordinary experiences, not virtues such as patience and accountability, not "home." Not pay phones with receivers, not spatulas or blueberries, not your health, or freedom of the press, or showerheads, or ceilings. Not Scotch tape, Cheeze-Wiz, or toenail clippers.

My shadow is a new one, since coming to Africa, since coming to Zimbabwe. I will have no room in my suitcase for a wooden giraffe souvenir, but my shadow comes with me.

Religion Professor Joe Pickle, one of the founders of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Zimbabwe Program, shared his personal perspective of the Africa abroad study program in "African Studies and the Undergraduate Curriculum," published by Lynne Rienner in 1994. The following is a brief excerpt of a related speech he gave at a Ford Foundation conference at St. Lawrence University.

I confess I got into this by accident, and it's a confession of self-indulgence. I wanted to go back, once I had visited Africa. I found ways to keep going back, and if I can find any more ways, I will. My confession is also of an active arrogance. My liberal arts education at Carleton College led me to believe I could learn to do most anything -- even to apprehend and appreciate Africa. And because I believe in liberal education, I couldn't see why my liberally educated colleague Solomon Nkiwane '64 and I couldn't just set up a program in Zimbabwe. Why not?

Since the essence of liberal education is the cultivation of an "appreciative consciousness," study of Africa in Africa is particularly fitting. Such a walk is liberating, not only freeing us and our students from the shackles of provincialism of politics and culture, but also enabling a double vision, a sense of meaningful difference.

My first trip to Africa was in 1987. I found my way serendipitously to Zimbabwe, and spent time with Solomon Nkiwane and many of his colleagues at the University of Zimbabwe. From that visit emerged an informal link that allowed us to start a tentative faculty exchange. Our hope was to find yet another way to overcome faculty provincialism and continue to internationalize the faculty. We made a little headway. As the college struggled with issues of divestment and as more of us struggled for a way to respond to the moral and political controversies in a meaningful educational way, the dean of the college suggested he'd be open to a proposal for a study program in Africa in the summer of 1989. Our tenuous link became a bond of opportunity.

Our program was intended to be introductory, but substantial. We arranged for the students to study Shona, "Issues of Political and Economic Development" (a course directed by Dr. Nkiwane), and "Cultural Identity in Independent Zimbabwe" (a course coordinated by me). The last three weeks were devoted to independent projects, ranging from cave painting to wildlife management policy to the status of women in Zimbabwe.

We tried to expand the range of experience and perspective of our students to learn specifically about Zimbabwe, and more broadly about Southern Africa and issues evoked by the crisis in South Africa. We sought to enhance study and research skills in cross-cultural context. My model was the Associated Colleges of the Midwest program in Pune, India, in which my son had participated; Solomon Nkiwane's model was his own experience as an international student at Colorado College.

As a first effort, it was successful. The president of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest was equally enthused about Zimbabwe and the possibilities of a consortium-wide African studies program. She persuaded us to treat our effort as a pilot project and to plan a full-semester program for the consortium of 14 liberal arts colleges: Beloit, Carleton, Coe, Colorado, Cornell, Grinnell, Knox, Lake Forest, Lawrence, Macalester, Monmouth, Ripon, St. Olaf, and the College of the University of Chicago. In 1991, our first institute had 16 students. Today, more than two dozen participate.

Over the years, we learned to yield to concatenation of current events, available resources, student dispositions and surprising new student insights and interests. We also learned to adapt the program to the opportunities beyond the university campus, Harare, and Mashonaland into other cultural communities.

A colleague had admonished our first group of students to "let Africa teach you." We found that he was right, and that, if we let go enough, they would.

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