Joseph

Zimbabwe 1984 -

I was a young girl who had a relatively easy and privileged upbringing in a middle class suburb in South Africa.

We walked into a water crises - a system shocker.
We bathed in each others water - whites, blacks, Indian.
The team.
We represented various nations of the world -
the Zimbabwian rifles did not
enjoy our presence -

I was introduced to political strife as one regime positioned itself to overthrow another.

It was my introduction to war outside of my own countries borders.
We were hated and
I didn't understand why,
because our message was one of love.

I sat with a "man-servant" (as they were called then), and heard his dry mouthed anxiety for the future -
bread and butter;
His next job;
unwittingly a victim of
a socio-economic alcatraz.

A little blonde-haired girl crawled onto my lap and asked why I had such curly hair -
Amongst my black sisters my hair was "white".
Indians embraced me more because they saw my grandfather's heritage shine through.
How was I to explain that being shifted about from race to race had its own struggles and impaled insecurities of its own kind.

I climbed the Ruins to hear the whispers of the souls who were lost to slavery.
Who built an empirical fort without acknowledgement.

I realised that the locals had stopped listening a long time ago -
They were swept up in the impending turmoil -
standing on the social precipice was a death blow to the economically  unbalanced.
Others routed for blissful change.

I returned and saw the "man-servant's" fret become a sorrow; a reality.

People and places;
faces that became engraved upon my heart.
The beauty of the Ruins etched like a Da Vinci.

The horseriding in Harare
The bustle of Bulawayo
The vampires who could smell black blood a mile away.

I walked the gardens he tended
lived through the stories he told
enjoyed the breakfasts he conjured up,
giggled as he taught me names of flora -
his pride.
The "man-servant";
not mine.
He was was my friend.
The tenderer of green lawns.

My pen writes for him,
for his family,
their bread and butter.
His job.
I hear his resounding fear
of the present

His dead laughter.

Killed in the name of a freedom
now translated into bondage.
He is my cause -

Man-servant to war;
I hear the echo
of his dry mouthed anxiety
and the melody of his dreams
as our laughter reverberated
against the stark reality of impending doom.
He understood,
Me,
I belonged -

Joseph -

(C) Jambiya
"The power of words".

#100thousandpoetsforpeace - Zimbabwe
#tuckmagazine