Lake Of My Heart - Chapter One

Lake Of My Heart

By Temba Magorimbo

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

All the characters, events and the story in this novel Lake Of My Heart revolving around Harare and Bindura are all figments of my runaway imagination. The story, events and characters have no direct/indirect relationship to anyone living or dead. Should there by chance be such a relationship, it's regretted as being purely coincidental. However, should I have misrepresented facts, I stand to accept correction.

Dedication

Lake Of My Heart is dedicated to minorities resident in Zimbabwe who trace their backgrounds back to when their forefathers emigrated from mainly Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi to work in the Rhodesian farms and mines as cooks/hands to the Rhodesians (then) who later formed an integral part of Zimbabwe‘s cultural diversity. Though they were looked down upon by their fellow Africans, they rose against the odds to integrate.

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About The Author

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Temba Magorimbo was born on 9 August 1966, Tuesday at Gwelo [then now Gweru] General Hospital. He attended primary education [first term] at Bumburwi Primary, Old Mkoba before transferring to Senga Primary, Senka [then Senga] from 1973 to 1979. He went to Nashville High, Nashville [two weeks] in 1980 before transferring to Ascot Secondary, Ascot until 1983.

He is married and has two daughters.

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BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Boomerang Butterscotch [Meet Me In Alberta] Child Of Promise For All Have Sinned HoneyCrisp If Women Can Weep Lake Of My Heart Let Close On Me Off The Eagle's Claws Pata-Pata [Soft Footsteps] Splash In The Loch Tigers Hunt At Night

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Lake Of My Heart – One

“My results?” he asked on the counter of the New Start Centre in Harare.

He had left the fast paced hustle and bustle of the city in its streets were car horns honked, vendors called their wares with a wary eye for both municipal and national police. The world had a new thing called ‘knowing your status’ so as to prolong your life. It didn’t matter if one had been a saint or a flirt. Any error in blood transfusion could render one sick with the dreaded scourge. Sickness was both in terms of physical and mental. The mental sickness killed one several times before the physical. The worry, the mental anguish, the mental strife and those thoughts doing merry go rounds in the heads were like drinking cyanide, killing oneself slowly but surely.

He had gone into his ensuite toilet and somehow he had passed out blood with his urine. That had frightened the living daylights out of him. He had sought medication. The physician said it was bilharzia. He was not okay in his head. He had decided to settle old scores if there were any right now. Taking a decision to be tested was a hard nut. It was not for the faint hearted.

That fishing trip! He had driven to Madziwa with his childhood friends. Among them was one called Dumisani. Dumisani was working for Mazowe Citrus Estates as an agronomist. They had left Bindura and its mountains of mine dumps that made a mark on its horizon behind. They had headed west to north west midway between Bindura and Mount Darwin. His vehicle had been under service. He had been dropped in Bindura by a childhood friend of his who was going to see her parents in Shamva.

They had driven in a 7-seat Mitsubishi Grandis Chariot NA4W Elegance towards Madziwa. The vehicle was supposed to be comfortable. The ride was supposed to be smooth tar. However there were elements within the tarred roads which appeared as if they had small speed humps and bumps added to potholes here and there. He was squeezed in the back bench seat. It should have sat three people. Instead there were four of them.

Since they were in Africa, he wasn’t complaining. That was standard. The journey should have taken about an hour if the tar was broad. However because there was a turn off upon which they drove on dust roads, the journey took about two hours. The dust wasn’t that bad. It was bone crunching in section with ruts in the middle of the road.

They also stopped at every large habitation with big shops to buy consumables that consisted of beer packs for the drinkers and minerals for the non-drinkers. They checked out the shops while taking time to empty out excess water. The Blair toilets were not up to their standards. However they had bladders to empty. They had no option.

Their fishing rods and tackle were stacked and secured on the top of the Mitsubishi vehicle. They left Bindura with the express hope of fishing near Madziwa Mine. Midway through Dumisani had talked about his rural home close by. Everyone wanted to see and compare notes with their own.

Dumisani, one of his childhood friends wanted him to see his rural hamlet that he had improved on. After touring the rural homestead which was more of an urban dwelling squatting in and amongst trees and nature, they had marvelled at its beauty. There were three charming round huts. The toilet system was a septic one with flashing units within the main house and outside. There was an orchard which had been under care for about ten years. Now it had been ring fenced to prevent occasional thefts. In it were citrus fruits.

The fact that there was a pig sty and a kraal reminded them they were forty odd kilometres from the nearest town. Out of the periphery of the homestead could be seen rural life, goats, sheep, cattle and rural clutter. His homestead was atop a hill hidden from view by a crop of tall local trees bunched together from whence going a little downhill was where he had located his homestead overlooking a stretch of valley where in better years water would be abundant.

“That is my home,” Dumisani had said to them. “This is where I spend my time when I am not at work at Mazowe Citrus estates.”

“It doesn’t look much rural with brick under asbestos houses painted white,” someone suggested as they left the vehicle.

His wife came to meet them curtseying. She shook hands with each one of them.

“My friends and drinking partners”, Dumisani had started the introductions. “Of the five you probably don’t know two, Trevor is a frequent visitor.”

“You make good relish, pumpkin leaves cooked in peanut butter.” Trevor accused. “Or the other day you knew how to roast fish, cut into two spread with flour added to which was an egg and put in boiling oil. That was very great.”

“Hello Trevor. How are her ladyship and the brood?”

“Which brood, he is still stuck at three, batteries need to be recharged,” Dumisani replied. “I think he needs a concoction to make him a father of five within two years.”

“We decided on four, one more to come in two years”, Trevor had joined in the laughter. That was the first time he had heard that he wanted four children in consultation with his wife. Two children within two years, that only happened in the early stages of his life.

“We are stuck with five and finish,” Dumisani said.

“I am the one calling the shots.”

His wife had shown them into the lounge. Because some of them had been drinking, she varied the meals. The non-drinkers were given sour milk and roast mealies to start them on the lunch course. The others were given cold cokes and the same freshly roasted mealies.

Dumisani’s wife spent half the time in Madziwa and the other half in Bindura mixing and matching rural and urban life. Trevor thought than none of Dumisani’s five children were really rural. They were more used to the city than rural life. Dumisani’s wife had four girls in quick succession and lastly a boy. Almost every three years like clockwork the children had come, three in the first half of the year the rest the other half. Why was African culture so much on having at least a boy?

Or was it just that some women wanted children with mixed sexes? They would go all out to achieve that even if it means having six children. Dumisani’s children were fifteen, thirteen, ten, seven and three years of age. Two of the eldest were at Howard Mission as boarders. Hey, Trevor didn’t like that type of family planning of having five children in the modern age.

Dumisani was about two years older than Trevor. They looked physically the same, tall and strong looking with Dumisani’s wife being tall and broad too. She had the looks that would have a man suspect she could pick a man up and throw him into a pickup truck. She was just a housewife who ran errands in the city and rural areas vice versa selling, sorting and growing things. They had been running around knowing each other in Bindura living in separate settlements. Dumisani was in Chiwaridzo while Trevor grew up in Chipadze. They knew each other from their school athletics competitions. It was odd. They had known each other physically. They had become on speaking terms when they had started meeting at interview locations mostly in Harare.

They finished basic ordinary levels. They had met at the Apprenticeship Registrar’s office and in interviews. They had separated during their temporary teaching years teaching in different segments of rural areas in and around Bindura including Masembura communal lands. Now it was the cell phone and internet that kept them together as homeboys. Friendship had developed and matured throughout the stages of their lives until after marriage. It didn’t look like Dumisani’s wife could be tilling the land wiping her brow with her cloth. It was more of good supervision and letting the good hands do the work for good pay.

The fowls she sold as frozen chickens were raised in a fowl run with four compartments for different stages. She sold fruit as well in Bindura when they were in season.

“Home is good,” Trevor had replied. “You grew up tilling the land didn’t you?”

“We alternated between living near Madziwa mine and Bindura. I grew up herding cattle, ploughing with a yoke of two or four oxen. I took cattle to the dip. At times I fetched water with the cattle drawn carts. I know rural life. I wanted my children to experience it in a less hostile environment than I did. It ate a lot of my reading time running around being a general dogsbody. My father’s place is about nine kilometres up the road.

“I started on my own. You know how it happens when five children marry and live within the same rural compound, hot words are exchanged. You end up having more time to quarrel than do farming. The other factor is the prodigal son bit. You end up waiting to inherit which is a sickness that can erode a person’s future. You wait out for the elder man to die, what if he outlives me? You put yourselves under stress,” Dumisani had explained.

They relaxed in an artfully furnished lounge with recliner sofas one would have assumed would only be found in the city. A 29-inch Sony television set was showing current affairs issues in a corner of the lounge.

“It’s good,” One of their friends had said. “Complete with electricity and a telephone landline.”

“Complete.”

“No wonder why you did agriculture,” one of their friends had said. “It can be discerned from your homestead that you are practising what you teach.”

“I wanted to do diesel plant fitting or boiler making,” Dumisani had replied. “Trevor will agree with me on the number of apprenticeships we both applied for including with Cluff Resources, Bindura Nickel, Corporation, Anglo American Company to name but a few.”

“I don’t know how I ended up as an estate agent,” Trevor had confessed. “For three years almost I was a temporary teacher moving around reading this and that but my mind was on apprenticeships. After my failure therein I tried the banks including the reserve bank, insurance, to train as a trainee manager.”

“Most of our mates Trevor fell to temptation as relief teachers on indefinite contracts. Some of them married local girls while others just stopped studying. They were mainly rural based. Others had to go through the shock treatment when their contracts became closed contracts without further education. I ended up at agricultural college when the time was nigh. I just didn’t like going for teacher training. I had been offered a place to study sciences and mathematics at Belvedere and Mutare Teacher’s Colleges.”

“Some are now farmers,” Dumisani replied. “Less than a kilometre and a half from here there is a guy who did relief teaching for almost eleven years in and out. Sometimes he lost, sometimes he was engaged. He is a farmer of cotton and soya beans mostly.”

“But you did well”, another offered.

They sat in the tastefully decorated rural lounge. It was a mixture of trades, a mechanic, estate agent, two agronomists and a wife who was both a food & nutrition high school teacher and a general trade dogsbody. She did not sell only what she produced, having a market, she would become a middle person and sell all the same.

After their tour, they had gone fishing at a local river, maybe which is where the bilharzia came from. He and they had stood quarter of a meter in knee deep water in one pond. The water wasn’t dirty though they knew well not to drink from the same place were donkeys, cattle, goats and sheep were partaking. The river had a series of rapids downstream with rocky outcrops upstream from where the water cascaded.

They had found a pool and within it had gone fishing laughing at the size of fish some of them were bagging. The cooler box with their bottles, ice and cans of beer had grown lighter and lighter. Periodically some waded ashore to pass out excess water. Could he telephone his childhood friends and find out if they too had foreign elements in their blood making them pass out blood?

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