Amelia’s Inheritance
Filed under: Books & literature, Entertainment, Arts & Culture, News you won't find elsewhere, Other Entertainment, Topical issues
Amelia
Paperback 204pp, Lion Press, 2010
Zimbabweans are picky readers and even pickier book-buyers. Who can blame us, considering that a considerable portion of the literature that has been churned out over the last two decades has been about the Chimurenga or the more recent political conflict? In a country where professionals earn $100 a month, who really wants to spend $10 on a book about how bad Rhodesia was or how repressive the present regime is? We know all that already.
How refreshing then to come across Sarudzayi Mubvakure’s second and latest literary offering, Amelia’s Inheritance! Set mostly in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, this is the story of Amelia Gruber, the daughter of a German immigrant man and a mixed-race woman of unknown parentage, who had been raised as an orphan. As a child, her peers mark her as an outcast, and perhaps this pushes her from the psychological and social fortress the White settlers built around themselves and allows her a glimpse of the rest of the world. Her father loses his wealth and dies a broken man, leaving the family to cope as best as they can as one of Rhodesia’s best kept secrets; the Poor Whites. Amelia’s mother loses her mind, and her younger sister elopes leaving Amelia to hold on to precious little else. Sisi, their maid, stays with her.
Speaking of secrets, boy are there plenty! The people she meets along the way seem to know a lot more about her past than they should, and it seems less and less a coincidence that they have come in to her life. Amelia is also learning about the wider world, she is crossing the racial and social barriers of Rhodesia. She makes friends with a Black activist. Through their relationship, we are reminded of a fact that doesn’t seem to get mention by other writers; that the dispossession of indigenous Black people’s lands by White Settlers did not end with the Pioneer Column but continued well in to the last days of that ignoble racist political system. Like I noted, Mubvakure doesn’t take up too much prose telling us what we know already. In a suspense-filled, pacy narrative, Amelia becomes part of the process to break down those barriers and the secrets of her past become unlocked in a stunning conclusion.
Mubvakure has marked her own territory on the Zimbabwean literary landscape. Amelia’s Inheritance reminds me of Dickens’ Great Expectations, Oliver Twist etc in that she has a hero whose circumstances are set to change as the mystery of their past unfolds. However, despite her many shortcomings, the most glaring being her poverty and the breakdown of her family, Amelia is hardly a passive subject to the whims of fate. And there may be a bit of Catherine Cookson in the style, too. But Mubvakure’s style is original and establishes her as one of the most exciting new authors on the scene.
Available through Lion Press Ltd’s website and their growing list of distributors worldwide, and the major online bookstores.
You got a car? You are the celebrity!
Filed under: Family, Friendship, Community, Joking around, Topical issues
My closest college buddy brings his car to school. Of course, to the average first world middle class citizen, this is a norm, with kids form this group even driving Mercedes Benz and BMWs even to high school. However to the average African who still believes owning a car is a sing of wealth, bringing one to school makes you fit to eat with the gods and makes you nothing less than an arch-angel.
Its funny how people will literally lick my friend’s ass just to be with him; boys and girls alike. Not that I am worried he gets all the attention; being in his shadow gets me a few licks as well. Take this example; there is this girl who goes out of her way to please the the guy, bringing him food (Get a life bitch. If he can afford to bring a car to school, he sure can afford his own food). She goes out of her way finding silly excuses to get stuck with the guy in the car in the middle of the night. So when her antics failed to do the trick, she turned to me thinking since we are buddies, I can convince him how blah-blah she is and he would change his mind about her. Although I haven’t done anything to date, I still get spoilt to one or two. Read more
Your vocabulary can feed the hungry
What if just knowing what a word meant could help feed hungry people around the world? Well, at website called FreeRice it does. Go to the site, and you’ll see a word and four definitions. Choose the right meaning and the site’s advertisers will donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program, a United Nations agency that is the world’s largest humanitarian organization. Keep on guessing (the quiz gets progressively more arduous, not to mention vexatious), and for each correct answer 10 more grains of rice will head to people who need it. Now, admittedly, 10 grains is a piddling amount. But the totals have grown exponentially. Over 56 billion grains of rice have been donated to date through this innovative program.
If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
-Mother Teresa
- Kubatana.net
The Rastafarian Christmas
Filed under: Inspire & motivate, News you won't find elsewhere, Religion, Spirituality for such a time, Topical issues
The following articel was originally published in the 24th December 2006 edition of The Sunday Mirror, Harare. The video depicts an Ethiopian hymn celebrating the Birth of Christ.
በተሳብ ቂዱስ The Blessed Virgin Maryam and Her Son
Lidät – the Rastafarian Christmas
Christmas as the saying goes, means different things to different people.
Even so, being the only Rastafarian in my wide circle of friends and family, my way of marking this occasion remains something of an enigma. I get many cards, and presents, but I never return the gesture. I also decline to attend Christmas parties. Then, in the first week of January, those of my people that are online get e-cards with the Amharic Greeting, Inkwan lalidätu baal badahna adarrasaw (lit. “Congratulations, to the Birth of Him the feast in safety He has brought you”)
And so, it emerges that Rastafarians do celebrate the Birth of Christmas, except that it’s not called Christmas and it’s not celebrated on the 25th of December. It is called Lidät, an Amharic word meaning “Birthday”. Because the Amharic language has its own alphabet, you will sometimes find this spelt as Ledet or Lidet as there is no standard transliteration in Western letters.
Already, it is clear from the name that the origin of this custom is Ethiopia, the spiritual home of Rastafari. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, one of the oldest Christian Churches in the world, has been celebrating the Birth of Christ on the 7th of January long before European Christendom even came up with its own version of Christmas. In the light of the on-going controversy about the exact date, let me hasten to mention that the Orthodox Church does not claim that this was the day Jesus was born. Rather, the Feast was instituted by the Three Kings who arrived in Bethlehem on this day and paid homage to the Infant Christ.
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him,” Gospel of Matthew 2:1-2.
Further testament of the particular importance of Lidät is found in a prophecy of the visit if these Three Kings, dating from the time of the Patriarch Adam, who was given their gifts as a consolation after his expulsion from Eden. Read more
An immigrant’s tale
In life every generation seeks it’s own path, to redefine itself, to break free from their parents generation. With people of Zimbabwean heritage scattered in the four corners of the globe I’ve found reading the tales of émigrés and their children fascinating. In the last year or so I’ve read a couple of accounts primarily from India. These stories have made me wonder how the generation of ‘Zimbabweans’ born and raised away from the mother country will define itself. What will be it’s motivating urge and how will it relate to their parents country of origin. Read more
A woman for a bar of soap
"The women in South Africa are expensive, but across the border in Zimbabwe you can have a great time for a few bars of soap, and goods like salt and sugar..."
This is from a recent IRIN report:
The border between South Africa and Zimbabwe is more than an international boundary; it also determines the method of payment for sex workers, because on one side cash is taken, while on the other, goods are bartered.
The South African frontier town of Musina is a regional trucking hub that has long been a haunt of sex workers, who use the boredom of truck drivers waiting for their cargo to be cleared by customs as a window of opportunity.
“Women tempt us. They come here in their short skirts and tight jeans and ask us if we want to have a good time,” a Zimbabwean truck driver, who declined to be identified, told IRIN. “Naturally, as men, at times it is tough to say, ‘no’. I use protection whenever I have sex with a woman.” Read more
