Memories of My Grandmother - Part I
Saturday, October 20th, 2007By Getrude Matshe Deep in the heart of Wedza Wedza is an African reservation, and from the day I was born in 1967 nothing much has changed there. Prior to Zimbabwean independence in 1980, the Rhodesian Government had forcibly removed Africans from their tribal lands, and had relocated them to reserves, or what are now referred to as tribal trust lands. No white men lived in a reserve, unless of course they were missionaries. The land was mostly poor, consisting of sand and rocks with barely enough rich soil for us to grow food. This meant that many of the men had to go to work in the city to earn enough money to provide for their families. I never got to meet my paternal grandparents, my fathers mother died before I was born, she came from Murewa and the only link we had to her family were her sisters. My parental grandfather was from Malawi and he died before my father was born. I was very lucky to have lived with both maternal my grandparents in my infancy. My maternal grandfather worked at the local Roman Catholic mission. I dont remember a lot about him, except that he was a very moody and grumpy old man. His name was Julius Mushaike, and he was so grumpy and argumentative that all his friends nicknamed him Bopoto, a word derived from Kupopota which means to argue. He loved to argue about everything, even if he was wrong, so my grandparents surname was changed from Mushaike to Bopoto. My grandfathers place of origin is Mozambique. He came to Zimbabwe from the western highlands borders of that country and settled in the mountains of Triashill, at the highest point in Zimbabwe. This is an area where mountains dominate everything: they fill the whole skyline with the most amazing variety of colours and shapes. The Roman Catholic mission where my grandfather worked was on a hill and in almost every direction there were the most amazing views of brown grasslands and rocks, hills of bare granite, long valleys and miles of bush and low trees. And everywhere there were patches of red dust making a network throughout the countryside. When Julius Bopoto got married he moved to Mount Saint Marys Mission in Wedza, where I lived with my grandparents for the first three years of my life. My grandmother was a strong woman both physically and mentally. She gave birth to 11 children, and during her lifetime she buried seven of them. The firstborn was a girl named Beatta, and then there was a daughter named Lucia and three boys named Clever, Stanley and Blazio. Next was another girl, Maria, followed by a boy named Christopher, and there were four more daughters named Clara, Letticia, Aquinata and finally my mother, Evangelista. Five of these 11children died in their infancy, and the two who died later were her sons Stanley and Blazio. Stanley was a foot soldier who fought in the Second World War. During the war he was stationed twice in Malaya, now known as Malaysia. At the end of the war when the soldiers returned to Rhodesia, all the European soldiers who had fought for their country were given hundreds and hundreds of acres of land, but Stanley was given a bicycle by the government as compensation for his service. Stanley was married and had seven children, but his life reached a tragic end when he was poisoned at a party. It is believed poison was put in his glass of beer. His brother Blazio was the victim of assault. He was attacked at a wedding while he was trying to break up a fight, and the man who killed him struck him on the head with a metal pole. Blazio was survived by his wife and two children. His wife later remarried and again death befell the family, for she was murdered by her second husband who struck her with an axe during an argument. When he realised that he had killed his wife he hung himself. Blazios two children were later taken into care by my grandmother. Maria, Christopher, Clara and my mother Eva all married and had children. Maria had three, Christopher seven, Clara nine and Eva had five children. In total my grandmother had 34 grandchildren, four of whom died before her. My grandmother used to say that I learnt to talk before I could walk. Apparently I was such a lazy little thing I even refused to crawl on my knees as regular babies do, but shuffled around on my bottom until I was almost 14 months old and my parents had started to worry a little about whether I had a disability. The one assurance they had that ruled out mental retardation was the fact that I could talk. I talked all the time. I asked questions about everything and everyone. And then, when I did start to walk, my grandmother said I just got up and started walking. In fact, she said, I ran. I ran everywhere and then they just couldnt stop me, and I have been running, running, running ever since. I was a year old when my mother and father were awarded scholarships to go to London to study. The scholarships funds, however, werent enough for my older sister Patricia and I so they went alone and worked hard after college to raise money for our air tickets. It took them one whole year to raise the money. My father studied to become a chartered accountant and my mother became a nurse. They both knew that they had left us in good hands. My grandmother easily stepped in to take on the role of my second mother and I followed her everywhere. My mother had weaned me off breast milk three months before she left, and started me on bottled milk. It was difficult for my grandmother to sustain the buying of baby formula on her limited earnings, and so she gave me cows or goats milk. She did have problems, however, trying to wean me off the bottle. I drank all the milk that was available until the cows and goats dried up, but I refused to give up my bottle and I would cry and throw tantrums when the milk was finished. One morning my grandmother had had enough, so she decided to put piri piri (hot chillies) on the teat of the bottle in an attempt to discourage me. She used to say I would suck so hard, all the time crying with discomfort from the hot chilli sauce she had applied to my bottle. When this didnt work she decided to crush my milk bottle with a rock, and she threw it into the field near the kitchen. I cried long and hard for my bottle and, miraculously, I found it three weeks later while I was playing in the field. My grandmother was horrified to find me running to her holding my broken, dirty old plastic bottle. She said I went into the kitchen and got some water and started to wash the bottle, then I tried to fill it up with water so that I could drink. By the time she realised what I was up to, the kitchen was a mess because I was trying to put water in the damaged bottle, which of course leaked so the water flowed right through and onto the floor. She eventually took pity on me, put some water into a metal bucket and brought it outside, and I spent all that afternoon filling up the bottle with water and trying to drink, to no avail. She said it was almost as though I was convinced I wasnt getting enough food or nourishment without my bottle, so she decided to substitute the milk with unpolished rice in peanut butter sauce. It seemed to work, and to this day I love eating unpolished rice in peanut butter sauce. My mother says she worried about us every day when she was away. Her biggest fear was that during the rainy season we would drown in one of the open wells and streams around the village. My grandmother, however, was the best surrogate mother ever. She was a gentle-natured woman who never used to shout or raise her voice, but at the same time she was extremely firm and was a good disciplinarian. At the end of each day when she got home from the field she would sit me on her lap and tell me stories. Up until the time I left for London she would take us everywhere with her and, because I was the smallest, I got to ride on her back. Even if she was working in the field she would carry a towel, and if I got tired of playing and wanted to sleep she would put me on her back and continue with her work until I fell asleep. Then she would place me ever so gently on the ground at the edge of the field where she could watch over me while she worked. She was a hard-working woman, my grandmother. She would leave home early every morning to go to the field to work. She always had a good harvest and we never went hungry. Excerpt from my book “Born on the Continent - Ubuntu”, buy a copy on my website http://www.bornonthecontinent.com, 100% profit goes to the Africa Alive Foundation for HIV and AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe Getrude Matshe Married and the mother of three children, Getrude is an African storyteller, a poet, an artist, a self published author, an entrepreneur and the founding director of three successful companies in New Zealand. Her extraordinary ability to manifest her dreams into reality can only be described as the way of the wizard Merlin; for she has the Midas touch and everything she touches turns to gold.Her presentations have drawn hundreds at recent engagements. She will share her amazing journey. 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