Worth a read to amuse you on a Friday afternoon . . . go to Ivor Hartmann’s blog.

By the end of my graduation day from Zimbabwe’s National University of Science and Technology (NUST), the 22nd of October 2010, all I could say was this was one of my best days ever! Just to see my siblings, relatives and friends with these huge smiles because I had made them proud made me feel like a little princess. I felt honoured to have His Excellency President Robert Mugabe cap me. I couldn’t even hide my smile when I heard him say, “Congratulations”. However, in the midst of celebrating and having fun my mind went back on a journey 5 months ago.

Monday the 31st of June 2010.

Exams were scheduled to start on that day at 9.00am. As usual students had spent the whole month, week and the weekend preparing for papers they were going to sit for. Not known to them was the fact that they weren’t going to do so. As students approached the examination hall, to their disbelief they were told that ‘only students with zero balance statements’ for their accounts were allowed to enter the examination room. Which meant one had to have cleared all their fees.

Students were baffled. I mean there was total chaos. Per semester fees range from $315 to $815 depending on the programme and whether one is in the convectional or parallel class.

A very few ran to the bursar’s office to collect their statements. I remember that only 10 students wrote their exam for a department in my faculty that had an exam on that particular day. Of the 10, many confessed that they only managed to enter by mere luck because the guard did not closely look at their statements. A few also managed to get in one and half hours late for a three-hour paper.

The majority, who did not make it into the examination room for their exams, stood by the entrance gate hoping for a miracle of some sort to take place. When they realised that nothing was going to happen, as the university’s authorities and security insisted they were not going to enter, they cried. It was so pathetic to see them and others, myself included, who did not have an exam that day cry at university. As final year students we wept, these were our last exams before graduating and we did not want to have our stay prolonged at the university.

All the time spent at university – for some four to seven years (depending on the programme) – seemed to be going down the drain just when you could smell the coffee.

Here’s a bit of background on fee paying at university.  For final year students the situation was bad. In the first semester fees had to be paid in Zimdollars and in the second semester dollarisation had taken place which meant we had to pay fees in foreign currency. That we did. However, when we got to campus to commence our first semester for our final year we were told that semester which we had paid Zimdollars for had been dollarised which meant we had to pay US dollars for it! The case was taken to court and the university authorities requested that students bring receipts showing payments made in Zimdollars together with their registration forms. Some students had lost their receipts and upon going to their respective departments to get their registration forms, some departments resorted to playing hide and seek with the papers.

I didn’t have an examination that day, but still my first exam was on Tuesday the following day at 9.00am. I got my statement from the bursar’s office stating that I owed the university US$485.00 which meant I had 24 hours to get that money and pay. You cry but you reach a time when you realise that tears won’t bring you anything. My parents are late, so I had to get in touch with my sisters and a few immediate relatives. They were all similarly shocked and ran around, but still they weren’t going to be able to get the money to me before 9.00am the following day. Luckily for me I was renting a house with first year students, my younger brother included, and their exams were scheduled to start two weeks later and because they were first years they were not implicated in the Zimdollar saga. Thus I borrowed money from them and also from a friend. I went and paid the balance before the exam with borrowed money, which meant I was in debt.

The following day police were all over campus and this was really intimidating. As I got my ‘zero balance statement’, I made my way to the examination room. A room, which is usually full, was literary empty. It was painful to see that the candidate, who sits behind you or in front or beside you, did not make it. I felt the coldest breeze pass over me not only because the room is exceptionally cold but also from having fellow students absent. We waited for nearly an hour hoping that other candidates would join us but only a few joined in after that hour had passed.

When it was time to start writing the exam, I realised my mind was blank. This was because instead of preparing for the exam the previous day, I had spent my time worrying and in tears. I had also spent my time visiting relatives around town, ‘begging’ for money. I had spent the day recounting the few notes I had and rechecking my statement to see if any miracle had taken place. I had spent the day with my phone in my hand, calling this person and the next.

Thus on my graduation I was over the moon not only because I had managed to endure the sleepless nights of reading and working on a dissertation, but because I had managed to sit for exams. Its sad to know that some students had to defer their studies because of the very short notice we were given to clear the fees balance.

I not only left the university on graduation day with a BSc degree but also with survival skills.

It’s that husky voice that I will always remember first.

That and the love story that I saw playing out between Shingie Chimuriwo and Fungai Tichawangana over the years.

The last time I saw Shingie and Fungai was late last year before I left Zimbabwe for the UK where I am currently studying. Shingie and I hadn’t seen in each other in a long time and we chirped on and on for a while about life and some of the controversial articles I had been writing (and there are always many!). She was, as always, amazingly forthright and self-assured; never one to back down from a hard argument and so fully supportive of free expression.

Fungai, my namesake or ‘sazita’ as we call each other, kept hovering about her asking her if she needed something – more food, a jacket, a seat – anything to make her more comfortable. Their love was like watching the characters of an epic romance movie peeling off the silver screen and taking human form. They loved so easily and naturally; so beautifully that you could see the vivid shades of their emotions light up when they were together. They were and still are soulmates.

Ever since I have known Fungai, there has always been Shingie.  I remember how she would come to many of our poetry workshop sessions held on cold and unfriendly winter evenings back in 2005. I remember how in 2009, Fungai went on a hunger strike after the Norwegian embassy denied him a visa to go and visit Shingie as she studied in the European country. His brave and unshakeable love for his woman saw ordinary citizens as far afield as the Americas taking the time to lobby their own Norwegian embassies to take action. It was awe-filling to see a man so committed to the cause of love.  It was even more special to see the happy pictures of the two in Norway when he eventually got his visa.

Something urged me to add Shingie as a Facebook friend last month. And on February 25, we became FB chums. Somehow, we’d managed to keep fairly up to date without relying on status updates and pokes and other things, but I was compelled to add her onto my list of FB Friends. We never did have a conversation in the 19 days that we were ‘Friends’, but on 16 March at 7:57 pm, I saw an FB notice flicker at the bottom left of my page. I had written a status update congratulating a mutual friend for winning a South African journalistic award. The status update I had written read, “I’ve just got to show off that I have got cool trail blazing friends! I am surrounded by GREATNESS!”

At 7:57 pm, Shingie’s finger hit the ‘Like’ tab and a message flickered at the bottom left of my Facebook page conveying her action to me. I am told that she had her car accident at 10pm; the fatal accident that killed a beautiful woman in her prime.

When I learnt of Shingie’s death, I kept looking at that status update wondering how someone who’d liked something could then be involved in a horrible crash just two hours later and be dead within a few more. I wanted to rewind time to the moment that she’d liked the update, wished I could have found her on chat and said, “Ndeipi.” Maybe if I had, we would have had a short conversation and she might have been running five minutes later and perhaps things might have turned out differently.

But who are we to know what life holds?

I will not question or challenge God’s will. He knows His own ways. But I thank Him that I have the honour of a thought, however ephemeral, from Shingie in her last few hours on earth. I am thankful for this potent message, painful as it is for I was having a horrible week of self-doubt and pain. Shingie has reminded me, through that flicker of her fingers that life is still with me, that my lungs drink in air and that I am still here to make a difference to this doubtful and painful world, that I am surrounded by GREATNESS, as I myself observed in writing that status update.

I am thankful for Shingie and for that lesson that she has left with me.

We will cry in the days to come. But we will celebrate too for Shingie is a woman who leaves behind a rich legacy of selfless deeds.

Thank you Shingie. And thank you Shingie and Fungai for the amazing story that your lives together tell.

I hold you in my heart filled with love and respect for both of you.

you were so small
compared to them, who always stood above
you, on steps, rostrums, platforms,
and yet it is enough for just one instant to stop
being afraid, or let’s say
begin to be a little less afraid,
to become convinced that they are the ones,
that they are the ones who are afraid the most
- Stanislaw Baran’czak

I sometimes think that most of our road users in Zimbabwe bought their driver’s license – it is a free-for-all, survival of the fastest and most daring jungle out there!

Do you recognize anyone?

1. The “Kamikaze Pot-Hole Dodger”
I won’t reduce my speed even though I know the road is pitted with peril – I rather maintain my preferred 80 km/h in the OTHER lane and play chicken with oncoming traffic (the holes always appear more friendly on the other side).  This is particularly entertaining if I can involve a few cyclists (uphill for extra points) and a couple of pedestrians who don’t want to get their feet wet in the grass – preferably walking abreast so as not to interrupt their conversation.

2. The “Secondary Smoker” (two types)
a. I am trying to get as close as I possibly can to your exhaust pipe, nothing gives me a rush like forcing you to indicate 2 km before you want to turn, the panicked arm-out-of-the-window calisthenics cracks me up and I can see the whites of your eyes in your rear-view mirror as you frantically check whether I am going to slow in time as you turn.  What sport!

b. My un-roadworthy vehicle provides a dense cloud of black smog for you all to enjoy.  To prolong your pleasure, I drive 40km/h (let’s be honest, my car doesn’t go any faster – I wonder why they give me a new disc every year, surely a sign of approval) on a single lane road in rush hour traffic.  For extra points I count the number of cyclists blinded by the smoke and halted by lung-wrenching coughs.

3. The “Lesser-spotted Bus Driver” (usually a bus driver but not exclusively)
It is not enough that, when driving at night, you have no overhead lights, no road markings to steer by and monster potholes lurking in the gloom.  For added entertainment, I come crabbing down the road (twisted suspension being a fairly long-standing accessory for the discerning bus driver), with one light on.  I imagine you in your little vehicle wondering “is it a bird? Is it a plane? And which f***ing way is it going??”  But just as you begin to despair, I help you out by switching on my brights, strategically timed – thereby blinding you into the ditch adjacent to the road (which has a 25cm drop-off edge by the way – bonus points for losing a tire!)

I could go on: people who think hazard lights give them right of way, the mobile maniacs (“where did I put that phone?”), trucks overtaking trucks, 4×4 users who have no idea how to drive them … But what I really wanted to say, do yourself and all of us a favour – don’t buy your child a driver’s license.  It isn’t worth it; it’s a death sentence, for your child or someone elses.

Softly
Wipe away the bitterness
From my brow.
Heal my soul, and
Calm the rage of betrayals.
- Chris Magadza in ‘Sun on my Face’