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Mender of broken soles
Stanley Ruzvidzo Mupfudza
July 2008

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The time he came to us our land had been without rain for many, many years. Indeed, there were many among us who had known nothing but years of drought from the time we had been born. There were others, of course, who vaguely remembered days of abundant rain, when birds still sang in the trees. But such reminiscences were nothing more than nostalgic ramblings of old men and women for many of us. We were not, as you might have thought, heartened when he appeared saying he possessed the gift to make rain fall. The truth of the matter is that when he announced his arrival with the hauntingly sweet melodies of his mbira playing we became agitated. We had grown accustomed to the long dry spells, the rotting bones in the planes and the deathly silence that filled the air. Besides, everyone knew that the Mambo of the land had banned all forms of music and merry making. But that music, conjured up by his fingers from the metal keys . . .

"I am a rainmaker in the land where I come from," he said.

There was a whole generation among our people that had never heard of music in their entire lives, or witnessed the miracle of a rain making ceremony. All they knew was that we got water out of the benevolence of the Mambo. Why, everyone knew that whatever thoughts we had, and dreams too, were from the good heart of our revered leader.

We looked at him askance.

"Are you the king of the land from whence you come, then?" we enquired of him.

"No," he said, "for there is another who holds that title. I am but a simple man who happens to possess the gift of music and the power to ask the Creator to open up the heavens and send forth rain that heals the land."

We thought he was mad.

"How is that possible not to be the king and possess such powers?" someone asked.

"It is the Creator-s wish, for gifts are distributed accordingly and justly to one and all," he replied.

We heard never heard such blasphemous words before. Nor had we seen such a man as he. He was tall, lanky man with white dreadlocks that cascaded to his shoulders. His age was difficult to determine for there were instances when he looked just as young as the youngest ones among us or as old as the oldest. He wore strange black clothes. He frightened us. We were also wary of him because our Mambo was known to send spies among us to ensnare those who harboured treacherous thoughts. There was nothing worse, the Mambo said, than a treasonous heart and of all sins, he abhorred this the most. In fact we did not even know what exactly a treasonous heart was but that was besides the point, so we were always being warned about the dangers of having one. Some of the elders had hinted of days when seeds of discontent had flourished across the land, but the Mambo had reaped them out but that had been so long ago that many of us had no idea what sort of seeds these were and what sort of plants they flowered into.

All we knew was that we had the most benevolent Mambo who had ever lived. He loved us so much that babies were taught how to be silent, for wailing could be deemed as a form of music. They were told the gruesome murders that had been perpetrated by our Leader in the past, for our own good. Such cruelty had been forced upon the Mambo. His palace was adorned by the heads of all those who had dared to sing their own songs in the past, and to dream their own dreams, as a reminder to those of us who might dare to do the same in the present. When one night our beloved Mambo had sent all his best sorcerers to collect dreams from our souls while we slept, we had been eternally grateful for the act of being relieved from such a burden as cherishing dreams of our own.

Now here was this strange man with the flowing tussled hair that the old men in our midst said reminded them of lion kings of yore that had once roamed the land before the Mambo became the one and only lion and king we knew. This stranger was actually playing music and talking of the gift with the power to summon rain. It was obvious that he was new to our land and he had not heard of how our one and only much loved Mambo had magical horns that had the power to gore out an individual-s soul. Ours was probably the only land across the entire breadth of the earth where the birds had learnt to sing in sign language for fear that their sweet songs might incur the wrath of our almighty ruler.

The elders wistfully spoke, once in a while of the erstwhile drum and rattle- ngoma nehosho- the heart of what they called our music. That had all been banned, of course. Mambo had ordered his mauto to come into our houses and bore holes into the taut hides of the ngoma, and throw away all our hosho into the bonfires which lit the night skies so that the glory of his vanity was visible for all to see far and wide. Boorangoma, we called him- the one who destroyed the drum- but once that name became common knowledge it too became taboo.

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