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Rural Women's Day 2008: A tribute
Fungai Machirori
October 14, 2008

Every morning, before the first light breaks through the seamless sky, Emilia Mathende, in her 80s, awakens to prepare for her day ahead. Bent over at an almost perfect right angle due to years of toil and old age - Emilia first says a short prayer then hobbles out of bed to sweep her four-roomed home, still steeped in dozy darkness. She tries to keep as silent as possible to avoid awakening eight-year old Farai, the great-grandchild whom she shares her bed with.

"One day he-ll wake up and find me dead," she often jokes, sarcastically, her wide grin revealing her toothless gums.

Emilia, a widow, and Farai live in the picturesque highlands of rural Chimanimani, located in the eastern provinces of Zimbabwe. Farai-s father, Emilia-s grandson, is away during the week at a nearby growth point where he works on various odd jobs. When he can raise the bus fare - which is not often enough due to the trying economic situation - he makes the trip to spend the weekends with his son and grandmother. Sadly, Farai-s mother abandoned him when he was just a baby. Emilia has looked after the boy since he was just a few moths old.

The disparity in their ages coupled with the ironic fact that both need as much care and attention as the other makes their relationship both fragile and beautiful. Emilia refuses to both give Farai up and move to Harare city where most of her children reside. And somehow, both she and Farai survive, each trying to complement the other-s shortcomings. For instance, Farai acts as a store of important facts and information - like the exact location of the money they have stored in the house - due to Emilia-s failing memory. She, on the other hand, determines how and when these resources are used.

Emilia-s six daughters often visit to provide company and much needed basic commodities to sustain the household. But even though Emilia is so well taken care of, she still makes the determined effort to get up each morning to conduct a ritual of chores which include the sweeping, visiting the borehole to pump buckets of water for her garden of various vegetables and crops, and cooking the early morning meal in her mud-hut kitchen. Due to her growing age, these tasks all take longer than used to before. But she neither gripes nor relents. All these activities are simply a part of her personal fabric.

Emilia is a rural woman, like many others in our country - a strong, selfless woman whose life unfolds each day with little fanfare or acknowledgement. But this year, as a way of celebrating Rural Women-s Day with her, I have chosen to provide a small insight into the microcosm that makes up the life of Emilia Mathende - my much beloved mbuya (grandmother) whose resilience and wisdom has helped raise generations of family, and whose tirelessness represents the essence of womanhood.

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