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Sad
realities
Dydimus Zengenene
March 24, 2010
The death of Sisi Mapo
was not a shock to us all. The angels of death had been casting
their shadows over her for a long time so much that we were all
convinced that her days were numbered. Whenever people asked her
mother about Mapo-s health she would lower her voice and provide
her usual answer, "Hameno Mwari" which means that only
God knows. The manner in which she would look down and lower her
voice spoke volumes about the condition of her daughter. It was
no longer good. This is the time when people prepare their hearts
for the bad news, the time when death is not a shock anymore.
That is the answer, which
I received from her mother when I last spoke to her about Sisi Mapo-s
health one morning. When I heard the news about her death, the low
and slow "Hameno Mwari" voice of her mother replayed
at the back of my mind and made me feel that life is never meant
to be long. The thought that God had done his will presented no
power over the sense of fear, which grabbed me and sent me silent
for such a long time I could not figure out its length.
Though people were not
very shocked, the air at her funeral gathering was as unusual as
any other funeral atmosphere. People wept their breaths away and
some collapsed. Seated round a fire with their faces glued cluelessly
to the ground, the old village men expressed their sorrow as they
waited for the sun to set and prepare for the burial which would
customarily follow the next day. One would hear those who had recovered
from the weeping discussing her final words. Deep down in my imagination,
I could visualize Mapo wondering who would care for her one and
only daughter. I could see her trying to open her lips to mention
a name but in vain. I could feel the beating of her heart and fury
of her last moments. Who really could commit resources to this young
innocent and surprisingly genius little girl. In a society where
girls are regarded as a second-class people, who will bank on the
future of this little promising lady? Whenever Rudo passed through
the crowd, we would see an intensification of emotions among women
who literally lost their breath again in long inconsolable sobs.
I wished one could convert the feeling into action and offer to
care for her after this day. No one did.
Mapo had been ill for
quite some time. She had headaches, chest pains, a swollen face
and several ills that would eat her away drastically. Seeing her
now would be like seeing a very different person from the Mapo whom
we had grown up teasing for her round stout energetic toughness.
In turn she would punch us all with clenched fists whenever she
got near any one of us. Her only weakness was on speed. The moment
we got out of her grip we would run away calling her Dhunda, a name
that she never accepted. She was a strong promising woman then.
The only time I witnessed her crying was when she got injured from
jumping off the back of a truck, which had given us a lift from
school. She had miscalculated the height and we all witnessed her
flying like a butterfly headlong onto the ground. When we were all
convinced that she was all right we broke the long silence and laughed
our lungs out. That day she never ran after us as usual, instead
she wept helplessly, and successfully made us all feel very bad
for having laughed in the first place. We then gathered around her
as nice friends, apologized and accompanied her home.
These were the happier
days, but now I am talking about the day this lady died. Mapo had
died of AIDS only a month after she had known of her positive status.
Her illness had called for several tests including that of Tuberculosis.
Her older sister had told her before to go for an HIV test but the
mother and father, as well as Mapo herself, were not for this idea.
They blamed the sister for accusing Mapo of having AIDS. Mapo never
wanted to hear of an HIV test despite evidence that suggested that
her husband could have died of it. All other tested diseases where
not found and the doctor then finally recommended an HIV test. The
family had wasted a lot of money in traveling to see the doctor
who was located sixty kilometers from Mapo-s rural home where
she was living. The HIV test would be done at another hospital much
further away. Painfully these journeys would begin by her brother
spanning their two oxen and draw her in to the bus stop some eight
kilometers away. This means he had to approximate their return time
and go back again to wait for them.
The father sold his beast
and sent the ill mother to accompany her daughter for the HIV tests.
From the time the news was broken to her, Mapo could not contain
reality. She is said to have worsened from there on. Even her return
journey from that hospital was not easy for her mother who had to
use the remnants of her energy to carry her on her back. People
wanted to help but somehow could not maybe because now Mapo could
not even say when she wanted to go to the toilet, instead she helped
herself as and when nature called irrespective of where she was.
Since then she never recovered until this day when people gather
to burry her.
Events were
now rewinding in my mind. I remember her one-day complaining of
the pains of an ant bite that she struggled to recover from. Maybe
the first course of ARVs worsened her to death. All these sad memories
culminated in the day I warned her against the boyfriend whom she
later turned into her husband. As young boys, we all detested truck
drivers who came to transport sand from the nearby river. They had
money and were clever urbanites that could easily win away our teenage
girls. As men, we knew their behavior which we derived from the
stories which these drivers would tell us when we helped them fill
their trucks with the river sand down the nearby stream. The stories
pointed out that these men never had a single partner. Mapo-s
own young brother warned her and their mother quickly rebuked him,
asking if he would be in position to marry her sister if she gets
too old. This message was never strong enough to stop Reason, the
brother, from protesting the relationship. The man took courageous
gestures by visiting Mapo-s home to meet the mother. Culturally,
only very serious men can afford to introduce themselves formally
like that. These visits never went down well with Reason who threatened
to fight the new couple.
One day when the couple
had gone out to spend some time in the big truck which would normally
be parked at a shop close by, they forgot about time and stayed
too late. Knowing very well that Reason might have good grounds
to question the decency of the relationship and possibly fight his
sister, the couple drove away to a nearby city where the driver
lived. Weeks later we heard that they had returned to pay part of
the lobola to formalize their marriage.
But to Mapo-s surprise,
she had fallen into a trap of a man who had another wife, and so
by default she was a second wife. It was a painful fact to learn
about, but what could she do to safeguard her image back home. It
is customarily decent for a woman to have a husband of her own,
and divorced woman are treated a bit differently as they are regarded
as the not so good elements of society. As a result she did her
level best to hide the situation from anyone back home. The man-s
parents felt that the first wife had been unfairly treated, so they
hated Mapo for having agreed to be married to this man. They blamed
her too for the failure of the man to support his own family as
he used to. In reality Mapo had a problem because either way she
would be disliked. She chose to stay, maybe because she was already
pregnant.
A few years passed by
without us meeting the new family, and their visits back home were
seldom. We were all used to living without Mapo, as she no longer
belonged to us. Then came the news of her husband-s death.
It was a shock. Elders of the community sourced a few dollars to
make it to the funeral. Some failed to go since they had no money.
The whole community felt that they had lost a mukwasha (son in law)
despite the method of marriage that he chose and despite the fact
that some never knew him. So is the communal love of the place.
The time I first met
her after the burial of her husband was when she came to her parent-s
home. We rushed to share our sympathy with her. As we spoke, she
was sobbing, her round black eyes were floating in two small pools
of tears, her voice was low. She then explained the challenges she
went through in taking care of her late husband whom she said his
parents had denied. They blamed Mapo for bewitching their son. When
asked how the husband died, she could only afford to say, '
Imi, anenge anga ava nacho", meaning that it was as if he
was HIV positive. That is all she could say before gasps of breath
could start blocking her throat. We all assumed it was AIDS but
could not afford to tell Mapo to go for testing since she would
break into uncontrollable tears. She believed she was HIV free but
never wanted to prove it. Even her mother never wanted to hear that
her daughter might be positive; she never believed it so there was
no reason to test it. Such was her emotional attachment to her daughter.
As we saw days passing
by, and with Mapo still with us she disclosed that she had come
to stay because her husband-s family never wanted to see her.
And then she and her daughter became part of us again. We all accommodated
her as a friend, and started sharing old school jokes.
I moved out of the place
for some time pursuing school, and better pastures. It was during
my visits back home that my mother told me never to go back to town
without paying Mapo a visit for she was ill. That is when she complained
of an ant bite, which she said she could not recover from since
the previous day. I comforted her and wished her a good recovery
and left for town only to be called back shortly for the funeral.
It was now apparent that
it was HIV. We all advised Reason to take Mapo-s daughter
for testing and the results came out as expected, positive. She
got the counseling, and treatment. At eight?
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