It was during the year 1988 that we left the city of Bulawayo and went to stay in the village with our grandparents. For my two brothers and myself, John, it was our first visit to the village, so everything seemed amazing to us. We used to see everything we saw at the village on our TV screen in the city, now we saw it in real life.

We went for a visit because our uncle came to visit us in town. He came with watermelon, peanuts, pumpkins and fruits from the veld. When we ate all those things, we thought life in the village would be awesome, and we decided to go for a visit. Before we left Bulawayo, our father told us that we were going to enjoy the village and that we would come back before the schools re-opened.

We did not know that it was a trap for us to go and stay at his ancestral home. We realised it only when the holiday was over. We started complaining to our uncle that we wanted to go back to the city because the holiday was over but he told us we were not going back any more. He had received the transferring letters from our city school. I hardly believed this. We had spent only two weeks in the village, but to me it was as though I had spent two months.

The conditions in the village were very different to those in town. In the village it was so hot, around 38 degrees. 28 degrees was the hottest temperature we knew in town. Life changed a lot as time went on. I was in Grade 2 by that time and we had to travel 5km away from home to reach the shopping centre and half a kilometre more to reach the school. Every day we could hardly wake up at five o’clock to beat the starting time. We travelled from half past five until seven o’clock running all the way to the school.

The school dismissal time was four o’clock and in the evening, we walked two hours to reach the fields a kilometre away from home, then another 30 minutes to the village. I could not believe that my father had done this to us. In the village, there were thirteen of us; eight children and five elders. It was my uncle and his wife, my grandmother, my aunt and her two young sisters, my two brothers and I, the daughters of my elder aunt and my three cousins, two boys and a girl, the daughter of my aunt who we were staying with in town.

My brother and I were in Grade 2; my older brother was in Grade 7. That same year, our grandmother promised us that the one who passed well would be given a special present. By the end of the year when our results came out, my brother was positioned fourth out of 46, while I was 20th. It was disgusting, as it was my first time in all this mess. When we reached home, my grandmother gave my brother a female goat and she said to him: ‘This is a special gift from your father. He said the one who had a good clean pass rate must be rewarded with it. Let it be yours. You deserve it.’ I was very disappointed, but I had nothing to do. I could not hate my brother for his pass rate.

Eventually, we got used to the situation at home. We slept in the round hut while the elders slept in the normal cement five-room house. We were overcrowded because the hut we slept in was also used as the kitchen. We slept in four groups; you chose a partner, took a blanket and found a corner. If you delayed settling down, you and your partner would find yourself at the door, where everybody waking up at night to go to the toilet stepped on your head. It was funny and boring at the same time.

Life became survival of the fittest to all of us while the elders were enjoying the glory of it. When it came to lunch, it was better compared to supper. The elders cooked their own food while we cooked ours, so our cousins were the ones who cooked for us. Their method was to cook and eat and then they would cook more and serve everyone else. They did not care whether we were fine or not. Everyone was used to it except my brothers and I. They called this kind of eating ‘grab and feast’. If you do not fit in to this kind of living, you do not survive, so we had to adapt.

The following year, my father came home with another wife. He told us that he wanted to make us happy again because our mother had left us. He built his new home about 50m away from where we were staying. Our village, Nkwali, was in Matabeleland south province and our nearest town was Gwanda, while our nearest city was Bulawayo. Here at Nkwali village, there was a mixture of languages: Venda, Sotho and Ndebele were the majorities.

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: Do you think it was fair of their father to force them to live in the village?