…continued form last week
Chapter 6
Nyanga and towards a new beginning
When I got to Mutare I went to my nephew Richard ‘s house and he was very happy to see me and promised to do everything within his powers to see that I got a job and very soon too.
He was fully aware that I had lost my job at the Collector of Taxes but did not know the reasons for my dismissal. I also knew that I would lie to him if he asked me how I had left my job which he knew I had loved so much.
I had got to Mutare right on time because had I got there a day later I wouldn’t have found him as he had been transferred to his company’s Nyanga branch and he would be relocating to Nyanga the following day.
I only had that night to spend in Mutare. My nephew was unmarried so there were very few items to load into his Mazda B 1600 pickup on the following morning.
Very early the following day we were on our to Nyanga by 9 and what a trip it was as we drove the through the breath taking scenic views between Mutare and Nyanga town and soon we arrived in Nyanga and went straight to the manager’s house in Rochdale Surbub.
My nephew was coming to Nyanga as the new manager after the then manager had gone to the then Yugoslavia to pursue a course in cooperative management.
It was so good living with my nephew Richard and there were only the two of us occupying the whole big house in Nyarerwe street in Rochdale Surbub which happens to be the low density suburb in Nyanga town.
We unloaded our few belongings and fortunately most of the furniture we needed was provided by the company for which my nephew worked.
After unloading our items and putting them inside we had very little else to do that day as Richard would start work the following day. Richard decided we go out to the shops for a beer drink.
We went to Nyamhuka shops and found a good drinking point at Taziwa’s Bar and soon we were enjoying very cold beers there.
Nyanga during the late 80s and maybe even before was a place surrounded by soldier training schools and such as the BBS Battalion Battle School and others from where every six or so months there would be a soldier pass out program and we arrived just a few days before a pass out parade was due.
The other thing that happened in Nyanga town when a pass out was imminent was that ladies of the night would come from various places in their hundreds to wait for the pass out night because the soldiers who had been in training for six months would be having lots of cash and therefore would want to spend it with these ladies of the night.
At night the bars at Nyanga’s Nyamhuka town are teeming with scantly dressed ladies of different makes who will be trying to entice customers from the many gentlemen drinking there.
Soon I was hooked to one and we were chatting away as we seeped our beers. That was where I learnt that ladies converge on Nyanga town from different places in Zimbabwe and some from nearby Mozambique a month or so before a pass out parade to wait for the big day when new soldiers are let out for the first time after spending six months locked up in a training area.
My lady went on to say there would be as many as five hundred or more young soldiers roaming Nyanga town and in some cases there wouldn’t be enough women to go round so the stakes would be very high as some would be out bidding each other in order to get the best ladies.
The lady went further to tell me that most of the ladies would be very cheap to catch before the special pass out parade day and some would charge as little as a dollar per session just to get enough money for food while they bid their time for the big days ahead .
Soon I was showing signs of getting drunk and Richard noticed that I was getting cosy with my new lady and he came and gave me some money and told me to take the lady home for the night if I so desired and surely I …
Chapter 7
The pity of suffering from AIDS
Many HIV+ people destroy themselves by limiting themselves and their opportunities in life once they have been medically diagnosed as being HIV+.
A lot like I did before I realised that I was wasting my time unnecessarily and having not been medical tested for HIV I had already rushed to declaring myself HIV+ and spent much of my time in great fear and mental torment.
This is very counterproductive and those working with people living with HIV should pay more attention to building confidence in their clients.
The other dangerous behaviour that has devastating consequences are people who are unsympathetic to those living with HIV and give them all sorts of nasty and very cruel names thus making it very difficult for the HIV+ to feel comfortable in the presence of those perceived HIV-ve.
Truth is all people who have not been medical tested for HIV are suspects and should never boast even if they appear healthy that they are better off than those who are positive .Moreover being HIV-ve is not a life certificate anyone can die anytime or in any manner be they HIV+ or not .Being HIV+ and dying are two different things.
Having worked as a temporary teacher in Nyanga and Honde Valley for three years I finally secured a place to train as a teacher at Mutare Teacher’s College from 1991 to 1993 .It was at Mutare Teacher’s College where I came face to face with real live people living and dying of HIV/AIDs.
The Principal took it upon himself to tell whoever cared to listen about the havoc HIV/AIDs was wreaking amongst us the students of Mutare Teacher’s College during his weekly Principal’s Hour sessions.
He would sometimes even mention names of some students who would be present in his lectures and you can imagine the embarrassment we would feel if we as we sometimes would be sitting with or near them in the lecture rooms.
These were the days when I realised how destructive HIV was. We would watch helplessly as one student from another waste away very slowly and surely until they were no longer able to wake up or pull themselves to the dining rooms for a morsel of food.
During my stay at Mutare Teacher’s College I saw how cruel AIDS was as like a wild dog it devoured its victim piece by piece until the prey could do nothing to protect itself from the relentless attacks from the predator.
An HIV/AIDS victim’s body would waste away bit by bit hair changing from deep black to a thin greyish colour similar to that of a mouse and the body would be so emaciated that one would be able to literally count the ribs. Meanwhile, the victim’s lips and body would be having wounds all over.
Between the years 1991 and 1993 the college bus would travel to various parts of the country either on a visit to one of our sick fellow student or to the funeral of a dead fellow student.
Most of the illnesses and deaths that we went to were all members mostly HIV/AIDs related.
At one time we went first to visit a very close friend of mine who was then home based and was waiting for his death day at his rural home near Nhariro Business Centre near Chivhu town.
When we got there we found him just coming out of the bathroom and he could hardly walk on his own and was propped up by his two brothers one on either side as he slowly lifted one fragile and thin leg after the other.
He was a pitiful sight and unrecognisable. He tried to smile at us his fellow students but his thin wounded lips would not allow a big smile because they cracked in the process.
We spent an hour or so chatting and assuring our friend that he would get better soon. We later on gave him some gifts we had brought with us and prayed for him then left for Mutare.
In the bus all thirty students and four lecturers were silent throughout most of the journey back to Mutare each in his or her own thoughts.
We arrived safely in Mutare and it was not very long before we heard that our friend whom we had just visited had died peacefully in his sleep on the morning of the fourth day after we had been to see him .We were soon on our way back to Nharira for our colleague’s burial.
David’s burial was a very moving occasion as speaker after speaker gave a glowing account of how good and God fearing David was and how the witches had cut his promising life so short.
Those of us his friends knew the real David not the one these people who just wanted to please his relatives were trying to portray. We had lived, studied and had been to Teaching Practice with David and we knew David the drunk and womaniser who almost got killed when he was caught red handed with someone else’s wife in Zimunya’s Chitakatira village back in 1992. We knew David the drunk who would drink until the wee hours when he would come straight from the beer hall to school not this fake one they were talking about at this funeral.
While at David’s funeral that’s where I learnt that for as long as we continue to bury our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich pretending that HIV/AIDs only exists in the books and radio we will never win the battle against HIV/AIDs.
The world must face reality and call a spade a spade. Later on in the evening after burying David we boarded the college bus for the long and thoughtful drive back to Mutare.
This was not the only funeral we had at Mutare Teachers’ College there were dozens of funerals at our college and students would attend to them depending on how close to the deceased they were.
I remember our Principal Dr Rungano Jonasi Zvobgo saying on our graduation day that all in all 27 students from our intake had died and most of these from AIDS related illnesses.
Piason Maringwa is a teacher at Batanai High School near Manoti in Gokwe South District.
He has been living with HIV for more than 30 years and has been talking about his HIV+ status since 2004.
