‘Specialisation’

One man straightens the wire, another puts the head while another sharpens the tip. In this way all men make more pins than they would if each was to make the whole pin. Adam Smith

Suddenly, everything seemed to have gone wrong; but no one could tell what the cause was nor what had really happened. We sat down – Chimoto, Baba Nina and I – and in hushed tones discussed what might have occurred. But exactly five hours and two gallons of thick home-brewed opaque beer later, we’d only succeeded in getting ourselves numbly drunk and raising our voices to height-of-hot-summer cicada highs. We could have gone on. But Mhama Nina came into the study crying and saying that she couldn’t stand men that knew how to do nothing except drink and argue. Why didn’t we ever think of consulting the spirit medium, after all?

It was hot and a Saturday when we all crammed into the 4 x 4 single-cab truck that we had taken over along with the farm and all the other equipment. We could have gone on a Sunday, but I’d said that I would never dare insult God. Baba Nina had been the white man’s driver and he still drove the truck, though I was unsure of whether it was for himself, Chimoto or me. Baba Nina had grasped specialisation with gusto and had undertaken to master the art himself.

Every morning he woke up to the sound of the first singing bird. He washed the car spotlessly clean, and checked the oil and the fuel gauge. By kicking each tyre with his booted feet, he could tell which one needed more pressure, so that he could take the pump and do just that. His ritual took him until about tea-time, though tea was now rather scarce because of the countrywide sugar shortages.

Afterwards, he checked on the tractors, all three of them. He cursed and ranted every time Chimoto brought back a tractor covered in dust, mud and grime. ‘Can’t you even plough without muddying her up? Look at yourself,’ Baba Nina would size Chimoto up and down, ‘you’re as dirty as the plough itself. You even leave mud on the seat!’ He would pause and then turn to me. ‘How can specialisation ever work if we keep frustrating each other’s efforts? I’m a driver, a vehicle engineer, not a cleaner!’

I’d decided to sit next to the window where the rushing wind would cool my face and I could gaze at the vast expanses of repossessed land without straining my neck. Here and there fences that once restricted wild animals and cattle from moving onto the tarred road lay rotting on the ground or had been completely removed. It had been a rush, just like the gold rush. Everyone had wanted to take the closest entry into and onto the farms to grab the juiciest piece of ancestral soil they could find. No one had thought about tomorrow, life after the rush. The hunger had been too great and finding gates was just a waste of time.

‘The hunger had been too great and finding gates was just a waste of time’

Everywhere the land now lay bare and black, the skeletons of charred trees standing where forests had not yet been cleared. Almost everyone burnt the grass when they thought they had seen the first signs of rain.

Traditional habits die hard, even when you haven’t tilled for a century. The whole countryside had caught fire but no rain had followed. Not then; not now. But we could never be charged with destroying the forests with fire – it was a cultural practice. And there had always been grass-burning even before we took over the farms.

It was only that now nature had decided to show us her harsher side and, of course, we had not had time to repair the fireguards, a colonial institution.

‘Stop here, Chimoto,’ commanded Baba Nina. We had passed the turn-off to the main road. The spirit medium’s hut stood alone in the mountains, on a plateau where mermaids were said to be heard singing each morning at a spring well. Baba Nina braked hard, reversed and got onto the faint track. He manoeuvred the truck among the stones and burnt tree stumps. This way we could only take the car as far as the foot of the mountain. We got out and trudged towards the hidden hut. I felt tired and thirsty from the heat, and looking at Chimoto and Baba Nina, I knew they felt the same. ‘Do you think we will find the spring with water in this drought?’ I asked, breaking the silence that enveloped us.

‘Shh,’ Chimoto and Baba Nina said at the same time. I kept quiet, not wanting to ask why I had to shut up. Each of us walked differently. It was our specialisation. Walking. Most people said that I wobbled lazily. They said it was because of the books I’d taken to swallowing since an early age.

Baba Nina walked with short brisk steps. But Chimoto had an air about him. He walked with the gaiety of all those who have ever fought in a war, whether in defeat or in victory. One need not search far for people of Chimoto’s walking specialisation. They prided themselves as the country’s liberators, though during the guerilla war they’d been called terrorists by Ian Smith’s government or vanamukoma by the fearful majority in the barren sandy reserves.

And as a relic of the war, just as some wear the légion d’honneur or other war memorabilia, Chimoto carried a limp in the left leg where he said a bullet had entered but not come out. The limp, however, only became visible to those who didn’t know him when he was angry, which was often, and when they were at a meeting for the war veterans.

There was money from government for those who were injured during the struggle. It was he, Chimoto, after one of their so many meetings about this or that money who had come to tell us how absurd he thought it was that twenty years after independence, we still had not got that for which we had shed our blood.

So all we had needed to do was to wait for Baas Kisi to go to the city, as he always did every Friday, and then telephone him and say, ‘You white kaffir, don’t bother showing your nigger farse here because we will do your ace meat meat with a shap panga. The farm and everything on it is now ours. We, the soverin sons of the soil.’ Chimoto had written down the statement so that I would not forget a word he wanted said. I told him that farse should be face and that ace had to be arse and that there was nothing like a white kaffir or white nigger but he wouldn’t listen. Men of his specialisation, the country’s war heroes, wouldn’t listen to anyone. They knew it all and being our MPs, and old men, they spent most of their time arguing with the opposition, which only had toddlers and men with no liberation war history (except that of having been sell-outs) in parliament. I could have made him do the calling himself if he knew sufficient English and if he didn’t keep on saying tell Baas Kisi this or tell Baas Kisi that.

He had been the white man’s tractor driver and he still drove the tractors now though I was unsure of whether it was for Baba Nina, himself or me. That was his other specialisation. Driving tractors. He, like Baba Nina, believed in the prowess of the Englishman’s education, which was my own specialisation. I had gone all the way, according to them, though I could never tell them that half the time we had never had any lecturers since they had all gone where the fields were greener and lusher. Or we would be boycotting classes ourselves because of the inadequate government payouts to ‘poor’ students, or joining into any one of the unsuccessful demonstrations organised by the opposition parties. No, I could never tell them that because they believed in my ability to solve our problems.

So when I had taught them what the father of mass production had told me in those economics textbooks, they had abandoned everything they had ever known before. They had agreed that they’d never thought mushandirapamwe in which everyone worked together would succeed. Everyone had to do what they knew best. And that much we did. Baba Nina drove the truck. And Chimoto ploughed the fields. Mhama Nina sowed the roundnuts and groundnuts because these were a woman’s crops and I sowed the maize. The children, Baba Nina’s children, weeded the fields.

We reached the plateau with a final sigh of relief. Chimoto had started to complain that his leg was hurting. I did not see the spring, just as I had failed to see the farm workers in the compound the morning after we had told them we would be taking over the farm and them. We had woken up to find the whole place deserted, as if they had all been some sacred vanishing spring. Instead, I saw a spot where I thought the spring had been, nothing but a ring of stones that could only have signified a fireplace in any ordinary home. ‘This is a bad omen,’ Chimoto mumbled almost inaudibly.

‘What?’ Baba Nina asked, his face skewed into a frown. ‘I said this is a bad omen,’ Chimoto shouted back. I could sense that he was growing agitated. We all kept quiet and he went on talking when he realised no one was going to ask him why. ‘If the spring vanishes when you arrive, the mediator will not see you. Don’t you know that?’

About the Author

Lawrence Hoba was born in 1983 in Masvingo. He studied Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of Zimbabwe. He represents a new generation of young writers working hard to have their voices heard but recognises that writing is more art than impulse. Hoba’s short stories and poetry have appeared in the Mirror, a magazine published by the Budding Writers of Zimbabwe, and various blogsites including <www.zimbablog.com>.</www.zimbablog.com>