The road is bumpy and people’s stomachs are full of turkey. But there isn’t really much to do, so we all decide to go to the farm. Besides, my mother says, the fresh air will do us all the world of good. It is also another opportunity for my father to test his brand new VW Microbus, which he says will get us there in no time. As we leave the house we notice some of the local gardeners are already sprawled on the sides of the roads, dead drunk. My grandmother says they must have drunk kachasu.
‘It’s the only drink I know that can make grown men behave so stupidly,’ she says.
The car hit a dog as we approached the traffic lights at the shopping centre. In an effort to avoid hitting the dog my father applied the brakes suddenly but it was too late. The dog, a brown mongrel with a white stripe across its muzzle, was thrown into the air and ended up on its back. It lay on the road, its limbs twitching violently. There was blood gushing out of its mouth and nostrils. There was nothing anybody could do, so we just left it there, a sad creature bleeding to a slow death in the dust.
The new farm my father was recently allocated by the government as part of the land reform programme is about two hundred and eighty kilometres to the west of the country. But the white farmer, Mr Allan Bradford, wouldn’t budge, so my father had to go to the farm with some of his hefty relatives and force the man out. The incident was widely reported in the press and made father something of a minor celebrity. That was his fifteen minutes of fame. He loved the attention and at weddings and funerals often amused people by retelling the story of how he had kicked out the stubborn Bradford from Pangolin Farm.
Father knew the government official responsible for the farm allocations in the province of his choice – an old comrade from the embryonic days of the ‘Struggle’ – and was given a list of half a dozen farms to choose from. His first preference was New Jacaranda Estate, a thriving citrus concern about seventy miles out of town. The estate provided the country with half its oranges. The other half earned foreign currency in several European Union countries. But his friend who did the allocations told him too many ruling party chefs were after the same farm and warned my father that he might find himself in a bruising tug-of-war. Father had settled for Pangolin Farm because of its rich cotton soil and temperate climate.
My father is very excited by the idea of being a New Farmer. He was born and brought up in the city and says he cannot wait to live in a place where everyday he can feel and taste the fresh air of the great outdoors. He says he cannot wait to be part of Nature. He spent the whole of last month proudly showing all his friends and relatives the offer letter from the Ministry that proclaimed him the new owner of Pangolin Farm. He says once he realises the grand plans he has for Pangolin Farm, poverty will soon be a thing of the past for us.
My father has always entertained fantastic money-making schemes that he always assures us will one day make him rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Every time he reads in the newspaper of some massive fraud committed by some junior bank teller at some bank he always whistles and shakes his head in admiration. He has always had a soft spot for daring criminals.
When I was young I remember he used to read ‘True Detective’ and always used to tell us about the Great Train Robbery of England. And even after a few stiff Scotches he can still reel off the names of the villains involved in that daring act, men who collectively boasted a vast portfolio of petty crime – Bruce Reynolds, Tommy Wisbey, Roy Jones, Ronald Biggs, Charlie Wilson, Gordon Goody, Jimmy White.
He also admires Aidan Diggeden, a local small-time thief and legendary jail-breaker who eventually got deported to England, his country of origin, after the Justice Minister, like Pontius Pilate when Jesus was finally brought to him, finally washed his hands of the evasive crook. Father told us that while incarcerated in a Bulawayo prison, Diggeden would periodically break out to commit daring robberies. Afterwards, he would break back into prison and stash the proceeds of his crimes in his cell. Later on, during a five-year hiatus between jailbreaks, Diggeden even became a national trampoline champion.
Although he is not poor, my father is not exactly rich either. He says he would like to make enough money to buy a house in the northern suburbs where some of his rich friends live, something with a chip-tile pool, Jacuzzi, tennis court and other state-of-the-art modern conveniences that passed him by during the time he was exiled in Tanzania, playing his part in the ‘Struggle’.
Whenever my father talks about the ‘Struggle’ he hushes his voice, like a trespasser walking through a hallowed shrine. He often tells us how, when he was at the University of Rhodesia, he fought the injustices enshrined in a system that determined a person’s worth on the basis of colour. But he also admits it was never going to be easy to be an equal citizen in an unequal society.
There is nothing wrong with the house we live in now, but my father says it’s in a ‘wrong area’ – Waterfalls. He has always considered the southern part of the city – with its askew tin-roofed houses and huge unkempt gardens – cheap and tacky. He also says he would like to change my mother’s car, which he says has outlived its legitimate lifespan.
The car is always breaking down and my mother now doesn’t use it much, except to go the supermarket or to pick Eric from school. My father is always saying how wealthy so-and-so is, how the previous day so-and-so had bought such-and-such a car, and how so-and-so and his family went to such-and-such exotic resort for holiday, and how so-and-so’s daughter or son went to such-and-such ridiculously expensive school. But he has not given up yet; he still feels his time is still to come. Maybe Pangolin Farm will do the trick.
The farm was originally called Coomb Farm, but when it was gazetted it became Pangolin Farm. Father says it’s because there have been several of these ugly and scaly animals found on the farm. Pangolins are shy and rarely seen, and if you come across one it is considered a good omen. Although the meat is supposed to be tasty nobody is allowed to kill pangolins. If you find one on your land you have to call the people from the Department of Parks and Wildlife. In the old days all the pangolins captured by villagers were given to chiefs because, according to African tradition, they are the only ones allowed to eat them. Considering how ugly pangolins are, I always felt sorry for the chiefs.
The seven men to be interviewed for the vacant farm manager’s job were already waiting for us when we reached the imposing homestead. They stood chatting uneasily in the deep shade of an adjacent storage shed, clutching briefcases or colourful paper folders. Every so often they would warily size each other up, the way boxers do before the bell for the first round. The house had a tiled roof and a pea-shaped swimming pool in front of the living room veranda. The pool’s water was black and oily, and an unseen bullfrog chimed a melancholic refrain from a clump of lilies floating in the pool’s deep end. Parts of the house seemed to have been recently vandalised; strips of ceiling hung from fractured roof rafters and the glass had been broken in some of the windows. I wondered whether Mr Bradford had been responsible for all that damage. But it was obvious that some time in the dark mists of memory, this was once a house that had seen prosperous times.
While all of us stood there marvelling at the sheer grandeur of the homestead, father collected the men’s papers and perused them studiously as he walked to an office building adjacent to the house. We sat on the veranda, away from the scorching sun, and my mother unwrapped the bacon and egg sandwiches she had prepared as mid-afternoon snacks. It was surprising how the bumpy journey seemed to have made everybody hungry. Eric and Franco were soon running around the garden, excitedly exploring their new surroundings as small boys and small dogs are wont to. My grandmother sat rocking in a garden chair, staring open-mouthed at the huge house. It seemed her desire to relieve her bladder had been suddenly outweighed by the need to satisfy her child-like curiosity.
‘The white people lived well,’ was her only comment.
About the Author
Daniel Mandishona is an architect. He was born in Harare in 1959 and brought up by his maternal grandparents in Mbare township (then known as Harari township). In 1976 he was expelled from Goromonzi Secondary School and lived in London from 1977-1992. He first studied Graphic Design then Architecture at the Bartlett School, University College London. He now has his own practice in Harare.
His first short story, ‘A Wasted Land’ was published in Contemporary African Short Stories (Heineman, 1992) and he has subsequently been published in Writing Still (Weaver Press, 2005), Laughing Now (Weaver Press, 2005) and Writing Free (Weaver Press, 2011). White Gods Black Demons (Weaver Press, 2009) is his first full collection of short stories.
White Gods Black Demons is available at Weaver Press and at www.africanbookscollective.com
Post published in: Arts