Philani A Nyoni reviews Nyika, I love you by Alice Vye Henningway

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I am immensely fascinated by the title of this text. When I first heard of it, I assumed Alice had written a love letter to Zimbabwe, since Nyika translates from Shona into “Country”, but the memoir centres on her upbringing under the care of a housekeeper named Nyika. It is common for children raised by housekeepers to identify with them as a second mother, and often they do a lot of the primary socialisation. I still appreciate the double entendre; in a way, this book is an actual love letter to Zimbabwe: diving fish eagles, ancient rock art on kopjes, rolling tobacco and papaya leaf cigarettes in newspaper, starlit nights and fireflies dressed by hearty drumbeats and song ascending to Mwari, the Shona God. And gunfire – bullet-perforated walls and bathrooms reinforced to withstand guerrilla attacks.

In our imaginings, the wars of liberation in Africa pitted two sides against one another, but life is seldom as black and white as calling death to all the whites, even a five-year-old girl on a tyre swing. The easiest way to dispel that myth is to look at the lives and careers of black characters such as Lucas Mangope (South Africa) and Abel Muzorewa; or, as the author’s father points out, note that nine out of ten soldiers in the Rhodesian army were black. On the flip side, we have men like Jeremy Brickhill (Zimbabwe) and Dennis Brutus (South Africa) who fought on the, eh, black side. The wars were fought against systems and oppression, for the very soul of Africa: an all-inclusive political system that gives ample opportunities to all racial profiles. We can argue how far that ideal has come in the last 31 years since the last African nation was liberated, but this text lives in that grey where actual people live; it’s about the grass that suffers when the mighty elephants of the political theatre squabble.

But Chishakwe­­ – “Place of Lions” – that’s where you really came into your own. Nursing orphaned animals, learning the ways of the bush, tinkering with that old Land Rover. Africa got into your blood in a powerful way during those years at the ranch-turned-conservancy. Spending your days in the tribal compound with Nyika, always barefoot, learning Shona ceremonies and traditions – that place shaped you forever, Joe. (xi)

It draws out the essence of being an African, of being raised on the Rhodesian soil in times as tumultuous as the war for liberation – the Second Chimurenga or the Rhodesian Bush War, which in some parts of her text is called a Civil War. The author is born in 1972, the same year the armed struggle escalates. This speaks to a newness in the air, a newness that places a white child plum in the middle of high conflict, where the colour of her skin is the shade of oppression and enmity, as evidenced by the attacks on their home – the first one coming when she is but five. Or it is a newness where racial harmony and equality are forced onto the unwilling; it’s a story of being a child on the front lines of a violent gestation of a country.

Each night without gunfire felt like a gift, a night of survival. (3)

There is an honesty within these pages that is rarely seen in memoirs and politically slanted texts from the African literary scene. Right off the bat, the author acknowledges her father’s allegiance to the Rhodesian army, which in many ways fought to defend the status quo. This is a brave choice to make, but still the story unravels to clarify the fog of choices made in those days; it was not all black and white, and choices were not as binary as it might seem to future onlookers. The author appears sincere, without a revisionist agenda; this is a text of catharsis and honest reflection, a window into a time and space, more nuanced than statistics and the broad strokes of history books. It’s a tale about how people actually lived through the war, the corruption of innocence when an idyllic summer day suddenly brings a five-year-old face to face with the narrow end of a Kalashnikov, and within two years she learns to say, “Your god is a cunt” (27).

It is a story about the duality of existence in a strikingly primordial example. Most importantly, it’s a story about deep loves and bonds that shape lives beyond what the obvious may look like; of unlikely families: feral children, warthogs that think they are dogs, nightjars that pop up at dinner tables, impalas sleeping on kitchen floors; and of hope: living again after grief, keeping up the mast in the middle of a chaos as old as God.

Zimbabwe is a land where crocodiles play lifeguard and locusts throw impromptu eclipse parties, but it is also a place where magic seeps through the cracks of everyday life – where disaster waltzes with joy, and strangers become family over a shared Castle Lager and a smoke (151).

 

 

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