Mbizo’s Mom

“In all her doings my mother influenced me to have endurance, dedication, resistance, faith and resilience.” Mbizo Chirasha

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Our village rondavels sat on the peripheral fringes of Dayataya, that elephantine mountain of home. It cracked with a fervent babyish glee every promising dawn. Birds sang soprano and black baboons yelped baritone. The chattering monkeys and jiving rock rabbits chanted tenor. Musical Mother, your footsteps to the mountain to pick firewood for our morning meal was a goddess jive, complimenting nature’s rhythm. This is points to the meaning of mothers. They are angels, messengers of life, You, my Mother, are the goddess of all times.

Dayataya wore a light-yellow tinge on its head at dawn. Toward sunset it cracked a harmless oxblood tinted smile. You wore an earthly doek [bandana] with your resilience matching that yellow, the color of freedom.

Dayataya was our mountain of home. Its cousin, Zvegona, remained…