Like me, my mother married young into a family that despised her.  Up to this day I will never know why they despised her and her family so much.  I think she must have wanted so much to be married because her mother in law, my grandmother and her six daughters,  my aunts treated her so badly.  They verbally abused her every now and then.   My father on the other hand would go chasing after other women. She hung on to the marriage and I think it was because her well educated husband, my father, had a good job and stayed in the city  in the then Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe and what it is now. 

She  had a first foundation education which meant she could read and write but not anything else and had only come to the city to find a job as a domestic worker till she got married.    But she really wanted the best for  her four children - my two brothers, sister and me. She made sure we had  to go to multi racial or white dominant schools and get the best education the country could offer.

Eventually my father divorced her and I watched her desperately trying to make ends meet as she started her life afresh.   Her lesson to me in all this was that I had the great advantage of education and no one could ever abuse me.  This was one of my biggest weapon.    After three years of marriage, I walked out of a marriage that was more like my mother's all because I chose to and I could.   Even though she could not  pay for my education she kept  forcing us on  to a father who did not want us -  so that we could get an education.  And we did get it.  In the same way that my grandmother and my aunts abused my mother, so did  my  mother in law and her nieces verbally abuse me, my husband was always cheating  and I chose to walk out because my mother had wanted me have an education and I could now use it to my advantage.  I did not have to stay in an abusive marriage because of dependency on my husband.  She had wasted so many years of her life building it around a man who did not appreciate her,  or love her, who took her for granted and  in the end and  took everything away from  her  all because he was educated and could afford to do it. She used to buy a lot of things for resell and she was one of the first women in the eighties who started cross border business between Harare and Johannesburg so I know she contributed financially in the household. I promised myself that I would never waste my life on anybody.    I walked out on my husband and family when they least expected it and went on to fight for custody of my son, Michael, now fifteen years old.

After her divorce, my mother moved to a small city which was two hundred and sixty kilometres away from the capital city to begin her life there.  When you have been a housewife for eleven years, starting afresh can be so hard.  She tried to come to South Africa on a cross border business but without substantial capital, she could never get on her feet.  She sold her few belongings and began a life living under the poverty datum line in one of the townships.  We would visit her every three months for  a month and tell her of our hardships with our father and his sisters.  She would try and make it as enjoyable as she could by taking us for movies at the local hall every single day.  This was for five cents per person and it was next to nothing.  She did not have side plates so  she would serve mealie meal pap (commonly known as sadza) and relish in two big plates.  We would then use tea saucers as side plates and eat together as a family.   

I have a son and a daughter  and I am there for them in every aspect of their lives, and had my mum had been able to she would have done that.  No matter what problems or hardships we come across, we are thankful that we are a close family that shares quality time, holidays and family meals together.  At Easter holidays, we would find four big easter eggs in my mother's small cupboard. Sitting on the floor in a small circle and eating together as a family  was a big thing for me even though she did not have  the dining table and chairs that my father and aunts had.  At the end of the holiday she would send us back at the end of that one month. 

Saying goodbye was always so emotional, so tearful, so heart rending and emotionally traumatizing for all of us. Yes we were going to white schools, living in fancy houses or suburbs, being driven around in posh cars, but it all came at a price. We were verbally, physically and emotionally abused.  Meal times were not as special because  we were picked on for bad table manners or whatever that other children at the same table could do and not get noticed.  But we all made our mother happy and proud because we did so well at school. 

Decades later I look back and  cherish what she taught me -  family time.  I  have made a choice to stay with my two children without any child support, to work hard for them and to spend quality time with them.   Laughing and sharing jokes made her beam and she would be proud that we acted and sounded so much like the white children that she would see in movies.  I also remember her showing off our school report cards to neighbours and that encouraged us to do even better at school.  She could not attend our prize giving ceremonies, our special days at school but just hanging our prizes in her one roomed lodgings always made us feel appreciated.

One thing that Mwera never did was to communicate with her children.  She died with so many answers as to the whys, hows and whens of her life that I can never ask anybody but her.   She could never tell us how good or bad her marriage was,  why she will never talk to the people that she did not want to talk to,  all the secrets of her life,  why she put up with all the abuse; and the biggest one of all, a scary dream that she had before she got terminally ill.  That dream scared her a lot and she decided to take it to the grave.  She was with my sister, who is the last born in our family and my sister cannot forget the fright and confusion that was  in her eyes.  I want to think that she loved us too much and protected us from the truth.  I never want to do that to my children.  I owe it to them to tell them what is going on.   I learned that I must sit my children down and tell them all they should know.  If for any reason I cannot bring myself to tell them, I will write a letter that can be read to them after I die.  My mother died when I was nineteen and I feel there are things she could have shared with me.    I do understand it was in good faith and even though there is no comfort in the truth, I would have preferred to be hurt honestly.  The truth is one thing that I will pass to my children.  We had to learn who her enemies were and those who loved her after she died and we still have so many unanswered questions.

Part of  rebuilding her life in the small city involved a lot of  buying and selling to make a living. They were good days and bad  days.   At one time she bought tomatoes to resell and she watched them rot because no one would buy them.  She threw them in a garden patch  and cried for days on end because as far as she was concerned it was  a business gone bad.    But after some weeks and  a bit of the summer rain,  she noticed tomato plants sprouting and  before she knew it a large garden of giant tomatoes.  These tomatoes sold out and with this and other savings, she was able to make a trip to South Africa for other things to resell. 

She finally joined a cooperative that sold meat in a local beer garden.  It was good money but she would have done better if she had done it on her own.  But there was no one to advise her and her circle of friends came from that sphere.  It was a place of  mixed people ,  pleasant, wicked, jealous and the nasty ones.  From then on I observed  the ones that rejoiced with her when she did something, the ones that laughed at her even in her face, the ones that encouraged and stood by her side, the ones that mocked her and dressed her down and I vowed that I would never have friends.  I do not believe in genuine friendship, I do not  think it exists.    My best friends are my sister and my two children.  I wish I could say the same thing for my two brothers but sadly that is not the case.  People have a way of letting you down and I am quick to put up an emotional brick wall and close myself in.  I thrive in solitude and this is because  I love writing.   I have no time for friendships because I watched my mother being stabbed in the back, being hurt and crying herself to sleep because of people she thought were her friends.  I choose my friends with extra caution and I can count my friends on one finger.  I do not hold grudges or harbor any unforgiveness but I  will never continue the friendship where I have been let down.  Acquaintances are most welcome  but I am yet to find a friend who can be all that a friend is.  Maybe in another life.

When you stay in lodgings for a great part of your life there are rules and regulations to adhere to.  Not far from where my mother was staying there was a rural area where her aunt was staying.    Since my mother was a lodger who could not keep pets she decided to make the best out of her situation.  She went into the rural area and bought herself a female kid which would grow into a big herd of goats.  The plan was that it would be kept there and when we came for holidays we could go and  take one from the herd, have it slaughtered and  have a lot of meat to take us through.  She was selling other kinds of meat so we knew that we were spoilt for choice whenever we were with her.    I took it as a lesson that God never leaves us if we strive to better our lives.  I have struggled in Zimbabwe with my two children, working as a Secretary, Public Relations Officer and as a buyer and after working hours selling anything that I could.   I have sent my kids to good schools, stayed in a better suburb and just when I thought I could relax, things have gone bad with Zimbabwe's Economy.  Instead of wallowing in self pity I brought my children to South Africa to work as a domestic worker, a waitress and now a warehouse Manageress.  I continue to work very hard to give them a good place to stay, send them to good schools  and very proud to say I have made it.  It has been a storm but I survived to see the rainbow.    I look back and  and see myself making so much progress in  my life as well as my children's lives.  Xenophobia, racism and so many limits as a refugee have not stopped me. I keep my head above the water.   All this learnt  from the life of a woman who gave birth to and strove to make it.  She never went back to her home to die in dire poverty unlike her brothers and  sisters.  She had the option of going back to her mother in a remote rural place where she had grown up taking us her kids  with her and just give up on life but she did  not and here I am today.

Most girls or guys  learn a lot from their mothers.  They learn to cook, bake, sew, play instruments. I cannot say that for myself. My mother could not teach me a lot physically.  We had a paraffin stove and when I was with her I could not bake or cook the three course meals that I learnt to cook at school for the four yeas that I was at High School.   She was not there when I had my first period and there was no one to teach me about it.  I  had to learn from my friends and prefects. I learnt about sex from my Science subject at school. I have nothing concrete to say she really showed me but what  I have mentioned in this article is what I learned.  As plain and as vague as it sounds, this is what makes me the woman that I am today.  A person who does not have friends, who works hard to give the best to her family and her livelihood, who can smile at everything and nothing and who spends quality time with her children.  This is what I will pass on to my generations after me.  My aunts had all the  money in the world and could afford anything, but all I learned was to despise people, to show off, to be unkind.  But from someone who had nothing and so very few words I learned  a lot.    I am proud of her, she is my unsung heroine.  I could write a whole book about the day to day incidents of our life with her but she had a part to play in my life knowingly or unknowingly. 

My hope is to be able to go back in the city where she was staying, Mutare and to walk in the same streets and show my kids where we stayed with her.  Hopefully there are some people who knew her and have survived this Zimbabwean political and economic  madness who will be able to see her in me.  A different her, who refuses to be a doormat, who refuses to be abused by anyone, who got the education that she wanted for her children and who is now writing articles, who refuses to think that telling her kids the truth will hurt them.  But with the same smile,  working hard to better my life like she did,  and  for them to see her in my children's smiles as we spend quality time together.  Without telling them  who I am, they will remember me as the little girl who with her brothers and sister traveled to see a woman called Mwera and made her heart proud.  The woman who let opportunities go and could have chosen an easy way out but could not because she wanted to make a difference in four people's lives.  She could have married someone else and lived without thinking about us because my father had custody but she chose to be a part of our lives even if it meant once every three months for a month.

I feel sorry for women who, because of a situation in their lives, stop living and make their children suffer.   I encourage every woman reading this to learn from this remarkable woman, that as women we are strong in our own way and the fact that we can give birth to children makes us stronger when faced with any situation.  Look at your children or their achievements and ask yourself if it's worth going to drugs, alcohol, suicide, anorexia or prostitution.  Each day brings a lot of challenges but also joy and exciting times.  Our children are there to comfort and make it more bearable.  And God being who he is always makes a plan for the unexpected to happen in our favour. 

Some people would be ashamed to share an experience like this with anyone.  Since I have been here in South Africa, I have gone back home to Zimbabwe once for a family matter.  One thing that gave me satisfaction and that I smile about is that I went to my mothers' grave which is two hundred and sixty kilometers from the capital city.  It is in a small remote village called Mtoko and I made sure I went there to see her cement grave.  Cemented graves are a luxury that most people can afford never mind a tombstone, but going there and seeing the flowers that my sister had taken a month before made me want to both cry and rejoice.  To cry because I would have wanted to give her back what she had given me.  I would have wanted to give her a nice cottage in the city and in the village because she gave me a home when all my father and aunts could give me was just a house.  I would have wanted her to be with my children and for them to go and spend holiday times with her.  But also to rejoice because a sixteen year old innocent girl from a humble home in a remote village married a very selfish man, gave him four kids and did everything she could for them not to live the life she had lived.  May her soul rest in peace.

Cynthia Farai Chitongo