“The land is crying for its people. The people are crying for the land. Do not be silent. Speak up for her.” – Australian Aboriginal
You know those winter evenings on the highveld? Where red sunsets blacken the trees in shadow and dust hangs in the branches.
Then suddenly it is night.
Zimbabwe night.
Just like that. One minute you breathe daylight, then coolness wraps you in dark.
Mist settles like a shroud, dim moonlight, alters shapes and noises.
Sounds happen.
Suddenly.
Crackles of dry grass. Crickets. A distant owl.
Silence.
Watching.
Sentiment? I’m fine with that.
My whispering in the night. My shadows. Like a stranger waiting.
As if someone is watching, waiting …a wraith reaching out to say something.
As if it was someone I met…and could not grasp what they were saying…
As if I was called to meet someone or something…
My mother believed in another world, said we could see things, feel things if we believed.
I felt it as a child. In the Matopos, not balancing rocks and plastic picnics but voices and spirits.
I began walking in the bush after that. To search I suppose. I never knew what I was looking for though…
Easy to scoff, dismiss it as hippie nonsense- Gaya rubbish-mbanje belief the earth is a vital self-sustaining energy…. that it talks to us if we listen. An easy leap to hugging trees.
As science pursues meaning to life, alternative realities, shadows of existence are now accessible in the laboratory. Beyond belief.
The unfamiliar is reaching out. For me it is in a sharp intake of dry cold, the crackle of the air.
Like a stranger waiting. .
Spain is beautiful-dry and dusty but there was no feeling for me in the land.
Night strolls were…night strolls.
Walks in the deserts, the Okavango did not have the stranger’s voice.
So I returned to walk in Zimbabwe.
Marvelling at the everything-ness and nothing-ness of the bush.
I felt the stranger again. I do not understand him. But I do know his name.
Home.
By Rory Kilalea