Semper Fidelis

By F.V.Magama, Sr

What is man but the sum total of his experiences. Behind a smile, a look, a phrase, a stare, a gasp...a memory connects. A connection to the future from the past. Set in post independence Harare, this is a journey through time. A flailing ribbon, grasp a thread into no man's land, a space in the mind. A glimpse into society's influence on the molding of life. A place of wonderment where faith lives, always.

• Language: English
• Publisher: F.V.Magama, Sr
• Release date: Mar 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9780620603140

F.V.Magama, Sr

I am a story teller.

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SEMPER FIDELIS

Dedication

Copyright Page

Semper fidelis

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of world changers; Mr P. Sharples, Mr Chauke and Mr Mutsekwa; they influenced generations to something greater than the individual. Taught men.

And to Grace Magama nee Mberi for making the world fit between two fingers and bringing its myriad of colours to light; spreading love the ‘deed’ and not love the ‘word’. A meteor from the stars who left a lasting dent.

Semper Fidelis

By F.V.Magama

Smashwords Edition

Copyright ( 2014 F.V.Magama

ISBN ( 978-0-620-60315-7

Cover design by Flow Creative

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Harare 1994

…this transitory phase was a beginning of self actualisation. I became aware of the self. The awareness that my steps left an echo. However, this was not an easy morphogenesis. Whereas I had been cruising in the nonchalance of childhood, an awakening had been stirred, one that had been growing parallel to my childhood experiences. Key to this unfettered development was my mother. Everyone else in my close extended family (no such thing as immediate family where I’m from) had their own ideas of who I should be, or what I should emulate from them and how I should get there. As for father, Mudhara Magama was an infrequent visitor to home, something I figured was due to his excess of wives, and, as I was soon to realise, his ill-health. An unknown fact at this time. Be that as it may, I had grown out of the expectation of him being a meaningful presence in my life.

Lucian proved more of a stubborn ‘shake off’. This high-spirited youngest brother to my mother had shared in most of my life situations to this particular point. More like an older brother in the conventional sense, though in truth closer to a sidekick in his teenage escapades…for a lot of escaping there had been. Uncle Lucian was still caught up in that progression where ‘I’ was still his sidekick. The new reality was ‘I’ had outgrown it. All of 12 years old, I now had experienced enough teenage rebellion to last me a lifetime (two lifetimes!). The solution left to me was to step out of this space. I distanced myself from Uncle Lucian and his pack.

It was a trying time though; because it was a time a male role model who resembled the strengths of my character was really the missing ingredient during this time of high impressionability. But I made up my own, having a keen observant eye. I borrowed traits from the males around me and on the big screen and from books I read. Being naturally shy I went for the silent type image. Characters from comic books such as X-men (Wolverine and Cyclops), movies like Superman, Batman, James Bond, The Saint, people like Denzel Washington, Nelson Mandela, sports individuals like George Gregan, Joost Van der Westhuizen and icons like Jesus, all had traits that struck chords with me.

The danger in this, as my later early adult years were to prove, was that these were two-dimensional characters, as I perceived them. The reality or the consequence of emulating my perception of two-dimensional characters was that my expressions of the other emotions not in character with these models were increasingly stunted until years after my high school. However, in the meantime I strove to be the personification of these two dimensional traits.

And so it began...teenage-hood. With my oversized new blazer, purple, turned in oversized trousers, grey, necktie, grey with purple stripes (purple with grey stripes!), new black trunk and a new school year, I was in high school. I was going into boarding school. I felt like a man, independent of Mai Magama; well, as far as constant surveillance and contending with motherly wiles is concerned.

I could see the pride welling in her eyes; little Vimbai was off to big boys boarding school. Not too far though for Churchill Boys’ High was only about two suburbs away. I had had a few experiences of the place, gate-crashing a few ‘discos’ after ‘borrowing’ mum’s car with uncle Lucian. But that was in the dark, so I never had a sense of the place. Actually it was the adjacent girls’ school that I recalled. Anyhow, the good thing for my mother was that she was moving into a flat in the air base where the school she was teaching at was situated, meaning closer to friends and other distractions guaranteed to lessen the effect of my absence.

Tariro, my young brother was at this juncture two years old, hyper and stubborn, so she had enough to keep her active. My little brother had made his appearance only a couple of years prior. Of course Lucian had finished college and was out of the house making his own moves in Mutare.

Driving down ‘Nigel Phillip’ road east bound was like a right of passage. Leaving the familiar R.Mugabe Ave leading out of the capital Harare, my mother turned left then right into a parallel service lane before accessing the beginning of ‘Nigel Philip’ on the first left turn. There was a continuous parade of pine trees lining the left side of the road sheltering a pedestrian path. Beyond this path one observed a well-manicured field of green patches, a golf course. ‘TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED’ lined the fence at intervals, (‘…hm, exclusive…’, was my current thought at this moment, quickly replaced by, ‘…somebody must have TRESPASSED…’).

On the right side of the road were normal residences. That seemed mundane to look at, so I continued with my silent discussion of reasons for trespassing into a golf course. The golf course fence was then replaced by a higher double fence, with a few dying vines trying to graft themselves onto it (some had succeeded but died anyway). Just a few metres after the high fence had begun, a massive gate with ‘DELANO’ on a signpost came up. Looking beyond that I glimpsed an omnibus with two stripes painted across it, broken up by a coat of arms.

We continued eastbound, as the road had curved from a northerly direction initially. A maintained low hedge, a familiar sight from an escapade some years ago, cropped up lining a small brick wall...ROOSEVELT GIRLS’ HIGH was painted proudly on huge sign post.

(‘…may the lord have mercy on some of those parents…’ I was thinking, shaking my head, as I recollected an incident I had witnessed after my uncle Lucian, a bunch of his friends and I had gate crushed a ‘gig’ some years back, ‘…its going to be a long four years…or maybe six, if they have the intellectual leanings or sense to last that long…’)

Chii?, my mother interrupted my musing after she saw me shaking my head

Kamusikana ako kane blazer rakapetwa maoko serangu!, I instinctively replied.

Beyond the Roosevelt gate was unfamiliar territory in truth, so, my musings ended and a sense of expectation returned immediately. The pine trees continued, now on both sides, shielding the Roosevelt grounds on one side and a seemingly empty space on the other, with inflections of Jacaranda trees. This created a sense of a tunnel. My stomach rumbled. Then on the right hand side school buildings appeared. On the left, a small gate led to a distant unimpressive exposed brick building facing a vast open space. My gaze turned back to the school buildings. Having spent my first seven years of primary schooling at a government school (former so-called group A schools), I could recognize generic traits in the evident building. It was a school hall. Next to this high walled brick building, was a tarmac, which currently had cars being parked on it and an orange broken basketball ring in the back. Beyond that was an old loopy tree with big branches exposing a grey double storey building behind it. In actual fact, as I quickly observed, grey was a common background, um, shade (colour?).

Mother pulled up by the main gate and an well-spoken articulate young man in a uniform like mine (except for two stripes on his fore-arm, and loopy white and yellow strings on his cap, and the numerous sewn on labels just under his blazer pocket, and the numerous pins on the blazer collar, and his shirt was white, and his tie wasn’t striped like mine) pronounced a greeting and a set of instructions on where to park. We had arrived at Churchill Boys’ High.

Welcome, to the school of Churchill, gentlemen. Take note, 'gentlemen'...You are no longer little boys, vapfana…forget ana momz naana mudhara, kana vakoma venyu nekuti havakubatsirei kuno. So JERK UP your IDEAS and smarten up vapfana, HANDITI...

Silence.

ADDRESS ME and the prefects as 'SIR', lighties, and acknowledge when I am talking to you HANDITI!

Together, Ye-yes Si-SIR! we stumbled on the words in disbelief at the sudden transformation of the situation. This was directly after the whole glamour speech prepared for our guardians and keepers and protectors had been successfully delivered and they had left with a false image of a holiday camp in their heads. We had bought into it as well...Up until that moment. The ‘lovely’ school tour had ended.

...VAPFANA! I don't think you understand... the head-boy, now sounding like a drill sergeant (at this point looking like a human caricature of a bulldog...hunching and swooping like a vulture with its unforced sinister smirk), continued,

...I tell you something, you respond WITH EFFICIENCY vapfana, EFFICIENCY!! HANDITI!

YES SIR!

...I didn't hear you!

YESSSIR!!

...in-fact, stand up from those chairs! You don’t deserve to sit on them yet...

Prequel: The first five years of existence

According to mother, before I could sit, that light-flashing box captivated me, especially when it churned out rhythm and fast moving pictures of gyrating individuals following the same. She said,

Waibva wafara stereki uchitambisa kagumbo wakatarisa TV.

If she said so, then so be it. As if in support of this notion, I became a television addict in the few years that came.

However, for the most part, as a toddler, I was Lucian's mascot. Yes no typo error, mascot.

Let me expand on that inference, or rather an intuitive deduction, see, I was like the key, his guaranteed passage through the main exit of the apartment (back then). Lucian was what the western world, in psychological vocabulary, has termed 'a hypertensive child'. Him being that was not a welcome trait for the child minder or adult in charge. Longer story short, he was a 'difficult' young one. An even challenging teenager, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Anyway, that being the case, sekuru Lucian was under strict supervision and tutelage in the art of responsibility. This included (grace carried me through), baby-sitting me for more than half the time to foster his responsible nature. Yeah Right! Talk about tempting fate! Now the issue of having me under the 'watchful eye' of sekuru Lucian proved a bonus for him in that, he would use me to get out of the house and also to get attention on the Highfield streets. Truth be told, I was a cute baby. Hence the mascot assertion, he got passes to a number of things on my account.

It was not a problem for