I Beat Goliath: My Life's Journey

By Pearl Heart

I Beat Goliath, My Life's Journey, is a powerful, inspirational and dynamic expose of Ruby Moyo’s life travel with six interchanges: - Her early childhood, a blissful existence; her later childhood, an affluent comfortable time , but spiritually and emotionally vacant; her married life leading to a cruel and painful divorce, the loss of her children, an abrupt termination of her career and loss of her home; her harrowing experiences living as a rough sleeper on the frightening streets of Bridge city; a short term Prison sentence , her stints in homeless accommodation units and an unsuccessful Alcohol Rehabilitation programme until her Restoration.

The reader is invited to share in Ruby’s story which although tragic in some parts, it is hilarious in other parts. On the whole, the book is an uplifting, exhilarating experience filled with hope. Is is about overcoming adversity.
This is not a Religious book. Where Bible Scripture is cited, it is for the benefit of giving impact to the issues that Ruby has raised.
In writing Ruby’s story, I aim to bring hope to the myriad of desperate people in this World, whose lives are blighted by Addictions, Illness and Loss in its various forms, letting them know that when they feel they have come to the end of their Life Journey, that could just be their new gratifying beginning.
I also write this book to reach out to the millions of desperate people out there, or just somebody who is feeling today that their life is at an end, to give them hope, and let them know that their perceived end is only just the beginning.

I dedicate this book to my beloved children and grandchildren as a tool to them, in the hope that they learn, understand and avert the pitfalls that Ruby fell into.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728385693

Pearl Heart

“Pearl Heart. Dip Bus Studies, R.N, LLB Hons., L.P.C Pearl Heart is a mother and a grandmother. She has worked for many years as a Computer Programmer, Trained Nurse and Social Care Manager. She is recently Semi Retired from paid Profession and currently enjoys working in Philanthropy Charity Work and Church Ministry. She lives in Surrey, England.”

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

EARLY CHILDHOOD

I was born in Amhlope, Zimbabwe in the 1960’s, then Rhodesia, a British Colony governed by the repressive Ian Smith regime. I am the younger of two siblings, my brother Stanley, being the older by three years. He and I are and have always been very close. I had an idyllic upbringing in the first eight years of my childhood. My mother left me in the care of my father and her parents in Xholweni, Amhlope and emigrated to England to study and qualify as a senior Nurse Midwife and Family Planning Coordinator. My brother went to live with my mother’s sister in Zumba and my father took me away to live with his parents at their farm in in the south eastern region of Zimbabwe. They were Christian believers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Living with my grandparents was a dream growth period. I was a favoured child and much-loved favourite grandchild.

My grandmother was a very loving, nurturing gracious Christian woman who instilled ‘good-heartedness’ in me. She had an excellent knowledge of herbal treatments, collecting herbs from the forests surrounding our large farm. From these, she pounded, ground, boiled and made various preparations to soothe, treat and cure a wide range of ailments from minor injury, cuts, bruises, burns, allergies, colds and influenza symptoms, cramps, diarrhoea, stomach poisoning, to labour pains and easing birth. She gave birth to my father and his eleven siblings and none of them ever had the need to see a nurse, doctor, optician of dentist in their childhood. She advocated the benefits of a plant-based diet. Our farm, being a mixture of both Arable Pastoral farming, my grandfather, uncles and aunts would hear none of her proposals for meals made entirely of maize, rice, potatoes, cereals, wholegrains, pulses, vegetables, nuts plus any of the fruit from our orchards and forestry. They argued vehemently for daily consumption red meat, chicken, milk, cream and cheese. They specially favoured the cow and sheep innards, chicken gizzards, cow foot and liver. In exasperation, my grandmother attempted to explain her belief that liver was bad for us as it contains toxins. She lost the argument and instead doubled her collection of prescriptive herbs as a precautionary measure. She became known as the local nurse, midwife and counsellor. She told me that she acquired such knowledge from reading the Bible and understanding God’s natural laws of health. She said the Bible taught her the importance of good nutrition in accordance to how she had read: -

And God said unto them, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. [King James Version (KJV.) Genesis 1 verse 29. Page 2, also called Authorized Version or King James Bible, English translation of the Bible published in 1611 under the auspices of King James I of England].

My grandmother’s persona and vocation were the spark plug to my Medical Missionary study and work in later years.

My grandfather was a ‘Master Farmer’, as the Community title was certified to him. He managed and worked their farm successfully rearing cattle, sheep, goats and chickens. Among other crops, they grew maize, wheat, alfalfa, rice, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, peas, lentils, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, a variety of green leafed vegetables, pumpkins, melons.

My grandfather was also the area Church Pastor. He ministered and preached weekly, on a Sabbath at the nearby Seventh-day Adventist Church. Him and his parishioners built the small brick building using mud bricks they made at our farm and natural materials sourced from the forest and riverbed nearby. Initially, they all worshipped at our farmhouse under the large shady Musasa tree indigenous to Zimbabwe. I always jokingly claim that my grandfather was the pioneer of Church Tree Planting, the now popularised concept whereby large churches are broken into smaller widely distributed establishments. My grandfather loved me dearly and I learnt multiple farming methods perched on his shoulder as he went about supervising his farm employees, working with his hands tilling the land, cultivating, sowing, branding cattle, dipping cattle, cow calving, hunting and fishing. It was a thriving farm and my grandfather was very generous, giving away the excess from the ample crop produce and fruit laden trees in the orchards.

The only blight to my otherwise early childhood living with my grandparents was when, at the age of about four years old, an excessively friendly neighbour attempted to sexually molest me using the allure of one brightly coloured boiled sweet in his hand. He unzipped his trousers and invited me to come and sit on his lap and enjoy the sweet. It was fortunate that my grandmother, on seeing me enter her kitchen where she knew this neighbour was the only occupant at the time, rushed in and took me away. In hindsight, she had never allowed me to be alone with this neighbour and I wondered whether that incident bore connection to the arrest and incarceration, years later of the neighbour for sexually molesting a young child. Sadly, he died in prison.

My first memorable tragedy heartache for my grandparents was the death of their twins, my uncle and aunt, who both died in a double tragedy and atypical manner. My uncle was trampled under by the ox as he led their old-fashioned cultivator and died instantly. My grandparents took his body to the house to lay him and prepare him for burial, arriving to find my aunt barely clinging to life, having been burnt in the kitchen, caught in flames by the fire she had lit to prepare the midday meal. She died seconds after they arrived.

The second tragedy was when our farmhouse was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. I only remember my grandfather, uncles and aunts frantically running to and fro with buckets of water to quell the fire, whilst my grandmother cradled me to stop me running in to retrieve my cotton doll that she made for me. The attempts to save the huge six-bedroom structure was fruitless. The outer rooms, storage barns filled with dry wheat, corn and rice were providing quicker ignition. The house made of timber and thatched roofing crumpled under the fierce blaze and was a heap of black mass within hours.

The destruction of our farmhouse appears to have the defining moment of the end of the blissful childhood in which I had thrived and passed all my developmental milestones. Very soon after that, I went to live with my father.

CHAPTER 2

LATE CHILDHOOD

My father lived in Harbour city with his then common law wife and her two sisters. I missed my grandparents, ached and cried for them most nights.

I was happy enough living with my father and his wife. She was nice and loving. She treated me with kindness and genuine concern. I grew to love her as much as she loved me. I called her Auntie Mummy. I recall an incident which occurred a year after I went to live with them. A sharp object became embedded in my eye during play. Aunt Mummy abruptly dropped everything she was doing, scooped me up, applied a protective bandage over my eye, bundled me in her car and drove at fast speed to the hospital, where I was treated satisfactorily. After that she was very protective of me, watching me in play, spoiling me with treats such as pretty outfits and weekly visits to local hair-dressing salon to have my unruly hair tamed with a hot comb and styled. She proudly showed me off to her friends as This is My clever daughter, she is the youngest in her classroom and yet she always gets the number one. The educational structure was that pupils’ scores in tests were graded from number one to whatever the class membership totalled; woe betide the pupil who was the ‘number thirty-five’ in a class population of thirty-five.

My mother returned to Zimbabwe to live with us when I was almost nine years. They collected my brother from Zumba where he was living with my aunt and her family. At first, my brother did not want his little sister back in his life. He had formed a good relationship with our aunt’s children in Zumba, and he missed them; however, he has a loving nature and he soon warmed to me, we bonded intricately, and we always have had each other’s backs.

On seeing my mother, my memories are of anger and resentment towards ‘this interloper’ whom I did not know, had never been made aware of her existence, nobody had ever spoken of her in my presence, I never knew nor had I been told that I had a real mother, not a ‘Mama mother’ as in the case of my grandmother or a ‘Auntie Mummy’ as in the case of my father’s lady. To have her thrust on me, and as was my nine-year old understanding; to have her chase away my beloved Auntie Mum was akin to devil himself appearing. I hated her on sight. This first impact view of my real mother shape or rather miss-shaped the history of our relationship up to my adult life, when, eventually I gave my life to Christ, sought forgiveness for not honouring my mother, resenting her, breaking God’s commandment to:

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which thy Lord has given thee [King James Version (KJV)Exodus 20 verse 12 page 67, also called Authorized Version or King James Bible, English translation of the Bible published in 1611 under the auspices of King James I of England].

I prayed for God to forgive me and put love for my mother in my heart.

My life, living was my parents was one of wealth, rich materially yet Spiritually lukewarm and a comfortable lifestyle. I was chauffer driven to the best schools. I was a member of a private sports club where I was a member of the squash team. I attended a Convent Boarding School where I achieved excellent ‘O’ Level GCSE results then transferred to a very good selective Private Girls High School where we switched classes to go to the Boys High School across the road for sixth form Physics, Chemistry and Biology lessons. I was a School Prefect, the first black School Prefect at the previously all while girls High School. I obtained excellent ‘A’ and ‘As’ Level results in English Literature, English Language, Biology and Geography. I went to the city University where I studied for a Bachelor of Business Studies Degree, however, I dropped out after two years of my three-year degree programme when I became pregnant. For my two years of study, I obtained a Diploma in Business Studies. had my baby, Grace, got a job and worked as a Computer Programmer at a Financial Services company to support my baby. Grace’s father wanted us to get married, but both our parents were not supportive of the idea, believing we were too young. I had known Grace’s father since we were at primary school. We went to different high schools and were later re-united at University where we fell in love. He was my equal intellectually and I remember that when we were in year 4, in the same class, he got the number 1 and I came second at end of year results, I cried all the way home. He taunted me and called me ‘Trumpet’ after that. We went our separate ways, he completed his Bachelor of Science in Agriculture degree, travelled to the U.S.A, where he completed a PhD programme.

Although I lacked for nothing materially when I lived with my biological parents, their characteristics differed at length to my grandparents’. I always felt the they lacked the inward formulation of humane joy, love, compassion, self-sacrifice, kindness, respect for others, goodness, gentleness and self-control; and were secretively dishonest in matters where honesty posed a risk to their reputation, yet openness from them would have averted a lot of future pain. It was not instilled in me to be a ‘sheep among wolves, wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove’; rather, I was applauded for being fearless as a lion which resulted in me being imprudently brave and never backed backing off from a playground fight with both girls and boys. I became the school self-appointed rescuer, never recanting from confrontation and taking on bullies much older and larger than me.

This was in direct contrast to my early childhood as I recall one incident when, my grandmother dragged me to hide noiselessly behind the tall reeds alongside our river bank when an irate neighbouring white farmer came charging towards us screaming, Now, where is the bloody black kaffir who left his beast to graze on my paddock!. I yearned for my grandmother especially one evening after my friend told me about what had happened to her the night before. She said that her uncle, who was living with them in their house, had entered her bedroom and shoved his hand up her nightdress. She said that she had spat the word, ‘efulefu, efulefu’, loudly at him. She did not know what this word meant, only that it was an Ibo derogatory term from the book [Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print] that we were both reading at the time. She then heard the living room door open as her father or mother heard her shout. Her father met her uncle in the corridor, and he came into her bedroom to ask her if she was okay. She said that she was. I write about this incident and my five year-year old near-abuse tale, not to shame my anybody, but to make my children and other young children and their families aware that sexual exploitation may occur even in their own homes and to be mindful of the signs of it and remove themselves from potential danger. I implore them to be courageous enough to