This is my friend Auxilia from Princeton; she is also from Zimbabwe." This is how a friend of mine introduces me to her schoolmates at Penn when I visit her one day. I smile and shake hands as thoughts immediately start dancing in my mind, and I realize how much truth there is in that statement. In this part of the Earth, Princeton is my home. The place that shocked me beyond imagination when I first got to America has become my home.
I feel more comfortable in Princeton now than anywhere else. It brings a quirk to my mouth to think back to the days when I used to cry, "Why here, my Lord?" Now I look around and do not think twice about the amount of human flesh being displayed everywhere, do not open my mouth so wide at the age and sex of the beings blowing out circles of smoke. And the amount of people that do not share my religious views has almost become normal. How strange to call home a place where one is handed "a set of problems" every week.
What helped me accept Princeton as my new home more quickly was remembering, on my way here, a big part of the reason I was traveling over the Atlantic. Improving home by running away from home seemed ironic. "Education is the gateway to success," I had always been told, and so I had come in hot pursuit of it, to the land where tertiary education was supposed to be best.
But now I realize that I could never improve "home." Home in the right sense was perfect. There was nothing more to be desired. The love was there. 6592.8 percent inflation has not wiped off the smiles. And since reminiscences are all I have at the moment, rows of laughter of loved ones still echo in my thoughts and dreams as I remember kumusha, ekhaya (the Shona and Ndebele words for home, respectively), the place where I so long to be.
When someone asks me where in Zimbabwe I am from, I always think twice before answering. I am torn between two places: where I physically live with my family and where my family comes from, kumusha. I always feel the right answer is kumusha, where my parents grew up and where my ancestors are buried. There, I have the deepest sense of belonging, and I love the way I am so at peace with nature. On a typical afternoon sitting on a reed mat eating something from the fields — whatever is in season, always fresh — feeling like it is a much-needed and much-deserved meal after working in the fields all morning. We set out before the sun rises, soon after the first cockcrow (around 5 a.m.), because it gets hot quite fast. As we work, we talk and laugh and do not look at the clock, for we have a set portion to work on, not set hours to work. The stories continue during a tea break, and a couple of boys head out to herd the cattle. After we hit our target we all set back for home, in dire need of a shower and a heavier meal.
That is when I sit down and appreciate all that's around me. I see a hen with a trail of day-old chicks, some goats grazing nearby, a donkey bleating on its way to the grinding mill, an eagle hovering over to see if it can make lunch out of one of the chicks, and remember how wonderful it is that humans do not only live off the animals, but also with them too — in peace and harmony. This is where my heart lies, where I do not have to be camping to sleep outside, and sharing anything from meal plates to bedding is the order of the day.
But this side of home I only experience during one-third of the year. The other two-thirds are spent in the city where the children of the working class go to school and most families spend the academic season. Beautiful Harare with tall buildings, like a fantasy land — the closest there is to Western culture. Here one is not necessarily related to all the neighbors, which is almost always the case in kumusha; but we do know each other very well. Everyone knows each other; they even call the tomato vendor on the street by name and know what her husband has been doing. Nighttime is family time as daddy comes back from work, and all the kids are done with their homework. We all happily dig into our sadza, made of fine maize meal and water, and relate the events of the day.
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