A Tribute to Kenneth Kudoma 28/02/1978 - 02/05/2014

Death is a certainty, but as we go through the walk of life, we never anticipate having to deal with the passing of a loved one. I was just checking my facebook timeline on May 5 when I saw an update from a common friend that Kenny had died. What a shocking way to discover the death of a friend of 15 years. Another person commented on the post and mentioned having read the story in a certain publication, that was when I checked online and found this horrific story of Kenneth's exit from this world. The undignified way in which he died worsened my pain, it was not befitting of someone with such a beautiful soul.

I don't actually remember how I met him, but it was during my first year at the University of Zimbabwe in 1999. From then on, we got along like a house on fire. I will remember Kenny as someone who laughed a lot, even when it wasn't necessary to do so. There was a time when I had a terrible toothache and my other friend, Christina decided to make me feel better by giving me a piece of cake. He came to see me and I complained about Christina's weird choice of comfort food under the circumstances.

He started laughing and told me about how he also once developed a toothache while watching a soccer match in Bulawayo. His friend had bought him a Cascade (a Zimbabwean sweet dairy fruit drink), which he drank and worsened the toothache. "This cake will make you cry, let me help you deal with it," he said as he ate the piece of cake. 
One day I caught him on a bad day when his studies weren't going too well. He said, "Charlotte, I've heard people say they got such and such a degree from whatever university. Madegree haangotorwi, anoshandirwa (you don't just get degrees, you work for them), and he burst out laughing.

The late Kenneth Kudoma

Kenny was always full of positive energy.  I have lots of beautiful memories of the moments I spent with him, just chatting about nothing very important. I always knew about the new good and crazy songs receiving the most airplay through Kenny. I remember him interpreting Charles Charamba's Nyika, singing R and K sounds' Tina and performing a duet for me with my friend Senelisiwe singing Arthur's Mnike. 

Whenever I needed to buy groceries at Groombridge and Bond shops, he would always agree to walk with me, even if he was busy. I was proud to be seen with him as he was always neat. He connected me with several other people, most of whom are still my friends to date.
After university, we would speak on the phone, but thank God for facebook, we found a cheaper and more convenient way to chat. Our correspondence was usually months apart. He was one of those friends who I didn't speak to everyday but knew he would come through for me if I needed someone to talk to. He would always tell me to be grateful for my family and tell the ones I loved that I loved them. 

As we grew older our conversations also evolved from talking about music and light stuff to discussing serious things. In 2010 I was gravely concerned about him as he seemed to have hit a very low point. He later told me that he had been having issues with alcohol but was now doing OK. Sometime last year he sent me his last msg, which I never responded to as I kept procrastinating. I don't feel bad about it as our friendship was characterised by long breaks of no communication. 

Just like others that loved him, I have questions about how he met his demise. What did he do to provoke the "the group of gays" to have made him feel his life was so severely threatened that he sped so much and met his death? What was he thinking a few minutes before he crashed?

The late Kenneth Kudoma

My heart goes out to his lovely wife and young son, his sisters and other friends he had. It's not good to have a loved one die so young and senselessly. Whatever squabble he had with those people could have been resolved in another way, surely? I wish he hadn't spoken to those people, if he indeed fought with anyone. So far I haven't seen any solid proof of the existence of the people he fought with. I wish he had been at home with his wife. I wish Kenneth hadn't died. But he did. And it's hard to accept that he is not alive anymore, that we have to refer to him in the past tense. And he will be sorely missed. He was the type of person whose absence will be felt because of the energy he exuded. I hope he had remembered to follow his own advice and told those he loved that he loved them, just so that they have something good to hold on to. May Kenneth "'KK' Kudoma's soul rest in eternal peace. I feel extremely sad right now, but I hope someday I will think of him with a smile on my faces, not with tears welling in my eyes at the thought of his gruesome death.  
Since he loved music so much, I will dedicate this song to his memory.

No holidays for Zimbabwean women

The Oxford Dictionary defines a holiday as:

1. an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or travelling. 

2. A day of festivity or recreation when no work is done:

With this in mind, spare a thought for most married Zimbabwean women, for they know not the real meaning of this word. The Easter holidays have just ended, and many of these women are still nursing sore muscles after slaving away at their parents-in-laws houses. Real holidays are for rich, white tourists as far as most Zimbabwean men are concerned. Any public holiday is an excuse for them to show their parents that they got them a real beast of burden disguised as a wife. While holidays are a time to let your hair down and put your feet up, for a Zimbabwean daughter-in-law it's a time to tie your hair in your doek, place your feet firmly on the ground and work like a flogged horse. 

A survey I carried out with a number of married women indicated that beneath the submission and still waters, there's boiling rage and bitterness out there. Zimbabwean womenfolk feel short-changed by their husbands as they feel that their holidays are stolen from them. Many are lucky to ever spend a few hours of any holiday with their own parents.

I simply asked these women in my circle if they enjoyed their public holidays and Oh my! Did I open a can of big fat worms! From gangsta husbands who ban their wives families from visiting to sadistic ones that imprison their wives in their parents' houses behind invisible bars with invisible guns pointed at the woman's head, wives that come dressed as sheep but are actually wolves. In-laws who act like outlaws, husbands that think their families should be the only ones that should should get groceries and financial assistance. Because of the overwhelming response, I will have to write a follow-up article.
The worst affected seem to be the ones in the diaspora who only get to visit their families once a year, or even once in two years. 

According to Fatima: 

"Visiting in-laws is not fun at all because when the African daughter-in-law is there, the whole burden of household chores falls on her. I don't get enough time to relax. If I want a good holiday I just avoid visiting my husband's family. I enjoy going to my family for holidays because I get lots of help in whatever I need to do. I am more relaxed. I wake up late and eat what I want when I want. The other tactic is to have your own home in Zim especially closer to wherever they stay so that you can always relax there. African women have not holidays."

Tendai said:

 "Truly speaking, each time we visit Zim, I always feel short-changed because most time is dedicated to the husband's family.Fine, at times he leaves me at my father's house, which l strongly feel would just be some gimmick, because while at our home l get calls  from him any time to be told we have to visit this , that or the other person, all from his side.I basically have no time of my own. I'm not happy at all, and worse still when we go to his parents' house coming from South Africa, yooooh I will be so tired of travelling, and being a daughter-in-law, they expect you to cook for them from day one."

Because the issue of visiting families back home is such a thorny one, with many couples failing to strike a compromise, a lot of people have just decided not to visit their motherland during public holidays, and if they do, they minimise their stay there to minimise the squabbles. All the happy faces people see seem to be just a front. There is a lot of pressure behind the scenes. My former schoolmate, Ashley, had a lot to say with regards to home visits: 

"To manage all this craziness, we start planning for the journeys months before they come.  Budgeting every cent that it takes care of both families during the visit. We also set the number of days we spend with families which are not more than a week, that way it reduces pressure. Basically visiting family during holidays has become the biggest challenge we have had to encounter, it's not a joyous thing anymore because with each and every visit we plan, we have also to keep in mind the pressures we will encounter. We play the roles that need to be played and make sure we are out of there before we end up fighting ourselves because the pressure, when it's turned on from all corners, we ourselves end up fighting. 

To remove this pressure associated with visiting families in Zimbabwe, some couples part ways on arrival on the home soil. Georgina said she and her husband always part ways with her going to her mother's house while he goes to his own family. That way everyone is happy. It's a strategy that many couples have employed. Husband and wives then take time to visit each other' families, but will keep their bases at their families' homes. This seemed to be a popular choice for a lot of women I spoke to. Some open minded men, like Sam, did not find a problem with this.

"Normally we save for and make a single 'Home trip' each year where we include both families, days at mine and some at my wife's. If there is need or time is limited then we split, she goes to her family and I go to mine. We obviously not happy with the status quo but we have to do what we can, considering the expense and the work pressures this side." 

Austin confessed to spending more time with his family than his wife's.

"The reason is simply they stay in the rural areas and I am not comfortable staying in the rural areas as a typical town boy!Moreover I hate having to humble myself around the place, that's not my style!Definitely my wife is not happy about that because she wants more time checking out my in-laws. So what we do these days is shorten our stay in Zim to about a week!"

Lucky fish, isn't he just! It really is a man's world. A woman wouldn't have the audacity to say I can't visit my husband's family in the rural areas because I'm a typical town girl.

Of course, you can count on it that there will always be the hard nuts, which are the dominant group in the male species, like Ryan, who thinks that since he paid lobola for his wife, she's now like part of his furniture and can't just go to her family any more. Ryan said it's the wife that joins a man's family when they get married, she even assumes his surname, and that means she doesn't belong to her family anymore.

It seems the line between marriage and slavery is notoriously thin, in most cases. And here I was, thinking marriage was the merging of families, not the woman being forcibly yanked from her family. Talk about taking the wedding vow "To have and to hold (to ransom)" to another level! I also thought that if a woman got married, her parents would have gained a son not completely lost their daughter, condemned to never see her again. With this very bleak outlook of marriage, a nunnery begins to look like a very attractive option. Marriage shouldn't be for the benefit of one person, ensuring happiness for the other person should be reciprocal in that union.

People spend years on end away from their families, some only travel every second year to see their families in Zimbabwe. Both husband and wife miss their parents and relatives. They get home after so long and the husband says, "my parents'  home is now your home. You can't go to your family. I paid lobola for you. You even use my surname. Blah blah blah!" The woman misses her family while in the UK or wherever, comes to Zimbabwe and is forced to stay with people that her husband misses, is only permitted to see her family for a few hours and has to quickly take lots of pictures of them to see while she's imprisoned at the husband's family home, and before long is back in the diaspora, still missing her family. If this isn't sadistic, I don't know what is.  

"My husband has become self involved and there was a time when he didn't like my family to visit or us visiting them so it was a challenge. We have now always tried to balance the visits by alternating each year. Its not easy though as the hubby's family believe all holiday visits belong to them!", said Charity. "I sometimes catch myself asking me this question, is this all there is to life? To love? To marriage?" she added.

It appears, apart from women just missing being with their families, they are concerned about the high expectations that come from their husbands' families. "Most times you would rather spend more time with your family because your husband's family always has high expectations of you whether materialistic or physical, like cooking all the time," said Patricia. "Its never easy because nobody except your own family can really accept you. Its always easier with your own people. There is always that feeling that you are not welcome, even if its just imagination," she added. 

For some women, though, life is a breeze. One woman, Selinah, said, "Fortunately for me all my in-laws are deceased so I get to visit my family the most". Another, Elizabeth, said she was OK with her husband's family. "Maybe its easier because both my in-laws are late so I don't have to perform all the chores expected of a daughter-in-law."

I must say Selinah and Elizabeth's responses were jaw-dropping for me.They stopped me dead in my tracks. I had never thought someone's death could be viewed as fortunate. And it is disturbing that life turns out to be easy for some people only after others are dead! When will this war, this animosity between in-laws end? Can't we just get along when we are all alive? Does one have to die for the others to be happy?

There are a few drops in the ocean that actually get along with their living mothers-in-laws, like Anna:

"My husband's family is extremely big. When I go there I know I go to work , but my mother-in-law never sits down. We work together. She's a wonderful person and even shouts at her daughters when they don't help me with the chores . My husband and I agree on the duration of our stays with our respective families. My hubby is so free at my parents' house that he can sleep over even when I'm not with him. My sisters-in-law used to be a problem but my husband told them where to get off. My father-in-law is also a great man.

Anna's scenario is what a lot of women can only dream about.  

One interviewee gave me a very rare scenario where her father would pick her from the airport on her arrival from the UK and drop her off at her in-laws, saying she didn't belong to her biological family anymore.  

"Now my siblings are married I'm not forced to go to in-laws I just go to my siblings' houses and stay as much as I want," said Debrah.  

And that ladies and gentlemen, is the life of most Zimbabwean women with regards to public holidays. From these few interviews, there are evidently very few happy bunnies. In my follow-up blog, I will throw another pity party as we look at more of these very sad women's sob stories.

*Names of interviewees have been changed to ensure the women's families aren't slaughtered altogether so they are never seen again, not even on Facebook!

Write your own history

I have a number of people in and out of my life that blame the past for everything that goes wrong in their lives, and I must say I find that a bit lame and retrogressive. 

"It's not my fault that I turned out this way, I was raised in a dysfunctional home." 

"I grew up without love from my parents, that's why I ended up dating older men that abused me." 

"My legs were amputated when I was very young, so I ended up loving guns to defend myself and eventually shot and killed my girlfriend", 

"Blah blah blah!"

Psychologists will say otherwise, but I will argue that it's up to each person to decide which path they want their life to take. People who have habits and beliefs that affect their marriages very negatively, like domestic violence are known to blame it on how they were raised, how their parents neglected them, or how they didn't have role models in their lives. You can't keep singing that song for the rest of your life. 

I am responsible for writing a history that my kids will look back at, and either be very proud or very ashamed of. And I try to make sure I don't normalise nonsense like "men are like children and should be treated as such", or that marriage is hard and women have to be resilient sweet sad wives. What other people believe is their business. We are not other people, we are individuals who make our own rules and try to stick to them,map our own paths for the sake of mutual happiness and so that our kids never have to also be self-destructing or self-effacing because they came from a certain kind of upbringing. I try to make sure my kids will say about me: "Mom didn't take crap from anyone and that's where I learned not to take crap from anyone either". 

I don't think anyone should ever use their upbringing as an excuse. Whether your father was an unrepentant criminal or your mother was a prostitute who was known far and wide, you should strive to better yourself to avoid going down the same road. 

I met this elegant grief-stricken woman at Protea Magistrate's Court waiting for her jailed son's appearance on numerous charges of fraud. She was from Soweto and told me she had been lampooned in the township when she sent him to posh schools because she wanted only the best for him. She thought if she sent him to the township schools he'd just wind up being a drop-out, or worse, a criminal like some of the boys in the area. She said to me, "Wait till you see him. Just one glance at him and you will see that he wasn't raised to spend his time rubbing shoulders with the scum of the universe". And I spotted him when he appeared. He was in a group and I discreetly pointed at the strapping hunk in handcuffs, carrying a plastic bag with clothes and asked her if that was her son and she burst into tears. He was absolutely handsome, a beautiful man that many girls would have loved to take to their mothers. His mom's whole body shook as she sobbed and he waved sadly in her direction. My time was up and I had to go back to work, but I just sat with her and held her hand as she wept. I did not even know her name, but her grief broke my heart. 

When the son's case was postponed, he came over to hug and kiss his mother and repeatedly said, "Don't cry Ma, be strong for me". He also shook my hand, probably because he had seen me support his mother as she cried. After he had left, the woman said, "Maybe if his father had been there, he would have turned out better." I told her I was sure she had done great raising him, and he had made the choice to defraud people. A lot of kids grow up with both their parents around but probably do not get half the love and material support that the errant young man got from his mother. Others have it far worse, but they strive to ensure that their own children never have to suffer the way they did. 

And that's what it boils down to - choices. I choose to be a fighter. I choose not to dwell in the past to my own detriment and that of my offspring, dwell so much in the past to a point where it clouds what vision I have for my future. I choose to make my kids look at me one day with awe in their eyes and say, "Wow!!", not roll their eyes and say,"We couldn't choose our mother, thank God we can choose our friends".