The gnawing guilt ate at my insides the moment i boarded the plane back home. 18 months of trying to make it in a world that did not give me a second glance. Promises made with verve at the beginning, the same that lost meaning along the way, till they became nightmares haunting me every day.
The same would confront me that very same day. Seeing the country I love, gone so much into decay. Yet a part of me was rejoicing; indeed it jumped and sang hallelujah that very day, for finally, I was coming home to stay...
I craved for the sweet smell of dust on the Zimbabwean streets; the whiff of urine and excreta that came from service lanes right in the deep recesses of a city I called home. The site of bumptious young women with ample breasts covered in tops varying from lime to blue and sometimes gray...
I longed to be back in a country I called my own; To bump and jive to the sounds of Oliver Mtukudzi, as his voice resonated to the lyrics of Nhava.
As with many, I vowed to listen only to the sound of his voice once again and ignore the meaning of his words, as he rued the coming back of a son of the soil from the diaspora to an empty life with nothing to give his family and friends.
I could have done better. That is what I constantly swore. Could have made it big. That is the idea, is it not? "You board the plane, and you are rich" When you decide to eat dog, better get the male and take the balls and all, the elders used to say...
People will only smile at you when you are in the diaspora, far away from home, missing them, with a dollar or two to spare...
That is the life of the one who chooses to go to the world out there...
It took me a year to realise that Harare would not be a home for me again.
This is why, after a year of pain, I packed my things and left...
