Of Radio Dodger

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed to catch up on whats been happening in the world when a trending hashtag felt like a punch to the core.. #RIPDodger it cant be I thought as I scrolled through the condolence messages to confirm that Donald Marindire AKA Dodger was indeed gone.

Pours liquor…
💔#RIPDodger https://t.co/nFm2gUaFSu

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) August 26, 2021

I first met Dodger at the ZimHipHop Summit during the Shoko Festival several years back. Back then blogging in Zimbabwe was… was… was… lets call it highly underrated. I knew only a handful and was pleased to meet a fellow blogger, particularly one who was actively showering the power of blogging to the Zim hip-hop community. He had noticed a dearth in credible publicity around the Zim Hip Hop culture and what started as mini rants and reviews on Facebook had grown grew into a something bigger, www.shonaboyco.co.zw

Donald went by the self-styled moniker of Dodger after a memorable Charles Dickens character. Dodger had grown up with the literary bug, the library his favourite chill-spot and from there the progression from reading to writing had been elementary… Having been a long time resident of his Facebook and Twitter pages I always chuckled at his witty repertoire which was highly uncharacteristic for his professional capacity in the second republic of Zimbabwe.

While he professed he was no poet, he could wax lyrically about existential philosophy and of course Hip Hop. I recall running into him at a rooftop poetry recital of a now late wordsmith Rae Lyric where she had declared she was a bride of poetry and between finger clicks and sips of Charles Glass Lager we talked about the immortality of the creative soul which could be reincarnated again and again in transcendent art forms such as a line of poetry, a punchline in a rap song, a sentence on a blog…

Orbituary:The first and last time i met Rae Lyric https://t.co/24SnNThEot
cc @AfroBloggers @Beatonm5

— Kwekwe Town Kid (@Planet_Dodger) November 23, 2018

That moment with time would eventually lead me to the creation of blog post which is scheduled to post in the event that for whatever reason I am unable to keep deferring its publication date like a deadman’s switch, one last coffee share…. *Read Of My Immortality*

I was thinking about this as I went through Dodger’s last posts which now in hindsight seem like he was signing out, literally and metaphorically… I thought he was being morbidly poetic but now re-reading the series Letters From My Deathbed he was really bidding farewell to the world…

Man, where to even begin… 💔

…So those were really Letters From His Deathbed…. https://t.co/KTjWoMtadP pic.twitter.com/UYnmoin7og

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) August 29, 2021

•Letters From My Deathbed: Dear Mr President
•Letters From my Deathbed: Dear Hip-hop
•Letters From My Deathbed: Dear Michelle

Been watching all the condolences messages coming through and feeling pensive as I replayed a track by The Band Perry – If I die young which has the following line:

A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell 'em for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner
And maybe then you'll hear the words I've been singin'
Funny when you're dead, how people start listenin'

Funny when you are dead people say all the things they should have been saying to you when you were alive and now I can only hope that you find peace and that family and friends find comfort during this difficult time… tilll we meet again in the space beyond the words…

Rest Easy, Radio Dodger ZW: Off Air

~B