Becoming The Muse

Its been maybe a couple of decades since I wrote my Ordinary Level Examinations but I can still pinpoint the exact moment that led to me getting my one B and all As in everything else, Sciences, Arts and Commercials you name it, if I wrote it I got an A in it. Except Shona. You could argue that a B is still a good pass but then when you think about how it reflects that you can get A pass in English but not your local language… well…

Moving along, I think that the reason I got a B pass in Shona was because the examiner did not appreciate the literal but creative essay I submitted titled Kutsva Kwendebvu…

Kutsva kwendebvu varume vanodzimurana is Shona proverb that literally translates to: when beards burn, men will douse each other out. This proverb means that there comes a situation when we need help from other people. No man is an island.

The essay I wrote, I promised myself I would take to the grave… but since this blog is my attempt immortality I am going to share what I remember of the story that I wrote in the Shona Exam.

Kutsva Kwendebvu

There was this mechanic, who did mechanic things, fixing cars. Sometimes what cars simply needed to start was for you to suck out fuel from the fuel line and then spit it into the carburettor and just like that the car started, roaring into life, where it had previously been spluttering and coughing.

*Note This is a yesteryear solution… cars of today no longer have carburettors and instead have fuel injection systems.

Anyway back to out mechanic friend, he was having a particular hard time getting this one jallopy to start and had inadvertently swallowed copius amounts of fuel while trying to do the carburettor magic trick. Eventually he managed to clear the blockage in the carburettor and the car finally started. Success!

The mechanic decided to light a celebratory cigarette and in his haste he did not consider the fuel that had trickled into his beard as he was doing his thing. Oh I forgot to mention that our friend had a bushy beard going on, you know the kind that made it look like he was biting a furry little creature. Hair is extremely flammable, a beard that is soaked in fuel is spectacularly flammable.

The moment he brought the flaming matchstick to the tip of the cigarette lazily hanging at a jaunty angle in his mouth, whoosh, his beard went ablaze and shortly after his grease stained overalls joined in the inferno. He was running around the workshop screaming like a beast that had lost all rational thought. His workmates tried to tell him to stop drop and roll… but the mechanic was feral, running and screaming trying to claw his face off.

One guy grabbed the heavy mat they used to lie on when working on the underside of cars and dipped it into a bucket of water, then chased the man on fire and covered him, thus smothering out the fire. The incident took less than a couple of seconds though it felt like eternity. The mechanic was more shaken than hurt with his hair, beard and eyebrows completely singed off.

Fast forward to a few years later when the mechanic was visiting his now best friend on account of having saving his life. The friend was tinkering with a paraffin cooker that was refusing to light up because he had been sold water instead of paraffin. He had thought of a brilliant plan of soaking the wicks in petrol to repel out the water and get them to burn.

Unconsciously he had been stroking his beard with kerosene soaked hands so when he leaned into the stove to light it up the cotton wicks… You guessed it… his beard caught fire. As fate would have it that is the exact instant the mechanic walked in and without missing beat grabbed a bucket of water beside the kitchen sink and poured it all over his friend extinguishing the fire.

“Kutsva kwendebvu” they yelled as they laughed raucously, you wouldnt think anyone had just come a hairsbreadth from a fiery death.

The End.

WinterABC2023