Becoming The Muse

Guest Post

To forget or not to forget? That is the question.

It’s almost three years now since I left Zimbabwe. With every passing month, I feel like a part of me; a part of home, slips away. It’s clear in the way I now sound the word water as warraaahh without my mind jamming to process an irregularity. It’s engulfed in all the Chinese fried rice recipes I have fallen in love with. It’s evident also in my normalization of drinking bottled water and shunning tap water (Although, I believe the billion-dollar water industry must fall). As the body cleanses itself by releasing waste to make way for the new, so does my acclimatization feel like it has to sacrifice a former identity of mine to accommodate the assumed new.

And with such a happening I find myself confronted by the fear of forgetting home.

Having landed in America at twenty-three years of age, I was already fully equipped in the ways of the Zimbabwean man and, unlike folks who migrated in their younger years, I’m almost like an old head stuck in their traditional philosophy of life and refusing to conform to the now. Settling here enables changes that happen subconsciously, in the shadows of everyday culture shock and huge stay-your-ass-poor ravenous mouths of unending bills and debt.

These changes can only be pointed out by my people from home over the I-was-busy-all-week weekend WhatsApp video calls. I’m not refusing to change. Change was forever bound to happen. I’m worried that the changes are simultaneously also changing the sensitivity I have towards the struggles I used to identify with. Or maybe that’s okay?

That should be one of the perks that come with crossing over. Maybe it should be akin to reading a fiction novel as a form of escapism from the realities of struggle one faces, but only this time, real escapism —overseas, far from those troubles I used to sleep with every night.

To be fair, assuming I may be judged for lack of attempts at keeping up with home, my playlist is pregnant with nice tunes from the land of Mnangagwa and the new crop of talent coming up. (I must state here, for my Zimbabwean reader, that I’ll still fight anyone who says Jah Prayzah is greater than Winky D. Behave!) Sadza is served at least once a week, complemented by a mix of fried beef and kale. Sometimes a good beef stew works the magic of teleporting me back to my yesteryear streets.

I state this not to shame, assuming also that any shame can be sucked from it, that I have met friends here who crossed over and shunned everything home. While I keep up with the politics of the motherland via any of the loud X (formerly known as Twitter) accounts or King Kandoro’s hilarious political commentary on the Zimbabwean status quo, a lot of my peers could care less. Or maybe I’m throwing a wild allegation here, because, how many Zimbabweans have I even met to make such a bold claim?

Regardless, the question remains: Have I forgotten about home? Because, at the end of the day, it is more personal than it is about the collective.

See, the reason why I even chose to sit and pour on paper this mental state of affairs is that a large part of me feels guilty. Remember when we were young and didn’t want to eat spinach or finish the food on our plates and our parents would force us to finish by shoving an image of starving kids elsewhere without the food we had.

At that moment you’d have to feel lucky to even have food and, at the same time, feel guilty for having food and wasting it while other kids out there slept hungry. Yes, in a very simplistic way, that is how to paint my conundrum.

Many who have crossed over, especially to the US, have done so through means of Academic prowess —awarded scholarships for tertiary education. Some credit chance via the visa lottery or employing extraordinary talent (whatever that means). I rep the first: mere chance. Or God’s favor. I’m not ready to delve into how God’s favor works given that I know many of my friends whom I always thought deserved to go, grow and glow abroad but still remain in the country seeking greener pastures and waiting for better days.

Back to the eat-your-spinach analogy. Those imaginary kids who don’t have food aren’t imaginary in the status quo. They are my family who survive on remittances from all over the diaspora. There are my former college mates, the comrades I rolled with during lunchtime and crafted dreams of tomorrow with. They have their college degrees but with nothing to show for it. I know this because I talk to them.

They say they’re hustling and that’s how they manage adulting. But, what invokes my pen to scribble away (actually my keyboard but anything for the aesthetics) is this one question all of my peers keep asking me.

It’s the same question I see being asked online. Sometimes in subtle ways and funny sayings like, “International Orphans.” How does one get to also leave Zimbabwe? So goes the question. Of course, if you’re Zimbabwean you’d know that leaving Zimbabwe has been termed the Zimbabwean dream. And this fundamental question plagues many of our youth back home.

To reconcile my fear of forgetting home, the guilt within and just the mere self-righteousness of an article that seems to seek an exoneration of the self from those who have “sold out”, allow me to indulge you with one last analogy. If you got this far, you may as well stay for the ending.

In the small village where I grew up, there was a general unspoken consensus that if anyone had a car it became the means of transportation for almost the whole village. On average, there were always, at most, three families with cars. This meant that when there was a gogo who needed to be taken to the clinic for a checkup the car owner was on duty. No payment. No! Just community service. Pregnant women were guaranteed transport at any time of the day. At church, the preaching was that God can bless one person in the family and through that one person the whole family is blessed. Likewise, in the community, if one person had means, everyone in the community had means through them. This notion extends beyond its religious context. Ubuntu is loosely defined in these very same terms too.

At a personal level, I feel that I’m mandated not to forget where I came from. The more I remember home the more I appreciate a 9 – 5 job, a phone bill and a hot shower every morning. They’re simple luxuries that when juxtaposed in context with the modus operandi of back home, become huge.

There’s also a never-ending question as to what I can do to change the situation for my fellow comrades in the struggle for just the basics. Beyond the personal, maybe in the spirit of ubuntu, as exhibited by my village, I also feel that the people who have crossed over now have a moral responsibility, bigger than ever before, to solve the problems for those that remain in the burning furnace of the Zimbabwean economy. Because the solution cannot be that we all seek to leave. I do not have the answers. Surely, I don’t. I believe many in my position don’t either. And, contrary to popular expectation, although having crossed over, we have been presented with new problems that become immediate for our own survival in these foreign lands.

Again, maybe there exists a messiah complex within me that drives me to present myself as one who cares whereas I may just enjoy the luxury and comfort of an uber eats takeout, then when I’m well nourished by the unhealthy fried chicken and cheese, I become full of shit too (Excuse my vernacular, I’m sweet in person). In the words of the great Kanye; “I guess we’ll never know.” Either way, there’s a part in all this that spells out the need for solutions independent of powers that be.

Forgetting is out of the question. But does a deliberate intent not to forget to produce any oil to fuel a solution machine?

As you were!

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About The Author

Phiwe Mhlope is a software developer based in the US. A writer by night. Runs a weekly substack newsletter which is about stories and commentary from a Zimbabwean childhood and trying-to-adult life in America. A sucker for soulful Amapiano.
Blog: https://phiwemhlope.substack.com/
Social media: Twitter & instagram @phiwemhlope