Becoming The Muse

Black Rain

I caught a sliver of ash, falling from the sky and it took me back to my childhood.

I spent a part of my childhood in Chiredzi, a town located south east of Zimbabwe, in the lowveld region, hot and dry. My memories of it, carry with them the sickly sweet smell of molasses, which was used poured as tar on the roads of Hippo valley estate and its vast sugarcane plantations that were irrigated by a dense network of water canals.

When it was time to harvest the crop they would set the fields on fire, filling the air with smoke and ash. We would play outside, catching the ash from the burnt stalks… we called it black rain.

The reason for burning the sugarcane was because it was a simple and cost-effective way of removing the leaves and tassels from the sugarcane stalks before chopping it down and packing it for processing at the mill plant.

Have you ever tasted sugarcane that has been burnt? It has a hint of caramel…obviously.., sweet, smoky and tastes like sunset…. Or at least, how ten year old me, imagined a sunset would taste like. Once you taste that type of sugarcane, the fresh one seems so bland. I actually prefer brown sugar to white sugar because its flavour is vaguely reminiscent of burnt sugarcane.

There was an unwritten rule, that you could walk into the fields and feast on as much sugarcane you wanted, as long as you didn’t attempt to leave the plantation with it. The were mounted cops on horses patrolling the area and it was rumoured they could smell if you were upto no good..

I caught a sliver of falling ash and it reminded me of a time when all that mattered was play and the smoky taste of burnt sugarcane, we didn’t worry about the impact of burning sugarcane on the environment – we were kids–

We might have seemed carefree but we were careful to never be in the fields when they were burning – the were stories about people and animals trapped and burnt to death. We also knew to not be on the side the flames were going as various animals and creatures that had made the fields their home would come rushing out… some found it the perfect opportunity to hunt.

After a day of fun in the hot lowveld sun, with stolen dips in the canals, even though we were expressly forbidden from doing so.. adult me is shocked at the recklessness of youth – gosh, I’m turning into my parents – we would be home for dinner with the family, cooled by the breeze from a rickety chandelier ceiling fan, going round and round above the dinner table…. The night silence punctuated by the insects bumping their heads on the window trying to escape the heat outside.

Sometimes tiny black insects would fly through a gap and find themselves in your soup…. They gave off an ever so pungent odour which would totally ruin your entire meal if one tiny insect found its way into your soup…. We also called those black rain as well…

I hated those insects and their horrid smell, but they were the perfect for one thing. An excuse to get up from the dinner table and dump your plate of food in the bin. All you had to do, was make a disgusted facial expression, point at your plate and exclaim, “Argh Black Rain….”

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