Becoming The Muse

Coffee With Rasta

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle words and invite you to feel at home. The water is boiled and the sun has decided to join the load-shedding schedule… Is it just me or are days colder and longer when there is no electricity, maybe that’s just the boredom which is hard to distinguish from the hunger, or is it just a me thing?

My personal style aesthetic is that of a simple soul who finds a home wherever my head can rest.

One remark I always get from people is how come my hair isn’t as grey as my beard, beats me… genetics perhaps? Having locs subjects one to a lot of assumptions and curiosity. Bob Marley and reggae music made a lasting impact on introducing Rastafarian culture and Jamaica to Zimbabwe. We even have genre of Zim Dancehall music which sprang from influences in Jamaican Dancehall music.

Having loc’d hair used to invite the stereotype that one was either dealing drugs or doing drugs and possibly criminally connected. The last one is odd, when you consider that you get your head shaved when you are arrested, so someone with long hair is essentially displaying how long they havent been on the wrong side of the law… (or maybe that they are really good at not being caught.)

Over the years locs have somewhat become demystified, its not odd to be in a space and find loads of other people with locs there too… Maybe its because I fraternise with a lot of creatives, and there seems to be a certain correlation where creative individuals tend to have locs, perhaps it’s a form of embracing their self-expression…

 Its not uncommon to hear someone comment “marasta awanda kudarika vanhu” which directly translates to the are more rastas than people as if someone with locs isn’t a person… Even when someone is describing a group of people they will phrase it as “I saw three people and one rasta…”

A random stranger will greet someone with locs in Jamaican Patois and if the spirit moves them might even invoke a rastafarian chant “Greetings in the mighty divine name of His Imperial Majesty, emperor  Haile Selassie I the 1st. The conquering lion of the tribe of Judah”

Maybe it’s the rasta colours…

A pirate taxi will stop for someone with locs and not pick up a close-shaved baldie on suspicions of them being undercover cops on a sting operation to arrest illegal pirate taxis known as mshikashika… The mshikashika are a menace on the roads disregarding traffic rules and seating arrangements with impunity…

As a rasta you get invited to have the front row seat to the traffic mayhem, as you worry about how any sudden braking would result in castration…

If you are having coffee with me I would tell you that as someone with locs passing a group of police makes you question if you are in violation of rules and regulations. The police seem invested in stopping petty transgressions like how they have now launched another operation to stop touts.

These are another menace who will be trying to load passengers into public taxis and sometimes to the point of harassing the commuting public… Making eye contact with them is like signing a contract and before you can finish saying where you are headed to, you will find yourself bundled into commuter bus or taxi..

Meanwhile allegations of million dollar corruption scandals barely get investigated even when the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission maintains that the are no sacred cows. The commission’s twitter handle has currently been hijacked by someone who claims to be a disgruntled insider turned whistleblower claiming to expose the rot in the system.

The alleged evidence is damning and implicates high ranking government officials. The commission issued a press release to disregard any communication posted there as they are not in control of the social media handle…

Whats been going on in your neck of the woods?

~B

#WinterABC24