Becoming The Muse

Coffee With Trabablas

If you were having coffee with me, I would be happy to have you visit my tangle of words… Compliments of the festive season. Its officially summer this side of the world having passed the Summer Solstice and deeply entrenched in the hot dry season…. It usually rains on Christmas Day but for the first time in a long time looks like we might have a dry Christmas, which is our equivalent of snow on Christmas.

If you are having coffee with me, I would tell you about an ambitious project launched in 2021 to turn the traffic circle know as Mbudzi Roundabout into an USD$85 million-dollar modern traffic interchange. It was initially projected to be complete by 31 July 2024 but its currently at 85% completion, even after adjusting completion date to end of December… will they be done in under a week?

The public is generally sceptical about the project and its bloated budget given the rest of the challenges the country is facing, how do we justify spending millions.. A quick overview might make it seem like one of the most expensive interchange projects built in Africa… but will the completed project reflect the amount of money poured into it?.. Compared to the Area 18 interchange in Malawi which cost USD $6.557 million (2020) and The Mount Edgecombe Interchange in South Africa which cost US$65.9 million (2018)

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that at a recent cabinet briefing it was announced that upon completion  Mbudzi Interchange would be renamed to Trabablas Interchange after one of the president’s liberation war names Trabablas Dzokerai Mabhunu in recognition of his developmental work in the second republic. I have no idea what his name means except that it rhymes with the colloquial lingo for a hangover… bhabharasi.

In 1964, a then 22 year old Mnangagwa bombed the Rhodesian locomotive at Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) Railway Station together with Comrade Mathew Malowa and they were arrested and sentenced to death. On account of his age he was removed from death row and after serving a 10 year prison sentence, he was deported to Zambia where he later studied and practised law. If this were a fictional tale, one would could say blowing up the train was a foreshadowing of a derailment to come…

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that President Mnangagwa is currently on his second and last term as president according to the constitution and even though he has publicly stated that he will not be seeking a 3^rd term, there seem to be an orchestration to have him serve beyond 2030. Social Media revealed that the president’s car the ZIM 1 is now a Rolls Royce and there’s been speculation on how one would acquire such a vehicle if they had no plans to stay in power….   

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that we had barbecue with trabablas… aka a goat which is known as mbudzi in ChiShona… Ever since the announcement that Mbudzi Interchange would be renamed to Trabablas people have been casually dropping the word Trabablas in sentences especially to substitute the word goat and just as an interjection, a punctuation, a noun and a doing word..

It was the best of times it was the trabablas of time…

Its Christmas in a little bit, whats been happening in your neck of the woods?

~B