The Sunday Mail
Rosenthal Mutakati
A stunned Mbuya Soko, with hands neatly folded behind her back and a hoe delicately resting on her left shoulder, grimaced as she pondered her next move.
While in this thoughtful trance, she shook her head vigorously, sat down and reached for a pouch of snuff that was in her bra.
She fed the contents up her nostrils before letting out the obligatory sneeze.
“Vakafa havana chavakaona. Since birth, I have never come across such. Someone is after me.
“Time will tell. How can someone just come and destroy the future of my family and grandchildren like this,” the widowed elderly woman retorted as she doddered back home.
But no one could blame her.
Someone was building a house right in the middle of a field she had ploughed for close to four decades.
As if that was not enough, her sweet potato beds had been dug up and a pit latrine was being constructed.
It is a familiar tale around the capital, where most open spaces in most neighbourhoods have been parcelled out by land barons.
“There have been successive droughts and I made no effort to check on my field. I only made the trip here today, to find someone building his house there. I wish I still had the energy; I could have dealt with this person decisively,” the old lady said.
Ghetto life will certainly never be the same again.
Land barons have literally taken over land that was previously used to grow crops and delicacies such as pumpkin leaves, nyevhe, okra and sweet potatoes that usually came with the rainy season.
Most streams, where we usually took a swim, have been destroyed.
Houses are mushrooming almost everywhere.
Most people who grew up in the ghetto had small fields from which they grew various crops.
Not only did these fields provide sustenance to some families, but it was on trips to these small fields that some teenage relationships blossomed into marriages.
“Usatambe shasha. Most people ended up getting married because of trips to these fields.
“You could go there and spend the whole day with a girl without anyone caring to inquire about your whereabouts.
“I grew up next door to my wife and we got a chance to be alone when it was time to go out to the fields,” one man who grew up in Glen Norah told this writer.
But bad things also transpired in these fields.
Delinquent teens would use them as cover to bunk school or to smoke.
“What these land barons are doing is unfair. They are threatening to bury history. Those fields were supposed to be left like that so that we tell generations after us how important these open patches were to the household economy.
“These fields were places of fun and we could practice a lot of things like singing, boxing, karate and playing the guitar there.
“Someone must put a stop to the issue of land barons so that life in the ghetto is restored to its original state,” said one guzzler, who prides himself for having grown up in the ghetto.
“Ghetto ‘rine nharo’. Real men were born and raised in the ghetto,” he quipped.
It was in these fields where gossip thrived during chance meetings.
If only they could talk.
And who can forget the odd fights as people feuded over pieces of land?
Family members would literally miss work to deal with the intruder.
Life will certainly never be the same again because of blood-sucking land barons.
Inotambika mughetto.
Feedback: [email protected]
