Fidelis Bushu offers first review of Shamhu yeZera Renyu

(pic: Fidelis Bushu and Memory Chirere as young men in Bindura, 1995.)

A book Review by Fidelis Bushu
Title of Book: Shamhu yeZera Renyu
Author:  Memory Chirere
Publisher: Carnelian Heart Publishing, UK, 2023
issbn: 178-1-914287-11-4

 

Memory Chirere’s latest book of Shona poems, Shamhu YeZera Renyu, gives me a range of personal memories of him as man and poet whom I first met in his formative years.
 
I am happy that Memory Chirere has continued to grow in stature as a writer and poet ever since. Now I often see him ranked among the writers of our country, Zimbabwe. I usually smile at that as I try to deal with my memories. I am excited that many can now see what I already saw back then. I must state that this may not be a conventional book review. It is just a testimony instigated by Chirere’s latest book.
 
 
Memory Chirere was my work mate for a good number of years. Later, we both learnt that he is my uncle and I, his nephew, because we the Bushus are related to the Nzou Samanyanga people of Dotito.
 
I first met Memory Chirere who was coming in as the new teacher of Literature in English in a school where I had already been teaching English for a couple of years. He was being transferred from a school in Madziwa so that he could help resuscitate the teaching of English at A level at Chipindura. I first saw him when he was offloading his belongings from a truck onto the green grasses of Chipindura High School in Bindura. We were to share a house in the school. After we had carried his suitcases and the many-many books inside, he came out of the house to sit with me on the doorsteps to watch my luxuriant little patch of maize crop. Then he had a lean and hungry look. You could say he appeared underfed but athletic. He has always been a warm and hesitant personality with a penchant for quiet introspection. Of course, he also had that philosophic gaze into space common with teachers of Literature.
 
In 1995, Tipeiwo Dariro, which carries his first batch of poems, had just been published and it had already become a school text at Ordinary level in Zim. I recall many students coming over to the staffroom to see the poet and immediately walk away in disbelief. Meeting the writer of a book that you are studying may actually be quite jolting. Chirere gave our students at Chipindura High an opportunity to see that books could also be written by people they knew.

Chirere blended well in the school environment, regardless. He did not hold very strong views about anything. However, once he understood a matter, he tended to put it across in a much simpler way than many of us could, gradually, inflicting no pain on anyone! He has always been ‘avuncular’ and we laughed a lot together with him about that word. Chirere loves to break down difficult concepts into everyday language. This has continued to be his trademark as seen through some of his poems and short stories. In his first poem in Shamhu Yezera Renyu, he writes:

“Ndave kutya
nekuti handisati ndanyora
bhuku revanhu.
 
kana ndazoripedza 
vanhu vanofanira kuona kuti
ndivo vakarinyora.
 
vanhu vanonyora bhuku ravo
nemipinyi nemapadza nemajeko nemitswi
nemisodzi nedzihwa nedikita...”
 
 
Chirere has always been attracted to the subject of childhood in his writings. An early poem to this anthology is rightfully entitled ‘Ndaimhanya’ (I would run). It talks about how we are in constant haste during childhood and that we all have an extraterrestrial fuel which pushes us throughout life:

“Ndaiti ndikatumwa upfu kumhiri uko
ndaimhanya.
Kana ndave kubva kumhiri ikoko neupfu
ndaimhanya.
Ndaipa vakuru upfu ndoenda kundotamba
ndichimhanya.
Ikoko ndaiwana vamwe vachimhanya
Ini ndomhanyawo navo.
Taimhanya tose dakara zuva rasvika pakunyura
ndozomhanyira kumba.
Ndaimhanya.
ini ndaimhanya.”

In his short stories in his, Tudikidiki, a boy makes it a habit to watch the goings on in the neighbourhood and street. I recall that Chirere fell in love particularly with Kashangura Road in Bindura’s Chipadze Township. He adopted that road, and it recurs in his two short story books, Tudikidiki and Somewhere in this Country.

Kashangura is the first road that you enter when you come to Chipadze from Chipindura High (from the western side.) We often ambled along Kashangura with Chirere and the other teachers; Mr Walter Hondo, Mr Robert Masunga and Mr Tavengwa Tore, talking about nothing in particular. One day Chirere simply said, “This is my Miguel Street.” I understood him because I had read how all those short stories of VS Naipaul went round and round Miguel Street. Although each story in Miguel Street is individualized, the setting is the imaginary Miguel Street in Port of Spain.

Chirere liked to watch the men of Kashangura drinking from the tiny verandas, with their eyes always towards the road. He marvelled at the women plaiting one another’s hair with the calmness of artists. He liked to see the children playing games right on the narrow tarmac, their plastic balls rolling between our feet as we walked by. Up to this day Chirere tells me about his going back to Bindura, again and again, to taste the atmosphere of Kashangura. I feel it in his last poem:

“Dai
Ndikakuwana
uchipo.
Dai
Ndikakuwana
sezvatinoita howa.
Ndigokudzura.
Ndichizunza mavhu.
Ndichikudzura.
Usingatyoke.
Ndichikudzura usingacheme.

Masvosve akatarisa.

Ndigokuradzika mutswanda

usingashevedzere.”

Chirere tells me that Chipadze brings to him echoes of Aime Cesaire’s long poem, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, a book that Chirere reveres to this day. That long poem tells the story of one young man's excited return to his home in Martinique, after being away in France. The speaker of the poem is on a journey to confront history, the negatives and the positives, but he is not sure how to begin. I find the same vibe in Chirere’s longer poems, especially in ‘Detembo risina musoro’ (the worthless poem). In that piece a man gazes at his many shoes (old and new) on the shoe rack at night and is overwhelmed by the many futile journeys he has made on this earth, in search of meaning:

“Shangu dzangu zhinji dzakaita rundaza madekwana ano
muimba yokurara dzinondipa kufunga nzendo dzangu dzose
dzandakafamba. Kuita seshangu dzevanhu vandisingazive idzo
dziri dzangu! Ndinozvisunya ndichidana zita rangu repanyika.
Ndinoona sendisingadzoke kwandinodanwa nguva dzose. Mazvinzwa.
Saka iwe pikisa tikakavadzane ndizive handisi ndega. Uneni here?
Ndiri ndofa nhasi, ungatoreurura kuti wanga uneni here nhasi uno
muupenyu huno? Ungatonderawo bvuri rangu mauro kumadziro emba ndichidya nekuzavaza? Ungatonderawo kukapaza kwemawoko angu?
Dzimwe nguva ndinotarisa vana vangu ndoti ndevangu pakudii?
Ndevenyika! Kana naivo vana vandinoticha vanobvepi gore negore?
 Ndevenyika! Zvinonzi ndingatiche chii kuvanhu vane njere kare kudai?
 Ndiwoka madzimudzangara anonzi hupenyu hwangu. Mavhiri emota
akaturikidzaniswa seri kwezimba risingagare vanhu. Asi pane kanzira
ketsoka kanobva kugedhi kachiuya kumusuwo wezimba risina pendi…”

The speaker in that poem could be losing his mind gradually. The more the speaker flies into his own mind, the more he becomes enamored into existence. The poem alternates between hope and despair. You also find the same effects in ‘Kungoenda’ which leaves you wondering if the narrator has travelled abroad or has actually committed suicide. Just as you find in his earlier award-winning anthology, Bhuku Risina Basa Nokuti Rakanyorwa Masikati, Chirere blurs the edges and just when you think you have got him, you lose him!

In real life Chirere gazes at an object and appears to fall asleep in the beauty of his thoughts and when he wakes up you see it in his eyes that he had travelled. In his writings, his characters try to deal with the origins of their plight, their own insecurities, their own self-hate, and this quest allows their voices to inspire others to transcend their passive and horizontal identities.

I am not surprised that Robert Masunga, one of Chirere’s long time associates, says on the blurb that this book is based on journeying, physical and metaphorical. In one poem, a man is on the bus and on seeing the bloodshot eyes of the driver; he starts to wonder if this one too is not his long-lost son he may have accidentally sired during his many adventures across the world.

Or the other poem about a man journeying on a bus from Harare to Mt Darwin and meeting people who appear to be shamans. You sit next to a woman and all the way; she is busy on her phone, and she does not see you during the whole trip from Harare to Glandale. When she alights at Glandale, in order to proceed to Chiweshe, you gawk at her until she goes beyond the bend, still speaking into her phone!

She disappears from your sight with your soul. In her place sits a new passenger, who is carrying roosters in a basket and, as he alights at Kasimbwi, you follow him to say, you have left your roosters and people in the bus do not realise that you are now under the influence of something akin to Cyprian Ekwensi’s sokugo, or the wondering charm, that afflicts Mai Sunsaye in Burning Grass. The sokugo causes men to wander off, deserting their families and leaving behind their previous lives. Men suffering from Sokugo are also unable to settle in a place for a few days.

In Chirere’s poem in question, the narrator has to be exorcized by somebody at the next bus stop at Mushowani through wild and barbaric caning:

“Vamwe baba vazoti tinodzika tose ndikubatsire paMushowani
Murume mutema ane sutu nhema tai nhema bhutsu nhema…
Tadzika paMushowani.
Abvisa bhande ndokuti:
Mushonga wacho ndokukiya zvekuti dhu kuti huku idzi dzisiyane newe.
Zvanga zvisingasekese…
Akumura bhande paye ndokundikwapaidza
Ndokundirurusha
Ndokundishwatura
Ndokundichudika
achiti, mhanya, mhanya, mhanya usiye huku…
Ndatanga kumhanya ndichitevera mugwagwa weDharuweni
Ndokunzwa kuti jongwe nesheshe zvasiyana neni.
Ndamhanya kwenguva nekuti panga pasingamirike.
Izvozvi ndiri kunyora detembo rino pamusika paDharuweni…”

The Korekore country and its mysteries come alive in some of these poems. Chirere himself is an ardent follower of mbira music and African thought. He would play song after song of mbira on his radio, and the dancing feet of him and his friends would punctuate the night. We let him be.

It was through him that I came across many who were to become important in the literature of Zimbabwe when they came to visit or to take him to writers' workshop beyond Bindura. These are the likes of Ignatius Mabasa, Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, Emmanuel Sigauke, Shingai Ndoro, Alson Mufiri, Dudziro Nhengu, Munashe Furusa, Irene Staunton and others.

I wonder what other readers will say about poem, "Maraya naMareta," (Mary and and Martha). Is it about friendship or romantic love or the combination of the two? Was Chirere thinking about the struggle between appearance and reality? I have read the poem Vana vandakaticha (the children who were in my class) with a lot of interest, having taught the same children with Chirere. That poem begins:

“Aita mawara okuisa ruoko muhomwe mangu
Achibva aburitsa dhora ndisina kumupa…”

I am suggesting, in line with what Ignatius Mabasa says in his beautiful introduction to this book, that we have to acknowledge that through this book, Memory Chirere has joined the elite poets of   Zimbabwe through the sheer depth of his artistic and thematic engagement. To Memory Chirere, I say with a muzukuru’s license: Nayo nayo, shamhu yenyu, a'sekuru!

 
+Get a copy of Shamhu yeZera Renyu in Harare for $17usd. Contact Book Fantastic on: 263779210403. They meet anyone in town (Cbd) and offer delivery services anywhere in Harare and the country (for an extra fee)

Order it through Amazon:

Shamhu Yezera Renyu (Shona Edition): Chirere, Memory: 9781914287114: Amazon.com: Books