Buoyant in a Sea of Cries

I am at a point where I'm asking myself, what is the point of being buoyant in a sea of cries? Where is the joy, in striving so hard for life security and getting it, and yet be surrounded by people with such a dire lack of it at every turn? Will I have a good night's sleep in my big house, when the people I grew up with are struggling to survive? I think I will be tossing and turning on my therapedic, just as much as they on their rickety.

Where is joy in sailing a flamboyant yacht in a sea of blood and sweat? In a sea of poverty? Is it a worthy definition of success to drive a Bentley through the shacks I grew up in? Or I would have to bury the memories of the soccer we used to play with in that dusty ground with Rongai, and not set foot there again? That's a pill I can't swallow, I would have to keep a reserve of black in my heart to pull that off. A dark fort in my heart to take refuge in, for I don't think my house in the Brooke would be a fort strong enough to protect me from the mental torment.

Such is the vermin that's is eating at our African societies, we are chasing dreams that are not our own, trying to live lives that were imposed us. Half of the things we spend half of our lives doing are irrelevant to our societal needs. We do not need half the things we learn at school and half the things we spend our money only give us half the satisfaction we really need, completely unnecessary.

With our unnecessary education we went on to invent new unnecessary industries and embarked on unnecessary expensive advertising campaigns, forcing each other to buy unnecessary products and services, while poverty is festering like worms on a rotten pork liver. Poverty we should have been fighting all these decades, a poverty which has corroded our livelihood down to our thinking faculties.

This disease has consumed our perception, and this is a century old pandemic, and over the last couple of decades the symptoms have been slowly coming to the surface.

Walking in the streets of Harare you can see the blisters and boils of this pandemic, at the corner where there was a hardware shop, now there is a shop selling fake hair. Do our women need fake hair and fake nails, because I know we need bolts and nuts and saws to make our own products instead of importing everything. Our streets have been garrisoned by vendors selling unnecessary $1.00 products that do not change our circumstance.

Where there was a car showroom there is a fast food shop, where there was a cinema there is one of these new churches. Our industrial areas have gone quiet. Where there was factory warehouse there is a church, our community halls for community development have become churches, our sporting arenas have become churches.

I pray these churches preach the gospel of taking up our mental arms and fight the mental liberation struggle.

Yet all the sons-and-daughters-of-the-soil are concerned with is buying things for show off, selling things for show off, renting things for show off. Busy trying to live concepts of lives that were borrowed from our colonisers at the expense of real production. Busy buying second hand goods and second hand technologies from foreign nations, in an attempt to achieve foreign success, at the expense of real societal progress. 

We haven't developed our own technology, we haven't manufactured our own machinery, we haven't carried our language as a means of business, trade and instruction. Now our children are jobless in their own homeland because they have failed interviews conducted by a foreign language belonging to foreigners who murdered their grandfathers. Help me people, Is that sound reasoning?

These concepts were fed to our great-grandmother's children, after their fathers had been savagely murdered by foreign usurpers, so that they are eternally dependent on their usurpers. But its high time we redefine what our lives stand for, and strive for a kind success that make us independent, and interdependent and not dependent. A kind of success which is rooted in eliminating poverty. After all what is the point of being buoyant in a sea of cries?

They are using our hunger to control us, to force us into democratically voting a new government that will take us back to dependence in the name of trade and investing. They are keeping us in poverty, so that they can offer us a mirage of hope, and control where we put our Xs, leaving us to aimless finger-pointing, FINGER POINTING WITH NO REAL FACTS, an endless blame game, turning our heroes into villains. Heroes who took back what was taken from us. Even though some of them are a victims of this disease of trying to be buoyant in a sea of cries, this century old pandemic, which has affected everyone. But remember, no man wants to die with regret in their heart, the chances are still plenty.

If entire generations can be victims of such a pandemic, it is possible that an entire majority can be mistaken.

Does democracy really work for a hungry people who are easily swayed by the grumblings of their stomach? A hungry man is an angry man who might do things they will regret. We do not have to be arm twisted by IMFs and World Banks into accepting concepts of democracy they know they can control. 

It is a natural law of the universe that the strong will pry on the weak to feed their young, history might repeat itself. We must tread carefully, well meaning missionaries led to the scramble of Africa, and so can well meaning investors and donors. That is not the only solution people, there has to be another way. Let us build our strength first. The liberation struggle is not over yet, we have to be liberated in our way of thinking, we have to craft up solutions to our problems, THIS IS A WAR PEOPLE, SOME SACRIFICES WILL HAVE TO BE MADE.

Our leaders will pass the button stick to us, if we show that we have some sense, they will open doors for us, if we show we have a vision of the future, a vision to utilise what is ours for ourselves, and not just to globalise it, a vision that will lift the yoke of dependence and poverty. WE ARE JUST COMPLAINING IN OUR HOMES, but very few have knocked on their doors and proposed their visions of the future. Propose a real plan, that doesn't risk history repeating itself, and see if the doors do not open, I dare you today.

What we need is interdependence, being dependent by choice, knowing we can be independent if we chose, if our trade partners call for unfavourable bargains. We want to discuss with other nations on the same level. But we are not there yet, we have tried to chinja maitiro but I think we first have to chinja mafungiro.

The symptoms of this disease have been showing, and it is a century old pandemic. When the foreign companies that used to run our economy, foreign companies we used to brag about thinking they were our own, foreign companies that had been running the economy for a century, when those foreign companies suddenly relocated we were suddenly naked. Naked like Adam in the garden of Eden, suddenly conscious of the reality.

I am changing my definition of success, I will call myself successful when I have lifted at least 100 individuals completely out of poverty, out of living from hand to mouth. I will call myself successful if I have spread the real education that we need, an education on how we can build our communities, to at least 1 million people. I will call myself successful when I have contributed to our own home grown technology that cannot be sanctioned by another nation. I will call myself successful if I have made sure my people can utilise their languages to better their living, and not be downtrodden because they have not mastered other people's languages.

That is my new definition of success, one that is relevant to my society.

This is a complete paradigm shift.

Together we can make this work.

I wish you success.