My African Home

Some days, I remember Bulawayo. I was fourteen when I left, and now I am sixty. Yet the city lives in me still. Undimmed. Unforgotten.

I remember the crisp morning air and the heavy, stifling embrace of summer’s heat. School days at Baines and Eveline were long, but in the afternoons, our pool’s water was a refuge. Cool, quiet, and soothing. 

The journey to Eveline Girls’ High on the city bus, from Paddonhurst to city centre, passed jacarandas standing sentry, their violet robes like solemn guardians. The city hall teemed with the pulse of life — the bus stop thronged, and the market spilled its wealth of colour — fruits, flowers, and wares wrought by patient hands. From there, my sister and I walked to school to join the late row for assembly.

I remember how fond I was of the area around city hall. There dwelt an air of dignity in the city whenever I visited Haddon & Sly and Meikles. The city with its broad streets was never loud; it didn’t emphasize any clamour. It bore itself as an elder does — worn, wise, and watchful. 

In those days beneath the endless blue, before the world began to unravel, I was whole. Complete.

This I remember.

Yet, I am a child of Africa.

Born in South Africa, yet raised within the beating heart of another land, I know this continent. I know it by the scent of soil and the song of dawn’s first birds. The hadeda, Piet-my-vrou, and thrush, to name but a few.

I knew more about wild animals than farm animals. I recall the monkeys at Maleme Dam, bold and untroubled. The crocodiles gliding like shadows through the waters of Lake Kyle. The blue duiker flitting through the emerald hush of the rainforest at Mosi-oa-Tunya, where the mist rises above cascading waters.

I remember the orphans, lions, eagles, antelope, with every  visit to Chipangali; wildness preserved in trust.

I remember the fish eagle’s cry at dawn on the radio, clear and haunting, as if the land itself spoke. I listened to Afrikaans on the radio with quiet wonder, not fully understanding all that was said, yet knowing with certainty: it was part of me. My heritage. 

Nature is a quiet reminder that there are no borders. Trees flow across them: the flame trees of Matabeleland and Limpopo, their scarlet blossoms ablaze against the sky. The msasa, whose copper leaves turn in the vernal air, the yellow fever, kierrieklapper, mopane, acacia, and baobab.

Both here and there, I have wandered past wild hibiscus and flowering aloes, beneath the arching boughs of flamboyant trees in bloom. I have breathed the sweetness of yesterday-today-and-tomorrow mingled in the heat of the late afternoon. I have seen bougainvillaea climbing walls, and plumbago tangled with memory.

I know the scents of lemon bush, the stubborn brilliance of impala lily, the solemn grace of proteas, the sunburnt cheer of gazanias as they greet the light, and the strelitzia in bloom.

I have walked on mighty stones — not those that pave the city’s streets, but those that raised kingdoms. I have stood among the silent ruins of Great Zimbabwe, where the past rises from the earth in solemn majesty. I have heard of Mapungubwe — the ancient hill where golden rhinos once lay buried. I have stood on Matopos, and I have breathed the mist that crowns the Nyanga mountains, where silence reminds me that the world is cradled in the hands of its Creator. 

I remember the Bulawayo storms gathering in the hush of hot afternoons. Swollen with sudden quiet before the sky was rent asunder. The scent of rain on parched earth rose sharp and electric as the first drops fell. Granite drew lightning like a lodestone, and the heavens answered with fury. These were not gentle rains, but fierce and living things — storms that knew their names. Like horses wild, pulling chariots of sombre cloud, they charged across the vault of heaven, cleaving the light and reminding the land to whom it belongs.

I remember the taste of home. The warmth of sadza held in the hand and eaten with marog. The sweetest oranges ever known, sun-warmed and dust-kissed, their juice running down my wrists in childhood’s careless delight. I found comfort in the salt and spice of biltong, the smoke of a Saturday braai curling into the dusk. Crisp samosas, malva pudding, melktert, and koeksisters — tastes borne across borders, stitched into memory like thread through cloth.

These are not mere memories to me. They are roots.

I left a country, yes.

But I shall never leave Africa.