These six women

They came at different stages of my life and  all had some impact on my life. Some are long gone from my life but their memories I will carry till I die, if I will die, I am one of those who still think science will solve the little immortality problem  before it's lights out for me, even though science has failed Fidel Castro who died today.  I think of them as the six women. You see i have a condition called compulsive counting which is a particular sub type of my obsessive compulsive disorder. I number and put significant people in my life in appropriately numbered groups. Anyway I digress,  back to the six women.

The first one is not my mother as most of you must have thought. In fact my mother is not on the list of these particular women, she is on another list I will write about after I have written six other stories about the people in my life. Her name was Jane. I never got to know her surname. Lord knows I tried searching for it on the names  on the tombstones at the Number 6 cemetery. Those of you that know Bulawayo know that I  am not making this up, there really is a place near my former school Sizane High School named Number 6 and there is a cemetery there.

In that cemetery is where I would go searching for a tombstone with the name Jane on it so I could know what her surname was, I was never lucky. Jane lived both in my dreams and nightmares as a boy. She lived in my dreams because of her rumoured beauty that was more than that of any woman in Bulawayo. She lived in my nightmares because of what was said she did to men who picked her up.

You see Jane was prostitute. She operated in the  Marisha cocktail bar which to the uninitiated is like a mini night club in the suburb of Magwegwe where I grew up. If a man picked her up she always insisted that they go to her place. And what man could say no to Jane? So off to her place they went and had a great time but come sunrise the man would wake up on top of a grave at the Number 6 cemetery.

I won't mention the second woman's name in case they have gotten back together with her husband. I met her when I was a student librarian at Harare Polytechnic College in 1999. It happened that after dinner I went to buy bread in town, my college being slightly out of town near the Sheraton hotel and the headquarters of the Zanu PF party. It was around 9pm. I saw this woman with a bag bigger than what  the women of the night who operated in the then Kopje area usually carried.

Always one to read people's body language I could tell she was wasn't okay. When I got closer to her I could see she had bruises on her face and one of her eyes was swollen. What happened I asked? She told me her husband had beaten her up and chased her out of the house. I asked why didn't she go to the hospital. She said nurses would insist she report the assault to the police and she didn't want to do that as her husband might then be arrested and jailed and who would look after her and her two young kids? I then asked if she had any relatives she could go to and she said not in Harare as all her relatives stayed in a town called Bindura.

I then offered her my room as  a place to spend the night since she  didn't want to go to the Harare central police station, lest the police ask what happened to her face. She reluctantly agreed on condition that I wouldn't ask for anything in return as she had nothing to offer as a married woman. I said of course, since I wasn't that type of a man boy who took advantage of one in need, especially a woman. We went to my room, bribing the guards at the gate to let her in as only students were allowed at that time of the night. We drank tea, ate bread and slept. Her on the bed and me on the floor. In the morning I took her to the buses to Bindura and that was the last I saw of her.

The third woman was one I met in a taxi on my way to a job interview at The New Age Newspaper. Unnecessarily loud, rude and vexatious she insisted on talking to me even though I was clearly not interested as I was practising in my head possible answers to possible interview questions. As an assertive person I generally tell people who make me uncomfortable off rather quickly in sometimes colourful language though I hardly use French, but the language i use is close enough. Anyway I am glad on that day I held my tongue because when I was ushered into the interview room to see the human resources person it turned out to be the same woman whose rude and loud conversations I had endured silently for twenty odd minutes. She laughed in a rather embarrassed  and self conscious manner,  asked a few questions and told me I had got the job. I worked at The New Age Newspaper for two months as a photojournalist in those two months I  discovered I wasn't cut out to be a hard news photojournalist as I couldn't stand photographing the gory things people do to each other, the accidents that sell papers nor the numerous court cases given to junior photojournalist. That job inspired me to start my own freelance photography business.

Woman number four is one of those who lives in my phone. A divorcee with two daughters, she has a sense of humour I would take to the stage as a stand up comedian   had I  been gifted with. She has been through a lot but she writes about it all on her social media page in nonchalant manner that only her wit can command.  The stories she tells of her daughters especially the younger one always hilarious and leave me laughing like a lunatic. This woman proves that laughter is indeed the best medicine both to one who gives it and one who receives it. I won't mention her name in case her head grows larger than it already is, bigger heads on short people don't look good. That is the only identity clue I will give.

The fifth woman is as cold as they come. Fifty years with a body of a twenty year old because of a rigorous gym schedule. She, like many people is full of contradictions. Uneducated but an accomplished author of books used by those who went to school but are afraid of putting their thoughts on paper. An immigrant to Britain but she is unmoved by the plight of other immigrants who still want to move to the UK, especially able bodied men fleeing conflict in countries like Syria. Childless and never married not for lack of suitors but out of her own choice, which is rare for women her age as most gave in to social pressure and did what society demanded of them.

She also doesn't believe that blood is thicker than water as most relatives take advantage of that saying but she is very close to her sister. A curtains seamstress who spends most of her time indoors she enjoys going out  to dance at nightclubs or hosting themed parties of which she foots the bills for and let in the people who come to them in for free serving them generous amounts of alcohol and food. All of which ate of high quality and are expensive. Yet when she sees a mother with a young child begging on the street she doesn't give them a cent.  She is a Black woman but is not moved by people who cry racism everytime some misfortune befalls them. You get in life what you put in she says, most people don't bother working hard yet expect good things to come to them she concludes.


And who is the sixth woman? Well the sixth woman is actually one that I am not going to tell you about, not today anyways but look out for an article titled "The Sixth Woman". I am only telling you about her here because I wouldn't be able to tell you about  this woman in a few paragraphs yet in my mind she is grouped together with these other  women mentioned above. Remember my obsessive compulsive disorder I talked about earlier? That's what made me include her here even if I wasn't going to talk about her, not in detail anyways.

Velempini Veap Thuthan'mabhun'elizwen'lethu Ndlovu is a writer based in Johannesburg. He can be contacted on veapndlovu@gmail.com