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ISBN: 978-0-86922-823-4
By Chemist Mafuba
YVONNE VERA became a novelist by the mercy of God.
Her mother wanted to have an abortion. Yvonne went blind in her childhood. And, she could have died in a road accident.
This took place in Tsholotsho where her mother had gone to teach in 1971.
Yvonne had wanted to see her grandparents in Bulawayo.
Her mother was teaching at Kapani Primary School, where Yvonne was in Grade 2.
Buses ended at Sipepa Township, 15km away from school, due to bad roads. Her mother hired a donkey-drawn cart to take them there.
The cart overturned on the way and covered the pair. The driver ran to the village to find people to help him lift the cart.
They put it back on its wheels, enabling Yvonne and her mother to crawl from where they had been trapped.
Ericah Gwetai recounts this incident in the autobiography Petal Thoughts that she wrote about Yvonne Vera.
Yvonne was born on September 19 1964 at Mpilo Maternity Hospital in Bulawayo. Her mother had failed to have an abortion.
She had felt dizzy and passed out when she had been waiting for the bus at the main terminus in Lobengula Street. She woke up to find a crowd of excited people surrounding her.
“My shoes had been removed and my feet were propped up on top of my red handbag,” says Mother.
“My skirt had been unbuttoned on the waist and the blouse on the front, leaving my breasts bare. A tall, sturdy woman was fanning me with a napkin. She was shouting: ‘She’s pregnant! Look at her glowing skin! Her breasts are enlarged!’
“Another woman who had examined my ears shouted: ‘It’s true! She’s pregnant!’ I don’t know what my ears were showing for her to have said that,” says Mother.
“Our women have the knack of telling if you’re pregnant without using laboratory tests. I was shocked to learn that I was pregnant. My heart was racing so violently that I could hear it. I was 17.
“Some women were giggling and others were smiling at me. The men remained calm, except for one smart young man who was wearing a bell-bottom and a black shirt.
“He ogled at me, whispering: ‘Babe, you’re pregnant and beautiful.’ I was flattered. Of course he was being mischievous. I pulled myself together, dressed up properly and left the scene.”
The doctor confirmed that Mother was two months pregnant. Together with Jerry Vera, the father, the two of them hatched a plot for her to abort. Her friend Ka, who had had an abortion herself, helped her.
Ka used all the methods that she knew to induce the foetus to come out. Nothing happened. They tried a doctor who was known for helping girls wanting to remove unwanted pregnancies. He gave Mother some liquid to take. It didn’t help.
“I showed the liquid to my friend – a nurse. She laughed: ‘This tonic is for people feeling low after an illness.’ I realised the doctor wanted me to keep the pregnancy. I accepted without interest.”
Mother was to be with Yvonne when she died on April 7 2005 in Toronto after a long illness. She had earned a doctorate for the thesis on “prison literature” from York University and, she had taught at institutions of higher learning in Canada.
Her first book, Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals, was a collection of short stories that she had published in 1992.
Mother knows how she felt when she was carrying Yvonne. “I’ve a vague idea about how I behaved when I was experiencing labour pains,” she says. “I remember visiting the bathroom several times. I had the urge to urinate, but nothing would come out.
“Nurse told me that when pain became unbearable, I’d sing Que Sera Sera by Doris Day. Yvonne’s first cry was the sweetest music I ever heard,” recalls Ericah.
Yvonne Vera grew up playing hide-and-seek in the neighbourhood New Luveve with other kids. They called her Voni, the girl from ekhoneni (the corner).
It was when they were playing in the park that a metal swing cut the scar that was below Yvonne’s left eye. She had to have several stitches and she was blind for several months.
“We were worried that she’d be blind forever,” remembers Mother. “Yvonne regained vision in the right eye first. The left eye couldn’t see for some time.
“One day she covered the right eye with her hand and looked into the mirror with the left one. We heard her bubbling with joy: ‘I can see, I can see with both eyes!'”
Yvonne refused to have an operation to remove that scar.
“I don’t want to destroy my identity and my history,” she would say.
One weekend Aunt Mildred took Yvonne to the beerhall in Mpopoma to watch traditional dancers performing choreography.
The Malawian dancers wowed the crowd with their regalia and dance. Their fierce masks were painted in bright colours.
One of the dancers invited Yvonne, who was five, to come to the stage and sing. She ran away when the actors started performing the routine during which they pretended as though they were “eating children”.
The scandal about how the dancers could have abducted Yvonne and made her a wife gripped the whole neighbourhood.
The family made frantic efforts to look for her with the police. Meanwhile, acquaintances, relatives and neighbours were practically holding the “funeral wake” at home.
“I didn’t cry,” says Mother. “I just felt numb. It was as if I had taken an anaesthetic.”
A young couple brought Yvonne home the following day from outside the house in Mpopoma where she had gone to take refuge.
Mother went with Yvonne to Harare in 1970 to stay with father. One of the greatest guitarists Zimbabwe has had, John White, entertained the passengers who were on the train that they had taken.
He played so well people were convinced that his guitar could talk. John White enthralled Yvonne with the way he struck the strings using a small bottle which had red oil.
“Yvonne enjoyed being part of the crowd that gathered around John White,” says Mother. “People showered him with coins and the movement of the train itself had an enchanting rhythm about it.”
Yvonne enjoyed going with father and mother fishing at Hunyani River. Her stay in the capital didn’t end well. Mother was teaching in Chitungwiza. The couple split up when father lost his job and took to drinking and fighting with Mother.
Mother took Yvonne back to Bulawayo to stay with her grandparents. She had found a place to teach in the city, staying alone.
Ericah later married Lambert, the teacher that she had met during the days when she was in Tsholotsho.
The book chronicles how Yvonne was growing in the shadow of the war of liberation that had gripped the country. She used that experience to further her talent
Yvonne’s great grandmother inspired her to write Nehanda in 1993.
Masindengere was a traditional healer.
She came to prominence when someone had stolen money at the General Hospital in Salisbury. Authorities invited Masindengere to help them catch the thief.
The person who sat on her when she was divining had shown her the herbs with which to treat patients.
She had received them at a “bira” that was held for that in Malawi. Yvonne was to go there when she was teaching.
At the hospital, Masindengere sat cross-legged, on the mat with an internee who interpreted the tongue that she used during consulting sessions.
The traditional healer performed miracles.
Masindengere was quiet for a while. When she was possessed, she started burping and spitting like a cobra. She became jittery.
The internee gave her snuff. She inhaled a whiff and placed some under her tongue. All of a sudden she bellowed like a bull and broke into song.
“The great one has arrived,” announced the acolyte, clapping her hands and chanting in a sing-song: “Pakuru! Come in peace, the great one!”
The whole staff at the big hospital could not help themselves, but join in hailing the spirit medium.
Masindengere looked into her mirror, which showed her everything that would have happened. She bellowed again and rolled her bulging eyes skywards.
In her trance, she shuffled into the crowd with her internee, striking fear even into the hearts of the quivering multitude.
“Mbuya touched the shoulder of one man,” Ericah recounts what she was told. “He stood up on shaking legs. And, stammering, he confessed what he had done. The mesmerised crowed grasped and gave Masindengere a standing ovation.”
The doctors recovered all the money that the man had stolen. Ericah adds: “Both Mbuya Nehanda and Yvonne’s great grandmother were a major source of inspiration when she wrote the novel Nehanda.”
The artists who contributed to the autobiography include Pathisa Nyathi, Stephen Mpofu, Virginia Phiri, Terence Ranger, Barbra Nkala, Irene Staunton, Flora Veit-Wild, and Yvonne’s husband John Jose.
Yvonne enrolled for her Form One at Mzilikazi Secondary School in 1978 when she was staying with her grandparents in Luveve.
Her uncle, Jairos, who would refuse to take his tablets for a mental disorder, would switch off the lights when Yvonne was studying and he would snatch her books.
Almost all members of the family drank beer from the cocktail bar that was near their house.
They would speak on top of their voices when they came home, especially during weekends. Yvonne would be caught in crossfire when fights broke out.
Mother says: “She showed me the scratches that she got on her thighs when she was jumping the hedge that was a metre high and half of that wide.
“She was running away from someone who wanted to beat her up when she tried to separate two people who had been exchanging blows.”
Yvonne’s health was stable. However, there was a time when she would faint. A traditional healer told her that a bad spell had been cast on her.
She stopped eating dairy products as part of her treatment and the n’anga gave her chicken gizzards to eat raw with herbs. The fainting ceased for some time.
Mother was worried when Yvonne fainted on the way from Mzilikazi Secondary School.
She sent her to be a boarder at Luveve Secondary School where other girls would be with her in case she fainted. A psychiatrist cured her.
When she finished her Form Four, Yvonne enrolled at Hillside Teaches College in Bulawayo in 1982 and trained to teach secondary school students.
“We held a party for her when she graduated,” says Mother. “Most of her friends attended. Yvonne and I couldn’t sleep that night.
“We danced to our favourite song, Furuwa, which was popular during the 80s. It was an amazing song.
“Then Yvonne went to stay in Canada. I posted a record of Furuwa to her because I knew that she was missing that song.
“The record was broken into pieces along the way. This made us sad, especially when I couldn’t find a replacement for it.”
That song would bring bitter memories to Mother. Yvonne had been in and out of hospital for some time. When her condition became serious, doctors put her in a unit for patients with terminal illnesses.
“Come and see me,” said Yvonne on the phone and broke down.
“I was troubled to know that my daughter was very ill,” says Ericah in the autobiography Petal Thoughts.
“She was in a faraway land. I couldn’t sleep at night. I went to Harare to get a visa. It was a bit difficult to get one. God helped and I left for Canada at once. I went straight to the hospital. Yvonne recognised my voice. ‘Oh, my mother,’ she cried.
“I hugged her with tears rolling down my cheeks. I sang Furuwa to Yvonne when she was on her death bed.
“I knew she could hear me sing. She groaned. I was happy that I had sung her favourite song to her. I cried. I stayed with her in the hospital.
“She was unconscious for five days. I knew that I was waiting for my daughter’s death. In the afternoon of 7 April 2005, Yvonne died peacefully.”
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