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Pathisa Nyathi
From time to time I seek to rejuvenate my body. One way of doing this is to take a few days’ retreat to my rural home at Sankonjana in the southern part of Matobo District, in Ward 1/Silebuho Ward.

My memory which lets me down on matters relating to me personally does get some kick- start when I interact with a landscape and people, I knew over 50 years ago. The place is sacred to me. Here lie the remains of my parents and my own umbilical cord, that very important link between me and my ancestors.

Calls of certain birds rekindle old and fading memories. Lowing of cattle bring in their wake experiences precious and dear to me. However, it is the landscape that I find enchanting. There are collapsed and collapsing stone walls on the numerous mountains including Sankonjana Hill after which the place is names. There are huge rounded and bleached to settlement some thousands of years ago. One mountain in particular, Dume Hill has these waste materials in great abundance.

Less than a kilometre away there are nodules which seem to be products of iron smelting. It is possible that the more metallic nodules were byproducts of refining and fashioning metallic iron from the smelting process.

I have not to this date identifies remnants of smelting furnaces. The services of archaeologists to carry out some excavations may be required. This time though I did identify some stones, reddish brown in colour which are found where the nodules are found scattered around.

There are sections of the landscape where such rocks are found. Most of the area is covered with granite rocks. On one of these low-lying granite massifs there are two pairs of dole holes. All along I had seen a single pair, but this time I identified two pairs-well rounded and about 25 centimetres in diameter and one pair with holes that are 50 centimetres apart.

Growing up at Sankonjana we referred to the holes as rock plates, one for isitshwala and the other for relish.

Our parents used the extensive granite rock massif as some threshing enclosure where harvested sorghum was stores prior to threshing and subsequently stored in granaries at home about 200 metres away.

This time I also took a keen interest in rock art on one of the split rock boulders. I sat there motionless, yoga style hoping I would perhaps link up with the San artists who painted the few images on a rock surface that is not protected from the ravages of the elements.

The images, in two vertical sets, are painted in a colour to the stones I had picked up at the iron smelting sites. I could not help suspecting that the iron oxide was an ingredient in the paint the San used to execute accurately and proportionally executed artistic form. Any other natural material that could have that colour are saps of certain trees. The giraffes are imposing, facing east.

The two are of the same dimensions, same color and the same poise.

Below them is a stylised San hunter, holding his weapons-a bow and arrow. Close to and facing him is a gazelle with long and sharp horns leaning backwards. It’s as if the hunter is taking aim at the animal at the seemingly unperturbed animal. Motion suggesting the animal is running away and is being pursued is not depicted.

Further west in the second set there is a faded image of an animal whose head identifies it as a giraffe which, like the top two, stands in a relaxed mode. The unprotected nature of the rock surface has led to emergence of smudges of a lighter orange colour which has defaced the images.

Enough by way of revisiting the past to get rejuvenated and revived. I am equally keen to know the status of the Covid-19 it terms of community participation in quelling the spread of the coronavirus. The first thing I sought to investigate was how information got to the people.

Within the community there are people who receive payouts on a monthly basis. These travel to the ward Centre at Lubhangwe (Libankwe). The Catholic Non-Governmental Organisation, Caritas is behind the welfare effort. It was here that some community members got to know about coronavirus. It was here that they received formal training relating to the pandemic.

They were told about the wearing of masks and why it was necessary to do so. They were informed about the manner in which the virus spreads and that sneezing and coughing result in sprays that spread the virus. As to whether the message was internalised is a different matter altogether.

Social distancing was also introduced and justified. The image of an aeroplane, ifulayimatshina was made use of. They have seen the plane up above and its image was used to determine the distances between people sitting or standing up.

Once again these were theoretical lessons whose impact, I did not find within the communities except in semi-urban areas such as Maphisa where I found a mixed bag of adoption of measures to curtail the spread of coronavirus.

Equally, the washing of hands was given due emphasis within a community that is facing serious water shortages. At Sankonjana there was time when their borehole was not yielding any water. Livestock and humans were getting the little water there was from a well in the Kafusi River.

Villagers are collecting money to deepen one borehole whose water yield is not impressive. It is difficult to link the limited washing of hands to the lessons these people received under the aegis of Caritas. More research is called for if intervention strategies are to be effective and enduring.

They simply have to be community-specific rather that universally grounded in exotically determined strategies totally devoid of local input and considerations of a rare worldview which may apply brakes to well-meaning development efforts. Culture, when taken into consideration is a facilitator of development and the mode within which development is understood.

Another effort that was brought to my attention was that from the local Christian Church, the Salvation Army under the leadership of Captain Mlambo. Gift Moyo who is based at Tshelanyemba took advantage of community villagers that were gathered at Sankonjana Primary School. The school was ravaged by rain storms last year and remained in a sorrowful state. It took the initiative of Plan International who came to spearhead the reconstruction of the school that provided some of us with basic education and skills that we continue to share with the rest of the world. The community speaks in glowing terms regarding the work that Plan International is doing for the community. Gift seized the opportunity to spread the word about coronavirus and what the community should do in order to curtail the spread of the pandemic.

These are some of the measures that were taught to the community. In the next article I shall continue more with my observation on the ground as I drove from Sankonjana to Bulawayo. My eyes were wide open, as a student of development to detect what was taking place at Babirwa Business Centre, Sun Yet Sen Business Centre, Maphisa town and administrative centre, Kezi Business Centre and finally Whitewater Business Centre.