The most difficult question

UNWANTED TASK

Tell us about yourself! Who is the advocate of unpopular opinions? These questions always leave me thinking if my junior class teachers taught me enough of ‘Myself’. Here are two of the questions I have on me not being abele to tell who I am: is it a manifestation of the inadequacies of probably my schooling or is it because I am that complex creature that cannot be explained in a simple answer to the statement “Tell us about yourself”

Since I am not good at explaining, identifying who and what I am, I will guide my thoughts with segments

WHAT I THINK I AM

The advocate is an uprooted villager who is at the moment in one of the not so adorable capitals of Africa. Yes, my city is not as adorable as I dreamed of before the uprooting. Even its city fathers are envisioning a different status about it by 2025. I have written of this, that is the city and maybe the uprooting somewhere: in my upcoming short stories to be published sometime this year in an upcoming short story anthology The Longnight Ending by Essential Books Publishing Co. One of my future blogs still on drafts and my dream auto-fictional memoir of prayers that went amiss are loaded with this idea of modernity as a cannibal creature. If you want to get an idea of this in a more polished nuance search of Chemutengure a concept being articulated by a Zimbabwean story-teller and thinker Ignatius Mabasa.

Home to two of the uprooted villager’s short stories

SELECTED CHILDHOOD MEMORIES IN BRIEF

There boundary between childhood and adulthood is to me somewhat very unclear. It’s #WinterABC challenge, I cannot afford to haunt you with my inconsistences. I am not going to trouble you with this blurred line. In this instance I classify childhood as my primary and secondary school days.

I spent two decades of my lived experience on this side of the living in the village. I think as an advocate my enjoyable memories are rooted during my formative years when I oscillated between an upcoming bright academe and a joyful herd boy. I was a reading enthusiastic herd boy and student with limited resources. I remember how I confiscated any set book from those villagers who were secondary school learners from wherever school they traded their time for certification. Honestly, that wasn’t enough to deal with my thirst for stories.

I decently passed my Grade 7 national examination and got admitted in another rural secondary school. If I were to use the ironic line of Candide in Voltaire’s that is the best of my all possible worlds. In my experienced world as of yet, I don’t think there is anything sweet like consuming words behind your herd, with the scorching sun lighting up the pages. I used to get consumed by words. When I grow wings I will not fly further further from the village but I will use my capacity to go places to fund-raise for development of libraries at my former village schools. My dream is to facilitate another best of possible world for my village of origin.

These experiences I am failing to articulate, are the ingredients of the making of this complex being not so articulate on what’s being said by voices in the mind. The village is a hive of activity depending with the time and season as well as the landscape and it’s resources. From my village of origin as indicated on my national identity card the main activity is farming. There from a tender age I embarked on farming activities such as herding cattle, planting, weeding and harvesting field crops and gardening.

When I transfered to another village in a completely different district for my secondary school the activities were almost the same except for a few activities which for the purposes of explaining I will term ‘leisurely activities.’ The village of origin was at one point in time was bless with a lot of wild animals and birds which made hunting and snaring a complimentary activity to enrich the diet. The other one was blessed with rivers, so fishing is a logical thing to do.

These activities were never dull. They are serious livelihood sources. We feed on them on a day to day basis. A lot of are schooled by them literally and metaphorically. Since, this about myself, I will say part of my education was paid by farming. Again articles on this are on drafts both in the mental and computer hard drives. These not so well explained activities of an epoch in my life have an overbearing impact on a lot of issues I will be raising here. Maybe you will help me know and articulate who I am. What I know is the years were joy, action and dream packed.

The villager in 2014

MIDDLE-AGE CRISIS

For the last seven years of my life I have been in the city. The main activities being education and idling between books, social media and dreams. At this point in time I feel ‘zombified’ I managed to travel very very little during this time to four capital cities of four different African nations. The cities’ spirit have striking sense of similarity. Silly philosophical point of views were born out of these not so significant travels. More of my philosophies in tomorrow’s conference.

Villager in specs

Deja-vu moment

Reader you have seen my journeys and my thoughts on them. Help me identify who I am. From the (un) articulated memories I have come to think I am a villager. I think I’m fast becoming a story teller. I think it’s stemming from the fact that I have lived enough not to wait to learn to be one. I am currently learning to tell my story or my thinking through short stories and poetry. I’m learning to blog. I’m no longer an avid reader, but I read at an average pace. I feel like without reading I won’t be the writer I and you want. I’m a dream farm. I think with adequate energy and knowledge I can be a good marketer and fund-raiser.

Your Advocate