YOU VICTORY IS IN YOUR RESOLUTE STEP FORWARD! Life is so structured that to get to a next stage, we always come to a zone of transition, sort of a bridge in which we have to decide to take a step to the next major zone or to remain where we are. The big temptation is to remain where you already stay and stand because you are now used to it. The status quo always persuades you to ‘stand down’ and be contented with what you are used to. The status quo always whispers, “Yes, you may go forward, but why bother? Don’t you see, you have everything that you need here? See the assets you already have. Even if some of them are not exactly tangible but you have got joy, peace, love and harmony here.” It is good to spent all the day at home and be with your children and wife or husband: they don’t go to school and you don’t go to work! But wait a minute, hunger and strife while poke you out there. In fact, they will come armed like robbers to make you hate your home. I have known some rural gentleman. He refused to go to Salisbury (now Harare), I am to told, for the simple reason that someone convinced him that in Harare people get run over by cars. He so dreaded going to Harare and has sired many children in the village. I have known his household as a house of hunger. You can go at his home any time during the day and you will never find him. He hates his home because he has nothing to offer to it and it has nothing to offer to him. He moves from place to place looking village beer (ndari) and that has always been his life. So, time and again we come to places of transition. We confront a big river, a boundary fence, a regional road, a mountain, a border and to cross or not to cross becomes the subject of concern. At some stage in life, when I was just three, I remember, my grandmother took me to a vlei garden (kumagadhe) with one of my siblings. I saw her break some little shrubs called zvigunguru, removed the leaves, nicely cut them so that it was some stick with two forklike horns. She took some strings form a tattered jersey and hooked two of the many forked sticks that she had made. She sat me down with my cousin (brother) and inducted us. “You are boys and grown up boys now. You see this place? This is where we grow vegetables, the green vegetables that you like more that the cabbages. These vegetables are so much liked by goats and cattle once they get a chance to get into the garden, right? The garden must be protected against the invasions of goats and cattle. See, it is spring time now (chirimo) and no one is taking care of goats and cattle so they just wander and they can get into the garden and eat you nice green vegetables. I have created these sticks. What do they look like?” We both shouted, “they are like cattle because they have horns”. She said, “You have said it rightly. Have you seen your grandfather using cattle to draw a cart or to plough” “Yes!” we chorused. “From now own, I want you to do exactly what grandfather does. I want you to yoke these cattle” (pointing to the sticks with strings on their necks) “Tomorrow I will teach you how to make simple carts which you will pull with these cattle of yours.” She demonstrated how we would to it. Then she said, “You now have to play using these but as you plough you need to be vigilant and see if there are no cattle (real) or goats trying to get into the garden. Now I have to go home to do work there. Don’t bother about coming home early. When you are hungry I will bring you food. You play and watch over the garden. I will do the cooking for you and we will have this arrangement from now own.” Off she left us. That day, my cousin and I were so happy. We liked the cattle, scotch carts, fields/farms, fences, lorries game until the time I was through with primary school. She came with lunch, left us behind and came back to back to pick us home at near sunset. We didn’t see how time had moved for we were so engrossed with our becoming successful peasant farmers with lots of cows, oxen and bulls which we also saw the need to build kraals as we had seen grandfather’s cows in. We also had time to move them in and out. The following day, grandmother, as promised, brought an empty match box. She also brought with her some bottle tops which she had holed. She took off the inside blue box of the match box created for holes to it. One was for the dhezibhomu and the other would fit the exactly. She took an dried stalk of maize, nicely cut and chiselled it out and put zvikeyi on it so they ate the end of the day it looked exactly a yoke. She fitted it to the dhezibhomu and sooner than later we had our cattle pooling the cart and waal...it was nice! She said, “This is what I can do for you. You take it from there!” So by the end of the day, we were real farmers with cattle and carts. This was to be my game until I was the age of 13 or 14. I like it. I got so obsessed being a peasant farmer. We were to keep the garden as we played. Sometime at the edge of five, my grandmother, got me up early in the morning, and told me she was taking me to a place called crèche. I really didn’t like the idea because I was so used to my ‘peasant’ life. I wandered, “who is gonna take care of my fields, my cattle, my fence, etc”. I religiously followed her and he introduced me to the teacher who then took me to Sadza Primary School where we had crèche in a church building. I didn’t like crèche for it disrupted what I was now used to. However, I liked mazowe, maheu (echirungu) and bread (chingwa chekusitoro unlike the home-made bread (chimupotohai/chiomodho/chikodzamvana/chimondimwi (or zii) I was used to. At least for these I could go! I don’t really know what crèche added value to me except for the foods that I got from it. I remember some crechemates already knew how to write their names at that age and could speak some bit of English and do maths (dzekuplaza nekumainasa) but to me it was just darkness. I didn’t even know doing pattern like others. (Dai kireshi yaipiwa masetifiketi ini ndini ndaishaya kana chokubata). At crèche, the teachers were nice and tolerant. I had cousins (sisters) who were in grade 1 but they spoke so badly about grade one teachers (pinching, slapping, hitting by sticks children).The picture I had of school was gloomy. After my one and half years, it was my mother this time who came to take me to school. She so introduced me to the female teacher (taivati misitiresi) that I felt comfortable with her quickly though her ear of pinching was on the thighs somewhere right in the pant. She would joke with my mother about my characteristic bad pronounciation of words (chirimi). She would say, “You child says, my name is Innocent Chiyicha). I didn’t like it. Besides, I always wondered why mum loved so much to come to school and talk about me. Besides, she was coming and was selling guavas (zvaimakisaso kuita mai vanotengesa magwavha!” My teacher was her biggest customer! I didn’t want people to know she the seller of guavas was my mother. Sooner it became known that I was son to a guava seller. My mother did a great thing to nurse all my grade one being around. At year end of my grade 1 she went back to Harare to look for employment (mushandi wemumba). What a relief! No one would see her again moving down the school yard selling guavas, mangoes and nzimbe (sugarcane). After seven years, I was at Neshangwe High School. It was distant a school (more than 10km from home). It was the best day school and has its standards which it wanted maintained high. I was position number 4 for the second term when we had reports. Grandfather could not understand why I was not number 1 as I used to be. I tried to explain but he was just not pleased. After the four years, I was at Harare High School, now in town. This was a different environment together – no grandmother (who used to keep a piece of bread in a clay pot), no grandfather who taught me to work hard and put all strength in what I do. I was staying with a cousin whose attitude was you-just-see-how-to-survive-for-we-are-all-of-near-the-same-age! Harare life was really tough! A level was so demanding. The environment was so contrary! Mother was near but very far --- not available at the moment but try again later! Had to brace with life and survive. In life, we always come to zones of transition. When we are children, someone will make us master our way up. Without explaining the meaning of the verse, I like Galatians 3:24, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” In early life (childhood), we normally have someone taking us and guiding us to play the cards. When we grow into maturity, the tone and tune changes. We have to decide: to dance or not to dance, to move own or to stop, to cross the border or to remain. Woe to them who stop to do the blame game and say, “he/she didn’t come to pick me!” One major transition that comes annually is the New Year. At New Year many people make the so-called resolutions which in most cases are mere wish lists. A resolution is not a statement merely said or merely written down. A true resolution will be inspired by a deep desire to change, to change yourself and to change the status quo. A resolution is a do-or-die statement, a heart commitment! You have to be just resolute. It is not an I-will-like-it-when-I-get-introduced. It is not an I-will-decide-after-I-I-have-tasted-it. With a resolution you have to decide before you taste it. You have to be committed to do it at whatever cost. It is a situation where you decide on a journey and overcome all the forces against it before you start. You may have heard people say, “I that area there is a light that is seen; it is a spook/ghost and don’t dare go there”, “I that place there are lions, hyenas and crocodiles” You see, people can say all frightening things. But when you are resolute, yes, when you are resolute, you will say, “Thank you for the information but that will not stop me!” As long as you are still holding to reasons, you are not ready. As long as you still see a lot of time ahead of you ad you can always do it any other time, then you are not ready! Resoluteness will hold all other forces constant and says, I push and I will energy a hero, I will push and there are results from this endeavour and I will have them. Resoluteness sees an opportunity or a gap or some treasure. It will not rest until it grasps it. Resoluteness is like a thief, once it sees a loose purse, it pursues nemubhazi nemubhazi. Kana yahwapura inopa chikonzero. Unonzwa yoti ndonhazi reMarondera here iri iro riri reMufakose kusvika yakumbira kuti isiyiwe hayo idzokere inobata reMarondera. Resolutness inoita uite sewamboita kadzungu so, iwe uchiziva hako zvawakananga! Resoluteness says, I better be a fool now but I will emerge a hero. For a good number of people, they are never resolute because life has not pinched them enough, they have never been in a vice of life. The vice of life makes you to say, Ko kusiri kufa ndokupi! I will go for I what I want t do. I could go on describing resoluteness and the power to emerge victorious but let me cite a scripture here. (I am sorry it is a long text but take your time and read it). 2 Kings 7:1-9: “Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord, To morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die. And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life. And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it. Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the kings household.” I cite the text from the beginning so that you can tell the context of the issue. My real focus is the four lepers. They were outside the city but they had information about what was happening in it. As they sat together and knew they were not to expect anything from the city the decided to plan. They generated options and came up with two solids one – going into the empty sit and get nothing or move towards the mighty army of the Syrians and by God’s grace get something. They knew, if they followed the trail of the Syrians, they may find even some left over bones of chicken or crumbs of bread. They decided to move in that direction. I am not sure how they were moving but one thing for sure it was a difficult walk. They soldiered own and perhaps sang a hymn to encourage each other! As they made the difficult but firm and resolute steps of faith, God, who is so please by faith (Hebrews 11:6), could not help but release His host to come to the help of these four guys. This God, “Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire” (Psalm 104:4) blew his wind d the was a mighty force of great army which only the enemies of Israel could hear! This God! He respects faith and steps. He came down to make it resounding! He came down to give it the dignity the effort deserved! At the end of the story, it was the four lepers happy and the whole nation rejoicing! I am not sure what you have thought to do in your heart this year. I charge you to start taking the steps towards it. I charge you to hold all forces against your desire constant. Joshua made the earth to stand still (yes the earth, and not the sun!) (Joshua 10). Hold those forces constant. Declare your victory and fight your ground. Burn all the bridges behind you and say, I wanna fight to win, this year. Be resolute. Be determined. Be geared. Yes, fight on the good fight of faith! This year is your year if you are resolute! Time for being pampered is gone. You have to decide. You have to fight. You are at the battlefront. You have to fight and to win it! Indeed, you victory is not anywhere but in your step of faith and step of determination!
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 02:56:20 +0000
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