Mavis and I agreed to clean the garage on a Saturday. We both have commitments during the week, and with Mavis in school from Monday to Friday, weekends were the only time to attend chores too heavy for the working days. We were going to run an operation in the garage, which we suspected had become home to rats and all sorts of insects. We started from the back, pulling down piles of magazines, academic papers and municipal rates receipts (electricity and water bills) that hit me with nostalgia.
These things belonged to Amai Moyo. She had left Zimbabwe ten years ago, on a government mission in the UK. Her two sons, Rodrick and Rodwell, were my childhood friends, and they too had left the country to further their studies on presidential scholarships. Our friendship survived the test of time, and had since grown into something more like family. Fast forward to today: I moved into their house to help with projects that needed someone on the ground. That’s how I ended up living there with Mavis and her brother Tunde.
Mavis is Amai Moyo’s niece, and by that virtue earned herself an opportunity to swim above the waters of many troubles that life bestowed. When Amai Moyo found out about her plight, she decided to empower her by sending her to culinary school in Harare. Mavis’s husband had run away, leaving her to take care of their son on their own. The burden was too much, especially because they had been living in Mberengwa, a communal area with barely enough arable soil for sustainable subsistence farming. She returned home to her family and in less than a year her mother died. Her father took in a new wife despite ailing with old age. The dynamics of the family drastically shifted as the new arrangement bred tension. Amai Moyo arranged for Mavis and Tunde to move to Harare as an intervention or rather a responsibility since she had the infrastructure to change the direction of one’s life.
Mavis was passionate about her new career path. She was now living comfortably in the affluent Highlands suburb of Harare. Her education transformed her perspective of life, becoming a window that revealed what the future held in stock for her. As grateful as one could ever ask for, she attended classes and made sure to complete the daily chores at the house. Mavis was enthusiastic about my presence. It meant she would have the manpower and knowledge to get the garage properly organized.
Our main target was the dirt in the corners, where rats had made a maternity ward. Unlike Mavis, who proudly recounted her experiences dealing with chameleons and snakes clearing fields in Mberengwa, I hated rats. They kind of scare me.
Halfway through the job we found where the rats bundled. It seemed as if they were hosting a press conference. They scattered out of a tilted old microwave. I jumped back in fright. A loud bang followed. Mavis had hit it sideways with a metal rod, only Christ knows where she pulled it from. She commanded me to stand on the other side of the corner to trap them in a cow horn formation whilst she kept hitting. I started losing it. Rats raced through our legs and Mavis tried to follow them. She tripped and fell. She did not get hurt, much to my relief, because with that passion she was going to think I sabotaged her.
She instructed me to grab a stick of my own. I did not comply. Her face beamed with tension. You could feel the aggression filling the atmosphere as she pointed out how we could have handled the situation with more vigilance. Again, I thought to myself that killing rats was not for the human hand. Mavis was showing a side of her I always suspected was there. She had gone through so much tribulation and had never found where to express her anger, but on the poor rats on that day.
I told her with assurance that we would get the rat poison as soon as I got to the shops. She kept hunting rats while I retired to my room to refresh after a busy morning. At whatever price, I am still not going to chase rats, hit them in the head and pick their intestines from the floor. I guess she did, because the frustrations she carried needed somewhere to offload.
