I stand at the borders of the mighty Zimbabwe. With no identity, no family to call my own. I wish to inhabit this land and establish a family but I know not of its ways. I am the first in my lineage, I must build an identity for my children to carry. My deep thoughts are interrupted by a man, old and frail, holding a long cane that supports his weight. He asks, “What do you seek my son?” “An identity in a land I do not know.” He nods like he had been long expecting me. “I will give you your identity, I will help you choose who you shall be. Come with me.” I hesitate but before I even realise, my scenery changes in the blink of an eye like I have been transported. He is seated directly in front of me, on the ground under a large tree. Who is this guy? “Never mind that.” He says as though hearing my thoughts out loud and he begins to write on the ground, two words: Shona or Ndebele?
Which shall I choose: Bulawayo or Harare? Where will my journey begin? Where will I settle? What would be my name? Thando, the representation of love in the Ndebele. Tinotenda, the rawest form of gratitude in the Shona language. “You must first choose a totem,” the old man says, bringing me out of the depths of contemplation once more. “What is a totem?” It is the pillar of social identity, Mutupo in the Shona tongue and Izibongo in the Ndebele culture. This will guide your livelihood, what you can eat and who you can marry. “I’m confused,” I tell him. With a sigh and a polite smile he explains: it is an animal or body part. “Shumba” the lion, “Mhofu” the eland, “Moyo Chirandu” the heart of a cow, “Ndlovu” the elephant. Your totem is designed to preserve life, you inherit the totem of your father. The totem of your family is an animal you cannot eat or an animal part you cannot eat. But more importantly you cannot marry a man with the same totem as yourself, for that is your relative. “And what if I do?” I ask. “It is a great taboo, you must never do it!” He said with a tone as cold as ice.
The first male ancestor chooses the totem his lineage will carry. Only a male can pass a totem on. He erases the animals and the heart he drew in the soil. It connects you to your ancestral lineage. Our people still exchange their totems upon meeting for the first time to establish kinship, social boundaries and respect. He says as he looks up at me. “I understand.” But do I really? Who shall I be? What shall my family after me carry for generations to come?
“Choose a family!” He pulls me out of my thoughts once more. “I don’t understand.” This is the hardest choice, so please try to keep up and pay attention.
The west has diluted our norms but our ways still flow through our veins. He begins to draw again, a little girl who looks like me, along with seven other figures with no identifiable features.
Our way is to live as a union, no one of our blood stays far. Everyone lives under the same roof: your uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents and parents.
My wrongdoings are corrected by my mother, the sister of my father. Her beatings are more familiar than they are surprising. My mother walks in, the one who gave birth to me, and the scene makes her smile. I look up at her with pleading eyes. But she simply asks my aunt what I had done wrong. I had forgotten to let the chickens into their enclosure on time and, as a result, two of them are missing. My father, the brother of my father, says that I should not be allowed to eat chicken for a month, as though the beating wasn’t enough. “Yes!” The voice of my biological father booms. “Enough! Didn’t you do worse as a child?” The sweet salvation that is the voice of my grandmother speaks above the rest, silencing the room. My grandfather watches silently, peeking over his newspaper, in a way that shows he knows all too well not to ever cross my grandmother.
My brother, the son of my father’s brother, watches silently in fear, awaiting his own punishment.
This is family: your uncles, “bo-babamukuru” or “babamunini,” your aunts, “vatete,” these are your parents, and your cousins are your brothers and sisters. You are beaten and scolded by your aunts and uncles like they are your own parents, to encourage discipline and order as well as unity.
But with the coming of western culture, only biological parents and children live under the same roof. But one never forgets his roots. Connected to the ekhaya or kumusha, his rural home obligates him to send money to his people there to sustain them. He also visits every once in a while.
But what shall I choose? Extended or nuclear?
“Son, come out of your thoughts!” I am pulled back to reality once more.
The problem of a neighbour is the burden. “What?” I ask. He then points across the plain to a homestead I hadn’t noticed. “That old man there, buried his wife last season.” “What does that have to do with anything?” “Watch.” A woman crosses from the next house with a plate of food, unasked. A boy fetches his firewood, no one waits to be told.
Your neighbour must never lack in your presence, a problem of an individual must not remain unsolved. We are one, we depend on one another. Compassion and hospitality! Your brother must not go hungry simply because he has no food. If he does, then you have failed him and the community!
Stand up and give your seat to the elders of your community. Why should an old man die alone in his house while people claim not to have known of his sickness? Never!
“It makes no sense,” I plead with him. “This is not a choice, my son, this is our way, whether you are Ndebele or Shona. You are because we are. This is ubuntu, or hunhu, as the Shonas say.”
He finally sits back down and looks me straight in the eyes, with enough intensity to send shivers down my spine.
Finally, you must know one more thing,
You are the man, and our way is that you must provide, and your wife is to only be in charge of raising your children and your farmlands. “Patriarchy?” “Indeed, my son.”
“But of course the western world always has a way of creeping in,” he says with a sarcastic little laugh.
He shrugs. “It used to be so simple: the man provides, the woman raises children and tends the fields. But now look around you, wives are teachers, doctors, breadwinners. The old rules are still spoken, but less and less are they the ones being followed.”
“Oh! I almost forgot.”
He grins, remembering his own wedding. “You’ll hear ululating before you see your bride.” She’ll come in covered, and you’ll have to pay just to see her face again. There’s food. There’s dancing. It is the one part of our culture the West has never managed to touch.
The cows have come home!
“Pardon?”
Marriage is never just between you and your wife. It is a union of families, and it is symbolised by one thing.
It is symbolised by roora, lobola.
You pay money and cattle to your bride’s family! This shows appreciation for the child they have raised, as well as gives you paternal strength over your future children!
And then I’m back at the border where I started, and he turns and looks at me, “Do you know who you are?”
About the Author
Grace is a Zambian writer and poet specializing in cultural storytelling across Southern Africa. Currently pursuing her studies in India through the Edoofa Scholarship Programme, she brings a reflective, deeply observant voice to her travel writing, shaped by years of turning everyday moments into poetry. Her work moves between the descriptive and the personal, finding meaning in landscapes the way others find it in verse. Grace writes with quiet determination and an eye for detail, helping readers feel a destination’s spirit, not just see its scenery, through prose that lingers a little longer than expected.
Cover image: A traditional rural Zimbabwean homestead. Photo: AndilePam, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.