I grew up in a family that preached the Gospel of Education. Good grades. Safe job. Secure future. That was the path — the only path. And I believed in it completely.
But before the grades. Before the safe job. Before any of it — there was a season of survival that shaped everything I would later become without me ever understanding that it was shaping me.
Sabao Maeva
Between 2004 and 2008 Zimbabwe was going through what most Zimbabweans of that generation simply call the crisis. Shelves were empty. Bread disappeared. I was sent to stand in queues at TM Supermarket for four hours or more to buy two loaves. On more than one occasion I stood in that queue for the full duration and came home with nothing.
Rice became our replacement. My uncle VeeDot started a small business selling rice and soap smuggled across the Mozambique border. We measured it out using a steel cup — selling a certain amount per cup. We had a bar of soap called Sabao Maeva. Brown. Solid. Mozambican.
My uncle noticed something. When I was at the gate alone, customers came in numbers. I was thirteen years old and I was outselling the adult. One day I was sent out selling with Eloi — a boy three years younger than me. His soap bars were fat. Mine were thin. Every customer who was about to buy from me would glance at Eloi's box and change their mind. He sold like nobody's business. I went home with almost nothing. I learned more from losing that day than from any of the days I sold well.
Mr Chinoz and the Company Nobody Expected
When I was in Form 1 at Mweyamutsvene I met a teacher who changed the direction of my life. His name was Mr Chinewaita. We called him Mr Chinoz. He ran the computer lab. The first day he saw how quickly I understood computers he looked at me differently.
He introduced us to the Junior Achievement programme. JA Company. We started a snack business at school. I began as secretary. By Form 2, at thirteen or fourteen years old, I was Chairman — leading Form 6 students who were nineteen and twenty years old. I did not know then that I was learning how to run a company. I thought I was just doing school things.
Mr Chinoz was fired when the business grew beyond what the school could contain. But before he left he gave me unlimited access to the computer lab. I started arriving at 5am to type a teacher's thesis for money. I started a small typing business. I was already finding ways to monetise what I knew how to do.
The Precious Metal Business
At the same time I was smashing academic records, things at home were not good. My stepfather had abandoned the family. My mother was left with four children and a teacher's salary that was not enough.
Chiadzwa was not far. The diamond fields. My mother got a connection through a neighbour and became a supplier. A buyer would come to our door with money. We would source stones from the miners. My mother would receive a commission.
My mother did not take Tinashe, my older brother. She did not take Tawanda. She took me. I think she took me because she trusted me. Not just to carry the bag — though I carried it, full of money, on my back, every trip. But to stay calm. To calculate. To not panic when things went wrong.
Walking
We would leave at 5am and walk until we could not feel our feet. Sometimes we did not get home until 10pm. Fifteen kilometres or more in each direction. When we got home and found my brothers playing and relaxed, my mother and I would look at each other and say nothing. They did not know. They had not been there.
One night a client sent us home a different way he said was better. It was not better. We walked for an hour and thirty minutes not knowing where we were. We nearly fell into a ditch. We passed a cemetery. We held each other and kept moving. Then we heard a car — the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. Then someone came out of the dark with fire chasing us. A prank. We did not find it funny that night. We found it funny later. Much later.
The Fake Stones
One day we were sold fake stones. I took them and started rubbing them with a pencil. Somehow, in the confusion of packing up, they ended up mixed with the real ones. My mother went to the buyer not knowing. She came home with money and food when I expected her to come home with nothing. I said nothing. I am grateful the buyer did not notice. I am grateful we were never arrested.
The Rest Camp
There was a place on the road between the diamond fields and home where we always stopped. A small tuckshop. The last stop before the final fifteen kilometres home.
We would buy biscuits. And a bottled lemon cola drink.
I want you to understand what that lemon cola tasted like after everything that came before it. After the walking that made your feet go numb. After the weight of the bag on your back. After the fear of mountains and dark roads and fake stones and men whose intentions you could not read. After all of it — you sat down and you drank a cold lemon cola and it was the best thing in the world.
My mother and I would sit there together and rest and not say much and then get up and walk the last fifteen kilometres home. Those were the moments I felt closest to her. Not the big moments. The rest camp. Biscuits and lemon cola. Both of us tired and alive and together.