08/06/2025
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Mumvuri Wechiedza — Chapter 1: Kurasikirwa Nemhuri
By Ashley Annie Aisa
The sun had barely risen when the village echoed with wails.
“Mai vafa! Mai vafa!” someone shouted outside our hut.
I was only nine. Ndakanga ndisingazivi kuti upenyu hunogona kuchinja mumaminitsi mashoma. My mother had been coughing for weeks, but no one thought it was serious — until that morning when I found her still, cold, and breathless.
“Mai,” I whispered, shaking her shoulder. “Mai, wake up…”
But she didn’t move. Her body was stiff. Ndakapinda muhope dzisina hope, muhope dzerima. I screamed. Our neighbors came rushing. That’s when the real darkness began.
My father, who had already started another family in town, only came for the funeral.
He didn’t look at me once.
Three months later, word came that he had died in a car accident. It felt like God had taken both my parents and left me in a cruel world — alone.
I was sent to live with my stepmother, Mai Rudo, in a rural area near Chivhu. At first, she pretended to care.
“Unofanira kudya, mwana. Ndiri pano kuti ndikuchengete,” she said.
But soon the mask came off.
She would give her biological children sadza and vegetables, but for me — just water and salt.
“Aihwa, hauna kukosha. Uri mutoro,” she’d say. “Why should I waste food on someone who’s not even mine?”
I slept on the floor, on a reed mat that had holes. Winter wind would bite through the cracks of the hut walls. Ndaiwanzorara ndichichema, but no one heard me. Or maybe they didn’t care.
Sometimes, I’d talk to my late mother in whispers.
“Mai, makandisiira pano sei? Ndingaramba ndichitambudzwa here?”
But silence was my only answer.
One evening, after being beaten for using too much firewood, I ran out into the dark.
Ndakatiza. Ndakatiza husiku. I didn’t know where I was going — only that I had to escape. I walked barefoot along a dusty road, cuts on my feet, clothes torn, hungry and afraid.
The moon followed me as if it, too, felt sorry.
After two days walking and hitching lifts from strangers, I finally saw the sign:
“Welcome to Harare.”
I had made it to the city. But I was still just a girl, with nothing but pain and hope.
Little did I know, my life was about to change.
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