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Tererai Matara, Chiredzi (2026)

22/02/2026

Passion doesn't need a crowd. Even solo, the fire for the game stays the same.

14/02/2026

The Harvest She Never Tasted

She was more than a mother; she was the unshakable pillar of our home, a woman of unflinching dedication and a love so fierce it bordered on the sacred. She was one in a million, a rare gem who shone brightly in our lives. She was the only woman who could fight for me and never wanted me to be in trouble. She was my ultimate advocate, a woman who would descend into the arena to fight for me, shielding me from the world’s sharp edges even when my own actions were the cause of my trouble. She would defend me vehemently, when she knew I was in the wrong side, she refused to concede an inch to my critics unless I first confessed to her in private. To her, motherhood wasn’t just a role but it was a fortress.

She wouldn't tolerate anyone shouting at us; even my father knew that. It would often escalate into a conflict between her and him, as her defense of us was unwavering. She was hopeful, always blessing me and praising me, saying, "My teacher" …. she wanted me to become a teacher. She beamed with pride because I excelled academically. She would retaliate against criticism, especially from those who despised me, saying, "You will like him one day." I recall her saying after i was beaten by my big brother, "I want to buy you a puppy, and you can name it 'Muchandida' (You will like me)." She was a mother defending her child, hopeful that one day the tables would turn in my favor.

She was a mother who constantly worried about our next meal, whether it was supper, breakfast, or lunch. In times of need, she would strive to provide for us, making sure we had something to eat. Around harvest time, starting from December, her crops would be ripe….. small grains like sorghum and millet. She knew the timing, knew when she could conquer hunger. She would dry and grind them, preparing nutritious meals for us. She hated seeing us go to bed hungry, so she'd cook relish with plenty of okra or vegetables, serve it with a small portion of sadza, and encourage us to drink plenty of water. To her, that would fill our stomachs. She'd also prepare porridge from unripe pawpaws or cook them like potatoes, making soup, and we'd have something to eat for the night or day.

Who in our family can forget the Monkey Bread porridge (Masekesa)? She was a maestro at making it, and it saved us from starvation. I remember her traveling to distant places to buy sugarcane to sell, which would enable us to eat meat or pay our school fees.

That woman is deeply missed. My heart aches with the sting of remorse when I remember my childhood selfishness. I recall throwing stones in a fit of desperate tears, demanding school fees she didn't have. She'd take a whip, beat me, and I'd cry even more. Then she'd give me the only dollars she had to pay. A counseling session would follow, "Respect Mama." Oh, my poor Mum!

At one time, I was her trusted confidant; after coming from the local market where she'd be doing business, she'd call me to help her count her money. And yet, in my youth, I betrayed that trust by stealing from her. Imagine😭! I think of her now, ascending mountains to fetch firewood,
to sell to local businesspeople, nurses, or teachers ….. no scotch cart, no wheelbarrow, just her head, and she'd just earn a dollar for that load. She'd save that money until it could cover something – our school fees, household items, etc. But we were her top priority.

She'd toil in other people's fields to provide for her family. Imagine spending a whole day in someone's field and having to tend to her own field as well. There was a time when I was at university, and fortune smiled upon us. She was overjoyed, saying my dream had come true. When I came back from Harare during vacation, I was the only one allowed to take her groundnuts to eat, and the sack would be opened only for me. Yes, it would be closed after two weeks, but I'd savor those moments. She did it for her graduate. She'd dry fruits, sweet reeds, mushrooms, etc., just for her boy. What a blessing I had.

The cruelest irony of my life is that she never saw me walk across that graduation stage. While I celebrated my academic triumph, she was battling the illness that would eventually take her. Imagine all the sacrifices, all the expectations. Then God didn't allow that. She passed away in February 2017, a "bitter pill" that I am still trying to swallow. It feels like a stolen victory. She sowed the seeds in tears but was taken before she could taste the harvest……before I could buy her that fine dress, those soft shoes, or build her the home she deserved. Yet, I surrender to the Divine plan.
Nine years have passed, but her legacy is not written in stone; it is written in my very blood.

Till we meet again. I love you, Mama.

Chipo Matara nee Musakari
July 1960 - February 2017

03/02/2026

The electric eel (Electrophorus electricus) is an elongated South American fish that produces a powerful electric shock to stun its prey, usually other fish. Long, cylindrical, scaleless, and usually gray-brown (sometimes with a red underside), the electric eel can grow to 2.75 meters (9 feet) and weigh 22 kg (48.5 pounds). The tail region constitutes about four-fifths of the electric eel’s total length, which is bordered along the underside by an undulating a**l fin that is used to propel the fish. Despite its name, it is not a true eel but is related to the characin fish, which include piranhas and neon tetras. The electric eel is one of the principal aquatic predators of the whitewater flooded forest known as varzea. In one fish survey of a typical varzea, electric eels made up more than 70 percent of the fish biomass. The electric eel is a sluggish creature that prefers slow-moving fresh water, where it surfaces every few minutes to gulp air. The mouth of the electric eel is rich with blood vessels that allow it to use the mouth as a lung. The electric eel’s penchant for shocking its prey may have evolved to protect its sensitive mouth from injury from struggling, often spiny, fish. The shocked prey is stunned long enough to be sucked through the mouth directly to the stomach. Sometimes the electric eel does not bother to stun prey but simply gulps faster than the prey can react. The eel’s electrical discharges may be used to keep prey from escaping or induce a twitching response in hidden prey that causes the prey to reveal its position. The tail region contains the electric organs, which are derived from muscle tissue enervated by spinal nerves, and discharges 300–650 volts—a charge powerful enough to jolt humans. These organs may also be used to help the creature navigate and to communicate with other electric eels.

01/02/2026

A SISTER’S COURAGE, A LIFE SAVED
(Based on a true story)
By Tererai Matara

They say that survival is a matter of luck, but when I look back at the jagged edges of my childhood, I see something more deliberate. I see a Divine hand. There are moments in a person’s life where you stop, hands raised unconsciously toward the heavens, simply because you realize that by all laws of nature, you shouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

Today’s children are now living in a different world. They call it the "digital age" now, where their thumbs dance across glass screens, their minds locked in a vacuum of books and bytes. I look at them with a mixture of pity and wonder. They will never know the weight of the staff or the responsibility of the veld. In our time, we were the young sovereigns of the grassland. We were the "headmen" without titles. We were the guardians of the family wealth—the livestock We didn't have the luxury of separate lives; our education and our labor were a single, braided cord. You would take your schoolbook to the graze lands, balancing the history of the world against the wandering whims of a bull. It was a high-stakes game. One moment of deep reading, one paragraph too long, and you would look up to find your herd belly-deep in a neighbor’s green maize. That was the "Disaster of the Fields"—a double-edged sword of trouble from both the farm owner and a father’s belt. We didn't have a childhood of play; we had a childhood of consequence. Yet, somehow, between the lowing of cattle and the dust of the veld, we studied. We herded. We survived. And eventually, we reached the hallowed halls of the University.

I remember one Saturday with startling clarity. It was a Saturday that felt like any other, yet the atmosphere was charged. The trees stood stark against the horizon, and the air was filled with a frantic cacophony—birds and animals moving in a confused, rhythmic dance as if they sensed the shift in the weather. A fresh breeze blew from the south, bringing a drizzle that made the world feel perfectly, dangerously alive. We had planned an expedition to the Manjirenji area…a place of legend among us herders because of the massive dam that held 285 million cubic metres of life-giving water. Our friends, Netsai and Florah, spoke of it like a promised land. My sister, Nevitor, agreed to go, and where she went, I followed. At ten years old, the lure of the "new" was an intoxicant. We weren't chasing ice cream or store-bought sweets like children of today; we were after the real treasures of the bush: the velvet skin of masakaume, the sweetness of nyiiii, and the crunch of tyondyondyo.

When we arrived, the scale of the water was breathtaking. We saw hippos breaking the surface like smooth grey stones and watched local boys—braver or perhaps more reckless than I—navigating the depths in makeshift canoes. I kept my distance. The dam had a reputation for swallowing the unwary. I even didn't know then that the dam was already calling my name.

By midday, the sun and the salt of the wild fruit had left me very thirsty. We had no containers, no bottles—only the dam. She guided me towards a narrow inlet where the water pushed into earth. I wanted but with no strategy. I looked at the water, then at my sister, Nevitor.

"How, Nev?" I asked.

"Like this," she said. She knelt. She was like the soldiers of Gideon in the Holy Bible—those chosen few who were deemed brave and alert because of how they drank. In the scriptures, Gideon watched ten thousand men at the river; those who flopped on their bellies were sent home, but those who lapped water while keeping their eyes up were chosen for battle.

It was my turn. I was wearing a threadbare, tight-fitting sweater—a "jersey" held together by a single, stubborn button. I knelt on the slick, muddy bank. I leaned down, my lips touching the water, As I leaned down, the earth betrayed me. My knees slipped. In a heartbeat, the cacophony of birds was replaced by the muffled, terrifying roar of the water. I was inside Manjirenji dam. I was swallowed. It was the end of my world. I was a stone in the water. I couldn't swim; I could only feel the weight of the depths pulling at my limbs. But then, a hand—fierce and desperate—clutched the wool of my jersey.

This is the part that haunts me most . This is the "rhetoric" of my survival.

Nevitor, my sister, only thirteen years old, didn't panic. She didn't run for help. She reached into the water and grabbed the only thing she could see: the fabric of my jersey. Think about the physics of that moment. I was ten years old, heavy with the water I had swallowed, being pulled down by the current. She was grabbing a thin, ragged sweater held by one single button. What if that button had been loose? What if the wool had been too old and simply shredded in her fist? What if she had grabbed my arm but missed because of the slick mud?

I don’t know.

Yes, Nevitor was my anchor to the living world. But anchors can be dragged into the depths too. There is a terrifying clarity in realising that by reaching for me, she was stepping toward the same grave. Had she failed to hold me—had that single button snapped or had she lost her footing—the Manjirenji would not have been satisfied with one child. It would have swallowed us both, leaving our mother to wait for two children who would never come home.

Nevitor then stood over me, trembling, her voice a ragged sob: "My brother, are you alive?"

I couldn't speak. I could only roll my eyes, coughing up the taste of the dam, watching her cry. We didn't wait for the cattle. We didn't wait for our friends. We left the cattle. We left the fruit. We walked home in a trance, a brother and sister who had just looked into the mouth of a grave and seen it close. I was alive, not because I was a swimmer, but because a thirteen-year-old girl was given the strength of a giant for five seconds.

Today, I look at my life as a stolen gift. I see myself as a miracle because the math of my survival doesn't add up. A single button should not be enough to save a life. A teenage girl should not be able to pull a drowning boy from a dam. But God has His ways of writing stories. He wanted me to be here, typing this, clapping my hands in the middle of the day just to say Thank You.

29/01/2026

The architecture of an Unconquerable Soul

Part 2

The Architecture of Unshod Hopes

There is a deceptive weight to poverty that suggests you are born to stay exactly where you are. But life has a way of hiding its greatest treasures in the most battered chests. From the "banana feet" strategy to the second-hand shoes of High School, every struggle was a lesson in the architecture of a soul.

In the heat of our youth, the world tries to distract us with "minors"—status, the approval of peers, and the games of romance. When the girls vowed never to date you, it is a divine filter. This isolation is a sanctuary, saving you from wasting energy on things that do not matter so you could focus on the "major": your education and your character. Rejection is your shield.

The Philosophy of the Mockery

Never take mockery personally. A person who laughs at your rags is revealing their own blindness; they cannot see the giant growing inside the child. Use their laughter as fuel. Let their doubt be the wind at your back, pushing you toward a destination they cannot even imagine.

The "God-Sends" in Harsh Masks

In your journey, you encountered people who made you work hard… as for my case: the owners of the fields I weeded and the tasks that bruised my hands. I never blamed them. I only labelled them as God-Sends. They were the trainers in my gymnasium of life, pushing me to discover a strength I didn’t know I possessed. Every hard task was a brick in the foundation of my future.

The Beauty of a Life Hardly Lived

There is a unique sweetness in a victory earned through struggle. A life hardly lived….one where you fought for every inch of progress is something you will cherish forever. l always look back at the "Have-Not" version of myself not with shame, but with the deepest respect, because I know exactly what it cost to become who I am today.

The Mandate: Be the Bridge and Teach the Seed

Dear reader, this is the most sacred tenet of life. You did not reach the top solely by your own breath; you reached it because there were those who were "called by God" to see the future in you when you were still covered in dust. Because you were once "of it," you have a blood-bound duty to pay that grace forward.
1.Lift as You Climb

If you are of the same bracket with me, l am sure you know the smell of the plastic lunch bag and the sting of the barefoot road. So my friend, do not walk past the child who is where you once were. Reach down. Be the one who understands. Whether it is a pair of shoes, a book, or a word of belief, you must assist those in need. You were helped so that you could become a helper.

2.Instruct Your Children

Do not hide your scars from your children. Let them know that their comfort was bought with "piece jobs" and "banana feet." Teach them that their greatest inheritance isn't money, but the heart to see the dignity in a poor child. Ensure they grow up knowing that they have a responsibility to educate the many and to never let a struggling soul feel they are alone in the dirt.

3.The Chain of Grace: Turn your negatives into positives.

The hunger made you hungry for success; now use that success to feed the hunger of others.

The Final Revelation

In life I learnt that poverty is a circumstance, but excellence is a soul-print. What is inside a person cannot be taken away by a lack of welfare. You are a living testament that God does not start with what is in your hand; He starts with what He put in your soul.
The rest is no longer just your story—it is the hope you give to the world.

27/01/2026

Peace be unto you. Do not overthink, and do not let worry consume you; remember that you are not the first to face these trials, nor will you be the last to overcome them. Your journey is shared by many who have found strength in the same shadows. Take heart, for this too shall pass.

20/01/2026

The Architecture of an Unconquerable Soul

(A true tale of a village boy who defied the dust of poverty to become a man of purpose)

Part 1
(By Tererai Matara)

There is a deceptive weight to poverty that goes beyond the empty stomach or the threadbare shirt. It is a psychological gravity that whispers you were born to stay exactly where you are. When you look at your family and see a lineage of pain, a heritage of absolute suffering where every sunrise signals a new struggle, it is easy to conclude that you are merely a tenant in a life of handouts.
But life, in its mysterious and often cruel design, has a way of hiding its greatest treasures in the most battered chests.

The Liturgy of the Barefoot

In the small, dusty circles of my childhood, a pair of shoes was not a utility; it was a miracle. I remember my brother, a boy who possessed the rare luxury of brand-new school shoes. Every afternoon, on the walk home, he would offer a brief window into his world.

"Who wants to wear these?" he would ask.

"Me!" I would shout, the word leaping from my throat before my peers could breathe.

But the victory brought a secret, sweating terror: I had no experience with shoes. I didn’t know the left from the right, the port from the starboard of a leather sole. To avoid the scorching sting of mockery, I developed a strategy.

"I want to wear them on a banana feet!" I’d declare with a mischievous grin. It was a calculated bluff. If I put them on the wrong feet and he shouted, "Don’t do that or I’ll take them back!" I would quickly swap them, learning the 'right' way through his reaction.

If he looked at me and said, "But you didn't do it," I knew I had stumbled into the correct path. It was a game of survival played for the sake of a few moments of feeling human, of feeling "unique" in a circle where bare skin against hot earth was the only known reality.

The Caste of the Lunchbox

The inequality of the world doesn't wait for adulthood; it introduces itself in the primary school yard. We had our own definition of the "quality of life." It was measured in the texture of our lunch. Do you know that "Rice", i mean that Rice was really valued.

There were the "Rice Children"—those who arrived with clicking plastic lunchboxes, filled with delicacies signaling their status as the "Haves." Then there were those of us who carried our meals in transparent plastic scraps. My break time was a quiet confrontation with boiled dried maize (mungai), smoked corn (maputi), or cold sweet potatoes.

We became the voluntary servants of the Rice Children. We traded our dignity for the proximity of their "quality" food, learning early that those with plenty often take advantage of those with nothing. We did their chores, we laughed at their jokes, and we felt the crushing weight of being "the worst among the team."

The Classroom Fire

In the classroom, the poverty was even more exposed. I was the child without books, the one beaten by teachers for missing materials I could never afford. I was the one sent home because my uniform was a collection of patches and faded dreams. I cried in the corners of the schoolyard, feeling inferior, lonely, and disconnected. I cried many days, feeling the weight of a world that seemed designed to keep me at the bottom.

The High School Crucible

When the local high school opened its gates to various primary schools, the arena grew larger and the air colder. Here, the "reasoning capacity" of my peers was sharper, and their cruelty more refined. Poverty wasn't just a lack of things; it was a social wall.

I found myself with fewer friends. People played within their "status." They looked at my rags and concluded I didn't have a clue—that poverty had already killed my mind. As I entered puberty, the social exile became a romantic one. I was a guy that girls wouldn't dare associate with. They feared the laughter of their friends; they vowed they wouldn't date me even if I arrived in a helicopter. They judged my entire future by my present, convinced that the boy in the second hand rags would never be better.

In retrospect, this was a divine shield. It saved me from "majoring on the minor." While others spent their energy on the distractions of youth, I was forced to value education as my only oxygen. To bridge the gap, I took on "piece jobs." I spent my weekends weeding fields, the sun baking my back, doing any labor that came my way. My hands were calloused, but my spirit was becoming iron. By my third year of High School, I finally bought my own second-hand shoes. They weren't new, but they were paid for in sweat

The Unquenchable Light

But the world made a fatal error: it assumed that my lack of welfare meant a lack of warfare. They assumed that because I was empty-handed, I was also empty headed
When the lights went out and the focus turned to the chalkboard, something in the "poor child" began to shine. When the pens were distributed and the questions were asked, something miraculous happened. The hunger that gnawed at my belly turned into a hunger for knowledge. The poverty that caged my body couldn't touch the light in my head. It was a brilliance that no amount of suffering could extinguish. Despite the tears and the hunger, when the results were posted, the "Poor Child" shone. While the others had the tools, I had the fire. I realised then that poverty is a circumstance, but excellence is a soul-print. You can take away a child’s shoes, but you cannot take away the way they see the stars.

The Lift of Grace

Looking back, I realize that breaking the cycle of poverty isn't just about hard work; it is about those rare souls who see the future in a barefoot child. It takes a teacher, a stranger, or a divine hand to look past the "Banana Feet" and the plastic lunch bags to see the genius waiting to be unleashed.

To anyone still walking that dusty road: Your level today is not your final destination. The struggle you endure is not an inheritance you are forced to keep; it is the fire that is tempering your steel. You are not defined by what you carry in your hand, but by what you carry in your heart.

The rest? The rest will soon be history.

19/01/2026

The Sacred Refusal

The air in Rabat did not merely hang; it pulsed, thick with the scent of flared sulfur and the suffocating weight of expectation. On this night, January 18, 2026, the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium was no longer a sporting venue—it was a Roman coliseum, a cauldron of fifty thousand souls clad in emerald and crimson, screaming for a coronation.

For Morocco, the Atlas Lions, this was the promised hour. For Senegal, the Teranga Lions, it was a battle against eleven men on the pitch and a perceived invisible hand shifting the scales.

From the opening whistle, the atmosphere was jagged. Every challenge was a spark, every decision by referee Jean-Jacques Ndala a potential riot. To the Senegalese and the watching millions across Sub-Saharan Africa, the officiating felt like a slow tightening of a noose. Every marginal foul favored the hosts; every whistle seemed to stifle a Senegalese break. The air was thick with the bitter scent of "North African bias," a ghost that has long haunted the tournament, now manifesting in every controversial gesture of Ndala’s whistle.

The Spark

As the clock ticked into the second minute of stoppage time, the deadlock finally seemed to shatter. Ismaïla Sarr, ghosting behind the defense, met a rebound off the woodwork with a thunderous header. The Senegalese bench erupted—a release of ninety minutes of suppressed fury. But the joy was strangled in their throats. Ndala’s arm was raised, signaling a foul by Seck on Hakimi. To the objective eye, it was a collision of titans; to the referee, it was a crime. The goal was erased. The stadium’s roar of relief was a physical blow to the Senegalese.

The Descent into Chaos

Then, the breaking point. At 90+8’, Brahim Díaz tumbled in the box. It was a soft fall, a theatrical descent under the slightest pressure from Diouf. When Ndala pointed to the penalty spot after a cold, clinical VAR review, the dam broke. Coach Pape Thiaw stood on the touchline, a portrait of righteous indignation. He didn't scream; he simply pointed to the tunnel. It was a silent command for a mutiny. As the Senegalese squad began their slow, funereal march off the pitch, the world watched in stunned silence. The Final was hemorrhaging. For twenty agonizing minutes, the beautiful game was dead, caught in a diplomatic tug-of-war in the bowels of the stadium. It took the quiet, iron-willed diplomacy of Sadio Mané—the veteran general—to haul his brothers back from the brink of forfeit and into the fire.

The Hubris and the Hero

The clock read an absurd 90+24’ when play resumed. Brahim Díaz, seeking to etch his name into Moroccan folklore, opted for the ultimate gesture of bravado: the Panenka. He chipped the ball, a delicate arc of leather intended to humiliate. But Édouard Mendy, a pillar of granite, refused to blink. He stood central, a sentinel of defiance, and caught the ball as easily as a father catches a child. The silence that followed was more deafening than any roar. Hubris had met its match.

The Crimson Redemption

The momentum did not just shift; it careened. In the opening minutes of extra time, Pape Gueye seized the narrative. He didn't just strike the ball; he exorcised the night’s frustrations with a twenty-yard thunderbolt that seared the air, bypassing Yassine Bounou’s outstretched hand like a comet.
The closing minutes were a desperate, frantic siege. Morocco threw their very souls forward, hitting the woodwork through Aguerd, but the gods of football had changed their minds. When the final whistle eventually screamed across the Rabat sky, Senegal had not just won a trophy; they had survived a trial by fire.
The 1–0 scoreline would be carved into the trophies, but the legend of the "Walk-Off," the "Failed Chip," and the "Lions who Refused to Break" would be told in African football lore for generations.

11/01/2026

Lombroso's theory of criminology proposed that criminals are born with a predisposition to crime, identifiable by physical characteristics like facial features or body types, suggesting they are evolutionary "throwbacks" (atavism). He categorised criminals into types and believed biology determined criminal behavior.

I think the theory is being justified by these pictures

09/01/2026

IShowSpeed is professional in his own way. He values what he does; while it's high energy, to him, it’s professional because he follows the rules of his own acting and streaming style. Ndinofunga people underestimated that. Some people tried to promote their brands through him, and he was like, 'No! I am here doing my job as a YouTuber, not promoting your business.' He didn't care about the distractions or political parties. Jersey raNathan rakarasikwa kure 😂😂😂😂. He means business, which is why he was constantly checking his phone and yaitova sign kuti ndiri kuita zvebasa hama dzangu vatema imi. He values those who match his energy and gives them his full attention like mamonya aya kuTrabablas, naJani, or the man who screamed when he saw him uya. Zvatopindirana. He didn’t care about bi***es atazoona aya kkkkkkk, instead, he focused on the natural girl murestaurant and even told her kuti , “Wakanaka”

Tererai Matara

22/02/2026

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03/02/2026

01/02/2026

29/01/2026

27/01/2026

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