Letters to my unborn child - 27 weeks

 Yikes! It's almost the end of our second trimester. Having felt like this pregnancy has lasted forever, it's suddenly all speeding up and getting quite real! Yesterday, your dad booked us into the hospital (so Granny can stop worrying about you being born at home!).

While you're safe and cosy in my ever-expanding tummy, the world out here has become pretty scary. In the last 3 weeks, Covid-19 has hit Zimbabwe hard and we now know a frightening number of people who have the disease. We're back in a hard lockdown (though compliance has been patchy at best), so we're all working from home and trying to keep as safe as we can. How weird to think that one day, this bizarre period will be something you'll learn about in History. 

January has also been an interesting one in global politics. We stayed up till midnight the other night watching the Capitol being stormed by Trumpites - he's been impeached for the second time by the bye. There are some truly baffling conspiracy theories on the rise - really, dear unborn child, I pray more than anything that you are granted the gift of discernment - boy do you need wisdom to navigate this crazy world of ours! (but heck, I could be the nutcase after all and Trump and in two weeks time, I might be eating humble pie before a crowd of MAGA evangelicals - who knows!).

Our dear friend, and your revolutionary auntie, FM, was also arrested this week and has been remanded in prison. Grandpa is working extra hard to get her out as soon as possible. I keep thinking back to our one night in cells last year and the strange comfort that came from at least being there with friends. I hate thinking of her alone, having to be brave in the face of such cruel and ridiculous injustice. I know that this won't defeat her though. She is strong and courageous and her fierce hope in a better Zimbabwe will get her through this. 

I cannot tell you how inspired I am by the women of this country. We know a few good men, you and I (a lot of them are in our family!), but my goodness, the women! There's the young, feisty, constitution defender, and the slightly mad, older lady with faith like a mountain, who rescues the discarded and sick and sees miracles happen, and the women who start soup kitchens and just keep serving, and the writers and artists who use their voices to speak for the silenced and won't give up hope. Learn from your sisters and aunties and grandmothers little one. They have so much to teach you. 

Stay safe, stay woke.

Mother

P.S the rain is pretty incredible this year. It has been a reminder that God's grace continues to sustain even when all hope seems lost.

Letters to my unborn child - 24 weeks

I am currently sitting on the verandah at our dear friends' house, gazing into green and feeling unusually zen. We've celebrated Christmas and today is my birthday eve. Tomorrow I turn 35 - an age I find hard to comprehend. Ah time - you certainly are a mystery. Next year, you'll be with us and our lives will have changed in ways we can't imagine. 

Christmas has held special meaning for me this year as I have thought about Mary and how she must have felt before and while her body birthed Jesus in an animal shed. Was she frightened? Or strangely at peace? Was her body sore and uncomfortable? Did she wonder if she'd imagined everything about her child's conception? Did anyone come to help her that night she laboured? Was she filled with awe and delight the moment she set her eyes on her baby son or did she feel like she held a tiny stranger in her arms? 

The Incarnation feels especially important this year in the midst of such global chaos and widespread grief. And not just God becoming flesh, experiencing humanity in all its rawness in Christ's lived out life - but being born of flesh - to a fully human woman - that seems critical too. Those nine months of pregnancy - the stretch marks and nausea and rollercoaster emotions - that was important. The groans and mess and exhaustion of labour - that was important too. It was important because Mary wasn't God. But from her pain and her confusion and her limited and mortal understanding of what was happening, came the long-awaited salvation of the world. Not in a dramatic, spectacular fashion (although the shepherds perhaps would beg to differ), but in a slow-moving, ordinary, messy story that spanned three decades of a mother learning her son. 

And somehow, the difficult waiting and the dark unknown-ness of the future that lies before me seems slightly more bearable. The word 'adventure,' derives from the Latin 'about to happen' and shares the same root, the 'advenire' - 'to arrive', with the word 'advent'. Pregnancy is an adventure - the perilous journey before the arrival of a life-change.

May the advent of the Christ child, born so human-ly, be our strength and encouragement in our adventure. 

Merry Christmas (season, not day).

Mother.

Letters to my unborn child - 22 weeks

 Hello again,

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. We had your detailed scan and I am pleased to report that all is well. You spent most of the appointment curled up on your belly - like a little frog the radiologist said! It was pretty incredible. I can't get over the miracle of two tiny cells becoming a fully formed human - with organs and bones and the beginnings, already, of a unique personality. You were being awfully coy about displaying your genitals, so we haven't been able to confirm if you'll be a Phoebe or Phoebo - though the odds are in favour of the former. I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Meanwhile, we've been having a bit of a stressful time. We moved out of our flat this last weekend and have moved in with your granny and grandpa (temporarily). We have managed to accumulate an awful lot of... stuff and packing it all up was exhausting and actually quite painful, given my bloated state. (The french word for pregnancy, incidentally, is 'la grossesse'. It is very fitting). 

Besides the physical pain, it was also a real emotional wrench. That beautiful flat was my home for more than three years (the longest I've lived anywhere since leaving home!) and was your dad's and my first home as a couple. It has been a safe refuge for me through two arrests and a coup, and an oasis of calm and beauty through changing jobs and car accidents and all the other minor calamities of life. It's also where I fell in love with your dad as he brushed past me, helping me wash dishes in the teeny, tiny kitchen, and where we had our first kiss and spent our first night as a married couple. It was a happy home filled with dancing and cooking and pottering.

We are hopeful though that this is the first step in preparing ourselves for LATT (Life After The Trial) when your mother will (hopefully) be acquitted of her terrorist charges and will be able to retrieve her passport from the Rotten Court. Our landlords have been incredibly generous and have said we can use their cottage as a base while we wait. I will also be gainfully employed next year, thanks to an extended contract, and your dad has been given the freedom to continue his studies online until we can all leave together. I am overwhelmed with gratitude - for God's faithful provision; for our families and friends; for the kindness of strangers; for heavy rain and the glorious green of trees.

You continue to make your presence known with your dolphin imitation in my belly - but your father has yet to feel you move. He claims all he can feel are my digestive processes - which is a little revolting and I am certain is not true. 

Signing off for now,

Mother

Letters to my unborn child - 19 weeks

 Hello you!

So much part of me and yet not. I'll come clean and say I've not really known how to respond to you - this pregnancy has felt very alien in many ways. Which is not to say you are not wanted - you very much are - I just think I hadn't really processed what pregnancy would be. I've thought about being a mother and having a family but I don't think I ever imagined myself pregnant! 

It's a very strange feeling having your body invaded by - a life! For weeks I couldn't see anything different in me but felt like my emotions, my bodily impulses, my brain had been affected by some drug I didn't remember taking. Now that your growing body is more evident in mine, I'm finding being pregnant less abstract and easier to imagine that you're there. Now my battle is to fight the anxiety that comes with my consciousness of your presence - what if....? What if it isn't? What if I'm not enough?

Mercifully, your father has been nothing short of a saint. He has rubbed my neck and made me ginger tea and made sure I was eating my snacks and let me soak his t-shirt in my tears that were sometimes rational but mostly not. Good men do exist and your dad is one of the best. He has sacrificed so much to be an equal partner in this journey and I will be forever grateful. 

Next week we get to see you in a detailed scan. I am equal parts terrified and excited. 

Until then, stay comfy and if you could give me a kick or two occasionally so I know you're ok, that would be grand. 

In fear and trembling,

Your mother.

P.S. It's about to pour with rain - the sky is dark, the air is thick with humidity (yup my hair is all over the place), and the wind is starting to pick up, wafting hints of petrichor through our living room. I really hope you will get to experience African thunderstorms like this. There's nothing like it.  

The Impasse

The Impasse

A momentary lapse in -

Not judgement -

Something else:

An invisible line we set to guard

A sacred… something.

Changing everything

And nothing

And now

Words aren’t spoken

And aren’t needed.

We both know.

That here I am

And there you are

And where we are, the other cannot be.

The conundrum of knowing

Someone inside out and not at all.

I’m not certain

if I’m glad or sad

or neither

that the line was crossed

and uncrossed:

That the inevitable was an impossibility

in reality.

And so we’re at an impasse.

Who dares tell the other the

Mutually understood truth:

 

It was an attempt aborted.

Freedom March: November 18, 2017

18/11/2017 - picture credit: Glenn Morgan

What happened yesterday was historic. Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, at home and abroad, stood together to say that WE WANT CHANGE. 

Yes, how we each envision that change may be different. Yes, there are still many, many obstacles to overcome before we are truly 'free'. But for the first time in decades, there was an overwhelming sense that Zimbabwe has a chance to start over. For the first time, people gathered in their thousands with no fear of violence or retribution: no 'button sticks', no water cannons. There was no party regalia to be seen. Every single person on those streets yesterday knew that for that day, we were all the same: Zimbabweans who love their country and want better. Strangers hugged and took selfies together, shared flags, sang songs, danced.

We cheered together as the armoured vehicles rolled through the streets and got goose-bumps as a soldier fist-pumped from a low-flying helicopter: not because we want military rule or because we naively believe the army is our saviour from tyranny, but because extreme measures were taken in extreme circumstances and we have an opportunity now to make this about us, the people.

Of course these remain uncertain times. But the will of the people is clear: the time has come. Change must come. Opposition and civil society MUST NOT waste this opportunity to direct the change we are desperate for. The leadership vacuum in opposition must be plugged and the discourse unified, otherwise ZANU-PF WILL emerge stronger than ever.

Hope flows through the country today and it must be channeled for transformation.

I am reminded of a certain school's anthem based on Romans 12, and it is my prayer for all Zimbabweans:

"...Let joy keep you hopeful, 

in trouble stand firm.

Persist in prayer,

Have equal regard for one another.

Do not let evil conquer you

But use good to defeat evil."

Harare, October 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You are gorgeous -

Replete with blossom:

Purple, yellow, red.

Bougainvillea tangles in

Careless clusters

And jasmine perfume hangs in the air

as night falls.

Skies are hazy blue

And soporific sun lulls us

Into feeling

Everything is OK.

Sounds of the city rise:

Chatter and laughter and

Business as usual

And a red-gold light-snake

Weaves its way through

Jacaranda-ed streets.

Your beauty is a curse

Permitting men,

Believing that they own you,

To exploit and abandon and

Numb themselves to

The ragged child begging cents

Under the purple rain

And the thousand thousand

Stomachs sleeping hungry.

We patch our pockmarked roads

Like we patch our integrity

And our pockets

And our make-a-plan spirit:

Plastic surgery disguising

Ugly Truth.