My Sekuru

"My Dearest Tafara,

I am so sorry, I have been unable to respond to your letters because I have not been able to physically, morally, spiritually. There are so many things that are pressing me. Do you know I have been unable to pay for my shipping? I was let down by the American family. I was confident that I was going to get an award of a million dollars and I never got it. If I had gotten the award, you and Tendai were to get cars each.

I do not want you to be downhearted. Something will come up someday, somehow. If I can get to manage to leave you some money in a trust, you will be happy to use it. I am looking forward to establishing a trust for you grandchildren. There are alternative plans for saving money for grandchildren we are working on and not just depending on luck. We have to work hard.

I was happy to hear that you are working hard in your studies. With your determination, you will be able to do it. Nothing comes out of nothing. I want you to cheer up.

Please give my best wishes to Larissa and Christopher. I shall write them soon. I am sorry I am unable to do more. You are always in my thoughts.

Love Always, Sekuru"

I received this letter one summer afternoon in 1999 from my paternal grandfather. He was now back in his homeland of Zimbabwe because he had become too ill to continue living in the States. I didn’t think much of it then. I’m not sure what I had expressed sadness about in my previous letter to him. Perhaps, my spoiled teenage self was a bit disappointed that I would not be getting the car that my grandfather had promised me, but I was somehow managing to deal with driving around in the used vehicle that my parents had purchased for me. However, as I read this letter later in life, it made me think about my life with my grandfather and how this man, who was larger than life throughout my childhood, was simply a human— flawed like us all.

At the time that he wrote this letter, my grandfather was a shell of the man that I knew. He would die a year later, at the age of 82, after a lifetime battle with diabetes, blind and unable to take care of himself. The last time I had spoken to him was the day of my college graduation party in June of 2000. At that time in my life, I was unable to fully contemplate the man, the myth, the legend behind him. I had always heard grandiose stories about him—like the time he bought two Mercedes Benzes in Germany, had them shipped to Zimbabwe, and then traded in one of the Benzes to a man for a large home in the capital— and I spent a great deal of time with him during my childhood. It was through letters from him that I saved and letters that I found in a box in my grandmother’s bedroom after she passed away in 2004, however, that I learned so much more about my grandfather as a man.

A native of Rhodesia, which would become Zimbabwe in 1980 after declaring itself an independent nation, my grandfather, Dr. Matthew Wakatama, was born in 1918. The son of a postman, though I am told that we come from a royal family known for their skills as

blacksmiths and known for the craftsmanship that produced the weapons used to spearhead early civil wars against the colonists, he was educated at a mission school and went on to become a teacher. During this time, he married my grandmother and saved money to further educate himself, first at Adams College in South Africa, and later at Fort Hare University in South Africa, where he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Education in 1952. It was always noted in my family that he “attended University with Nelson Mandela while at Fort Hare.”

After graduating from Fort Hare, he returned to teaching in “Zim,” as we Zimbabweans call it. He then enrolled in the University of London and received a Master’s Degree in 1957. This enabled him to become the first African headmaster of a teacher training school in Rhodesia and later the first African founding principal of a college in Rhodesia, followed by becoming the first black Rhodesian African to be appointed lecturer at the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1963. He was a man of many firsts.

It appears that the spirit of his ancestors manifested itself in his plight as his political activism led him to uproot the family to Zambia in 1966, where he was appointed lecturer at the University of Zambia, all while he studied to complete his Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of London and provided for my grandmother and his seven children. The great story behind his move to Zambia was that he was such an outspoken activist against the colonists that he was told he would be imprisoned unless he left Rhodesia. Thus, he sent my grandmother and their four younger children to Zambia and followed them by “escaping” across the country border overnight. Of course, a practical adults might ask themselves later in life “why would one have to escape if they had been asked to leave?” Yet, as a younger person, the story sounded so heroic.

Completing his Ph.D. in 1972 at the age of 54, my grandfather moved with my grandmother to the States, where most of their children had attended college. He became a Professor of Education at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York, where he worked until he retired. During this time, it was notable that my grandfather worked directly with Betty Shabbaz, with whom I had the “pleasure” of meeting as a child, even though I didn’t realize the honor of such an experience. Could you imagine meeting the wife of the great Malcolm X? It was also notable that he was a well-known political spokesperson as it related to the politics of Rhodesia and, to this day, you can still find video footage of him on a Harvard website speaking at a Harvard forum regarding political matters in his home country.

Nevertheless, despite all of his accolades, he was simply my Sekuru, the word for grandfather in our native language of Shona, and I was his Tafara, the Shona word that represented the phrase “we are happy,” given to me as my legal middle name at birth, which was ironic as I do not have the sunniest of dispositions. Yes, he was the “Professor,” as everyone called him, and he was certainly was larger than life, if not regal, presence, but again, in reality, he was just a man.

In 1985, five years after Zimbabwe had gained its independence, my grandparents officially moved back there. They bought a big home in the capital city of Harare, with a pool, servant’s quarters, and farmland and my grandmother owned a butcher shop. A home that my cousins

and I would inherit upon their passing. Living across the street from a famous white Zimbabwean Olympic swimmer, they lived quite the opulent life. Or at least it appeared that way. My grandfather, however, would return to New York to continue teaching at Medgar Evers. After staying at my family home for some time, he rented a little apartment across the street from my middle school, where I would often spend time with him after the end of the school day.

He wasn’t a hoarder, but as an academic, he was a “collector” of sorts. Throughout his apartment, you would find piles and piles of books, papers, and mail. Often in his mail were sweepstakes letters from the American Family Publishing and Publishers Clearing House—well known for the commercials with Ed McMahon. Unbeknownst to me, he was playing these sweepstakes religiously, and oddly enough, this brilliant man who was often imposing wisdom upon me, really believed that he too “may already be a millionaire.” Since my grandfather had lived with us for some time before moving into his apartment, he would often receive mail at our home, and most prominent in his stacks of mail were his sweepstakes notifications. This would continue after he departed to Zimbabwe. But, I will always remember that opening these sweepstakes was often a part of his Sunday ritual at our home.

Most Sundays were the same from 1985 until his return to Zim in 1998, though I was away most Sundays after I left for college in the fall of 1996. My grandfather would religiously attend service at an AME church a couple of blocks from his home and someone from our family, whether it be my mom, my stepfather, or myself— once I was able to drive—would pick him up afterward so that he could spend the day at our family home.

Bespectacled in big tortoiseshell rims with a long grey goatee and a full frosted mane, he had a very distinguished look about him. You could immediately spot him walking with his cane out of the church as he was always impeccably dressed. It was a running joke in our family that you would never catch him dressed down. Consistently dressed in an elaborate suit and tie, you may sometimes catch him in a cardigan instead of a sports jacket on a winter day or in one of his coveted Guayabera shirts—the thin see-through shirts worn, in Latin American, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and Africa also known as “wedding shirts”—at a festive occasion on a sweltering summer day. The consummate aristocrat, he even wore shirt and sock garters— the same garters that I would run around the house with as a child thinking they were incredible stretching bracelets, often snapping my skin in them.

After arriving at our home, my grandfather would ceremoniously sit at the head of our table, ironically in what was my stepfather’s home, and wait to be served his brunch. Speaking in his heavy African accent, if there is such a thing as an “African accent,” he would ask his grandchildren about our week— he considered my half-sister and half-brother his grandchildren just the same as me despite not sharing DNA with them. Always supportive of our endeavors and instantly ready to offer advice, I can still hear him famously saying “aahhhh, but you see...” when trying to prove a point. He was the bearer of knowledge in our blended family which included three sets of grandparents, he being the only one with a college degree.

Following brunch, he would retreat to the couch to read the newspaper and sort through his mail, including his sweepstakes notifications, while the women in the house cleaned and he awaited his weekly haircut. Coming from a generation of clearly defined gender roles and native cultures that included women bringing men bowls of water to wash their hands in at their seats before serving them food, he certainly played the role of the family patriarch, and I didn’t think much about it as a child as I only knew that we respected our elders. Aside from that, my nuclear family didn’t ascribe much to the gender roles of the old world. My stepfather was often the one who cooked brunch, he also did all of the grocery shopping and laundry in the home. Later in life, I would realize that my liberal mother, once disowned by her parents for having a black child, played into this to appease him. She cut his hair every week, ironed his clothes, cooked for him, not simply because he was elderly, but because this was all he knew, which was not the case, as she came home to find him ironing a shirt one day and they shared a laugh as he told her that he knew how to do things for himself, he just chose not to.

Similarly, she looked past his constant philandering, which I would later learn from reading letters that he wrote my grandmother and was a constant source of sadness for her, especially as he remained in the States while she lived in Zim. My younger self had no idea that his “friend” with whom he stayed for periods when he was in between the States and Zim was more than a friend. While it may not be taboo to have multiple wives in many African nations, openly engaging in relationships outside of your marriage was not an acceptable norm in America. Just as he looked past American norms concerning gender roles, he did not seem connected to the racial strife experienced by Black Americans. As a native African, I don’t even think he understood race relations in America despite coming from a nation that was colonized and bordered by a country riddled by apartheid. In my eyes, he seemed to think of himself beyond the norms of America, and I continued to be clueless, young, and naïve. I was clueless as to the many nuances of gender, social, and cultural roles occurring during these times.

While my Sekuru was a great man, very accomplished and prideful, he was a man who possessed flaws. As I have grown older and recognized my flaws, I do not find myself disappointed, surprised, or perplexed when exploring all aspects of his life. I still love sharing stories about him, completely true or exaggerated, and I can find humor in some of his idiosyncrasies. I can also say that I learned a very important lesson from him in his last letter to me: “Nothing comes from nothing. You must work hard!” I believe in hard work, but I must admit, I do play the lottery from time with hopes of winning.