The Last Rain in Bulawayo

Bulawayo, 1998 — a city of sunburned streets and restless winds, where the scent of dust and diesel hung heavy in the air. In the township of Mzilikazi, two brothers grew up chasing the same dream but running from different ghosts.

Kuda Mavhura, the elder, had the calm eyes of a thinker — quiet, patient, believing in reason and hope even when both were dying in Zimbabwe. He once dreamed of owning a small business, a clean life far from the smoke and crime that wrapped their city.

Simba, the younger, was his opposite. He carried fire in his heart, anger in his fists, and a reckless grin that could melt into rage in seconds. When their father was crushed in a mining accident, everything fell apart. Their mother sold vegetables in the market, debts grew, and school became a luxury they couldn’t afford.

It was Simba who brought the first gun home. He said it wasn’t for violence — just protection. But protection soon became power, and power became survival. Together they joined the Gondo Crew, a syndicate that smuggled fuel, weapons, and stolen cars across the Botswana border.

Their boss, Mai Gondo, ruled from behind a veil of perfume and cigarette smoke. She was elegant, commanding — a woman who could smile and order a killing in the same breath. People whispered she once loved a general, and when he betrayed her, she built her empire on revenge.

Kuda was drawn into her orbit not by greed, but necessity. He managed her accounts, smoothed her deals, learned the delicate balance between crime and control. But Simba became her sword — the violent arm that enforced her rule.

For a time, money flowed. The brothers bought clothes they couldn’t pronounce, whiskey they didn’t like, and dreams that didn’t belong to them. But even in sin, Kuda’s heart longed for something pure. He found it in Nyasha, Mai Gondo’s niece — a nurse with soft eyes and quiet strength. She believed in healing, in leaving, in life after Bulawayo.

“You can’t save a drowning man who loves the water,” she once told him.

Simba loved her too, but differently — with jealousy, confusion, and denial. Nyasha saw that darkness in him and pitied it. And when she finally chose Kuda, Simba swallowed his pain behind laughter and whiskey.

The fragile peace shattered when a rival gang hijacked one of Mai Gondo’s trucks. The deal went wrong; men died, police intervened, and for the first time, her control slipped. She needed someone to blame — and the books pointed to Kuda.

“Someone leaked the route,” she hissed, her eyes cold.

“You think I’d betray my own blood?” Kuda asked.

“Not your blood, mine,” she replied.

She ordered Simba to watch his brother, to report if he turned. For days, Simba said nothing. He loved his brother, but he also feared Mai Gondo. In that silence, the world broke between them.

The government cracked down. The Gondo Crew’s safe houses were raided; their money trails burned. Mai Gondo became desperate, erratic. When she accused Kuda publicly, Simba finally acted — not out of courage, but love twisted by guilt. He betrayed her location to the police, hoping it would end without blood.

But when the raid came, bullets spoke louder than mercy. Sirens howled through the dawn rain. Kuda escaped into the chaos, guided by Nyasha’s trembling hands. Simba was caught. They beat him, dragged him away, and he vanished into the system — or into a shallow grave.

Kuda fled south, crossing into South Africa with a fake passport and a suitcase full of ghosts. Nyasha followed for a while, but her heart broke under the weight of exile and grief. When she fell ill and died in a Johannesburg hospital, Kuda stopped speaking altogether.

Fifteen years passed. The world changed, but his nightmares didn’t. Then one day, a trader from Bulawayo told him he’d seen Simba — alive, drunk, limping through the ruins of the old Gondo bar.

Kuda returned home. The city had aged — rust and rain eating its edges, hope buried under bills and broken promises. He found Simba sitting alone in the bar that once ruled the night. The neon sign still flickered weakly: “GONDO & SONS — NO CREDIT, NO MERCY.”

Simba looked up, half a smile lost in the wrinkles of his face.

“You ran,” he said softly.

“You stayed,” Kuda answered.

“We both lost.”

For a long time, they said nothing. Outside, thunder rolled and the sky tore open. Rain poured down like forgiveness neither had asked for. They stood together under the storm — two old men washed clean by time, guilt, and love that refused to die.

That night, as lightning flashed over the city, they walked through the streets of Bulawayo in silence. People said the rain turned red from the reflection of the neon light, but others swore it was the city weeping — mourning the brothers who once owned its sins.

Months later, the Mavhura brothers opened a small car workshop near the railway line. It wasn’t much — just grease, laughter, and the sound of rain on tin. Simba barely spoke; Kuda hummed the songs Nyasha used to sing. Sometimes, when the sky darkened, they both looked toward the west — as if waiting for their father’s voice in the wind.

They never became rich, but they found peace. And in a city that had forgotten what peace felt like, that was enough.

The locals still tell their story when the monsoon clouds gather — how two brothers drowned in sin but found redemption in silence. They say the last rain that fell in Bulawayo that year was the heaviest in decades, washing away the dust, the blood, and the names written in fear.

In the end, the Mavhura brothers didn’t escape their past — they learned to live inside it. And when the thunder returns each November, some swear they can still see two silhouettes walking together in the downpour, sharing one umbrella, and one unspoken forgiveness.