Stories that shape us

This story, her story, echoes my own in many ways. The film, directed by South African-born actress and filmmaker Embeth Davidtz, is unflinching in its portrayal of the time, largely down to a remarkable performance by Lexi Venter as Alexandra, who, despite her age, captures the reality the adults cannot accept. Rhodesia becomes Zimbabwe. The destructive colonialism our parents clung to comes to an end. And in the contrast between a child’s innocent awareness and the wilful blindness of the adults around her, the film tells a larger truth: about connection and love, brutality and power and the strange, painful ways we struggle with change.

Zoom out, and you’ll see it’s still happening. The greed. The fear. The clinging to dominance. The refusal to let go. It’s exhausting, watching the human movie of us, isn’t it

The lens of memory

What I remember most from the time, however, is our ever present nannies who soothed us, protected us, worked in our homes. Liza, Lois, Titisi... It was just me and my young epileptic sister and these lovely ladies who cared for us. If I close my eyes, I can feel their skin, their warmth, their love for these two little girls. They were my lifeline in those vastly lonely empty days as I roamed the farm on horseback, often talking to my grandmother who had moved to South Africa in case we needed to get away to a “safe” place after the war was over.

When you’re a child, you have no way of knowing what’s right or wrong. You’re just in it. No one asks how you feel. No one asks if you’re okay. Alexandra has the uncanny ability to translate these cloudy intricacies of human experience into clear, fearless prose. She finds the right words when there are none. She narrates a childhood splintered with confusion, racism, a fierce love of family, and too many tragedies to count… that very weird but real situation of just being “in.

Zimbabwe, where I am from, means ‘houses of stones” in Shona. I love my country’s name; the suggestion embedded within it that we’re solid, here to stay. There is no denying our history of wars, colonialism, corruption, exploitation. And yet, in our towns and villages, in the spirit of our people, we have not soured. We remain welcoming, generous, optimistic, even in grief. Visitors to Zimbabwe today nearly always remark on our ‘sunny disposition,’ as if sunniness struck us from above, unbidden. But it’s more complicated than that. Our good humour isn’t unthinking, it’s a discipline… it’s cultural. It’s ubuntu, defined as a deep, cultural instinct to care for others and to make them feel at ease. Perhaps that’s why this work, this business, is second nature to me.