Mauya! - Welcome!

For quite a while, I have been contributing ideas, through articles published in various media, particularly www.newzimbabwe.com www.theindependent.co.zw www.thestandard.co.zw - all great news sites focussing specifically on Zimbabwe, the latter two of which represent some of the few remaining newspapers in Zimbabwe. I have enjoyed the interaction with many readers. We did not always agree, which i found immensely useful, because i learned a lot from the ideas of my correspondents. Both the encouraging and critical comments were welcome.

Writing is liberating but it can also create certain enclosures - often when after years of writing, the readers begin to expect a certain way of writing and associate the writer with particular ideas and ideologies. In other words, the writer becomes classified. Sometimes, it becomes difficult for the writer to operate outsiode those confines. Yet writers are human, they too have certain views that do not necessarily conform to what's expected of them.

This blog is meant to accomodate some of my thoughts and feelings on everyday issues, which may not necessarily fit within the structures set in my previous or other writing. It won't be simply about politics or law - it will also be about other aspects of life - about things that i have encountered right from the time i was a small boy looking after cattle in the fields in Chikomba, about the close encounters with the 'modern world' when I became a city boy, about life at the Catholic boarding school, about the heady-days of student life at University in Harare, about the close encounter with a land that i had only known through Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, Virginia Woolfe - yes, those "A" Level Literature set books that we were forced to read, without the idea of real life in England - o! how the imagination stretched. Though i like to say, if one could survive that, they could survive anything ... and many of my beautiful countrymen and women, now scattered all over the globe, are living evidence of that truth ...

I love my language, so from time to time, i will use some of the wisdom of my ancestors - proverbs, idioms, etc from the Shona language - why should it be left behind in this age of globalisation?! ... Translations will always be provided. The title of this blog is "hurukuro nemazano" - which means "conversations and ideas". I believe, very faithfully, in the power of ideas and i place great value in constructive engagement. Welcome to my cyber-home .. "Mauya!", as we would say in the village.