Before we start, can I please address something that’s been eating away at my soul? I can? Thank you.
The other day, someone — can’t remember who, because my brain auto-deletes unimportant people — tweeted that the most “talented” name in Zimbabwean arts is Mukudzei. They reasoned that four famous people bear that name, which apparently beats every other name in the country. I haven’t been this emotionally invested in people’s government names since my brief but powerful obsession with John Magaro and Victoria Mboko.
Let’s dismantle this crime against research.
The roll call: Jah Prayzah, Holy Ten, King Kandoro, and Mukudzei Mlambo. I’ve listed them conveniently in order of relevance, so we’ll start from the bottom. Mukudzei Mlambo — out. No explanation required here.
Next: Jah Prayzah. I work with Jah. He’s reserved. Like, N’Golo Kanté reserved. He barely blinks… unless you misspell his name. It’s Mukudzeyi (note the “y”), not Mukudzei. That “y” has been a documented Agenda Item in actual meetings. Jah is not a Mukudzei. He is a Mukudzeyi. He would sooner shave his dreadlocks than let you drop that “y.”
That leaves King Kandoro and Holy Ten. That’s it? Two funny guys? I could walk to the shops and find seventeen Trymores who can sing, dance, and fix a ZESA transformer with one hand while eating a freezie. Be serious.
Moving on.
Last week, my sister-in-law got married. Naturally, my wife and I attended — partly because Natasha has been nothing but kind to us, and partly because she’s my wife’s sister. She’s my favourite Natasha. I prefer her to Natasha Nyemba, and that’s saying something. In the Talented Name Olympics, Natasha wins by a mile. Natasha Muz. Natasha Burnett. Natasha from Avenues. ZimEye tried to help my argument when they accidentally published Enchantress’s name as Natasha Mhandu instead of Natalie Mhandu. Honest mistake, but if her other name is actually Natasha? Shut it down, game over.
One of the highlights of the wedding was the playlist. At one point, the DJ dropped Sylent Nqo’s Denga, and the whole crowd was touching the sky. It was glorious. Then the DJ did something even better: he skipped Suhn’s verse.
Look, Suhn is talented; way better rapper than I could ever be. His music resonates with people whose parents did better in life than mine, but his verse didn’t fit on Denga. And that got me thinking: what other great songs are dragged down by a guest verse? My first suspect was Ti Gonzi, because he just feels like someone who has a crime scene somewhere in his features. But nope. His verse on Ndiringe gave me mild eczema, but not the full anaphylactic shock I was hunting for.
I wanted something so bad it makes your ears file for a restraining order. I thought of asking ZWitter, but I didn’t want to leak the idea; Manando is strict about that. So I went digging. This meant hours of King 98, Seh Calaz, ExQ… you know, the usual suspects. I say this so you appreciate the abuse I endure for your entertainment. No one else can say, “I listened to all of Seh Calaz’s music for you.” You’re welcome.
Perspective: in 1993, Serbian basketball player Boban Jankovic paralysed himself by headbutting a concrete hook support in a fit of rage. (Do not watch the video if you’re squeamish.) Next to that, I’m probably second on the list of people who’ve caused themselves irreversible harm for their job. This is a horrible way to make a living.
But as a man, you eventually accept rock bottom. I drive a Nissan Note; not my dream car, but it’s fine. It’s the Delroy Shewe of vehicles: reliable, gets the job done, but no one’s hanging posters of it. That has never made me feel like a failure though. You know what did? I realised I’m a failure when I caught myself Googling, “Who’s the rap guy on Ngoro Yeminana?”
And that feels like the perfect place to start this list.
1. Godfrey Munyaradzi Mukodzo on Ngoro Yeminana
On June 9, 2021, at 10:44 AM, the Twitter account Uncle Flo asked the single most important question in history: “Was the guy who rapped on Ngoro Yeminana eventually arrested?”
It was one of those rare moments where the Zimbabwean public, en masse, begged for the police to commit an injustice. Everyone united across tribe, class, and political allegiance to plead with the ZRP. People weren’t just okay with unfair incarceration; they were actively suggesting charges: “Plant evidence if you must. Frame him for murder. Invent a law if necessary. Just… do something.”
I ran a poll while researching this piece. Out of nearly 2,000 responses, only 13 said they liked Godfrey’s verse. My nihilist brother always rants that life is pointless and that we have no inherent purpose in this world. He says we’re just meat puppets grinding through suffering for Monopoly money so Elon Musk’s grandchildren can buy space yachts. We’ll die, our kids will die, and the elites’ kids will build on our bones; repeat cycle. I’d always agreed with my brother until I saw those 13 votes. Now I know my life has a purpose. My mission is to find The 13 and delete them from the family of nations.
True, some darkness in this world is unavoidable. The best you can do is focus on yourself, your loved ones, and the few things that bring joy. But sometimes, for the sake of humanity, exceptions must be made. And for those thirteen people, I am absolutely making an exception. This is the one place where I can make a difference.
To give credit where it’s due: some kind soul has already edited a version of the Ngoro Yeminana video that surgically skips Godfrey’s verse. This is the first truly good use of AI. Whoever you are, I hope angels personally escort you through life. You restored my faith in humanity.
But my bigger question is for the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. How and why has this verse not been classified as a national security threat? You’re telling me Geza is a bigger danger to our democracy than Godfrey Mukodzo? What is the metric here?
Before you think I’m being unfair, consider this: on October 1, 2020, the official Joyfull Praise Facebook page revealed that Godfrey was having serious health problems and was literally gasping for air when he recorded that verse (We know; we could tell.) But instead of concern, the comments section was full of praise. “What a soldier.” “What a warrior.” “What dedication.” Sir, no. Since when do we hand out Employee of the Month trophies for nearly dying on the job? Capitalism really cooked us.
This isn’t a story of someone denied medical help. No, he saw doctors. They literally told him to stop singing. He ignored them. That’s what makes this verse infinitely worse, because it wasn’t a tragic accident. It was a premeditated crime. He had medical clearance not to record, but still walked into the booth, defied his own lungs, looked mortality dead in the eye, and said, “Drop the beat.”
This now bumps me down to third place on the list of people who’ve caused themselves irreversible harm for their jobs. This is a horrible way to make a living.
2. Victor on Wapunza
Getting older has stripped me of the will to care about celebrities. In my teens, I knew all of them, even the washed-up ones. In my twenties, the interest started to fade, and gossip headlines stopped exciting me. By the time I hit 24, I only had bandwidth for two celebrities: Natasha Nyemba and Garry Mapanzure (MHSRIP).
I first became aware of Garry during lockdown, when I was broke, bitter, and surviving on spite (not much has changed). In a moment of entrepreneurial desperation, I realized that hating on him could actually turn into revenue. His star was rising, and for our scrappy satirical blog, picking apart Zimbabwean celebrities was always guaranteed traffic. It helped that my co-conspirator, Emmerson, was not only the graphics guy but also a menace with jokes. We were two unemployed clowns with internet access, which is a more powerful weapon than most governments want to admit.
Every Friday, we published a newsletter that stitched together world news with a Zimbabwean slant, peppered with cheap shots at local celebs. Some actual headlines we ran:
- “The new Minister of Energy has promised that since Fortune Chasi was fired, so will wood.”
- “The Southern African Broadcasting Corporation has sued Vimbai Zimuto for stripping naked on national TV. Asked about the lawsuit, Vimbai said she won’t wear it.”
- “The Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, has banned all commuter omnibuses from operating on Harare roads. Unfortunately, this means Hwindi President will now completely focus on music.”
- “In a recent interview with Zwitter.Com, gender studies commentator Shadaya Knight was asked if he preferred boobs or ass. This marked the first time a cunt was asked about other genitals.”
- “Professor Jonathan Moyo revealed last week that he has three PhDs, seven Masters, twelve Bachelors, and sixteen Diplomas. No one wondered how he managed to fit all that in his head.
- “In Media news: The Herald has officially stopped publishing after a Ministry of Health study showed ink is bad for the anus.”
That was our brand: unserious headlines for unserious people who needed a laugh on Friday mornings. Politicians hated us. Thin-skinned celebs hated us. But Garry was different. When one of our dumb Mapasure puns landed on his feed, instead of sulking, he laughed, called us hilarious, and even shared it. He was living in China then, if I recall. I became a huge fan. He proved he wasn’t one of those pretentious artists who treat every joke like a leukemia diagnosis.
People sometimes ask me why I wasted years of my life on that blog when I could’ve found “real work.” OK, that’s a lie. No one has ever asked. But I often imagine people asking, so I can pre-prepare the speech I would give if I were ever asked.
The truth is, I am corporate Ebola. Every company I’ve touched has died. I have worked at eight companies that no longer exist. Restaurants, retail, factory; all gone. Even the ones that still technically exist are like zombies; shambling corpses that should be laid to rest. My first real job was at Harvey Powder, a detergent factory with the employee turnover of bodyguards in a John Wick movie. On Monday, thirty of us were hired. By Wednesday, only four remained. By Friday, it was just me and Emmerson (that’s how we met). Within a month, some Indian entrepreneurs called the Chudasumas bought the whole thing and closed it.
Then came the bookshop. It was a cushy gig: sweeping, restocking, and reading to my heart’s content. I quit after reading everything on the shelves. After that came a plastic factory (closed), then a fast-food joint called Munyama (also closed, partly because of the name, methinks). On the final day at Munyama, the owner didn’t even bother showing up, so the staff looted everything not nailed down. People left with trays of chicken feet. I walked away with three extension cords and a sack of cartilage.
That was the breaking point. I stopped trying to be a productive citizen and leaned into the one industry with eternal job security: celebrity gossip. Garry Mapanzure became our muse. He was the definition of a good sport. He took every jab we threw at him with grace and laughed with us. For someone I only ever knew parasocially, I miss him more than makes sense.
If I could ask Garry one last set of questions, they’d be simple:
What was it like being a Black creative in China?
How proud are you of Hillzy?
What do you make of Zimbabwe’s RnB/Afrobeats scene right now?
And — most importantly, Garry — why on God’s tired green earth did you let Victor rap on Wapunza?
3. Silent Killer on Zvichitibhowa
In the early months of 2024, Kae Chaps and I had what I can only describe as an unnecessarily passionate argument about the best Zimbabwean hip-hop verses of the previous year. This took place, as most bad decisions do, in Dennis’s apartment. It was a few months after I’d won the Zim Hip-Hop Award for Verse of the Year, an accolade that meant absolutely nothing to Kae Chaps. Kae is a brand name. He floats above things like ZHHAs. Bragging about my win to him is like bragging about winning a free “combo meal” voucher from Hungry Lion to Kudakwashe Tagwirei.
Naturally, our conversation spiraled into bedlam because Kae and I belong to different schools of thought. Kae, being an actual working artist with money, values commercial viability. He wants verses that move units, fill stadiums, and sell bucket hats. Dennis, professional chaos merchant, agreed. That’s two votes against me before the argument even started. I, on the other hand, don’t care if a song cracks the Billboard Hot 100 or goes double uranium on Apple Music. This, of course, is why Kae Chaps makes money from music and I do not.
Quick detour — remember that person on Twitter who tried to argue that Mukudzei was the most talented name in Zimbabwe? The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Kuda is actually carrying the belt. Kae Chaps? Chillmaster? Begotten Sun? Kurry Suave? Mahachi? Tagwirei? (OK, maybe let’s put an asterisk on this one.) Kuda Rice? Kuda Mutsvene? Kuda Doba? Kuda Chadenga? Kuda Chakwanda? Whoever started the Mukudzei discourse is hereby added to The 13. Please die.
Back to the argument. The room quickly became five-versus-one. Dennis and his crew sided with Kae. Timire, who I thought would have my back, retreated into the corner with a blunt. My Verse of the Year pick was Synik’s soul-melting poetry on Good Old Days, the closing track on our joint album, Treasure. Yes, it’s dedicated to me, which makes me biased, but also makes me objectively correct. I dared anyone in the room to name something more beautifully written.
Kae didn’t hesitate. He went with Silent Killer’s verse on Bling4’s Zvichitibhowa. Tragically, he wasn’t joking. One of Dennis’s homies countered my Synik argument. He looked me dead in the face and said, “But it didn’t even crack TikTok.” This is a real sentence said out loud by an adult human man.
To double down, Kae pulled out a clip of what looked like a stadium full of people screaming Silent Killer’s verse word for word. I’ll admit, seeing that many people connect with art is powerful. But as I watched, I recoiled in disgust. The crowd was euphoric, but I couldn’t tell if they were laughing with Silent Killer or laughing at him. There’s a difference, and the line here was blurrier than Timire’s vision after two blunts.
For clarity: I have nothing against Ngwere, and I’ll prove that in my next piece. His verse on Mandy Ahwee’s Ndinonyara is one of my all-time favorites. But the Zvichitibhowa verse feels like a gimmick. The type of thing that trends because it’s chaotic, not because it’s good.
And then came the dagger. Kae added that whoever had won Verse of the Year 2023 had actually robbed Silent Killer of his rightful crown. Dennis, never one to let drama pass quietly, gleefully informed Kae that I was the one who’d won. At this point, a normal celebrity might’ve walked it back, shown grace, and said something polite to spare my feelings. Not Kae. He doubled down, yelling across the room: “Wakanyeperwa naBeefy, shamwari!” I was wounded. But I respected it. I will always prefer brutal honesty over fake politeness.
According to Bling4 himself, Silent Killer actually rapped over the entire Zvichitibhowa beat, and his team had to Frankenstein it into a sixteen-bar verse, cherry-picking what they thought were the “best” parts. Which raises the obvious question: those were the best parts? What horrors were left on the cutting room floor? Someone needs to start a petition for the Ngwere Cut. #ReleaseTheNgwereCut.
Here's my truth: this verse haunts me. In execution, it is catastrophically clumsy and borderline hostile to the human ear. And yet, in its horridness, it’s weirdly compelling. The first time I heard it, I wanted to amputate both ears with a teaspoon, yet nearly two years later, I still catch myself muttering lines from it like a war veteran reliving trauma. It exists in a genre of one: a verse so bad it loops back into unforgettable.
So no, I will not fold and call this a good verse just because the crowd lost their minds. Sometimes you have to be like Kae Chaps and stand on business in the face of adversity. And I’ll stand on mine: Handingarambe ndichiti bho zvichindibhowa.
4. Dobba Don on Uri Wangu
Natasha’s wedding was a blast. I’ll dedicate a full article to it one day, but for now, let’s zoom in on two moments. First: the MC. I wish I remembered his name. I don’t, and I can’t text Natasha for it because she’s on honeymoon. It’s bad manners to interrupt people’s first week of bliss with “hey, what’s your MC’s name?” All I’ve got is a description: cute guy, light complexion, chipped canine tooth, real charmer. If you know who I’m talking about, please tag him. He deserves bookings, or at the very least, dental insurance.
Anyway, at one point, the MC announces: “Ladies and gentlemen, the groom has arranged a surprise guest artist!” Naturally, the room goes feral with speculation. Everyone started throwing out guesses like it was the NBA draft. Fusion 5 Mangwiro had already played, so I figured the night had peaked. My guess was Delroy Shewe. Reliable, affordable, gets the job done. My wife, bless her, guessed Jah Prayzah, because that’s the only Zim artist whose name she knows. I laughed in her face. “No disrespect to Natasha, but I don’t think her man has JP money.”
Cue the MC screaming: “Jaaaaaah Praaaaaayzaaaaah!” I almost fainted. Everyone shot to their feet, scanning the venue, waiting for Mukudzeyi (with a y) to descend from the rafters. Then the MC finished the sentence: “…on the DJ’s laptop! DJ, play some Jah Prayzah for the crowd!” I was crushed.
Funniest moment though: the reverend — Anglican, name also lost to the black hole in my brain — asked all married couples to rise. Half the congregation proudly got up in matching brown-and-cream outfits, ranging from fresh newlyweds to couples old enough to have met at a Canaan Banana rally. It was beautiful. Chi and I sat admiring and clapping for them until the whole table nudged us: “Hey… get up!”
“Oh, right! That’s us!”
We scrambled to our feet like idiots. We had literally forgotten we’re married. This is who we are: unserious children masquerading as adults. I still don’t understand how the state trusts me with car keys, rent agreements, and a bank card. Any day now, I expect a grown-up to shout: “Hey! Whose child is this? Why do they have a wallet?”
And that is how I imagine Dobba Don feels about being an artist. Like… does he know? Does he wake up some days and think, “Wait, people actually consider me part of the industry?”
I first clocked Dobba Don through Mudendere, an Oskid-produced banger that lit up 2017. It slapped, like all Oskid joints do, until someone told me it was actually a drug awareness message song. That blew my mind. I had no idea. It was the same feeling I got when I learnt Nutty O’s Safe was about COVID. I was too busy shaking my waistline to realize I’d basically been gyrating to a public service announcement. 2017 was fun. But Dobba’s story since then has been heartbreak. His struggle with substance abuse is one of the saddest arcs in Zim music. In a fair timeline, Dobba should be in his “buying Range Rovers for mum” era. Instead, he’s fighting demons, and I respect the fight, but man…
Between my wife Chi and me, we know ten people in the last two years who’ve died from drugs. It’s brutal. You hear stats about fentanyl in the U.S. killing young people like flies, but you don’t think about our own backyard, where meth is quietly chewing through communities while we’re busy arguing about who dropped the best verse of 2023. We don’t even flinch anymore. If only we had… I don’t know… a drug awareness song to snap us out of it.
Which brings me to Uri Wangu. I don’t know what Dobba was on when he recorded his verse — maybe nothing, maybe something — but I can’t even crack jokes about it because the possibility depresses me. I wanted to find something witty to say, but instead I just felt gutted. It’s not even mockable. We can’t keep losing artists like this.
But let me end on a lighter note, because otherwise this gets too grim. Here’s your comic relief. My friend Blu Mordecai — genius music video director, self-described “Cole Bennett for people who can’t afford Cole Bennett” — was recently invited to pitch for a national drug awareness campaign. We wore our Sunday best, walked into the boardroom, nailed the presentation, and walked out certain we’d secured the bag. Then the lady in charge said she’d check Blu’s YouTube to review his work. His most recent upload was Mugaratia’s Mambo Solomon. You know the one.
“Ndoda zvaibhema Mambo Solomon, kana Bob Marley!”
That’s how we lost the tender.
5. MK47 on Zvachose
I was born in 1996, which means I’ve basically had a front-row seat to everything slowly collapsing with absolutely no hope of it ever getting better. Everything — healthcare, the housing market, Israel-Palestine, the climate, Zimbabwean music — has gotten worse.
Yeah, millennials love to complain, but we’ve earned it. Every socioeconomic study says we’ve got it rougher than any generation before us, and every stat proves it. I’m only 28, but I’ve long accepted that hitting 45 would be a statistical miracle. Experts say stress-related health issues are supposedly what’s killing us, but has anyone considered checking our playlists? Because I’m convinced half the problem is songs like Zvachose.
Posse cuts have never worked for me, especially the soulless remixes. If you lined up Ndiudze Zvese Remix, Fire Emoji Remix, NaMwari Remix, Zvidhori Remix, Kure Remix, Zvenyu Remix, Ihulumende (it’s actually more disgusting this one wasn’t even a remix), and Gore Remix, they’d all tie for dead last. Picking one is like Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice, except instead of saving a child, she’s told to pick between Hitler and Himmler. That’s also how selecting a “favorite” verse on Umsindo All Stars’ Zvachose feels.
I always find it funny when stars with obviously massive egos try to come together and form “supergroups.” The concept, in general, is cursed. It’s like if everyone on We Are the World had said, “This was fun, let’s start a band.” Umsindo All Stars was the first I remember, since I wasn’t alive pre-Independence. Then came The Xpandables, a group that only exists because ExQ and Xtra Large both have X’s in their names, and somebody — I’m guessing Elon Musk — thought that was enough of a business plan. Then there was MTM, which may have been a record label or simply a long-running WhatsApp group chat. And of course, 4Supremos with Holy Ten, Nutty O, Tamy Moyo, and Ishan; a quartet of legit stars who managed to produce… one song? Between these four “supergroups,” we got maybe four songs in total.
Zvachose is the prime example of this curse. Everyone involved sounded like they had taken experimental mushrooms, agreed to freestyle, and decided God would sort it out in post-production. I’ve developed a kind of Stockholm Syndrome guilty pleasure towards it, but if we’re being sincere, this song should never have existed, even as a passing thought.
To illustrate the trauma, let me take you back to the days of Napster. When it first launched, during the dial-up internet era, my sister would queue up four or five songs overnight, praying they’d download before someone picked up the landline in the morning. That “someone” was usually me, and yes, I picked up on purpose just to piss her off. Songs cut mid-download would live forever like that on a burnt CD. I still have a stack of those cursed half-songs. They kinda slap. The way we’d have trimmed Godfrey’s verse on Ngoro Yeminana back then was just by “accidentally” stopping the download halfway.
So, imagine being as excited as my sister always was, staring at that glacial progress bar all night. With a 56k modem, downloading even a modest JPEG took minutes. A low-res 30-second Meagan Good clip could easily take 30–40 minutes. Now picture my sister finally getting the “File Complete” notification after a whole night of waiting, and the file is Zvachose by Umsindo All Stars. I know for a fact she would have killed someone. I thank God every day I don’t live in an era where I’d have to wait 12 hours just to hear “Ndoda kuti kwauri… ini ndokuda… kubvira kare kare, mudiwa.”
Not a single verse on Zvachose clears the bar of “halfway decent,” but I single out MK’s for three reasons. One: outside Trevor Dongo, she’s the most talented on the lineup, so my expectations for her were higher. Two: I praised her in my first Riddims & Raps article, and cosmic balance demands that I now drag her. And three: representation. I can’t risk the diversity warriors and cancel brigade accusing me of leaving women out of my “worst verses” list. Equal-opportunity slander is the only safe slander.
And then there’s the wardrobe. Sweet merciful heavens, the wardrobe. Who styled these people? 2010 fashion was already a war crime, but the All Stars decided to push for The Hague. Remember: to promote the song, they handed out 15,000 free DVDs of this music video, essentially meting out evidence of their crimes against fabric nationwide. You’d think if you’re going to distribute something nationally, you’d want to look somewhat presentable. Not the Umsindo All Stars. Watch the video today and focus on the outfits. It will be the most disturbing thing you see all week, even worse than the Boban Jankovic video. Nothing prepares you for Alien from Project Fam appearing in a Joker-esque shoulder-padded powersuit, collars spread wide like a Gotham villain trying to take flight. It’s quite haunting.
Love songs matter. I get it. Population stats prove it. It took humanity from the dawn of time to 1800 to reach one billion people. Then only 125 years to hit two billion. Just 33 more years to hit three billion. By 1974, we were at four billion. Seven billion by 2011. Eight billion by 2022. In other words, people are having lots of sex. The human population has essentially doubled in Charles Charamba’s lifetime. So I get why love songs exist. They grease the wheels of human reproduction. But is Zvachose on anyone’s bedroom playlist? If anything, it makes you want to put your clothes back on.
Here’s the part that keeps me awake at night: MK’s verse actually made it past quality control. Twelve artists were on this track. Not one of them had the stones to say, “Maybe MK’s verse isn’t it.” Which means Sanii, or whoever was producing, either didn’t listen or just assumed, “Well, it’s MK47, so it must be good.” That’s not unheard of; it’s happened to me.
In college, I was part of a nerd squad working on a group project worth 50% of the grade. Our clique was drowning in assignments, so we decided to push it back, and then forgot to submit anything. We turned in absolutely nothing. But the professor didn’t bother checking, so he still gave us an A because, in his words, “I know you’re good students who always do good work.” That’s nerd privilege. We didn’t deserve it, but our reputation carried us. That’s the only time in my life I’ve benefitted from systemic bias.
And it makes me wonder: is that what happened with MK? Did she hand in absolutely nothing, and everyone just assumed it had to be genius because it was her? Because honestly, that’s the only possible explanation for how “Kungovaziya chete… nerimwe zuva… hehede” was allowed to reach human ears.
Conclusion
Some Riddims & Raps readers have written to ask where I’ve been these last two weeks. OK, that’s a lie again. No one asked. But if they had, the answer is: I’ve been in the shadow of death again.
My wife and I had to cut our vacation short because my mother needed an emergency hip replacement. She has lived with arthritis for as long as I can remember. Her limp was part of her, like a scar you forget is there until someone else notices it. She tried everything within her means, stretching the little money she had, but nothing ever helped. The limp worsened, and then the leg betrayed her completely — cancer. We managed as best we could, keeping her alive even when we couldn’t fix her, until her doctor called with a final window of hope. The cancer hadn’t spread yet. A hip replacement could save her leg from amputation. But it had to be done immediately. The catch? Five figures; more money than we had ever seen in one place.
My sister, Rutendo, had brain cancer. We found it too late. Surgery could have saved her, but the price was tens of thousands of dollars we didn’t have. That is how I lost her, on the 9th of December, 2024. I can still hear the silence of that day. All I have left are her burnt CDs and her Napster playlists — the half-downloaded songs she stayed up all night queuing on dial-up. That’s what still tethers me to her. My sister’s ghost lives inside those songs. I miss her every day, in ways words fail to convey. And I hate cancer more than I hate anything, more than I hate the emptiness it leaves behind, more than I hate Zvachose by Umsindo All Stars.
I couldn’t lose my mom too. I broke down in front of Chi — my wife, who is gorgeous — and before my tears had even dried, we were on the next flight home. Between savings, loans, and one generous cousin, we scraped enough to book Mom into West End Hospital. The procedure was successful. They saved her leg. She is in physiotherapy now, walking her slow, painful steps toward life again.
But recovery costs money. A special commode so she can go to the toilet. Custom shoes so her legs don’t collapse into unevenness. Endless checkups that insurance refuses to acknowledge. And pears, endless pears, because my mother loves pears. Rutendo loved blueberries. I don’t know why sickness sharpens taste buds into gourmet cravings. Why not settle for apples, or bananas, or something cheap?
The worry nearly broke me. Depression stormed back into my life like it had been waiting for the door to open. I had to return to antidepressants. Sleep vanished. My wife, who is gorgeous, and sees me more clearly than I see myself, tried to soothe me. But this time, I was drowning. My head was crowded: my mother’s health, our bleeding finances, the absurd cost of pears. I meditated, schemed, calculated, and only fell further into the dark.
One night, Chi — gorgeous, yes, but also a qualified psychologist — sat up with me in silence. I stared at two screens: my mother’s X-rays on one, our red-lined savings account on the other. Because we work through osmosis, she was on the brink of tears too. She sat beside me, wordless, until I asked, almost to the room more than to her:
“What am I gonna do?”
She usually has an answer. A video, a meme, a book, some little thing to break the weight. She knows how to patch my holes. But that night, there was nothing. My question wasn’t really meant to be answered anyway. Still, she looked at me and said, softly:
“Have you tried writing?”
I hadn’t. It seemed absurd. What good are words against cancer, against debt, against death? But I opened Word anyway and started typing. This article is what came out.
Mom is doing better now. And so am I. Writing helped. It always has. It may be the only thing keeping me sane. That, and my wife — who is gorgeous, but in that moment was also something more: the hand that kept me from disappearing completely.
So, thank you — yes, you — for reading. Thank you for giving me a place to put my grief, my jokes, my anger, my hope. Thank you for giving me an audience to laugh with when laughter is the only thing that can stop me from breaking. You mean more to me than I can ever put into words. Which is ironic, because words are all I have — that, and my gorgeous wife.
Till next time.
PS: The MC at Natasha’s wedding was MC Neville. Remember his name. Write it on your walls.
