This essay was published in Taproot Magazine 6 years ago.
Growing up in Zimbabwe and Botswana, I was surrounded by fruit bearing trees. Living in Gaborone, both my neighbors to the left and right of us had mulberry trees that left twigs, leaves, and red stains on the sidewalk when we played outside. My school uniform, everyday clothes, fingers, and lips were constantly stained red from the juicy purple-red fruit. I ate them while they were unripe, letting the zing from the young fruit sit on my tongue and make me squeeze my eyes shut. Birds joined the fray too, leaving their approval in the form of purple stained poop all over my father’s baakie much to his dismay.
Our church grounds were haphazard orchards with scattered trees that gave their tithe with lemons, peaches, gauvas, and mulberries galore. Kids left late Sunday afternoon covered in the sticky sweetness of the peaches and lemons. We tried to hide the stains from the mulberries on our Sunday’s best.
Morojwa also known as the snot apple, was probably the fruit I spent the most time trying to hunt down as a child. It had a hard, 4-5 lobed outer shell that needed to be peeled back to get to the chewy, caramel softness inside. The furry seeds were gross and inedible but once you had a piece of the fruit in your mouth, you had a treat akin to bubblegum to enjoy for a while.
A gargantuan Baobab tree stood in the middle of the compound at my primary school. Baobab’s tangy yet sweet fruit is a texture I can’t quite describe to this day. Sweet, yet sour. Hard, but with lots of give. When you crack open the hard outer shell, it gives way to bundles of chalky, sweet and sour morsels that we gorged on. We would sit at the base of the tree gathered around a big fruit and dig in together.
In secondary school, we had several, old, Marula trees that bore their fruit in the heat of the summer. We picked the fermenting soft ones that had fallen to the ground and tore into their skin with our teeth and let the fleshy and tangy pit bounce around on our tongues before spitting out the pit and wiping the juices that had dribbled down our chins onto our school uniforms. None of the high school drama or hormones could ruin our delight.
When I was in Harare, I would visit my uncle who had a tall mango and avocado tree in his front yard. My cousins and I would spend hot afternoons eating freezeits and throwing boomerang seeds and rocks up at the trees’ leafy boughs hoping to get a ripe mango or avocado in return. The mangoes would be devoured on site. We would shriek and run away from bees that wanted their share of the fragrant mango juice that ran down our fingers and onto our bare feet in the sand of my Uncle’s driveway. We would take the avocados inside, cut them in half, removing the pit and sprinkling white sugar on the fruit and dig in with a spoon. Every roadside had a watermelon truck or stand every few kilometers.
Those were the good times, before the drought and water control. Before the democracy become a dictatorship and politicians focused on filling their coffers more than making sure whether or not their people ate. It was a time before students left home to gain skills to further their nation but decided to never come back because they have lost hope. A time before we had to stuff a bag full of money to buy one loaf of bread. Everything dried up, and there were no fruits.
So we left, and I came to Kansas, the land of my other ancestors. I have a garden now, and I am planting my own trees so that I may enjoy fruitful summers like I did in my youth. I also have a two year old daughter who follows me around in everything I do. She watched me buy the seedlings. She was on my back when I tilled the ground, and planted the seeds. She held the hose when I watered the plants. She saw them grow, producing juicy tomatoes, strawberries, melon, and grapes that she could pick and gobble down everytime she went to play outside and she watched the creeping vines give us squash after squash.
It’s not the same, but it is my own piece of Southern Africa that I have in my own home. By having fruits for us to enjoy on a whim in the summer, my daughter gets to build a relationship and deep connection with nature while remembering to slow down and enjoy the fruits of her labor. I think often about my childhood, and the drought that swept through as the political climate tanked. I remind myself that even in times of doubt, like plants, my people are strong,resilient, and can survive. I know that even though it seems endless, at some point, the drought will end. Clouds will form and nourish them in endless waves of opportunity to be green, and lush, and fruitful again.
Rooting Tootingly yours,
Farai