tsitsi

A small knock rattled the door. Another visitor, I thought. Great. I hadn’t had a moment’s peace since arriving. I’m still something of a curiosity in my sister’s husband’s village in rural Zimbabwe, and I was staying in the newly built rondavel (round, hut-like house) across the dirt road from his family’s main complex. So I was a curiosity and fair game, especially for the teenage girls living in the area.

Sighing, I opened the door. I’d seen her before but we had not actually spoken. She was slight, sinewy, and radiated bashfulness. But there was something else, something hard about her, that made me realize she might not bend if pushed.

She greeted me. I greeted her. Then we waited. The wind blew cool under the graying, cloud-thick sky.

“Is there something you want?” I asked, playing, but also tired.

“Yes,” she stated. “Sweets.”

This was how I met Tsitsi. Tsitsi, whose mother died when she was just a baby. Whose father (my sis’ uncle-in-law) passed away a few months ago. Whose aunt found her in a nearby village, going from house to house looking for food, a place to sleep, a glint of affection or even just interest. Whose time was spent herding cattle – something girls generally don’t do – but wishing she was in school. And whose quiet, unassuming ways still allowed glimpses of the flint behind her eyes.

I didn’t know a thing about her when she first stood at my door. But over the next few days, I learned. And my sis told me that Tsitsi was in danger of not going to school, because those relatives who were looking out for her already had school fees to pay for others and little money with which to do it. Her uncle’s pension, for example, is 10,000 Zim dollars a month – but the bus fare to town to collect it is 40,000. One US dollar, by the way, gets about 15,000 Zim dollars on the black market. School fees are 600,000 a term, but they spiral all the time as money becomes more and more worthless.

So the night before we left, we called Tsitsi back to my little rondavel. My sis told her that from now on, she didn’t have to worry about school fees, because I was going to take care of her. She wouldn’t have to borrow old uniforms from schoolmates, because I would buy one for her. As long as she was in school and trying to do better, I would help her. The child sat between us on the bed, and when she spoke she seemed only able to look at her feet. “I’m confused. I don’t know if what I’m hearing is true. I don’t really know who Rachel is, where she comes from. But I just want to thank the God who made her.”

The next morning we took Tsitsi to town with us, and drove her to my sis’ brother’s house so that his wife could help her shop. Tsitsi’s small bag was in the back of our car; my sis had just given it to her the night before. But all it contained was a wet dress. It was the only other dress she had, so she had washed it the night before to bring it along. I had been trying all week not to be overly emotional about where I was and what I was seeing – the funerals, the living conditions, the cobra at the side of the footpath that nearly struck me, the hard labor of just getting by – because for me it was all tempered with the affection and welcome of people who didn’t know me at all. But the wet dress did me in. I went back out to the car, got my wallet, and took out the rest of the rands (South African currency) in it so they could also be exchanged and so that Tsitsi could also get some other clothes, a decent pair of shoes. My sis explained to her sister-in-law, who would take Tsitsi shopping after the holiday weekend, what she needed. “And if there is extra money, just…”

I cut her off. “No extra money,” I said. “Spend it all. If you get what she needs and there is still more, just let her choose some things. I don’t care what. I just don’t want it back.” I swallowed what felt like a swelling tumor in my throat. Tsitsi shyly hugged me in the driveway and my sis made her promise to study hard.

When the family was told that I would be taking responsibility for Tsitsi, they had all thanked me again and again. “It will be announced at school!” one of them declared.

“I don’t care about that,” I said, “Please don’t do anything that will embarrass her.”

“It will be called the Dr. Rachel DeMotts Scholarship for…” he continued.

“Really, please,” I said. “Don’t do that.”

He pushed. So I said, “If you must call it something, then name it for my grandmother, Mavis Johnson.”

So the money for Tsitsi because the Mavis Johnson Bursary. My grandmother passed away 20 years ago. We still call her the little hornet. I suppose I thought of her so quickly because there was something familiar in Tsitsi – a pinch of stubborn, but a sure and loyal warmth.

But when I came back and talked to a friend about Tsitsi, she told me I had better not get my hopes up for the girl, that she’d probably be pregnant within a year or two. Her pessimism (and the lurking views of Africans underneath it) was a bitter earful and I felt like she was warning me not to care, like I’d been foolish somehow, that I had better not really get invested or I’d be disappointed. But from my point of view, what I’d done wasn’t about me or my hopes or getting credit. I just thought that if I could make it possible for a 14-year-old girl to stop worrying about whether she would be able to go to school, then I should. It was simple. Like a wet dress, and having a dry one.