love for classical music. My class teacher was the ballet teacher, and she was a very unusual woman for a nun. She didn’t wear the habit like all the other sisters in the convent and her uniform was blue instead of the traditional black and white. She was a very graceful woman who held herself upright at all times.

“Posture, ladies,” she would say. “Posture is very important so please learn not to slouch. Back straight; heads up and smile,” she would instruct while we pirouetted around the room. I loved Sister Vincent, she was a breath of fresh air and I soon became the teacher’s pet, following her around everywhere and looked for ways to please her. I would clean the blackboard or go and get her a cup of tea if she didn’t have time to go to the staff room during her breaks. She never seemed to be stressed or unhappy about anything but was always smiling and pleasant. My friends complained that she was too strict but in my eyes she could not be faulted, she was just perfect.

Just as soon as I was getting used to my baby brother and had started to accept him, my mother had another baby boy. Now I had to deal with two little brothers. They called the new baby John Tarisai Bere. Tarisai means ‘look at us’. There was a lot to celebrate with two boys in the family to continue the family name. John was different from Joe. He was always a quiet little boy and not as demanding as Joe, and in fact as an adult he hasn’t changed much. I think because Joe was the first boy he always got special treatment and he knew how my parents felt about him. John on the other hand was like me, in the shadow of an older sibling. We were the two middle children, undemanding, giving and ignored. I

Sister Kevin was my mother’s cousin and a Roman Catholic nun, and she came and stayed with us for a few weeks. I’m not sure why they named her Kevin. She was a beautiful woman and had one gold ring on her finger.

“Are you married?” I asked her when I first saw the ring. She smiled, looked down at her ring lovingly and replied, “Yes, I am married to Jesus.” I was thoroughly confused.

The idea was that she would teach me a little bit more about our Catholic faith, but by the end of the weekend she, too, was exasperated. She couldn’t quite give me satisfactory answers to all my questions and she began to pray over me every evening in an effort to exorcise my demons. In the meantime, I was having fun at her expense. My poor aunt felt challenged and decided to stay on for another month.

One Friday afternoon when we got home from school I persuaded my sister to play a silly little game with me.

“Lets have a funeral,” I suggested. For some reason I was fascinated with life and death at that stage.

“Okay,” my sister agreed. “What shall we bury?” We looked for as many dead creatures as we could find for the funeral. We found dead flies, lizards, bugs and two rats which of course we had to kill first. Soon we had built a sizeable little graveyard.

“The tombstones need crosses,” I suggested, “and flowers.” So each little grave had a tombstone and we made little crosses out of sticks and grass and so the miniature graveyard was filled with little freshly dug graves. Then we went in search of flowers, raiding my mother’s flowerbeds to put a small flower on every grave. I thought it looked rather pretty, but the game was still not over.

“We need a proper ceremony,” I said. I went into the house and came back with a slice of bread, a bottle of coke and my mother’s Bible. “The funeral would not be complete without a church service.” By the time my mother found us we were right in the middle of our church service with me acting as the priest and giving Holy Communion (the bread) to my sister, and her Bible was full of dirt and mud. I had raided my mother’s wardrobe and had on one of her wide kaftans which did look like a priest’s ceremonial robe. My sister was kneeling like an attentive churchgoer and she even had on her head a little white scarf she wore for confession and Holy Communion. I didn’t have one yet; they kept telling me I was still too young.

My poor mother was horrified. “This is sacrilege!” she shouted, “not to mention taboo.” In our culture it is bad luck to imitate a funeral. It is believed that if you do you will only bring bad luck upon yourself and someone in the family might die. Quickly she entered our little graveyard and stomped out all the graves, and then she gave me a spanking. She just knew I was the mastermind of this crazy little game.

I decided then it was better to be a spiritual person rather than a religious one, and I decided just to try to be good. I believed in an intelligent God, I believed she knew what she was doing when she gave me a brain and the ability to question things around me. If anything, I would be insulting God if I decided not to make use of my brain’s full potential.

I became quite close to my aunt during this time. We shared a bedroom and I would watch her every evening going through the ritual of taking off her nun’s habit. It was quite a process, for she would take off each layer of her clothing exactly the same way every evening. She even had a systematic way of folding her clothes one by one, which was fascinating. I had never seen her hair before; it was always covered with a veil, but when she undressed on the first night I discovered that she had very long, soft silver grey hair. What fascinated me the most was the size of her breasts. Since my brother was born I had started to pay attention to women’s breasts. Watching my mother breast feeding was quite fascinating and I thought that my aunt would probably make a perfect mother. I didn’t understand that she would never get married and have children.

So every evening I would find an excuse to sit and cuddle on her lap while she read the Bible to us. The week before she left, I finally plucked up the courage to touch her breasts. They were so big they looked as if they were filled with milk, but I didn’t know that this was a condition reserved for breast feeding women. I remember the look of absolute horror on my aunt’s face when I touched her. I just reached up and grabbed her breasts and squeezed, giggling to myself. By the time she had shrugged me off and pulled on her shirt I had run out of the room laughing and calling to my sister.

“I touched them, Patty, I touched them. Woohoo!” I shouted, laughing to myself.

That was the day my aunt left. She never told a soul, not even my mother about what happened, and to this day we have never talked about it.

After my aunt left, the rift between my mother and me grew bigger and she just didn’t seem to have any time for me any more. I became very rebellious. I found a nice hiding place at the back of the house and hid there whenever I had had a fight with my mum. I used to love hearing her calling out to me.

“Getty, Mwanangu, urikupi? Getty, my child, where are you?” she would call with concern in her voice. At first she was genuinely concerned, until my sister told her where my hiding place was. It was an old oil barrel near our chicken house, and I spent hours hiding in this barrel. It was a comforting place. Perhaps it reminded me of our rat mobile. Sometimes I would spend all afternoon in there and I always made sure I had some food and something to drink. The new baby was taking up so much of my mum’s time and I felt neglected. Patricia seemed to be coping well with the changes but I was struggling to accept the new addition to our lives.

My father knew I loved apples and he would go to the market and buy two large sacks of apples. He would put one aside in the pantry and tell everyone that that sack was for me only, and that would make me feel so special. He went to an auction one Saturday and brought back a large box full of LPs that were of classical music records, so I got exposure to compositions by Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mozart, Vivaldi and Schubert. Before long I was humming intricate pieces of classical music by heart. I always had a good ear for music and I surprise myself even now with how much I remember. I wanted to take up music but the lessons were far too expensive and my parents were barely managing the school fees, so I watched with envy as my friends attended their piano, cello or violin lessons.

In grade three I started taking ballet lessons. They didn’t cost half, as much as the music lessons and my father felt it would further develop my love for classical music. My class teacher was the ballet teacher, and she was a very unusual woman for a nun. She didn’t wear the habit like all the other sisters in the convent and her uniform was blue instead of the traditional black and white. She was a very graceful woman who held herself upright at all times.

“Posture, ladies,” she would say. “Posture is very important so please learn not to slouch. Back straight; heads up and smile,” she would instruct while we pirouetted around the room. I loved Sister Vincent, she was a breath of fresh air and I soon became the teacher’s pet, following her around everywhere and looked for ways to please her. I would clean the blackboard or go and get her a cup of tea if she didn’t have time to go to the staff room during her breaks. She never seemed to be stressed or unhappy about anything but was always smiling and pleasant. My friends complained that she was too strict but in my eyes she could not be faulted, she was just perfect.

Just as soon as I was getting used to my baby brother and had started to accept him, my mother had another baby boy. Now I had to deal with two little brothers. They called the new baby John Tarisai Bere. Tarisai means ‘look at us’. There was a lot to celebrate with two boys in the family to continue the family name. John was different from Joe. He was always a quiet little boy and not as demanding as Joe, and in fact as an adult he hasn’t changed much. I think because Joe was the first boy he always got special treatment and he knew how my parents felt about him. John on the other hand was like me, in the shadow of an older sibling. We were the two middle children, undemanding, giving and ignored. I

ceremony,” I said. I went into the house and came back with a slice of bread, a bottle of coke and my mother’s Bible. “The funeral would not be complete without a church service.” By the time my mother found us we were right in the middle of our church service with me acting as the priest and giving Holy Communion (the bread) to my sister, and her Bible was full of dirt and mud. I had raided my mother’s wardrobe and had on one of her wide kaftans which did look like a priest’s ceremonial robe. My sister was kneeling like an attentive churchgoer and she even had on her head a little white scarf she wore for confession and Holy Communion. I didn’t have one yet; they kept telling me I was still too young.

My poor mother was horrified. “This is sacrilege!” she shouted, “not to mention taboo.” In our culture it is bad luck to imitate a funeral. It is believed that if you do you will only bring bad luck upon yourself and someone in the family might die. Quickly she entered our little graveyard and stomped out all the graves, and then she gave me a spanking. She just knew I was the mastermind of this crazy little game.

I decided then it was better to be a spiritual person rather than a religious one, and I decided just to try to be good. I believed in an intelligent God, I believed she knew what she was doing when she gave me a brain and the ability to question things around me. If anything, I would be insulting God if I decided not to make use of my brain’s full potential.

I became quite close to my aunt during this time. We shared a bedroom and I would watch her every evening going through the ritual of taking off her nun’s habit. It was quite a process, for she would take off each layer of her clothing exactly the same way every evening. She even had a systematic way of folding her clothes one by one, which was fascinating. I had never seen her hair before; it was always covered with a veil, but when she undressed on the first night I discovered that she had very long, soft silver grey hair. What fascinated me the most was the size of her breasts. Since my brother was born I had started to pay attention to women’s breasts. Watching my mother breast feeding was quite fascinating and I thought that my aunt would probably make a perfect mother. I didn’t understand that she would never get married and have children.

So every evening I would find an excuse to sit and cuddle on her lap while she read the Bible to us. The week before she left, I finally plucked up the courage to touch her breasts. They were so big they looked as if they were filled with milk, but I didn’t know that this was a condition reserved for breast feeding women. I remember the look of absolute horror on my aunt’s face when I touched her. I just reached up and grabbed her breasts and squeezed, giggling to myself. By the time she had shrugged me off and pulled on her shirt I had run out of the room laughing and calling to my sister.

“I touched them, Patty, I touched them. Woohoo!” I shouted, laughing to myself.

That was the day my aunt left. She never told a soul, not even my mother about what happened, and to this day we have never talked about it.

After my aunt left, the rift between my mother and me grew bigger and she just didn’t seem to have any time for me any more. I became very rebellious. I found a nice hiding place at the back of the house and hid there whenever I had had a fight with my mum. I used to love hearing her calling out to me.

“Getty, Mwanangu, urikupi? Getty, my child, where are you?” she would call with concern in her voice. At first she was genuinely concerned, until my sister told her where my hiding place was. It was an old oil barrel near our chicken house, and I spent hours hiding in this barrel. It was a comforting place. Perhaps it reminded me of our rat mobile. Sometimes I would spend all afternoon in there and I always made sure I had some food and something to drink. The new baby was taking up so much of my mum’s time and I felt neglected. Patricia seemed to be coping well with the changes but I was struggling to accept the new addition to our lives.

My father knew I loved apples and he would go to the market and buy two large sacks of apples. He would put one aside in the pantry and tell everyone that that sack was for me only, and that would make me feel so special. He went to an auction one Saturday and brought back a large box full of LPs that were of classical music records, so I got exposure to compositions by Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mozart, Vivaldi and Schubert. Before long I was humming intricate pieces of classical music by heart. I always had a good ear for music and I surprise myself even now with how much I remember. I wanted to take up music but the lessons were far too expensive and my parents were barely managing the school fees, so I watched with envy as my friends attended their piano, cello or violin lessons.

In grade three I started taking ballet lessons. They didn’t cost half, as much as the music lessons and my father felt it would further develop my love for classical music. My class teacher was the ballet teacher, and she was a very unusual woman for a nun. She didn’t wear the habit like all the other sisters in the convent and her uniform was blue instead of the traditional black and white. She was a very graceful woman who held herself upright at all times.

“Posture, ladies,” she would say. “Posture is very important so please learn not to slouch. Back straight; heads up and smile,” she would instruct while we pirouetted around the room. I loved Sister Vincent, she was a breath of fresh air and I soon became the teacher’s pet, following her around everywhere and looked for ways to please her. I would clean the blackboard or go and get her a cup of tea if she didn’t have time to go to the staff room during her breaks. She never seemed to be stressed or unhappy about anything but was always smiling and pleasant. My friends complained that she was too strict but in my eyes she could not be faulted, she was just perfect.

Just as soon as I was getting used to my baby brother and had started to accept him, my mother had another baby boy. Now I had to deal with two little brothers. They called the new baby John Tarisai Bere. Tarisai means ‘look at us’. There was a lot to celebrate with two boys in the family to continue the family name. John was different from Joe. He was always a quiet little boy and not as demanding as Joe, and in fact as an adult he hasn’t changed much. I think because Joe was the first boy he always got special treatment and he knew how my parents felt about him. John on the other hand was like me, in the shadow of an older sibling. We were the two middle children, undemanding, giving and ignored. I

ake off each layer of her clothing exactly the same way every evening. She even had a systematic way of folding her clothes one by one, which was fascinating. I had never seen her hair before; it was always covered with a veil, but when she undressed on the first night I discovered that she had very long, soft silver grey hair. What fascinated me the most was the size of her breasts. Since my brother was born I had started to pay attention to women’s breasts. Watching my mother breast feeding was quite fascinating and I thought that my aunt would probably make a perfect mother. I didn’t understand that she would never get married and have children.

So every evening I would find an excuse to sit and cuddle on her lap while she read the Bible to us. The week before she left, I finally plucked up the courage to touch her breasts. They were so big they looked as if they were filled with milk, but I didn’t know that this was a condition reserved for breast feeding women. I remember the look of absolute horror on my aunt’s face when I touched her. I just reached up and grabbed her breasts and squeezed, giggling to myself. By the time she had shrugged me off and pulled on her shirt I had run out of the room laughing and calling to my sister.

“I touched them, Patty, I touched them. Woohoo!” I shouted, laughing to myself.

That was the day my aunt left. She never told a soul, not even my mother about what happened, and to this day we have never talked about it.

After my aunt left, the rift between my mother and me grew bigger and she just didn’t seem to have any time for me any more. I became very rebellious. I found a nice hiding place at the back of the house and hid there whenever I had had a fight with my mum. I used to love hearing her calling out to me.

“Getty, Mwanangu, urikupi? Getty, my child, where are you?” she would call with concern in her voice. At first she was genuinely concerned, until my sister told her where my hiding place was. It was an old oil barrel near our chicken house, and I spent hours hiding in this barrel. It was a comforting place. Perhaps it reminded me of our rat mobile. Sometimes I would spend all afternoon in there and I always made sure I had some food and something to drink. The new baby was taking up so much of my mum’s time and I felt neglected. Patricia seemed to be coping well with the changes but I was struggling to accept the new addition to our lives.

My father knew I loved apples and he would go to the market and buy two large sacks of apples. He would put one aside in the pantry and tell everyone that that sack was for me only, and that would make me feel so special. He went to an auction one Saturday and brought back a large box full of LPs that were of classical music records, so I got exposure to compositions by Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mozart, Vivaldi and Schubert. Before long I was humming intricate pieces of classical music by heart. I always had a good ear for music and I surprise myself even now with how much I remember. I wanted to take up music but the lessons were far too expensive and my parents were barely managing the school fees, so I watched with envy as my friends attended their piano, cello or violin lessons.

In grade three I started taking ballet lessons. They didn’t cost half, as much as the music lessons and my father felt it would further develop my love for classical music. My class teacher was the ballet teacher, and she was a very unusual woman for a nun. She didn’t wear the habit like all the other sisters in the convent and her uniform was blue instead of the traditional black and white. She was a very graceful woman who held herself upright at all times.

“Posture, ladies,” she would say. “Posture is very important so please learn not to slouch. Back straight; heads up and smile,” she would instruct while we pirouetted around the room. I loved Sister Vincent, she was a breath of fresh air and I soon became the teacher’s pet, following her around everywhere and looked for ways to please her. I would clean the blackboard or go and get her a cup of tea if she didn’t have time to go to the staff room during her breaks. She never seemed to be stressed or unhappy about anything but was always smiling and pleasant. My friends complained that she was too strict but in my eyes she could not be faulted, she was just perfect.

Just as soon as I was getting used to my baby brother and had started to accept him, my mother had another baby boy. Now I had to deal with two little brothers. They called the new baby John Tarisai Bere. Tarisai means ‘look at us’. There was a lot to celebrate with two boys in the family to continue the family name. John was different from Joe. He was always a quiet little boy and not as demanding as Joe, and in fact as an adult he hasn’t changed much. I think because Joe was the first boy he always got special treatment and he knew how my parents felt about him. John on the other hand was like me, in the shadow of an older sibling. We were the two middle children, undemanding, giving and ignored. I

there whenever I had had a fight with my mum. I used to love hearing her calling out to me.

“Getty, Mwanangu, urikupi? Getty, my child, where are you?” she would call with concern in her voice. At first she was genuinely concerned, until my sister told her where my hiding place was. It was an old oil barrel near our chicken house, and I spent hours hiding in this barrel. It was a comforting place. Perhaps it reminded me of our rat mobile. Sometimes I would spend all afternoon in there and I always made sure I had some food and something to drink. The new baby was taking up so much of my mum’s time and I felt neglected. Patricia seemed to be coping well with the changes but I was struggling to accept the new addition to our lives.

My father knew I loved apples and he would go to the market and buy two large sacks of apples. He would put one aside in the pantry and tell everyone that that sack was for me only, and that would make me feel so special. He went to an auction one Saturday and brought back a large box full of LPs that were of classical music records, so I got exposure to compositions by Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mozart, Vivaldi and Schubert. Before long I was humming intricate pieces of classical music by heart. I always had a good ear for music and I surprise myself even now with how much I remember. I wanted to take up music but the lessons were far too expensive and my parents were barely managing the school fees, so I watched with envy as my friends attended their piano, cello or violin lessons.

In grade three I started taking ballet lessons. They didn’t cost half, as much as the music lessons and my father felt it would further develop my love for classical music. My class teacher was the ballet teacher, and she was a very unusual woman for a nun. She didn’t wear the habit like all the other sisters in the convent and her uniform was blue instead of the traditional black and white. She was a very graceful woman who held herself upright at all times.

“Posture, ladies,” she would say. “Posture is very important so please learn not to slouch. Back straight; heads up and smile,” she would instruct while we pirouetted around the room. I loved Sister Vincent, she was a breath of fresh air and I soon became the teacher’s pet, following her around everywhere and looked for ways to please her. I would clean the blackboard or go and get her a cup of tea if she didn’t have time to go to the staff room during her breaks. She never seemed to be stressed or unhappy about anything but was always smiling and pleasant. My friends complained that she was too strict but in my eyes she could not be faulted, she was just perfect.

Just as soon as I was getting used to my baby brother and had started to accept him, my mother had another baby boy. Now I had to deal with two little brothers. They called the new baby John Tarisai Bere. Tarisai means ‘look at us’. There was a lot to celebrate with two boys in the family to continue the family name. John was different from Joe. He was always a quiet little boy and not as demanding as Joe, and in fact as an adult he hasn’t changed much. I think because Joe was the first boy he always got special treatment and he knew how my parents felt about him. John on the other hand was like me, in the shadow of an older sibling. We were the two middle children, undemanding, giving and ignored. I

love for classical music. My class teacher was the ballet teacher, and she was a very unusual woman for a nun. She didn’t wear the habit like all the other sisters in the convent and her uniform was blue instead of the traditional black and white. She was a very graceful woman who held herself upright at all times.

“Posture, ladies,” she would say. “Posture is very important so please learn not to slouch. Back straight; heads up and smile,” she would instruct while we pirouetted around the room. I loved Sister Vincent, she was a breath of fresh air and I soon became the teacher’s pet, following her around everywhere and looked for ways to please her. I would clean the blackboard or go and get her a cup of tea if she didn’t have time to go to the staff room during her breaks. She never seemed to be stressed or unhappy about anything but was always smiling and pleasant. My friends complained that she was too strict but in my eyes she could not be faulted, she was just perfect.

Just as soon as I was getting used to my baby brother and had started to accept him, my mother had another baby boy. Now I had to deal with two little brothers. They called the new baby John Tarisai Bere. Tarisai means ‘look at us’. There was a lot to celebrate with two boys in the family to continue the family name. John was different from Joe. He was always a quiet little boy and not as demanding as Joe, and in fact as an adult he hasn’t changed much. I think because Joe was the first boy he always got special treatment and he knew how my parents felt about him. John on the other hand was like me, in the shadow of an older sibling. We were the two middle children, undemanding, giving and ignored. I think as a middle child you just don’t know how to demand attention and so it becomes very easy to be overlooked.

Like Joe, John was very good looking. If anything he was even cuter than Joe, with chubby cheeks, and he was always smiling. Then three years after John arrived, Patrick Tapfuma was born. Tapfuma means ‘we are rich’ and my parents were truly proud of their three little boys. So I learned to be a tomboy and play rough and tumble games with my three little brothers. My sister on the other hand maintained her dignity and never got dirty with the rest of us.

Excerpt from my book "Born on the Continent - Ubuntu", buy a copy on my website http://www.bornonthecontinent.com, 100% profit goes to the Africa Alive Foundation for HIV and AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe