Crawling out of the Darkness

By Gamuchirai Mandebvu

People suffer a number of wounds for different periods of time in their lives, at times these wounds can be self-inflicted or put upon us by others, but most are a combination of both. The experience of these wounds can cause us to focus on the pain we suffer, the power of others in our lives or the injustice of the situations. Yet every person, be it after years of suffering or a sudden tragic event reaches a chasm in their existence that decides ones future and how the story will end, that moment in time that causes one to re-evaluate their lives. This trail will cause one to come out of the experience with one of three possibilities. Surrender to the suffering, the pain and the despair while living in hate of self and or others slowly dying each day, or fight everything and kill even those who could help one as the anger and bitterness becomes septic and destroys oneself, while the last category of sufferers learn from their circumstances, become better, and overcome it for their benefit and all who come close to them. They shine forth with a light so bright that assures humanity that beyond this world, beyond this moment, beyond this cry within your soul, there is hope.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gamuchirai Mandebvu
• Release date: May 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393894230

Gamuchirai Mandebvu

Gamuchirai Semukele Lindsay Mandebvu , is the daughter of one of Zimbabwe's pioneering doctors and a strong willed nurse. From a background of pan African-ism grounded in western world her global mindset puts her apart in her expression. From birth she appreciated the struggle of mankind and the hope of self actualisation. her experience from atrocity to love and truth has matured her.

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Prelude – Behind It All

Simple issues may seem inferior in appearance because we assume them ignorant or primitive yet these values, acts, and emotions when pure and whole, are so multifaceted if we but take the time to investigate them, especially once maturity has set in and time has had her wave of influence over things. The older we get the more we crave the simple things in life, we ask the question... It cannot be this hard, there must be an easier way. The baby feels the burden of crawling and seeks to run, seeks to eat the meat not just taste the soup. The teenager is searching for an easy way, the grandfather is still seeking the shorter route. The curiosity of novelty has passed and time becomes a vestige. Humanity finds simplicity an attraction, the drawing of a child now requires great skills and learning for an adult to attain. The acceptance of emotions that seem normal to an infant requires years of counseling and reflection to be restored in the adult. The simplest mathematical problems understood according to a YouTube video by any seven years old, are explained by great books by many learned persons who still are left with more questions. Yes, even the simple reality of gravity has taken years to partially understand and international leaders discuss the implementation of laws to value all life while a child in innocence and love simply widens its eyes in awe at the wonders of creation.

I have come to realise that the simplest of things are the most complex of things. It takes more words to explain the simple things, the basic emotion of terror that I experienced in being kept a prisoner of a war that I had not sought yet I found myself in; thus registering my name to the list of the mistake by being a member of the ignorant bystanders who are threatened by extinction for their lack of knowledge. So far more words than could initially have been expected are used to give clarity to a moment's breath that changed everything. At times I get lost when I try to express myself and find that I need to take a step away from my expectations to be understood. I am going to try to speak to you for like me you also need a story that speaks of simple events that change lives and reveals that there is more than today to all we go through. The answer is plain to see at times but we find the question beyond our grasp. Only after having identified the questions can the answer be connected. I realise now that the solution to my life was before me from the beginning in plain sight, I just had to ask the right questions that would lead me along the correct path.

I have experienced a life of struggles and in retrospect, I realise that all my experiences held the singular purpose in enabling me to overcome this pivotal hurdle that changed my life. Overcoming this hurdle has changed the way people think of me and has changed the way I look at the world, this moment in eternity has realigned my purpose to add value to many others. At one time in my life, I saw power and control as fluid assets of relationships that I could hold onto and give up at will and make all the decisions for my benefit. I believed that power was mine for as long as I chose to have it, like the idea that one’s vote counts in a world of political intrigue, logical not quite yet the issue is simpler than the conspiracy theorist would like to make it, as I will try to explain through my life story.

So on that week in August 2009, I screamed out against abuse and torture. One moment I was free complaining about how I was being harassed and that management should act out in due diligence, I spoke with my head arched back, chest out like a general assured of my victory while at the next moment I was going through psychological manipulation and torture that sought to bring me to my knees and questioned my sanity and when that didn’t work I was placed under guard with armed guards looking stern in the khaki uniforms that blended with the creamy skin of their Nepalese complexation all holding machine guns under strict instruction for my person. I had become an enemy, a dangerous terrorist who could turn the entire site to ashes. Possibly the thought of my skill as a MacGyver or James Bond, able to use tissue and soap to make a bomb and overpower the guards being bandied around. How does something like that happen, how does it come to this point, what made all this happen? I still do not fully know but what I do know is this, I am alive and it's more than luck it’s the greatest thing to know that life is not a right but a gift to be used and valued while you have it.

While in this state of arrest I learned the value of my senses. Every word, smell, touch, and sight become more alive. The phrase ‘this is for your good was bandit around’ as fear becomes a guest sitting across the chair smiling with a lopsided grin just waiting to take me by the throat and grant me release if only I would look at him and reach out. I screamed out at the wall that was my prison, I wasted more time fighting the wall than outwitting the jailer, my actions had become childlike in their simplicity and resulted in complete despair as they failed in their purpose. I was in a private dungeon, moved from isolation into prison a prelude of the torture I was to endure in the hands of my captors who ruled over the men with machine guns. The power of fear instilled with great efficiency by these captains of companies reminded me of Georges Orwell’s Napoleon, a pig who understood the power of death over the most honest of creatures, so the dogs that would have protected all become the tools of great management the tools of fear to manage the power and control of the masses, so my captors help by private military personal or mercenaries in waiting chose to have their way. The game of life is the game of power and control, its perception and reality so simple and as deadly as these companies' private army. The reality of the coin two sides different symbols of different views, yet the same coin. One event one moment, one second the very same experience but different realities two sides of the same coin. So the security of the people is the workers' protectors or jailers. The company I worked for was not an army though I experienced more battles than I could have hoped for, so the power of the masses exchanged for a coin is now in the control of the few and the workers depend on the management’s whim, these armies run by those who had the power to act and the willingness to live their dreams regardless of the cost to others, these had become my new wardens in the chasm that was in my life.

In a foreign country that was at war within itself and against its occupiers who sought to rule their nation and transform it for their ‘good’, working for a military contract company, I had entered a new world, yet I find it’s the same world just the players are bigger and their impact greater than in my childhood. The things people do for your good, the restrictions they place you on for your benefit, the pain that one endures because one believes that man cannot be that evil is a lesson from childhood to death, a complex lesson that seeks one to search for the key to return to the truth and restore all things only to find a simple answer. Here I was in August 2009, in the prison of the warlords of finance I was in a room surrounded by strangers with guns, I knew only that I wanted to get out and get even. I wanted to take their power like they took away mine. Yet as I reflect I now realise this simple truth I never lost my power or my control, I just focused on what I could not accomplish rather than who I was. It took me years to realise that it not about the audience. To gain an audience requires much more than noise, to get results requires a platform before those with the capacity to act. But the value of my person is not limited by events, perceptions of failure. I have come to the truth I know that I matter and there is hope even if all evidence points against it.

I want to share a simple thing that may seem so complex, in a world full of pain, amid the darkness that covers the land like a blanket no... not a blanket, the darkness covers the eyes and hearts of man like tar on the gravel bringing all its power to force you to forget what was and still is. To cut through that tar to get to the soil ready to bring forth the good of the land requires one to know. Know that the pain that is caused by the wound the pain that seems to call forth death is but temporal. Time, effort, and knowledge will bring forth healing. I am still here, there is hope. The dawn will come... I woke up from torture that seemed never to end, my skin was sore after being burned in the sun, at other times I met death and looked back at how close I had come, feeling like I was being drowned in ice-cold water. Each day brought new methods some repeated some suggested and left to the creativity of my mind, I slept with the tangible fear of rape, of being mangled and grasped in a hold of lethal suffering, all this was interwoven with the daily reality brought forth by the pain that no medication was provided for, the physical pain of being hit and punched around, the pain of the flesh and bones that had met great violence in great alacrity. Yet as I reflect on how I moved from employee to victim, from individual to instrument, all for the convenience of those who believe that they are bigger, better, more powerful, or unquestionable. All these things that I experienced in the week in August and its presiding months, where no different to the punches that I survived growing up because of my sex or race, because of my upbringing or faith. Every punch sought in my reflection was to re-identify me and dehumanise me but everything revealed this simple truth thing I am alive! Otherwise, why try to kill me, you can only kill what is truly alive. Life makes the most sense in retrospect and I find that as I look back, it’s as if a hidden hand, led me through different hurdles so that I could jump over the highest one yet. The concept of control is a misdemeanor in metal perception. What is control in human relations, what is power? Where did I get it and how do I lose it, why should it matter if I lose it? The need to be in control and its excessive meditation and study becomes its trap to the individual.

I thought my voice could be heard if I shouted loud enough. So if I was abused or taken advantage of I could make a noise and help would be at hand from the audience to return what was mine, my control, and power. But what audience has the capacity and the desire to help? I realise that I have burdened the world with the expectation that like myself others must act on good intentions.

The day I realised that life is but grace and hope is a tangible thing. A physical reality that can be by your side so close so solid so firm, as firm as a rock that balances another creating in their union a mountain. I hope that you can walk away while you cry at its betrayal, the pain of the loss of power. The loss of myself, amid the desert. That day I realised that when power is not transferred by choice but can be taken from you by violence, you still can take it back. My peace is not in the silence of others but the reality of my person. Simple but complex, violence that has order has as more results through its control than silence without purpose, so great battles are won by those who have a purpose, understand their worth and maintain their integrity, in the middle of the battlefield there is a structure there is a greater aim, the true battle is not in my dying for my believes but in the apprehension of my faith.

I see the poor walking into the city, burned to the core with bitterness against their leaders, they share their anger, and they share their pain only to return tomorrow for more of the same. The redundancy of their purpose playing their life story unto an audience of themselves. The greatest drama is in the recess of the private mind, without critique the director, player, and the audience is one and the despair of such a man is the death of hope. I was surrounded by silence that was noisier than the plane setting off the flight. I was in prison without a trial, surrounded by armed guards without legal recourse. I was alone in a world full of activity. The world did not stop for me, the days did not halt for me, my pain continued and my victory was yet to be attained. But the very idea of hope in the midst and after such a time as this showed that me that nothing is impossible.

Emotions are defined as the state of being or having a feeling or sentiment. The possession of the emotion can possess the owner, be it pain, hate, anger, love, forgiveness, hope, and peace all different states that are experienced. Emotions can drive us and break us. Many times we avoid them for we feel disempowered in them yet the question of whether we flow into them inherently or are forced into them or even chose to enter into them has baffled philosophizers from time immemorial and psychologists have studied but failed to give us a simple answer.

The reason I speak of emotions is that they form an integral part of the events that follow and my view at the time as to their impact on my character and person. As I look back I find that changes in my character come from changes in my values and principles was more defined, thus my character changed hence the volatility of my emotions reduced. My motives and the resultant actions changed and the basis of my identity was redefined and established.

As I overcome the pain that I suffered and I forgave those who failed to assist me in gaining justice, as an uncle of mine said it’s your battle, I have won mine and look at all the power I hold so fight yours, if you win we will stand beside you, if you fail it was your choice to continue in this battle so you will live with it. After my ordeal was made public I realised that this was a common thread of thought. When asked by a politician what I would need a leader to do for me, I said I wanted power, the power to influence and open doors, and speak in forums that I cannot in my capacity walk in. I realise now that power I had access would be only by favour for even political voices will only be heard and acted on when all the pieces of the puzzle all in place and nothing stops what will be will be at its moment of maturation.

The fruit will fall from a tree once ripe, no amount of banging will make it ripe, the owner who plucks it off the tree still has to wait for it to be ripe before eating it. So the powers or institution and persons are valid for their season, afterward like Kamuzu Banda or Louis the 16th the fall will not be hindered by anything. So I chose to hold onto the value of my testimony if only for myself. I gained a greater purpose in helping others who had suffered similar emotional, physical, and social pain through different experiences of abuse and loss. I found great joy in giving hope to others, not my hope but a revival of their own.

As I look unto those I helped be they an old homeless man who may have made some bad decisions, not caring for his family and enjoyed life to an extent that he forgot that he would grow old, a man who had chosen to die like an animal in the wilderness who is now in the hands of loving people with the passion of the aged, to remind them of love not deserved or given but divine from creation for we all need another’s touch tomorrow if not today, the helping hand to a young child not able to go to school due to financial lack as parents chose to justify their pain and darkness with snappy thoughts about children’s needs constitute food and shelter of sorts, the rest they will have to make do for themselves as life, after all, is hard and to have life is a parents gift to you.

Be it a young lady ready to change the world who needs some encouraging words to just lift their wings and fly onwards to their purpose and passion in all of this I see the eternal value of life. I realise that their circumstances have not overpowered them, as much as all the darkness and pain in my life did not destroy me. Rather I found that after undergoing my transformation from the student, worker, refugee, trafficked migrant, a victim of torture, broken spirit, and restored Queen, I stand on the mountain top looking back over great battles won and look forward to many mountains to attain without fear or favour. Not that I have experienced it all, not that their lives are boxed into my bias nor could I understand all that they suffered nor could I ever dare or seek to explain it all. But as I look on I know there is hope for the living and overcoming for those who dare to hope.

I shall share with you a narrative of events that changed my life, these events took place in the space of a week but their impact has not left me since, there many other parts of my life that contributed to who I am and why I acted the way I did, the whole story is like a tapestry that studied from afar has great harmony as life polishes away the edges and gives union to the events of my life. Years have passed and still, I reflect on the watershed moments that transformed my life amid time. The time within time shapes our lives, an appointed time, an appointed meeting changes everything, the events may seem simple but the spiraling wave spreads beyond the vast extremities of the universe of our being. As we are touched so is everyone around us for good or bad, the event signals a new beginning.

The imagery that I shall be used as I narrate the explanation within the story may seem poetic but the aim is to inform the reader and bring them with me to through this journey of realization. The words are relative to my understanding, sensitivity, and limitation. I will use what is in the natural to define or explain the emotional and spiritual and vice versa. Symbols can be related to painting strokes can be understood, admittedly the creation of bias and misunderstanding in the art will not be removed but as words are limited in their ability to describe a point I hope to relate to you from the senses leading to emotion and hopefully understanding.

Symbols and allegories are to speak for me, I cannot show you my pain, I cannot cry my tears before you so that you may cry with me at the tremor of my voice, as I fail to speak the words because of the overflow of thankfulness for another chance, oh how I wish I could smile with you or laugh with you as you share my amazement despite the waves of pain. But I can try to express all that I am on the painting of this paper with the gift of words that I desire each moment as I begin to write. Words are the only tool so simple to use for at times to describe things clearly, cutting out for you the images of our memory that in truth reveals more of our selves than we would desire. Writing strips one naked before strangers some may care for you, others who will never care, and many more will never matter in the schemes of things. But as all read with their bias and assumption, so here I struggle to express my life before an audience not of my choosing but one that desires to know more about me or the wounds that mirror their own.

The pain that I have felt and been healed off has no greater power than to amplify my sensitivity and maturity as it awaits my choice of the next path in the walk of life be it human and humble towards others or angry and embittered with all or my select bias and prejudice group that I chose to dehumanise. It’s easier to speak, I love to speak when I must, be it in days gone past in another age to tell a story to my brothers before they go to sleep, to describe the vividness of the drama that the actors played out in a film or the dramatic inspiration of the writer and my singular interpretation of that passage, or be it to encourage a heart that lost all hope, I love to hear the joyful babble of the children who in their age of innocence share all that’s in their heart without fear before the learn the pain of life that every word can be used against you for no better reason than to attempt to break your spirit. The power of words is their beauty so the painter paints each stroke declaring a dozen words and two dozen by the commentator.

The presence and value of words like the wind can only be identified by the force they exhort, the impact they make, and the flexibility of what is touched. My words may change a life, my reflection heals a wound or do nothing at all. The wind blows a whisper of all that is, the power of its flow only seen by the moving of creation, the branches bend before the wind and so do mighty nations before the words of the crying mothers of Sarajevo. Yet the flow of the winds and the power of the words speak of a source far greater than what can be seen. The power to make people submit to one's words is not limited to education, alliance, or force, many other factors play a role in the change that is made in the lives around. The different leaves moving in the ratio of their density a physics explanation to what is beautiful what mysterious, creation submits to greatness, simple yet complicated.

Some say I met death and greeted the grave, someone others said in artistry I met the devil shook his hand and lived to tell about it. I say I met myself and walked back with purpose and joy. I revaluated my experiences and values on a new scale, to breath is not a right it’s an opportunity to live fully, for the moment and leave an eternal stamp as we live out this is true greatness.

What does it mean to live? What value does each day that you pass through have? The value of life could never be translated into figures though many have diminished humanity making man no more than cattle to be traded, be it through enslavement, forced labor, human trafficking, sex trafficking and all it’s like, be it organ trafficking and the perception of the collateral damage of war be in business or the battlefield; all these activities, thought and lifestyles have devalued life. The equating of human life to a simple numerical basis destroys the humanity of the individual, yes labor, skill, and knowledge can be computed for the benefit of the individual but in truth, these also fall far short how much does integrity and loyalty cost, where can you buy such? The true value of a life is more often only seen once it has left those it touched, regardless how respected and lifted that life be during its existence’s this eternal reality of human actions that have been belittled and confusion reigns as each seeks to find meaning as an individual while rejecting the collective value with their neighbor.

I have experienced the attempt by others to quantify my life, be it for the sake of the legal battle that I began to fight against my abusers, or be it the loss of opportunity that I forsook to focus on the battle. My life became a mathematical formula for those whose desire was to encourage or constrain me, their motives may have different but their methods reduced life’s value to appalling scorn. The desire to control and disempower through categorizing and labeling are justified as an attempt to seek understanding. The labeling of people has never brought people to understand an individual. To be called black, yellow or white, rich, middle-class or poor, young or old means nothing in your understanding of my person, emotions, my hopes, history, or future. It can predict some demographic attitudes but it can never fully give an understanding of me or you. To seek to label me is not to simplify but to complicate my attempt to answer your question of who I am. Life is simple but it’s not a logo or a gimmick. Life is part of what I have gone through that has impacted me but not who I am. 

What causes the wind what is its source? What allows all of nature’s players to be set in place so that a reality so precious so eternal is reduced by man to become a technically simplified sum. The answer that simple? I believe that equating my pain to a formula rejects the individuality of my pain and the uniqueness of my abusers who may have done what many others have done before, but whose history and reasons may not be the same.

The attitude of familiarity is the attitude of apathy. Only the dead do not feel the poet writes, yet in reality, many of the living are part of the living dead, not as in the dramatic presentation of a horror movie, not as a mass of zombies seeking the lifeblood of those who while living they may have loved or hated, but in a more terrifying detachment to the rest of creation, its environment, and its future. The failure to see hope and the willingness to destroy because one fails to have a vision of a future that is death. The ability to justify and rationalize all that should shock or the blank face at what should cause wonder celebrate the least of things, the lack of joy and amazement in an individual are recognized as a disorder within a society that still retains sensitivity to life. I refuse that society becomes the standard of life, what is corruption becomes norm or abuse and human trafficking becomes legal can one justify that sin because my society is filled with darkness and wounds the sick. Society is made up of individuals and families so what shall become the new normal when sin is truth and lies the standard? This is a fearful question for now.

In my suffering as in the lives of many, the need is not money or restitution for truly no one can pay back what they cannot reverse, you cannot rewind my pain, my time, my life how then can you ever consider to value that which you cannot provide. The desire for the humility from the abusers to apologize can become a festering wound, so for the sake of the pain, the victim forgives so that healing begins without the presence of the medicine of justice. The failure to take responsibility is a human sin, it’s not preserved by a race or people, for honesty honour and integrity are expensive in the world of sinful man. What happens to the world when apathy, abuse, and pain is the new normal? What then if my life can be accounted for as collateral damage and recognized as politically expendable? What is normal when normality is relative to what I think and there is no standard compass, the loss of being in the loss of values, indeed before our very eyes do humanity became a mass of animals or a dangerous army of evil.

The collateral of the Syrian bombing and the historical abuse of political gamesmanship in the lives of nations is the mass exodus of refugees from the Arab and African coasts who flee western bombing and seek the nobility of the western world to warm them after destroying their beds and homes. The world’s leaders fear not to bomb but are determined to return these victims of their decisions, back to the shores, or the depth of the seas if need be. Much like the dramatic love for the labor of the African labor ended up with the desire to return the African to the land rather than accept institutional and social responsibility of the crime of abuse of a race as a nation. Much like the solution of the church in a season of apostasy was to seek revival through encouraging cleansing of communities from ‘witches’ rather than pray repent and call for God to reveal Himself, they sought the darkness and killed the innocent blaming the fracture of the church on others. So like the in the time of the slave trade, a people in America whose forefathers sought religious liberty and freedom fled to the new world to create a new equal nation, these descendants of the patriots of Christian living who had dispelled slavery in Europe found it their God-given duty to maintain slavery in the new land for the ‘good’ of the nation and the slaves. These good Christians felt that it was their duty to recognize the evil of slavery by deporting the free blacks back to Africa as missionaries, this in part to stop the ‘terrible’ discontent this freedom was creating in retained slaves. So these ‘free’ problems were to become the eternal solution to the continent they should call home.

It was not as William Lloyd Garrison said in his thoughts on ‘African Colonization’, engineers and doctors that were sent back to Africa but a people who looked somewhat like the natives, a tribe of untaught individuals with gunpowder who had never been taught to read-write or lead but had been kept subjugated abused and broken by their pain, a people never united by the strategies of their abusers, these now had to be removed from the land of their abuse to their ‘motherland’ for their good, all this complex planning and financing was done so that the national crime of slavery need not be recognized and the social crime of ‘mammon above life’ be continued. The continuance of labels in the hands of those who seek to control the lives of humanity, to simplify their actions and sins, what a savior who promotes his acts of charity. After all, it’s for your good. My worship of money above any attempt to value your life is for your good. It seems so far, but someone may just be saying these words over your life. The company that seeks pay cuts to maximize profit, the factory that will relocate to abuse children in one continent and leaving cities destitute on another.

I met the art of being quantified and labeled as I battled against abuse in the darkness of the Arabian nights without any of the romantics that the master thief could conjure and have been disappointed as I continue to seek assistance from those who could act but looked the other way and those who supported me with smiles but no action, in my search for justice be it from my nation, humanity and the abusers. The thing I might be fighting might be bigger than me otherwise it could not deem itself justified to have the confidence to harm me, it may be bigger in stature, skill, power, wealth or all the above but the fact that I live with hope for today and tomorrow means that I can overcome it for it failed to destroy me. All the darkness and the wounds of life failed to kill me, and even if they could I stood, be it once or twice by the hands of love that lifted me by the arms of those who would be there for me, through the words most divine that would encourage me, but against all odds I stood, so I can still get up if nothing else, it will give assurance to another.

Chapter 1- The Meaning of Life

What is life? Why should life matter? What is beyond life, what is after death? More questions than answers, so simple yet so complex! Life can only be truly missed and its impact felt once it has left your presence. I have found that I lose out each time I miss the opportunity to care for someone or be thankful to someone when I should when I miss that opportunity I tend to regret that at one time or another. It’s better to be rejected than to reject, it sounds off but I found that I can then live better without the guilt of missed opportunity. Lives value is a vapid of hope, of desire, and all it could manifest into. The scents of the rose, the flutter of the birds’ wings, the breeze that floats through your hair these very memories that embody beauty are greater in memory than at that moment.