Chirina is a very small
dusty township along the Masvingo-Gutu road via another equally small town
called Chatsworth in Zimuto.
Unlike other townships
where shops line both sides of the road, at Chirina or Gwengwerere, the five
shops are on one side.
Of these shops only two
were operating in 1992, a year after I was deployed at the day secondary school
just behind the hill.
One of the shops, whose
veranda was spacious enough to accommodate a band, belonged to a man known as
Isaiah and his aged mother.
It served as both a store
and a bar. It was also there where teachers from both the primary school called
Marongere and Makomba secondary school, extension officers from nearby farms,
and policemen from Chatsworth who happened to be in the area came for a
drink.
And it was there where I
met for the first time, the late blind musician Chamunorwa Nebeta and a group
of his rag-tag musicians who called themselves Glare Express in 1992.
At the time, I had just
left Gweru Teachers’ College but was stringing for Masvingo Provincial Star.
The group would tour
Masvingo playing at townships and growth points for coins. Usually, they would
stay at a place for weeks.
The group played
unsophisticated home-made guitars and drums and imitated the late Paul Matavire
and David Mabviramiti.
I was there the first
night the group came and performed. For a quiet township that had not the
experience of attending a ‘live’ show, the Glare Express that came complete
with blind female dancers who sang like Matavire’s girls, made the night.
Despite imitating
Matavire, Nebeta’s renditions of Nhamo
Yemurivo, Yakauya Aids and
Tanga Wandida moved the rustic characters including me.
In addition to renditions,
Nebeta had his own composition such as Kutozviti and Zvimwe Zvihombe. These
were later included on his debut album Wenyama Kwete released 10 years later in
2002.
When the show ended and
everybody left for their homes, the group was stranded. Since we were the last
to leave the bar, high as usual, one of the guys who helped the group members
to move around asked us the way to the school.
When we told them that we
were going down to the school, the group walked with us. We took them to the
headmistress’ house since they had asked us to do so.
But the headmistress was
not keen to take them in. When she turned them away at that hour of the time, I
took them down to my house – an empty seven-roomed house where I gave them
rooms to use.
The group was made up of
disabled women and men apart from three abled people who acted as guides. I
would spend about two weeks staying with them since they would go to play at
nearby townships and then came back to my school.
It was during those three
weeks that I got to know Chamunorwa Nebeta who was the most active of the group
and who appeared to know what he wanted to do. He was the lead vocalist and the
improviser of the group’s music.
During the time I stayed
with the group, I was relieved to realise that they easily joked about their
conditions. They also would joke throughout the night.
It was an inspiration to
know and stay with the group who despite their disabilities, made their lives
enjoyable and interesting.
I recall when I wrote a
story about them published in the Masvingo Provincial Star. Although they could not see it, they felt the page after one of their guides had read it out for them.
I was not surprised when,
after I had transferred to Harare, I heard Nebeta’s Tambai Mose Mujairane.
Unfortunately, I never got
to meet Nebeta before his death in 2007.
