Obato Utuhugabe Must Let My People Go by Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy.

Obato Utuhugabe Must Let My People Go by UBAJI ISIAKA ABUBAKAR EAZY

Being a doctor in Bulawayo is obviously not a lucrative job to Doctor Tinashe. Not with everyone falling sick here and there and having no money to pay, one would have to be a robot to refuse treating these people, not when they come to you with their gaunt face wrinkled and dry as old faded clothes and beg to be treated. Mostly, their ailments are not unrelated to hunger and malnourishment and as one treated one man with ulcer, another would come begging for drugs for migraine.

Dr. Tinashe could not bear staring into these faces and turning them back whenever they came knocking on his door. His wife found it impossible to believe she got married to a man who will rather dedicate his time to charity than making money. It had been six years since they got married and he was yet to have a car of his own, they still lived in the same rented apartment since they got married and he rarely bought her new clothes these days except on Christmas days. If only he had been charging those useless people always coming to beg for free treatment and drugs...she would think but Dr. Tinashe was not the type who believed in exploiting people. His wife, Chido, was determined not make him have an easy time of doling out his pearls to swines either. She would rail at anyone who came knocking at their door for free treatment or consultation. She would disallow her husband from stepping out of the house once he returned from the government hospital where he worked. She would not allow them turn her husband into a frustrated pauper like them. No, not if the survival of herself and her child largely depends on what he made from his profession.

So it happened that Dr. Tinashe returned home one rainy evening and prepared to eat his dinner after a quick shower. As he was running down the staircase to the dining room in his pyjamas, he thought he heard a soft knock on his door and went to see if anyone was there. He opened the door and saw it was little Thando knocking softly so that if she heard madam's voice answering the knock, she would take flight before Chido would open the door and start barking at her again that night. Luckily for her, Chido was in the kitchen putting finishing touches to her fried rice.

Thando was Taurai's seven year old daughter who had just returned from Egoli with her father after he began vomiting blood the year before at work. He had hidden this sickness for long and refused to seek treatment for it because his pay as a labourer could barely sustain him not to talk of paying his daughter's school fees. His wife left him when Thando was barely three years old—for after waiting that long for things to get better, her thread of patience had finally thinned out, so she left. Going to the company's hospital was out of the option for Taurai, although it was free, the doctor would examine him and declare him unfit to continue working and that would result to the termination of his appointment, he had seen it happen to many others before but he had never thought it may one day happen to him till the day he vomited blood again and collapsed at work. His colleagues came to the rescue and the foreman requested for a company's vehicle to come take him to the hospital while Taurai kept protesting that he does not need to see a doctor, it was just a small stomach disorder resulting from something he ate that morning but the foreman would hear none of his excuses.

'You must visit the hospital, at least for medical checkup.   You need not work if you are sick for if you die, the mine will keep running, so get treated and return to work,' said the foreman.

Taurai already played out what will most probably happen next in his mind. The doctor will declare him seriously ill and unfit to continue working. Then the company will send a long letter thanking him for the invaluable services rendered to it and ask him to come by as soon as he was released from the hospital and strong enough to visit them and claim a stipend of an entitlement and other fringe benefits meant for him. He saw it coming and that was exactly how it all played out. What he feared the most was not losing his job. It was returning to Bulawayo. The prospect of making a homeward journey scares the hell out of him. Home in Bulawayo; to Taurai; had never been a place of comfort, it was a gory image of pain, hunger and poverty and he dreaded the prospect of making a u-turn towards that direction. He had run away from that home five years after Utuhugabe became the president of his country. He heard that there were jobs to be gotten at the mines in Egoli and his legs had carried him towards that direction where he got the job of a labourer as an illiterate African. His fine features helped him secure the job for he had strong muscles and was quite tall with strong hands and face, his skin glittered as a fine sculpted ebony wood so that it was impossible for the white man making the selection not to notice him while selecting Africans for employment.

Had it been he was alone, Taurai would have grudgingly returned home without any qualms but now he had beautiful little Thando, the only thing he could truly call his, a proof of the little he had being able to achieve in life and a souvenir of the woman he once loved and called wife but who deserted him for another because his resources were lean. No, taking Thando to Bulawayo will kill the joy and light in her eyes. Why, the girl was happy in Egoli. There had been tales of political killings and adoption back home in Bulawayo, tales of much more hunger and poverty than that which had his legs running towards Egoli several years before. This was not the kind of world he envisaged for his daughter. South Africa might be racially unstable but things were better in South Africa than back home where one had no guarantee of three square meals per day. But what company would employ his wasted body now, he had spent his youth at the mines and what was left of his physical self was but a shadow of what he used to be. In the end, he turned back the way he came several years back, only this time he had his daughter as a companion and proof that his sojourn was not a futile one. He returned to his ancestral home to find it inhabited by miscreants and vagrants. The only living member of his family in Bulawayo died three years before and since then, the place became a home for vagrants. With the little money left with him, he made the place look better and habitable for his daughter, Thando.

Taurai had found happiness always being together with his daughter whenever she returned from school but his health had deteriorated even further and it seems he was going to die after all. Dr. Tinashe had been so kind to him by attending to him and giving him drugs even when he no more had the means to pay for the doctor’s services.

One rainy night, Taurai began coughing blood again and he knew within himself that the time had finally come. Thandi helped him to his bed and as soon as he got into his bed, he spoke weakly to his daughter.

'Thandi, run quickly and plead with Dr. Tinashe to come see me,' he coughed weakly, 'I have something important to tell him.'

Thandi did not like going to Dr. Tinashe' s house, it had never been a good idea, not with that Medusa wife of his at home. She always came back with gory tales of mistreatment anytime she visited the place but she understood the desperation in her father's voice so she agreed to go and went out in the rain to find the good doctor.

Dr. Tinashe held on to Thando's hand and kept walking slowly in the rain towards Taurai's home as against Thando's better judgement who felt they should walk faster before something goes wrong but the doctor had a lot on his mind. First, it was Chido's nagging voice.

'Where do you think you are going Tinashe? This is the reason why you will forever be poor. If this is how every doctor behaves, do you suppose anyone will want to become a doctor? If you had been demanding payment, you would have a car now and not be walking out in the rain! Why are you going to that man this night? You just returned from work and have not even had a bite of the food I have been labouring to prepare for you. From what I heard of that man's ailment, he is doomed to die anyway and your efforts would have been in vain. Why must you allow these people disturb our privacy? And you Thando or whatever they call you, how many times have I warned you to stop coming here? I shall have to break your head one of these days! You think we run charity... '

Dr. Tinashe had come to understand that the adage "silence is golden" holds true for his wife. To engage her in a verbal war would look like a sheep challenging a pack of wolves in a biting competition. He let her go on talking while he went on to change into something befitting for the outdoors. However, the girl had said something different this time, it used to be "Doctor come please, my father is dying." But tonight, she had said something different. "My father is sick again and he said he would like to talk to you." Dr. Tinashe knew Taurai's illness had gone beyond redemption but he kept on treating him nonetheless. Not that he was expecting a miracle, miracles came from God and hell, he did not even believe in the existence of God. Where was God in all these squalor and famine? Where was God when Utuhugabe prolonged rule kept ruining the country's economy? If God were there, he would not let all these sick people die in vain. God would never have given him a wife like Chido whose selfish attitude far outranges her altruism. A wife who goes to church every Sunday but does not understand the concept of sacrifice and helping those in need. He would eventually have to burn her bible and order her to stop going to that church of hers someday. Did the frustrated shadows who no longer know what it meant to hope and now bath in the local beer at bars on a rainy night when they should be with their family know of God? No, there could not be a God in all of these. He would not even want to be a part of it, God should be pure and holy, this place is all dirt, deaths and sin, God would not want to come close. He only kept on treating Taurai and others like him because he felt where God failed, man should not. These people should be given a ray of hope even though their deaths were imminent and quite glaring. That was God's job, he would not be in all these mess now had God done his job properly and come to think of it, what does Taurai have to tell him, does he have some secret treasure chest hidden away somewhere for his daughter and wants to confide in him? The man had worked at the mines before coming to Bulawayo so one cannot rule out such possibility. Perhaps it was just a ruse to make him come to treat Taurai again. One often found it difficult to decipher the hearts of these local people. He would get there soon to unravel the mystery.

He arrived at Taurai's house, it smelled of sickness and death. It was as if one could see the angel of death hurrying things up to collect the corpse and move on to other business as soon as possible. Dr. Tinashe looked around the room, it was supposed to be a sitting room, a corner of its floor was decorated with little plastic containers collecting rain water dropping from the ceiling where an asbestos sheet had gone missing. Still, there were not enough, there were places where the water dropped directly on the floor. He went quickly to the inner room and saw Taurai lying quietly on the bed. The man looks thinner compared to the last time he had been there to check on him and he had stubs of grey hair all over his face. Taurai opened his eyes immediately he heard the door to his bedroom creaking open and spoke while the doctor went on to check his chest pulse.

'Haa doc, you are here at last.’ It is so kind of you to honour a poor and dying man's invitation,' he said.

'It is the least I could do Mr Taurai and whoever said you are dying? I just did a random check on you and you are as fit as a fiddle. All you need now is some rest,' Dr. Tinashe assured him while little Thando curled up in a chair at one corner of the room.

'Haha, tell me doc, how can a man be dying of too much rest because I have had that these past years? Thank you for your kind words, I know what I feel and that is why I sent for you,' he retorted.

'But you see Mr Taurai, what we think we know is not always what we know,' Dr. Tinashe pressed further.

'Well doc, I called you here for a purpose. My candle is fast burning out and I must talk quick. Please that is my Thando curled up over there, help me take good care of her. She would grow up to become a beautiful woman someday, you must make her forgive daddy for not being around to watch her grow,' he coughed.

'Is that all,' asked Mr Tinashe waiting to confirm his theory of a hidden treasure.

'That is not what I even called you for, there is something  I have always wanted to say for many years now but could not say it because I have been afraid of what our unjust laws would do to me but I shall not forgive myself if I die not saying it. What I want to say is that President Obato Utuhugabe must let my people go! Enough is enough, he must free my people from bondage and darkness. That is all,' he ended.

'All?' A perplexed Tinashe asked.

'Yes, that is all, now I can die in peace.'

Taurai closed his eyes and went mute. He gave up the ghost while the doctor was still pondering the intensity of his words. After a while, Dr. Tinashe covered up the body with a wrapper he found on the bed and led little Thando out of the room quietly.

Copyright Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy 2016