How I met Coco.

The problem started when I left home that Saturday morning and did not bother to inform anyone to inform anyone about my whereabouts. Living with my brother and his wife was starting to become a bore. I was not sure whether I was the one causing the tension in their household or perhaps they had their own underlying issues and I was just the scapegoat. After all usually I spent my days at the college which was located in the central business district.

My brother did not own an automobile so I hitchhiked to and from college everyday. I ensured that I arrived home when I could barely make a face from the shadows, ate my dinner, had the necessity of a conversation before falling asleep and repeating the same routine the following day. My brother and his wife however assumed, that my late arrival home was due to the lack of transport, and long hours spent at the bus stop. I would either peruse through books at the library until late,or roam around the friendly streets of Harare, buy an apple from the fruit stalls and munch it while looking through the thrift shops that sprawled up on every pavement and street corners as the sun began to set.

Day time was less exciting as people sluggishly went about their normal lives,the streets were surprisingly empty. The police cars would be sports driving around aimlessly looking for illegal street vendors and loading their goods into the city council trucks. Usually tomatoes would end up being scattered all over the road to the dismay of the pedestrians. On that Saturday morning a different air hung about the city. A spiritualist might have been able to sense an evil shadow creeping about but to the human eye only the large number of crows perched on street lights seemed odd.

There was an urgency in the atmosphere but it did little to affect me,I walked about for a while before retiring to a bench in the park. Moments later an elderly man sat beside me. He kept looking at his phone as if awaiting an important phone call. After a while he shoved it into his pocket and stretched his legs before him. Closing his eyes he relaxed and shifted his head to look at the sky. All along he seemed not to have been aware that I was watching him and I was almost startled when he asked me what I was reading.

'Nothing just some inspirational stuff',I said

Looking closely at him he appeared to have stepped out of another era. He spoke English with a sophisticated accent, not like the type that one learnt in the classroom but on the streets. He had strong convictions and ideologies about life and still believed in morals and kindness. Putting the book in my carrier bag I took in my surroundings. The park being a means to access other streets had many exits and at every single one of them there seemed to be a man wearing a brightly coloured bid holding a cardboard box filled with snacks.

Just as I was starting to count the man in brightly coloured bibs,one approached our bench. I thought what he was doing to put food on the table for his family was brave but I did not say it. No one said such type of things to other people but I imagined people thought about it more than they would actually admit to it. The ignorant citizen however would argue why people needed to move back to their villages instead of crowding the urban areas. The man sitting beside me, I learnt his name was Jack. Jack ,the vendor and I had lengthy discussions on all that had gone wrong with the current young generation and we bought some crisps which we devoured wholeheartedly.

Jack shared all the adventures of his life and the places he had lived. He talked about his late wife and her pet dog. He still believed that the soul of his wife lived inside that dog and felt he needed to give it away. He said that he was about to die and could almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. Looking at him, he seemed to have young blood in his veins and so I told him. He chuckled merrily and called Coco his dog which I had not noticed sitting right under the bench. I knew that we were going to have many adventures when I saw him with his merino goat kind of fur covering his face.

Walking home from the bus stop that evening I was filled with a sense of fullness that was just overwhelming. Maybe the Jack's late wife's spirit resided within the dog but who was I to conclude. I arrived home a little later than usual only to find the whole neighbourhood restless. There were groups of people with fliers with my photo on it. There were several police cars and I saw my brother Seth giving a report to a police officer. Looking at his eyes it was clear that he had been drinking and the effects were beyond repair. I heard him say that his sister has been missing for three days and that if the officer did not do something he was going to put a brick in his head.

Clutching Coco to my breast I walked to him and apologised to the policeman for all the trouble I had caused and he yelled to everyone that I was back and soon the crowd started to disperse. I could not believe that my daughter in law had reported me missing and dragged my brother out of the bar to cause such chaos in the neighborhood. The neighbours however seemed to have been enjoying themselves and looked at me with inquisitive eyes. 'She is so spoilt,'I heard someone say as I walked towards the house. 'Where had she been in these three days',someone else joined in. If I did not know my neighbours well I might have thought that

I had been gone for three days and had suffered a memory loss. Coco growled at them and I laughed inside my heart but calmly told him to relax. However as I jogged around the neighbourhood that morning it seemed all eyes were on me,and despite the fact that I lived with malicious gossipers I couldn't help but wonder if I had been gone longer than I noticed. With Coco by my side we ran all the way to the shopping complex and passed by the bus stop where an old lady was about to change the paper on the stand. I greeted her and asked for the old copy she was about to throw away. One headline caught my eye,'ELDERLY MAN DIES AFTER SOLDIERS OPEN FIRE ON PROTESTORS'. Below the headline was a phone of Jack and the newspaper was three days old.