The fireguard

Start. your story with the line " By the time I stepped outside,the leaves were on fire"

 The Fireguard

By Dumisani khumalo

By the time I was outside ,the leaves were on fire. There was panic and frenzy ,and it was about me, and the prospects I had were becoming dim as I looked at the fire spread so magnanimously, and who would come to my rescue when I was there alone?

It started with prospects of finding out if I had green fingers at all ,with my extension trainings in agriculture,and my green beans grown in a can by the wall ,were doing quite well.

 Raking some grass and mulching ,and cutting grass around my small cabin at the back of my bosses house,on my attachment course ,was already showing off a good crop ,and I decided to extend it to about half a hectare.

My friends had never thought of growing anything and made money through vending and cross border smuggling,and I was already selling off green beans .By my calculations ,I was going to make quite a substantial amount ,and make the beans ,if like Jack and the bean stalk ,try to reach heaven,that is to say, pay my tuition fees ,which were dear and many of us were surviving on loans .At hyper inflationary interest rates at the time.

I piled the grass and it made my bosses encouraging nudge of a voice help, and the support gave me an extra push .There was land that needed clearing ,and I took advantage of it.Moreso ,it was free land .

Some students who were enterprising were already having farms ,and it was a push for me to even do better ,since the land issue came to haunt Zimbabwe in 2000,when jobs were becoming scarce in industry ,as more white people left for South Africa and Australia.

I am in Marula , where the Rosenfels ,I understand that means Rhodes and fellows, who were adopted as orphans by Cecil John Rhodes,and given land to farm and do ranching ,where this happens,is near Plumtree,the border town with Botswana.

The country Rhodesia ,named after him,changed to Zimbabwe ,a house of stone ,and a country boasting of having had two gay presidents ,the first being Cecil John Rhodes himself ,and Canaan Banana ,who took the country up in 1980 independence.

It's the knowledge that I was given by experienced white farmers that was becoming handy ,and it's when I was told to make a fire guard ,that I did not quite put up to the task .My mind was busy on finding more seed ,and making those continued mathematical calculations for the six months that I was to be due on attachment,that I was trying to maximize on my production than trouble myself on looking at this other risk.

The sandy soils there had a water table about twelve meters below due to the kopje,rocks, that protrude from the ground ,and spread into the matopos mountains ,where Cecil John Rhodes ,gave the name and famed it as  World's View,a stretch of rocks that looks like those bolders on Mars,where he lay buried and is his final resting place, dug into stone ,and the highest point in Matebeleland ,when his rival king Mzilikazi khumalo ,lays just a few kilometers below him ,as if it was a contest of minds to see who would be laid at a higher place than the other. I imagine the moon for all to see me.

I did my cooking outside on firewood,proud of this new found freedom to do as I wished to test myself .I had also in the meanwhile realised that veldt fires were common ,and since more white people were leaving ,more of these were happenung along the highway,buses and cars bringing in scarce fuel at the time ,being engulfed and human victims claimed 

You would see how easy fires came up and a wind would just suddenly materialise,from no where,and I would claim it's the close water table blowing it up into those grass blades into the air,and with my youth and skill to put small fires out, it was an interesting sport and a testing of my strengths. I ran for it and poured water on the foot of the fires that sometimes came up and when we heard those accidents by the road sides ,we were there to help out until the fire went out.

Obliviously on this day ,I had had one too many as we came from Redwood with my colleagues,and I decided to cook in the early morning hours of Sunday .It was a quiet Sunday morning and that cracking headache was holding me to ransom.

I had made a fire and walked back inside to see what I could manage to make for my early morning breakfast ,and our patent maize staple porridge would be ready in no time,and as I peeled some onions and cut up some tomatoes ,I heard a swish and cracking sound of fire.A big fire. By the time I stepped outside ,the leaves were on fire ,and the fire moving out in a windward formation,and blazing towards a number of villages that had just been resettled.

I was alone and did not see who to call for help or assistance.Shops were about half a kilometers away ,and no one had thought of divising a warning signal ,which ended up being a bell by the tree in our yard.

I tried to do my best but nothing could yield anything with my cut brushes.Everyone who stayed with me had gone out to their own homes and I was getting choked when I heard a tractor from a nearby farm come by.

It had one sole individual on it ,and I recognized that he was the guy doing government tillage programs in our area .He went to the head of the fire ,and ploughed in a fireguard right in front of me as I watched helplessly where the fire was going.Into people's houses and cattle kraals .What a mess was I going to be in. But the fire was put out in no time .

We ended up with a bell at the gate to nothing to fate.