Priviledge Chisumbu

Harare, Zimbabwe

My Little World

Whenever I came back from college, I felt like a giant. This wasn’t because of my academic achievement. This four-roomed petite maison in the ghetto shrunk whenever I compared it to my exotic designs. Nevertheless, it contained big dreams.

Plasters of sand painted its walls. I imagined Athens, Rome, and Paris… architecture.

With stress wearing the mask of hustle, my little world was serene – bridging between heaven and earth, where prayers were answered; necessary prayers. So we didn’t move to the suburbs.

Our home was welcoming. No matter how much we tried to keep the place clean, cockroaches came. Rats raced in. As they moved in, the hornets moved out of the clay nests near the ceiling. A complex design, these nests were.

This was a minor issue, however. The greatest problem was the mindset, set on thinking that we’d be more grateful if we had more of what we saw on TV or more of what we imagined. Well, we don’t yet have more to prove that we’d be more grateful. In effect, I write as if I no longer live in my little world, but the place where I write on this day.