I have been addicted to reading books since I was a child in rural Rhodesia. One collection of books that was always present in my mother's homestead was the Bible, a Roman Catholic Bible. You see, my mother had powerful Jesuit roots and the inevitable scholarly habits associated with this Roman Catholic creed. It us truly amazing, almost miraculous, that when the Jesuits missionaries decided to establish a missionary in the environs of modern-day Harare, they picked Chishawasha. My mother's Soko people called Chishawash home, and remains their home unto this day in spite of most of the people having been deported from their land following the grievous and unjust Land Apportionment Act of 1930. A significant fact that receives short shrift in the Zimbabwean narrative is the hereditary ancient priesthood of the Baboon people, the people who answer to the totem-based salutation of Soko, Gudo, Pfene, Bveni and other honorific terms symbolized by the baboon and the monkey primates. One of my better-informed Moyo brothers says that the collapse of the political centre at Khami Zimbabgi culminated in the incumbent chief priest retreating into the mountains of Chishawasha area, taking with him the imperial scepter to be later entrusted under the stewardship of Joshua Nkomo.
As a priestly priestly people, a salient point worthy of emphasis, the general but not a universally applicable trait of the Soko people is their studious or scholarly habits. This habit is fittingly captured and memorialized by way of laudatory names such as Wenjere and Malaba. Respectively, they are names accorded the thoughtful and studious Soko people. It can be argued that the Soko people and their hereditary priesthood and heritable habits curiously point at what has to be an uncanny parallel to the Biblical Aaronite priesthood, commonly called Levites and Kahunim.
It was within one of the Soko community that the early Jesuits missionaries opted to establish a Jesuit missionary, school and seminary: More specifically, the Soko people of Chishawasha. The confluence of events and and intertwining of cultures are so profound one is almost forced to accept that the hand of Divine Providence must have been busy at work. In a way, I count myself almost unfairly lucky to have been one of the beneficiaries of such a fascinating arrangement --- as a disclaimer, the presence of the Jesuits at Chishawasha was not without tears of excruciating agony, as captured in a book entitled An Ill-Fated People written by Lawrence Vambe, scion of the Shawasha royals at the advent of the Jesuits at Chishawasha, and more recently, by Zimbabwean scholar Professor Mhoze Chikowero. Be that as it may have been, I seek to highlight the significance of the events to my personhood.
Like I said, the Bible has been as near to me as my own very shadow. Typical of Christian-raised children of my epoch, interestingly the same embued in ancient African oracular practices thus rendering us syncretic, I was brought up in an environment that encouraged reading the Bible but with fear. What was written in the Bible was never meant to be put under scrutiny, not even of the cursory variety. It was only after I grew tired of being frightened that I decided to reevaluate my spiritual position with respect to Christianity. As it dawned on me that I had fallen victim to coercion and intimidation, my instinctive response was revulsion and outright hostility towards the Christian faith. The Bible was available as a tangible and soft target upon which to vent my anger and release my bitter juices of the spleen. Give time its course and it will magically tamp down even the raging fury of bellowing storms and howling winds. My anger was assuaged by the soothing hands of time.
Though very comfortable with my reversion to the spiritual ways of my ancestors, I decided to revisit the Bible for the sake of looking at it from the vantage point established by my ancestors deep in the fog of antiquity. My ingrained fear of the Bible was gone. The avid reader in me got hold of the ubiquitous Bible. Off, I went into a journey of discovery. Read from my purely African viewpoint, the Bible is turning out to be a collection of astonishing books. As a general rule, good books always have hidden surprises. The Bible harbours a multitude of very pleasant surprises. By way of example, let me harken to the Second Chapter of the Book of Judges.
At the beginning, it tells us: The Jehovah's angel went up from Gilgal to Bochim and said: "I proceeded to bring you up out of Egypt and to bring you into the land about which I swore to your forefathers. Furthermore, I said, 'Never shall I break my covenant with you. And for your part, you must not conclude a covenant with the inhabitants of this land. Their altars you shall pull down. But you have not listened to my voice. Why have you done this?' So I, in turn have said, "I shall not drive them away from before you, and they must become snares to you, and their gods will serve as a lure to you.'"
We also learn the following, in Verse 4: And it came about that as soon as Jehovah's angel had spoken these words to all the sons of Israel, the people began to raise their voices and weep. Quoting from my Karanga copy of the Bible, let me put this last part in standard Karanga. It reads thus: "Zvino mwana mutumwa waJehovah wakati ataura namashoko iwaya kuvana vaIsiraeri vose, vanhu vose VAKACHEMA kwazvo." The emphasis on the Karanga verb, VAKACHEMA, becomes pertinent when we go back to the English version, to Verse 5. It says; "Hence they called the name of the place Bo'chim."
My copy of the Bible is annotated. On the meaning of the name of the place where the people wailed, or where they became VACHEMI, the meaning of the name Bo'chim is said to be WEEPERS. Boom, just like that, we are told that the children of Israel were called weepers, what the Karanga call VACHEMI, a name that has the same sound and the same meaning as BO'CHIM. In the Book of Judges, these shocking revelations are more frequent that I initially suspected.
I shall avoid, for now, dwelling on the exact destination of the subjects, the children of Israel, headed to on their up out of Egypt, a reference to people moving up the Nile River.
BTechno.
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