Bryony's Blog

In the dusk of an unusually warm July evening, I go out walking. It is a long time since I last did so.  I usually take the dog to Hillside Dams, but sometimes it is nice to walk around your home area and get a feel for the place you live in.  Hillside in Bulawayo was always known as the 'posh' part of town, although today people will tell you Burnside is.   Years of economic decline have taken its toll on the area, though its past grandeur is still evident from time to time.  Sometimes I pass huge plots with tennis courts and swimming pools and jungle gyms and swings, where nannies in smart uniforms sit with toddlers on lush green grass and fierce dogs growl and bark behind high fences and closed gates with notices give warning of alarmed premises and armed response units ready to be deployed. Enormous houses tower out of rocky outcrops, surrounded by jacarandas and eucalyptus trees, while fountains of multi-coloured bougainvillea spill over six-foo...

It took me a long time to realise that my birth in Africa was not accidental, that growing up in Zimbabwe was not a wrong that had to be put right by leaving the country, and that continuing to live here, to have my children born here, and to call myself an African writer was not a wild, audacious statement that should be corrected and apologised for. It took me a long time to call this continent my home.     Like many white people in Africa, I grew up straddling two worlds. I read Enid Blyton and looked for fairies and elves amongst the bougainvillea and mango trees.  I thought snake holes would take me to the Mad Hatter's tea party.  Christmas in the heat and humidity of December always felt wrong; we should have snowmen and mistletoe, go sledging and sing Christmas carols wrapped in scarves and coats. The two worlds were something we took in our stride without much questioning.  We knew how to navigate them, how to be both white and African at the same time. ...

  Whatever happened to Rick Astley? may be an unusual title for a book of short stories set in Africa. Western expectations of African literature demand something more exotic, something at least with connotations of heat, dust and hardship.   Like every place, Africa has more than one side to it and there are as many different experiences as there are people and places.   Growing up in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, my life was an interesting mixture of experiences.   I lived on a gold mine out in the bush.   There were snakes and scorpions – and fear. It was an unstable time politically in post-Independence Zimbabwe.   Not everyone wanted the ruling party, ZANU-PF, in power and, in retaliation, the government sent North-Korean trained soldiers to Matabeleland to ‘sort them out’. This time of anxiety left an indelible mark on me. In other aspects, my life was ‘normal’ by Western standards.   I went to school, played sport, belonged to the library and watche...

 As I write this, it is 35C, the sky is miles and miles and miles of unpunctured blue, and the air is hot and still.  I am sitting in the coolest room in the house, escaping the heat outside.  As I look around me at the Christmas tree in the corner, the tinsel adorning the pictures and the stockings hung next to the fireplace, I think like I always think at this time of the year: wouldn't it be nice to be somewhere cold? And then I think, no.  It wouldn't be Christmas if it wasn't hot. I was ten years old when Band Aid brought out Do They Know It's Christmas? I remember my dad, who was very cynical of western do-gooders, scoffing at the lyrics,  And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time.  Of course there won't, he said.  There never is.  It is generally very difficult for people in the northern hemisphere to imagine a hot Christmas and I don't blame them.  What is strange though is to try and have a cold Christmas in a hot country...

  Whenever my daughter wants to imitate me, she will assume a wistful tone, look into the distance and say something along the lines of: ‘When I was a child, none of the gardens had walls.   We just roamed free, wandering across neighbours’ lawns, picking flowers and swinging from the trees. Nobody locked their doors either, so we just walked through their houses as well, helping ourselves to whatever we wanted.’ Ok, I get the point.   It is easy to look back at the past through rose-drenched glasses and imagine a fairytale world in which there was no crime and everyone loved each other.   It’s par for the course when you get to a certain age and even more common in older Zimbabweans who view the past as a virtual Eden from which they have been ejected. I will try and be as objective as possible.   We were never like some parts of the world, like America, where one lawn seems to run into another and where boundaries are marked by driveways.   When I was...

   My elderly friend and I are discussing the possibility of becoming gold dealers.  It seems everyone is at it these days.  I recently contacted someone who did some work on our driveway a couple of years ago and discovered he no longer does crazy paving; instead, he has become a gold dealer in Esigodeni. I imagine him meeting customers in the back room of some shabby establishment or drawing up next to them in the car park of some shebeen and handing over a bag of gold nuggets in exchange for large wads of money.  'You'd never do it,' says my friend.  'You'd be caught almost immediately.' I must say, I am a little offended.  I don't particularly want to be a gold dealer, but nor do I like being told I lack the ability to be one. However, I know what she means.  I'd be too nice.  Of course, that might just be my  modus operandi.   It would certainly provide a good cover and it save me the need to meet clients in dodgy hotels i...

    I am often asked by friends and family who don't live in Zimbabwe why we still stay here. It is not a question that is easily answered, except to say why does anyone live anywhere?  We all have things to complain about wherever we are in the world.  Those who don't experience power or water cuts will complain about traffic jams or the weather.  Nowhere is perfect. Recently, I wrote on Facebook how excited we were when the electricity, that had been off for nine days, came back on.  It was actually longer as we had had nearly a week prior to this of being one phase down, so we had no lights, but some sockets worked and half of the stove as well. Nine days is by no means a long time at all to go without electricity, and nor is two weeks.  Some people I know have gone without for three to six months, a year even.  I am sure there are those on my Facebook page who even wonder why I mention it at all. Surely this is to be expected when you live in ...

Sunday, April 15, 2018 'This September Sun' in Art This September Sun (Catherine Phillips) ' Nothing is Certain' is an exhibition of twelve experimental abstract paintings by Catherine Phillips based on book titles. The exhibition, which is part of a wider project celebrating books and libraries, is at Putney Library, Disraeli Road, in London until 27th April 2018. One of the paintings is inspired by Bryony Rheam's novel This September Sun , which is published by amaBooks in Zimbabwe, by Parthian Books in the United Kingdom, by Longhorn in Kenya and, soon, by Al Arabi in Arabic. The Zimbabwean cover of the book is based on a painting by the Zimbabwean artist Jeanette Johnstone. The books celebrated in the exhibition are: Designing with Natural Forms by Natalie d’Arbeloff Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys Rhapsody in Green by Charlotte Mendelsohn Spirals in Time by Helen Scales Sunquakes by J. B. Zirker The B...

The Shrikes’ Call | March 2016 As promised, here is part 2 of Bryony Rheam’s Speech Night presentation. “You don’t have to feel you need to go home and sell off the television set. What you do need to do, is monitor how much time your child spends in front of the TV and the content of what they are watching. Channels like CBeebies are great, channels like Cartoon Network aren’t so great, but whatever the channel – limit it. Make sure your child does not fall asleep in front of the television. And also make sure the TV is only on when someone is watching it. I have been to many homes, where the TV is on in the background from the time you wake up in the morning till the time you go to bed, even if no one is there. The danger with this is that it does not encourage listening skills and has been blamed for the increase in ADD and other behavioural difficulties. Children who are subjected to a lot of noise, learn to cut it out. And, be...

Our guest speaker at Speech Night last year was Bryony Rheam, an old girl of this school and in her own right, an author.  Her address on ‘Reading’ was so thought provoking that we have decided to reproduce the relevant sections in two parts in The Shrike’s Call.  The first of these follows : – “John and I worked in Zambia for seven years at two international schools.   They are run very differently to Zimbabwean schools and are marked by a general laxity in manners and demeanour and an attitude of ‘if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it.’  All this leads to, I’m afraid, is an atmosphere of boredom and apathy.  And, if the pupils are difficult to motivate, the parents are worse!  They can’t pick their children up after 3, they can’t help with play costumes and they feel that events like sports day should take place during school hours so they don’t have to give up a Saturday morning once a year. Personally,I’m tired of pandering to the ...

Bryony was born in Kadoma, Zimbabwe, in 1974. She spent most of her childhood in and around Bulawayo, leaving in 1993 to go to the UK. She returned to Zimbabwe in 2001 where she spent the next eight years working as an English teacher. In 2008, Bryony moved firstly to Ndola in Zambia and then to Solwezi. Bryony has had a number of short stories published in various anthologies of Zimbabwean writing, and in 2009, her first novel, This September Sun , was published in Zimbabwe by amaBooks. This September Sun won the Zimbabwe Publishers Best First Book Award in 2010 and was published in the UK in March 2012 by Parthian. In May 2012, it reached number 1 on Amazon Kindle sales. She lives with her partner, John, and their two daughters. OOA: Where do you currently live? BR: I recently moved back to Bulawayo after living in Zambia for seven years. Despite the economic situation here in Zimbabwe, Bulawayo is still a great place to live in. OOA: Which writer(s) have in...