Growing up in dusty Luveve, it was the sight of the yellow letterbox perched next to the gate which told us we were home.
For some reason that letterbox was such a landmark that it was regularly used to give directions to people, as in When you get to the house with the yellow letterbox . . . Another singular memory of home for me is the sound of my mother singing.
There was always someone singing in our house and these sounds even feature in my dreams so many years after leaving home.
For my children, I hope it will be waking up to the sounds of Sunday school favourites playing on the hi-fi on a schoolday morning. Or the smell of oatmeal cookies baking on a Saturday afternooon.
The tinkle of childrens laughter is a wonderful sound to come home to, especially when the chorus quickly changes to Ma-mma! Ma-mma! as one walks through the door. Nothing could make you feel more wanted, more cherished or more appreciated.
Whatever kind you come from, home is a concept that is imbued with visions of happiness, of acceptance, of the warm, fuzzy feelings we associate with the people we love, the things we treasure and the rituals that make us real.
But if a home is a place where we create happy memories, then there is a generation of people in Zimbabwe whose happy memories have nowhere to incubate.
I think of this each time I see yet another picture of a displaced community on the pages of our newspapers.
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Our media is full of reports of people evicted from farms, housing co-operatives gone wrong, and rampant corruption centred around the accommodation crisis in our urban areas.
A couple of weeks ago, I listened to Stafford Masie, a veritable authority on all things digital, as he spoke to businesspeople in Harare about how technology is changing the way we do business.
One of the things that struck me from his presentation was hearing that two of the worlds biggest companies dont own any property.
It really put into perspective the amount of energy we spend fighting about land in Africa and how we use issues of land to excuse so much that we achieve and dont achieve.
That, however, is a different conversation from the one about homes. We dont all need a farm, but everyone needs a home. And by the way, just because you can get a farm doesnt mean you should have one!
A little while ago I came across the first of what would be several full-page advertisements featuring a local businessman endorsing his own housing scheme.
At the time I wondered who his brand manager was and whether it was the brand managers idea to use the endorsement technique. I also wondered why the team thought this audience would be persuaded by the endorsement and whether they would in fact be proved right.
Lo and behold, while we were still pondering the ads, NewsDay published a story about 55 families being evicted from the same businessmans farm!
The families were reportedly dumped at Chinhoyi Showgrounds and are being denied access to help from a well-meaning charitable organisation that wants to donate tents and other necessities. The line in the story that really broke my heart was: The evicted families say they have nowhere to go, with some claiming they were born at the farm and know of no other home.
Oh, the irony! When South Africans inflict violence on one another we look at the history they have gone through. We speak of the psychological scars of apartheid and of how heavily this weighs on their society today.
We are haughtily horrified by the viciousness and the regularity with which they seem able to perpetrate cruelty on other people. But we understand that because of where they have come from, it will take a while to get rid of the pain and anger; after all, hurt people do tend to hurt people.
And yet we say very little about whats going on in our own backyards. Caledonia Farm went from being private property to being a squatter camp in a few swift strokes and shanty towns are literally burgeoning all around us.
Who are we raising in these settlements that arise out of homelessness? Award-winning scientists? Nobel Peace Prize candidates? Loving fathers who will ensure their girl children are educated? Women who are empowered and filled with passion for empowering others? What really are we expecting?
When we are robbed or attacked or our rights are otherwise infringed upon, do we ask ourselves who raised these thieves and villains or who created their mindsets, or what conditions led to their consciences being blunted? Do we ask how someone becomes heartless?
If home is really where the heart is, what becomes of the hearts that have no home?
Thembe Sachikonye writes in her personal capacity.
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