Building narratives: Ndoro: An advocate of African pride

By The Southern Eye | May. 22, 2022

With Fungayi Sox Tariro Ndoro’s poetry anthology Agringada: Like a Gringa, Like a Foreigner captures contemporary society issues and in my view remains one of the best poetic pieces of literature to come out of Zimbabwe in recent times. Ndoro is a Zimbabwean poet and storyteller. Born in Harare but raised in a smattering of […]

With Fungayi Sox Tariro Ndoro’s poetry anthology Agringada: Like a Gringa, Like a Foreigner captures contemporary society issues and in my view remains one of the best poetic pieces of literature to come out of Zimbabwe in recent times.

Ndoro is a Zimbabwean poet and storyteller.

Born in Harare but raised in a smattering of small towns, which probably influences her writings regarding high density locations, Tariro holds a BSc in Microbiology and an MA in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in numerous international journals and anthologies including 2035 Africa An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (Brittle Paper,2018) Kotaz, New Contrast, Oxford Poetry and Puerto del Sol.

Her debut poetry anthology Agringada: Like a Gringa, Like a Foreigner (Modjaji Books,2019) is a recipient of the inaugural NAMA Award for Outstanding Poetry Book.

The anthology is an exploration that journeys through acts of dislocation and (un) belonging in its forms, exile from language, exile from country and exile from sanity. In her debut collection of poetry, Ndoro divides and intermingles national and personal history in an attempt to reach herself. Within its fragmented prose and lyrical poems, Agringada is not only a celebrated capture of language but also of its intriguing subversion as it navigates meetings of class, gender, nationality and race.

Central themes: Language, Identity and Colonisation

In the poem The People in my pelt – Ndoro advocates the decolonisation of the mind which in essence becomes an indirect call for Africans to take pride and comfort in their skin. She says:

“I feel most coloured when thrown up against a sharp white background……. My friend Lorraine, dark like night tells everyone her father is white” (pp.13)

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In another poem entitled Self-portrait at nine, she further goes deeper and explains how colonial education eroded or criminalised the native languages. This is brought out through her own grandmother who questions why she mixes up some Shona words and how her own cousins laugh at her “syntax” and mixture of Shona words.

Your grandma wants to know

Why it is that almost holonyms

Tend to trip you up

Motsi/Mutsa

Nzara/Nzwara

Dzungu/Dzungu

A cousin laughs at your syntax but

you do not tell her

that sister sometimes

sits in detention

for speaking the wrong language

at the wrong time (pp.17)

From this, the author successfully uses the grandmother as the custodian of their native language through questioning her. She further reveals how speaking the native language could result in excessive punishment and detention at school. The poem Detention Excerpt (pp.18) further amplifies the criminalisation of her own native language.

Ndoro also tackles contemporary issues such as corruption and the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy characterised by massive immigration or influx of Zimbabwean cross border traders into neighbouring countries such as Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique. This is shown in one of her poems entitled Francistown and she writes,

So, you’re from Zimbabwe

Yes, yes, we are

How often do you come here?

Sometimes, always, when we are hungry

When we have run out of groceries

How many of you?

The whole family

Import duty is cheaper

When you travel as a unit. (pp.41)

This is also amplified in the poem Ramokgwebana Sketches were Zimbabweans migrants experience daily torrent of questions from border officials and how some have even mastered the art of lying so as to gain entry into neighbouring Botswana,

I have been doing this for ages

I have been around her often

This is how you do it.

How to lie to border officials (pp.40)

Finally in Double identities (pp.60) Ndoro notes: “To learn another language is to acquire another personhood. Sometimes you feel you have two separate souls. The English soul suffocates your Shona soul…Whenever a girl bleaches her skin, native soul is suffocated”. This for me summarises Ndoro as a literary champion of African Identity and decolonising our minds by preserving our native languages which in essence constitutes our identity and who we are.

Conclusively, it is my personal view that the poetry anthology Agringada serves three purposes.

Firstly, it is a clarion call for Africans to take pride in their identity.

Secondly it is a clarion call to decolonise our mindset

Finally, Agringada is a clarion call for Ubuntu amongst Africans and

A call for unity and for an end to Xenophobia.

Fungayi Antony Sox is the managing partner at TisuMazwi — a communications centred social enterprise that facilitates book project management including writing and publishing, distribution, printing, ghost-writing, content development and marketing, digital media and personal development. He writes in his personal capacity. For feedback contact him on 0776 030 949, follow him on Twitter: @AntonySox or connect with him on LinkedIn on Fungayi Antony Sox.