Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

Author:NoViolet Bulawayo [Bulawayo, NoViolet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

WAYS OF AWAITING ELECTION RESULTS

That day we learn the hard part of a #freefairncredible election is the waiting for the results afterward. Time moves like a lethargic snail. We check WhatsApp for election updates, we check Twitter, we check Facebook. We’re so tense, tholukuthi so restless we don’t know what to do with ourselves. We clean our homes, which are already clean, but it’s something to keep us busy. We wash our clothes, dry them, iron them. We create vision boards for the things we want to do, for the beings we want to be in the New Jidada that’s waiting just around the corner, we write Post-it notes to our future selves. We check WhatsApp, we check Twitter, we check Facebook. We send messages to friends and relatives, and when we run out of who to send messages to, we send messages to random strangers. We check WhatsApp, we check Twitter, we check Facebook. Check check check check check. Tholukuthi check. We count the trees, then we count the leaves in the trees we’ve already counted, after which we count the grass. We check WhatsApp, we check Twitter, we check Facebook. We check WhatsApp, we check Twitter, we check Facebook. Nighttime finds us near undone with anxiety; it’s Golden Maseko who rescues us by posting on the neighborhood WhatsApp group to come to his house for an election night party.

We congregate at the artist’s yard and cradle bottles of Castle Lite and Zambezi and Lion and talk about the approaching Jidada we voted for. We wonder how we’ll welcome it, how it’ll look at us, how we’ll see it. We think about what Tuvy is doing at that exact moment, if he can smell the inevitable dawn that’s coming for him. We picture his big teeth chewing his scarf from worry, ask each other what the so-called Savior will do with the supposedly magical scarf after the dawn, and we kill ourselves with laughter, imagining his dejection. We check WhatsApp, we check Twitter, we check Facebook. We wonder how our incoming chosen president—President Goodwill Beta—is at that moment readying for being the true president of the masses, if he knows what to do with himself on the eve of Jidada’s coming glory. Tholukuthi somewhere in the street, we hear a bull bellow his frustration; cats meow back, sheep bleat, ducks quack, donkeys bray, goats bleat, horses neigh, pigs grunt, chickens cluck, peacocks scream, cows moo, and geese cackle; for a brief, mad moment, Lozikeyi rings with the agony of waiting for the results.

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