Welcome to Fifth Word's We Need New Stories.
Episode four, Vinnie's Story.
It was in love, I was created, written by Zodwa
Nyoni and directed by Anastasia Osei-Kuffour.
This episode contains references to
violence and racism.
Fairy tales don't tell you the truth about love.
The truth is told after the phrase, "the end" is said,
there commitment is tested.
There we see how love is up, down, entangled in knots,
and sometimes stretched beyond its capacity.
I know this because I've witnessed it.
When my mom, Rita met my dad, Eric, her heart
still carried grief.
There had been another man she'd loved before him.
My biological dad was a Mozambican man
who'd found himself in Zimbabwe in the 1970s.
He worked with his hands building roads from Kazungula,
a small border town in Zambia, close to Victoria Falls.
A resort town known for Mosi-oa-Tunya, the
smoke that thunders.
Little did he know that those roads would lead him to my
mother, who was working in another town called Hwange.
It was known for elephants, giraffe's, lions, and buffalo.
Wild was their fate as it would turn out.
They dated and dreamt a forever together.
Soon my dad would return to his homeland, jubilantly
carrying the news that he was to become a father.
It was decided that they would move to Mozambique
and start their new life.
He came back to Zimbabwe to collect his love, his Rita
Roads lead us to new beginnings.
And sometimes to unexpected endings.
My father briefly returned to work.
Unbeknownst to him, buried beneath the earth, on what
started as a normal day, was a hidden landmine.
My parents forever after was left scattered like debris, my
father never got to meet me.
But his love grew in my mother's womb.
She returned to her hometown Bulawayo.
The story goes at my birth, my mother's body
was riddled with malaria.
The nuns at Mater Dei Hospital were preparing
to read her last rights.
It seemed like tragedy was going to follow her life,
but neither of us were prepared to leave this earth
with incomplete stories.
She fought.
I was born in 1972 named Vinnie, daughter
of Mighty Rita.
My mother raised me alone whilst working as an auxiliary
nurse at Ingutsheni, a mental health hospital.
My grandmother would help.
During the weekend, we had the routine down.
In 1975, Eric would come into our lives.
He was a white man from Nottingham who'd come to
Rhodesia to work as the charge nurse at my mum's hospital.
Once again, love had crossed.
Borders to meet her this time.
The danger could not be dug out of the asphalt.
It was ingrained in the segregation and hate.
Drinking fountains had whites only signs.
Blacks were in townships, whites in suburbs.
Rebels hunted white men, they saw as oppressors.
Love would have to be bravely fought for by all of us.
Mom and Eric dated for two years.
In 1977, they adopted a black baby girl named Iris.
We became a happy family of four people.
Stared at my family, especially when me and my
little sister would call this tall white man dad.
It didn't make us feel awkward.
It made us feel protect.
In 1980 when Zimbabwe's independence was gained, the
society finally caught up with my family's diversity.
Schools became integrated.
I loved my primary school.
I remember Mrs.
Miles used to play the piano with elegantly
long painted fingernails.
Things seemed possible for us.
Then in my first year of high school at Montrose, my
mum and dad told us that we would be moving to Nottingham.
I'd never wanted to come to England.
I liked my life and my friends.
But it was our turn to cross borders for love.
In 1985, we arrived in London.
It was the August bank holiday, and so there
was no public transport.
We hired a car and drove to Nottingham.
They were smaller and boxier.
The news spoke often of racial tension, burning
cars and riots in Brixton.
Mum and dad had each other for support.
My little sister and I had to find our people.
I thought we would in school, but I quickly learned that in
Cotgrave, we were outcasts, niggers, sambos, and darkies.
At swimming, the kids couldn't believe that the bottom of my
feet were white like theirs.
They'd ask if black men had white sperm.
They'd yelled that we should go back to where we came from.
I was 13.
I thought we'd left all this hate behind.
Didn't tell my parents at first.
But, eventually I confessed that I was
being racially abused.
Dad went to the headmaster and told him that if they didn't
intervene, he would write to the race relations board
complaining about the school.
My dad did his best, but the bullying didn't
stop as worldly as he'd been in his travels and
friendships, all he could offer us was positivity and
the reassurance that our goodness would be enough
to prevail in his world.
Sometimes I think he didn't know how to speak to our pain.
He loved us deeply, but he could never experience
Nottingham from the perspective of his
black wife and children.
No matter how bad the bullying got, I never compromised
or swallowed who I was.
I loved myself harder and louder.
I told myself that I had to defend myself.
My main bully's reckoning day came in maths as usual.
I was his target practice and the teacher wasn't
doing anything to stop him.
Frustrated, I got up, walked towards him and smacked him.
I punched him.
I grabbed his hair and banged his head on
the table repeatedly until his nose bled.
Finally, the teacher was forced to intervene,
but it was too late.
My point had been made.
No one abuses Vinnie any more.
Once that was settled, I found myself opening up more to
what Nottingham had to offer.
I made a small group of girlfriends from the next
Village, Radcliffe-on-Trent.
We do sleepovers, go to the disco to watch movies
and eat fish and chips drenched in vinegar.
They dated boys and I went home because mum and
dad wouldn't let me date.
I started making my own money from part-time
jobs in Poundstretcher and truck stop cafes.
Laura and I spent it all on late nights in
Astoria and Black oOrchid drinking Bacardi and coke.
We get absolutely bladdered and fake American
accents to make ourselves sound more interesting.
I'm glad love made us make this ocean
crossing for my dad.
If we hadn't, I never would've met the
childhood friends I have.
I never would've experienced the beautiful
blending of my Zimbabwean heritage with my British
citizenship, and I certainly wouldn't have met Ike.
Ike and I met in 1997.
I was in my late twenties, and he was the Nigerian
friend of a friend at a braai.
He was a nice guy, but we didn't speak much.
It wasn't until a few years later when I saw him at a
funeral of a family friend of his then girlfriend.
I'm not saying I had a hand in breaking them up, but I
will say he remembered me and there didn't last long
after that, we connected and began our love story.
20 years later, we are still going strong
and living in London.
The push and pull of love of a person, of a country,
of a culture of a time is how I was created.
I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Thank you for listening.
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All episodes in this series are available on major
listening platforms and on Fifth Word's website.
The next episode in this series is Munashe’s
Story, Keeping Notes.