A Girl Named Disaster

Nhamo sets out to collect firewood. The task can be frightening because the village is “surrounded by a forest” (6). Nhamo is most afraid of leopards because her mother was killed by a leopard when she was a toddler. Grandmother has always blamed Nhamo’s father for the incident, convinced the leopard was an angry spirit.

Nhamo wades through the stream and up to her secret place on the hill. She keeps an old magazine cover she took from a pile of scraps in a pot under a stone. She withdraws the cover and speaks to it like it’s her mother. The image depicts a woman spreading margarine on bread for a little girl. Nhamo often has tea parties with Mother but can’t imagine her father being there. He left the village when she was a baby. Mother’s family has nothing nice to say about him.

Nhamo packs up and heads home. She grows afraid when she sees a leopard near the water. Suddenly, the moon comes out and the leopard turns into “a tangle of leaves” (10).

Aunt Chipo scolds Nhamo for returning home late. Nhamo tends the fire without explaining where she was. After Aunt Shuvai, Aunt Chipo, Masvita, her sister Ruva, Grandmother, and Nhamo eat, Nhamo goes to the men’s meeting room to collect their dishes. She overhears them telling a story about a woman being eaten by a man who turned into a snake. She races back to the hut, shaking. Then she tells the women about seeing the leopard. Grandmother and the aunts think it was a spirit leopard. Grandmother explains that the leopard who killed Nhamo’s mother, Runako, dragged her into the forest and ate her. They buried a cow in her place. Nhamo wishes Grandmother would explain more.

Nhamo is surprised to find Masvita missing from the hut in the morning. Masvita’s father, Uncle Kufa, is gone at the trading post all day, too. When they return home, Masvita announces that she’s going to stay with her paternal aunt in the next village because she started menstruating. Nhamo loves Masvita but feels jealous.

Nhamo wanders the village feeling upset after Masvita leaves. Then she sneaks off to her secret spot to talk to Mother. During her tea party, she realizes she doesn’t have a paternal aunt and will have nowhere to go when she gets her period. Mother assures her that Grandmother will contact her father’s family when the time comes.

Nhamo returns to the village to talk to Grandmother. Grandmother reveals what she really thinks of Masvita and assures Nhamo she’s beautiful. Then she tells Nhamo about Runako’s beauty and intelligence. Runako even went away to school. Shortly thereafter, Grandmother’s husband died, and Grandmother lost her house. Afterward, the village was the only place she and her children could survive (22).

The village throws a party when Masvita returns. Nhamo watches the celebration from the bushes, but panics when she spies the leopard stalking the brush. The men search the brush, but don’t find any tracks. The party resumes and everyone starts discussing weddings and dowries.

Masvita’s paternal aunt falls ill the next day. The women tend to her, but she dies. The villagers worry the illness was caused by witchcraft. At night, Nhamo comforts Masvita by telling her a lengthy story. Meanwhile, she wonders about Masvita’s aunt’s spirit.

The illness spreads through the village. The villagers guess that it’s cholera, but want to contact the muvuki, or local doctor, to learn the truth. Meanwhile, the village girls spread stories about the muvuki and witches. Nhamo gets upset and attacks another girl when she accuses Mother of being a witch. Uncle Kufa breaks up the fight and Nhamo flees to the hill. She tells Mother what happened.

More villagers get sick and die. Aunt Shuvai is among them. Then one day, Masvita gets sick. Nhamo comforts Ruva by telling her more stories. Masvita starts to recover, but Aunt Chipo is still distraught. Grandmother scolds and the women start arguing. Masvita gets upset by their bickering, so Nhamo stays by her side.

After the illness passes, the villagers bury the bodies. Nhamo still feels that something is wrong.

Nhamo and her family travel to see the muvuki. Nhamo thinks they’re trying to solve the question of Masvita’s continued weakness and sterility from the cholera. However, she realizes they’re seeing the muvuki about her when she notices Uncle Kufa’s, Aunt Chipo’s, and Masvita’s matching charms. The healer must have given them the charms for protection against Nhamo, who they think is a witch. Masvita gives Nhamo some of the beads.

The muvuki stalls the family’s meeting. They wait near the trading post until he’s ready to see them.

Nhamo enjoys watching the activities around the trading post. One day, she hears a man playing guitar and begs Grandmother to go hear him together. Grandmother reluctantly agrees but enjoys herself once they arrive. She befriends a Portuguese trader who gives her several beers. The trader and his men like Nhamo, too.

Then Grandmother starts telling stories about Runako and her husband, Proud Jongwe. Runako ran away from school after meeting Proud and got married. She became pregnant with Nhamo shortly thereafter. When Nhamo was still a baby, Proud got into a fight with a man named Goré Mtoko at a bar one night. Goré attacked Proud. Proud defended himself, killed Goré, and fled the village thereafter.

Uncle Kufa appears, interrupting the story. They say goodbye to the traders and rejoin their family. All night, Nhamo thinks about Grandmother’s story. She can’t believe her father is a murderer and that no one was happy when she was born.

Nhamo’s family sees the muvuki. The muvuki announces that a ngozi, or an angry spirit, is responsible for their family’s recent difficulties. He says that because Nhamo’s father killed a man, the murdered man’s spirit is seeking revenge. Grandmother insists that she fixed the debt by giving the family two cows. The muvuki says the payment wasn’t enough and the leopard spirit wants more. The family decides that they should marry Nhamo to Goré’s brother, Zororo, in Zimbabwe to solve the problem.

Suddenly, Goré’s spirit inhabits Aunt Chipo’s body. She starts screaming for revenge, demanding her murderer’s daughter as payment. When Grandmother protests, Kufa tells the muvuki she’s sick.

Grandmother falls quiet and ill before they leave the muvuki’s hut. Nhamo stays by her side and nurses her at the trading post.

Nhamo thinks about her situation while caring for Grandmother. In the afternoons, she visits a trader named Joao and his wife Rosa. They make her food and ask after her family. They’re worried about the family’s visit to the muvuki, insisting he’s a bad man.

Joao and Rosa invite Nhamo to stay with them at the trading post when they hear about her arranged marriage. Nhamo is delighted by the idea, but fears hurting her family more. When Joao asks Kufa if she can stay, he refuses. The family departs shortly thereafter.

Nhamo mentally prepares for the start of her handing-over ceremony the next day (76). She doesn’t want to marry Zororo or leave her family.

That night, Grandmother tells Nhamo her plan. She wants Nhamo to flee the village, take the late villager Crocodile Guts’s boat, and row down the river to Zimbabwe. She explains the route and urges Nhamo to find the Catholics and her father’s family. Then she gives Nhamo the gold nuggets she’s been saving. Nhamo agrees.

Nhamo prepares to leave. She asks Grandmother how the spirits will feel about her decision to run away. Grandmother encourages her and they say goodbye. Nhamo retrieves her pot with the magazine cover and finds Crocodiles Guts’s boat. She feels excited to be fleeing once she’s on the water.