RHYTHM OF ANCIENT SONGS AND BEAT OF AFRICAN PRAISE POETRY My birth is a metaphor of bullet-traces and the ironic verse of Leninist style-songs for black liberation that reverberated the grey-mist clad red-mountains of home – Zimbabwe. My birthing was a stitch between the thud of war-time guns and a heave of pungwe jives. Young women of my mother's age were volunteer maids during the traumatic but zeal-oiled Chimurenga times, cooking and washing for the cadres of liberation. Chimurenga songs sung by these war-ironed peasant mothers and bullet-toughened collaborators in the red-hills of Wedza. These Mother-guerrillas endured the hard throbs of grenades and the thrash of midnight-rains in those village hills alongside bushy male combatants. They learnt the soprano of the gun and the tenor of death.These were heaven-echoing struggle hymns. On the day of my birth, heavy rains rattled the winter-crusted red-earth. Rivers sobbed with heaven's tears and sorrows of war. That grueling night, swarms of collaborators were moved from one base to another, my earthly goddess was among those pilgrims of war. …her heartbeat thrilled my tender ears and her blood-ripples lulled my faint soul to sleep. And somy foetus spirit rode along with waves of echo and beat of verse. Ingenuity. I am the blessing of the trip, the child of war song and rain. A mystery. I am a child of song. I was birthed during the exodus. That rebel's war was characterized by death, wailing, stampede, bravery, shallow-graves, song and continuous walking. A trailblazing Africa reality show. My earthly goddess was a dedicated collaborator, volunteer and songstress. She carried freedom in the sacred cave of her womb. After their strange overnight long walk to freedom base of Mbirashava – rains ceased fire, war-drums paused and their echoes got trapped into the blankets of early day mist. Then came my birth cry they say like an exclamation engraved on the yellow-disc of the smoke-bruised African sun. Claws of dawn caressed the sorrow-soaked red-hills. My goddess wriggled in a thick volcano of red-clay mud, ochre-red blood and dead grass. Her womb groaned from labor pangs and suddenly the wind was cold. June dared the earth and everything in it. Cold-winds whined ferociously to disobedient flora and delinquent vultures. Winter, fast clicking a pause button to the jungle's daily festivals. I was born. Cadres and collaborators dribbled a liberation jive for my homecoming. They called me Gandanga. I was initiated into this earth by the alto of howling winter-winds, baritones of barking-baboons and the ease soprano of hooting-owls. A child of song. I was introduced to the festival of sounds, loud and low, good and bad, discordant and beautiful. Upon arriving at the village homestead, the earth trembled, the air got electric with ululations. My paternal grandmother fervently recited a traditional totemic praise poem. “Chirasha, Chikandamina, Weshanu uri pauta, Mavsingo a Govere, Vari Zimuto, Mukwasha waMambo, Vakafura bwe rikabuda ropa” A lone drum thrilled them into the audience into another dancing routine. The echo of the tinkling drum resonated with the beat of my grandmother's recitations. They said that my eyes winked in response to their merriment. Even up to this day, I beat my chest with pride to that ceremonial reception performed by an elder qualified to be my ancestor. My old singer-grandmother usually bundled me behind her old but steely back. Lullabies caressed me into dreamland until my goddess returned from her daily errands. I was raised by extraordinary songs, sweet and mellow to every infant's senses. I enjoyed the ear-tickling ancient poetry. They say I slept to the rhythm of that beautiful lullaby. My grandmother was Gogo in African – she would fall asleep too. Mother returned from the red-clay fields to find us under the watch of spirits and snores. After some weeks my umbilical cord wilted and fell. They buried it under the hearth near the main fireplace. Thus how we are bonded by our departed clan spirits. And so I grew up in a highly strict African traditional clan. My father and fellow clansmen brewed ceremonial beer for traditional rites. They supplicated to ancestral gods to end life-tormenting ailments, ravaging hunger, abject poverty and bad omen. Their usual incarnations, totemic praise's performances cultivated the griot in me. Praise and protest poetry became my official language. After my umbilical cord rites, my father gave me a name. He named me after the most powerful battalion of Tshaka Zulu, a battalion that never lost even a single battle – Imbizo.

I graduated high school back in 2011, and have been attending community college ever since. At the time I was not interested in continuing with school but my older sister forced me to enroll because education was and is the only tool that many of us have. The only tool to work our way out of being poor for the rest of our lives. I attended classes but I had no direction, no passion, but I still tried anyway, I changed my major several times and for a while it seemed like maybe I could make a career out of being an American Sign Language interpreter because it didn't seem too bad, but after four semesters of that I knew I couldn't continue studying something I didn't have a passion for. I made a D in ASL 4, and thought maybe school wasn't for me, so I decided not to return. That only lasted a semester because I fell into a deep depression and my family made it their business to make me go back to school. So when I began to look at what classes I could take, I noticed that I had taken many of the core classes along with some developmental classes that I didn't need to take, and had avoided the upper sciences and math. At a quick glance, what seemed to be the “easiest” class to me was Stellar Astronomy, and that was the only class I took in Spring 2016. That one class changed everything for me. All my insecurities and complaints that I had about every little thing became superficial after taking that class. Out there - time and space become one, there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, dark matter etc. it all fascinated me, caught my attention. Earth, the only known planetary body to harbor life and we are a part of that, a part of the Universe. Suddenly I didn't hate school anymore and even though I originally wanted to become an astronomer because of that course, I knew the only career options for me were to either work for NASA or work at a planetarium which both seemed extremely unlikely because of limited opportunities and the competition. Through my searching I chose environmental sciences as an alternative, which seemed general enough because I began to appreciate every subject. My next step was to take more science and math, which I did and it was not easy. Spring 2017 I took Trigonometry and once again I made another D. That was personally crushing for me as well as for my gpa. I thought life was supposed to become easier when you found your passion but instead I left that class defeated. As a result, six weeks of my Summer I spent retaking Trig and made a B. In the Fall I took a Biology and a Geology course. I believe that it was somewhere around this time that I stopped receiving financial aid because for one I had become an independent student and two I had exceeded the time-frame given to students to complete their degree. I now had to pay tuition myself with the help of my family. My gpa wasn't the best, I had no achievements, no honors, no extracurriculars, so even though I had help with money I felt like I squandered so much of my time in school and I had no achievements. I had an idea of what I wanted to study but I began to wonder if it was too late for me. Everyday I felt an enormous amount of pressure from my family to finish school because I kept not graduating, and everyone thought I'd change my major again, and I needed to stop wasting my time so I could begin working to make big money. I was told to go back and finish my ASL interpreter training because I was halfway done with that degree. My family's worries were and are completely understandable but I did not want to settle because that's what so many people around me did and many of them are miserable. That one semester I took off was enough to keep me going - I never wanted to feel that way again. Spring 2018 I decided to go back to math and take Precal, and once again my life changed. The professor told the class about an opportunity called NCAS which was an acronym for “NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars” and I couldn't believe what I heard. Almost immediately I applied early and spent several agonizing weeks waiting to hear back. When I did hear back via email, I was accepted into the program! There was no way I was going to squander this opportunity. The online program lasted 5 weeks and was actually a competition with about 400 students from across the US who participated. Students who did well were going to be given a four day onsite visit for FREE as long as we earned a B to be considered. I made a 100% and after some paperwork I visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NCAS Summer Class of 2018. One year later and I am currently participating in NASA's Lucy Student Pipeline Accelerator & Competency Enabler or L'SPACE for short. I don't worry about my future as much anymore. I tried, failed many times, kept going and had to learn to become relentless with my goals and aspirations. I can't wait to see what my future holds. Just a little bit longer. But how much longer?