Shamiso by Brian Chikwava

The narrative of Shamiso is a deeply textured exploration of identity, the lingering trauma of war, and the complexities of “third-culture” existence, shifting between the dusty villages and suburbs of Zimbabwe and the rain-slicked streets of Brighton and London. Narrated by Shamiso, a woman who begins her story “obese with grief,” the book serves as a meticulous accounting of her past and her evolution from a stuttering child in a fractured home to a self-possessed artist in the diaspora.

The Legend of Jimson: The Root of the Family Tree

The story’s foundations are built upon the mythic and tragic figure of Jimson, Shamiso’s Babamukuru (paternal uncle). The narrative begins at a village borehole, where Jimson overhears a man named Shadreck spreading rumors that Jimson’s mother has become a witch. The allegation that she walks naked at night, sitting on men’s chests to pour potions into their mouths demands blood in the traditional code of the village. Jimson and Shadreck meet on a granite hill at dawn to settle the score with knobkerries.

Jimson arrives with only a puppy named Mapenzi (a name chosen to spite neighbors), while Shadreck brings a small army of kinsmen. The fight is brutal and swift; Jimson smashes Shadreck’s head with the “satisfying crunch of a watermelon,” an act that irrevocably changes him. To escape the police, Jimson is spirited away to the Chimanimani district and eventually disappears into Mozambique. He returns eleven years later as a masiganda (troubadour), a man who has traveled through worlds where “you have to sleep very fast because somebody else needs the pillow”. He sits under a bloodwood tree, playing a box guitar made from an Olivine Cooking Oil tin, “tickling the devil’s ribs” with songs of his itinerant existence as a laborer.

The New Republic and the Birth of Shamiso

As the war for independence concludes, Shamiso’s father returns from Mozambique as a “new man”. Having been herded across the border as a teenager, he returns speaking Mandarin and carrying the “volatile temperament” of a guerrilla who has seen too much death. Jimson, ever the cynic, mocks the returning comrades, questioning if they truly “brought the country back” in their pockets.

Shamiso’s father eventually joins the civil service, a move that coincides with the birth of the new Zimbabwe, where “Bantu faces” begin to populate the boardrooms and formerly white-only suburbs. He meets Shamiso’s mother, a traumatized ex-combatant who carries a brick in her bag for protection and lives for the bar. Their relationship is explosive; the father initially doubts Shamiso is his because she lacks the family’s signature dimples. After the father marries a “proper woman” and moves to a suburban house, Shamiso is brought “out of the wilderness” to join them. She grows up as a “hardy weed,” struggling with a severe speech impediment and the cold hostility of her stepmother.

Babamukuru Jimson in the City

The family’s suburban stability is disrupted by the arrival of Jimson, who has lost his rural home to drought and family mismanagement. He arrives as a “considerable” presence, a man who ignores social cues and walks straight into the house, eventually taking up residence in the “boy’s khaya” (the servants’ quarters). Jimson becomes both a source of embarrassment and wonder for the children. He entertains them with “terrific ferocity,” blowing snot from his nose with such force they imagine it landing in Zambia.

A pivotal moment of conflict occurs during a walk to the shopping center. Jimson attempts to buy ice creams for the children but gets into a heated dispute with a vendor over the “deformed” shape of the cones. Stung by the vendor’s contempt, Jimson loses his dignity, resorting to “stupicide” and insults. To regain his pride, he takes the children to a bottle store where he dominates a table-football game, proving himself a “legend” before returning home to a violent confrontation with Shamiso’s father. The fight ends with Jimson suffering a broken collarbone, a physical fracture that mirrors the social fracture of his displacement.

The Symbolism of the Nyami Nyami

Despite his delinquency, Jimson provides Shamiso with her first sense of spiritual grounding. He takes her to the Mbare market to find “pink rubber bands” for a slingshot and gifts her a Nyami Nyami pendant. The pendant a serpent with a fish’s head becomes a symbol of the fluid and connected nature of life. Shamiso wears it constantly, using the “spirit snake” to find an inner stillness that allows her to withstand her stepmother’s physical abuse. She learns to “separate and be double,” flying away from herself during beatings to “flat calm clear blue waters that no one can rock”.

Jimson’s decline continues as he is relegated to the role of a gardener, receiving his lunch through a kitchen window like a servant. Shamiso watches with “loathing” as he surrenders his dignity to her stepmother, becoming a “weird thing” and a “stranger thrusting a beggar’s broken smile into the afternoon sunshine”. The cultural gap widens when Shamiso makes friends with Maria, a girl from London who dismisses the Nyami Nyami as “dirt cheap” tourist fodder. Driven by a sense of shame and an irrational urge to destroy her connection to Jimson, Shamiso publicly rejects him during a school event. Shortly after, Jimson commits suicide by hanging.

Grief and the Journey to the Mountains

Jimson’s death plunges Shamiso into a “blind panic.” She attempts to purge her grief by gathering all the wood carvings he made and those she made as his apprentice and distributing them for free in the Harare Gardens. Feeling “cold inside” and unable to find her Nyami Nyami pendant, she experiences a psychological break.

She embarks on a 75-kilometer trek to the Chimanimani Mountains, seeking a rendezvous with her ancestors. In the mountains, she experiences a “rhythmic calm,” marching barefoot through mud and jagged rocks, finally ready to “die with my choice or live with it”. She realizes her father’s “place of birth” is nearby and that the “red earth’s mineral aroma” is the only thing that can ground her. She returns to Harare on a truck next to a goat, having decided to “keep flying”.

The Move to England: Brighton and the Birchenough Trust

Shamiso’s father, unable to understand her and viewing her as “possessed by a crazy spirit,” sends her to boarding school and eventually supports her move to England. She wins a scholarship to study art in Brighton, a transition that feels like “shedding old skin”.

She is taken in by Gabriel and Nishta, a couple who provide her with a stable, academic environment. In Brighton, Shamiso encounters George, a “twig of a boy” with a mixed heritage (white Zimbabwean mother and Senegalese father). George is a provocateur who cleans the house once a week and later reveals a fluid approach to gender and identity, occasionally appearing in dresses. Shamiso is both attracted to and repulsed by George’s “delinquent glint” and his power to corner and crush her emotionally.

The Complexity of George and the “Flash Snog”

The relationship between Shamiso and George is defined by a “fated to misunderstand each other” dynamic. During an “open mic” night, George recites a poem about a boy seeking “lesbian love” to unlock his trapped energy, a moment that confuses Shamiso’s feelings further. She experiences a sense of betrayal when she witnesses George engaging in a “flash snog” with her classmate, Atilio, at a gathering hosted by the Bishop of the Church Without Walls. Shamiso retreats to the beach, feeling the “inevitable progression” of her childhood isolation.

For Christmas, Gabriel and Nishta give Shamiso a 17-kilogram piece of verdite rock from Zimbabwe. The stone becomes a “metaphoric sin,” a heavy, unyielding object that she is supposed to “charm into becoming something”. She begins to use her sculpture training the “subtractive technique” of removing material until something emerges to process her trauma.

The Final Confrontation in London

The narrative reaches a peak when Shamiso’s father travels to London with a Zimbabwean netball team. Despite his “Mugabe’s MP” status and his history of violence, he sends her a message saying he is “proud of her”. Shamiso meets him at Victoria Station but chooses to observe him from a distance, watching the “sauntering alpha baboon” of her childhood wait in vain outside a WH Smith. She realizes he is a man who “intuitively knew how to locate the elusive key to an animal’s transformation” but never knew his own daughter. She chooses to walk away, letting the “shadows fall behind her”.

The “Caitlin” Scam and the Break with George

Shamiso and George briefly rediscover each other, embarking on a passionate, physical relationship where they “dress each other up” and become each other’s “creations”. However, this bliss is shattered in London when they meet Caitlin, a sophisticated woman who works for a modeling agency.

Caitlin singles out Shamiso for a “development programme,” which Shamiso realizes too late is a scam that drains her of £500. The incident causes a final, “unspeakable” rift with George, who accuses Shamiso of being a “diversity and equality Barbie” and of stealing her family’s recipes to recreate their intimacy with others. George eventually vanishes, leaving Shamiso in a “bleak landscape of guilt and grief”.

The “Ghost Train” and the Final Return

In her final years in England, Shamiso lives as an “illegal” in London, working as a waitress and an artist. She adopts a homeless cat named Babamukuru, who becomes a “permanent fixture” in her life until he is tragically killed by dogs.

The book concludes with Shamiso receiving a letter from George that provides “all the loose ends” she needed. She reflects on the “ghost train” network of England trains that run empty just to maintain a legal fiction. Realizing she can finally “go home,” she gathers her belongings from the “roundabouts and riverbanks” of London. She prepares to return to herself, perhaps to Zimbabwe, or simply to a state of being where she can finally “clap the night to pieces for the return of the River God”.