I have always been here

How do I tell my conservative Zimbabwean parents that the signs were there when I began spending my weekends stripping apart every laptop in the house instead of going to church? A glimpse into journey from modding game consoles to dreaming of limitless world.

My mother stares at me in a confused repulsion while my father tells me of how he preferred the version of me that had never lived alone or learnt how to smile with my face and eyes. I wish you saw the daughter in front of you.

Randomly Accessing Childhood Memories

Being born in 2000s Zimbabwe and entering your childhood through economic collapse really does a lot to ones perception of self and the notion of ideas. For the longest time, all I had was my ideas and a caretaker my parents hired to keep me alive. Mom was in Malawi depending on the season and Father seemed to find more peace at his desk at the office. When it was the school days I spent all my time at my grandparents with my cousins.

Play has always been a big part of my identity. You see, I was that kid the teacher's always called inattentive or in their own world and would perform a lot better if they "tried a bit harder". Performance and Play; what is the difference? Hopefully I can answer that in a future post. Safe to say, in my later highschool years I became quite the actor. I could only watched the theater kids on the sidelines, never truly joining them. For adolescent me play was the only time I felt truly in my body. I could block out the persistent ring that clouded my mind, and for an afternoon be lost in a whole new world. In primary school we all got back from our strict, colonial schools and gather around to watch Naruto, Avatar the Last Airbender, and my favorite show to cap it off, Winx Club. Although I could never admit that to my sisters at the time. Then it would be time for Sekuru's fascinating BBC game shows and we would run outside to explore distance lands. I loved playing hide or seek and would sit and marvel at my sisters perfect sync as they clapped their hands while going through the whole alphabet. I always retreated inside once it was time to play "house". That game didn't feel like play, and I do not think it ever will be. Looking back, it is no surprise that I love the doomed yuri simulator that is Sunset Visitor's 1000xResist so much.

Then the 2010s began and all of a suddenly a few notable pieces of technology began to surface widely through Zimbabwe, or at least amongst my extensive family. DSTV Decoders and Windows XP laptops manufactured by Samsung and HP. Our family laptop was the iconic Samsung NC20 and I will always be nostalgic about that little thing. This forever changed the game for me. Every day after school and it was time to go to my grandparents place, there was a slight chance my aunt had left her laptop there. I took every chance I got to fiddle with this strange machine they only allowed us thirty minutes at school. I opened every program that was there, found an interactive kids encyclopedia that was bundled with the laptop and worked offline, introduced my sisters to Purple Place, and most importantly found WildTangent Games. In a country were sanctions heavily limited access to modern technology, and a paranoid state clamping further down on its economically deprived people, access to such a grand library of offline games was quite the privileged and my safe space. Then one day, my aunt brought home a strange USB stick with a simcard in it. I do not think I have been the same person since.

Have I told you that I am quite obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog?

As someone who was only diagnosed with adhd at 20 and later self-diagnosed autism, it often feels as though I am constantly trying to piece together my childhood to restore the memories clouded by static and muted ringing in my ears. To reach this point took leaving the comfort of my very controlled environment that was my parents' house and the country I had known all my life. These earliest memories...of near death experiences, the afternoons at my grandparents, and the genuine smiles of my mother's youth. It is truly hard to let go, and at times I feel that I am still stuck in those memories.

So when I look people square in the eyes and tell them that Shadow is "literally me", it is with 100% authenticity.

Have I mentioned that I started HRT? When considering how unseriously serious genz tends to be, I can only express the sheer disbelief and excitement, accompanied by existential dread, this development in my journey has brought be. But in retrospect this makes sense. I have always enjoyed tinkering, laughing, and holding a hopeful view of the future...so surely I can apply all this to myself?

The Answer is Yes

I am still trying to figure out this whole blogging thing, and starting a whole publication with a couple of buddies scattered across this place we call earth, but understanding that sometimes you really do just have to start the thing is why I have been feeling so much more hope in the current world we live in. While people love to hate of the modern web and social media platforms, these little bubbles, spheres, and digital bolo's have fundamentally reshaped my understanding of possibilities.

Africa is so big and fragmented that we often forget how varied and vast the lives under our sun can be. Everything feels so far yet so close, that you can hear your neighbors gossip through the wire/less. You are never truly alone as there is another you dreaming just as big at the horn, yearning just as much as in the streets of Lagos, and laughing just as hard in the south. This lens of looking at our home and understanding the nature of unique lived experiences while acknowledging our interdependence lived reality makes me smile. A smarter writer would have been able to link that to pan-africanism, but that is not me, and I believe a more internationalist approach is required. I have been told I sound poetic, but I think it's just years of memory loss and brain fog.

It really only takes a handful of people operating independently together to get anything done. Some of us just enjoy doing things. That ties back to the brain fog thing and the whole "nature vs nurture" discussion. People love to write things onto surfaces for other people to read, from cave paintings to graffiti, but what they put down has always been affected by their circumstance and environment. One could say that is exactly what I am doing here. There are certain things that seem consistent in our timelines. The need to create and the inevitable discussion of said creations.

Till Next Time

We ain't got no editors or anything, and almost all of this is sustained by us for fun, but (let me not speak for everyone) I believe it is important for there to be spaces for us to just post for fun and tell our stories.

Thanks for sticking through to the end of this somewhat incoherent but fun reflection on my life. It's not perfect as of now, and we still have so much stuff to work through and polish, but I really hope you enjoy your time with us at Aminasi.