In Depth Story on Tendai Matsika
The boy, twenty years later
Casey Goldvale, Harare Tribune staff writer
Harare Tribune: So, Tendai, you've just finished your first semester of your last year of college.
Matsika: That's right.
H.T.: What's it like going to Hafuka University, the best medical school in Zimbabwe?
Matsika: Oh, it's great. The campus is nice, the lab has everything, and the food is phenomenal. My dorm mates are nice guys. That was important to me. In my childhood the only people I really knew were my family and the Mellower. Oh yeah, the robots too if they count. When I was in my teens I started school but everyone was settled into their “cliques” and I was an oddball anyway, being General Matsika’s son and all, no offense to my dad.
H.T.: What are you planning on doing when you’ve finished school?
Matsika: Well, I have no worries about financial issues, my parents will back me up if they need to. I was thinking of starting my own business, I here that there’s space available in the new three-hundred-fifty-fourth story of the Mile High MacIlwaine. I love that building, it always soothes me. Now, this may sound crazy and superstitious, but I think it may be because the Mhondoro left a trace of his spirit behind after the whole kidnapping incident. He told me that I could make a good spirit medium. That sure made my day. I grew up convinced
that I would be one and become famous. I still have a slight hold on that dream, but here you see me, a doctor-to-be. [At this Matsika laughs] I made a rhyme! I’m a poet and I didn’t know it!
H.T.: You’re a poet and you didn’t know it…?
Matsika: It’s an old English phrase.
H.T.: I see.
H.T.: Now back to the subject. What made you give up that dream of becoming a spirit medium?
Matsika: I’m not sure. I’ve given many answers to this question. I think the best one is that I’m afraid.
H.T.: Afraid of what?
Matsika: Afraid that the Mhodoro would deem me unworthy of his contact. Afraid of disappointing hundreds of people. Afraid of ending up, not as the Mhondoro’s medium, but as some cruel, heathen god’s. Afraid of dieing. But most of all finding that I have somehow lost the ability to be a spirit medium. It is almost better to live without trying but with hope than to live having tried and having found you’re a failure.
H.T.: Do you suppose that other spirit mediums feel this way?
Matsika: I think the real ones might, but I’ve always noticed how the cheaper spirit mediums’ trances never last more than fifty-five minutes and they always tell you what you want to hear.
H.T.: So you think that all the spirit mediums to whom those characteristics apply are frauds?
Matsika: If you wish to put it so bluntly then, yes, that is what I believe.
H.T.: What made you want to be a doctor or spirit medium?
Matsika: I could say it was kindness and the warmth of my heart but that would almost be a lie. I mainly help people out of pity. Desperate people, despairing people, people in predicaments. It is nice to know that it is within your power to help people who need it. Being in a predicament yourself is very inspiring. Once in a predicament, you’re always sensitive to another’s predicament. Or, at least that is true for me.
H.T.: You say that you’ve been in a predicament before and I think that I’m right to guess that that predicament was when you were kidnapped?
Matsika: Yep.
H.T.: What made it a predicament?
Matsika: What the masks did to me and were going to do.
H.T.: And what was that?
Matsika: I was going to be their messenger.
H.T.: You seem rather short on the subject.
Matsika: I’m sorry. It’s just that the subject brings back bad feelings and terrible memories. You have no idea what the Big Head mask did to some of us mentally. I suppose that’s a reason why I’m a doctor now.
H.T.: One last question, do you regret not becoming a spirit medium?
Matsika: Actually, no, I don’t. it would probably be an extremely stressful job. Also, I wouldn’t be able to help as many people. In case you haven’t noticed, spirit mediums are incredibly expensive and insurance doesn’t cover them. Anyway most reasons to visit a spirit medium aren’t life-threatening. As a doctor I can become more of a regular life-saver.