Beings

Ruwa is a town in Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe, situated 22 km south-east of Harare on the main Harare-Mutare highway and railway line. In recent years it has grown rapidly and become a popular area for people moving out of Harare. When I was a girl, I had unusually vivid dreams there. One night I dreamt three beings from space visited me in my bedroom. Without moving their lips, they sent me a message: "You are all going to die."

Family who stayed watched President Mugabe destroy our infrastructure. I left when I could. While they cooked what they could over firewood I ate in my small apartment in the New York Bronx. Four nights a week I cared at a home for mentally retarded women. Daylight came through the curtainless bedroom and washed out my dreams.


*

LYNN: Is there such thing as UFOs?

I'm not sure, Lynn. Nobody knows for sure.

LYNN: Is there such thing as aliens?

I dont know... why are you asking all these funny questions?"

LYNN: I saw it on TV. Aliens on TV.

You saw aliens on TV?

LYNN: Yeah, yeah. Aliens on TV.

*

During the first decade of independence, Mugabe used the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade to silence any opposition from the Ndebele nation in an operation against dissidents referred to as Gukurahundi. Several thousand civilians, mostly Ndebele, were killed or disappeared and have not been accounted for to this date. Allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing have resulted in calls for Mugabe's arrest and prosecution for crimes against humanity.

Then, last summer, I woke up with the hot afternoon sun in my window and saw men and women on fire falling from the sky. I threw open the window and watched the Harlem river sparkle and the commuters waiting for the train and the air was quiet and calm. After so many dreamless sleeps, were my dreams starting to spill out of my head? I shook and sat down on the bed.

That's when they started again. For three nights before September 11th, I dreamt of an exploding satellite, and an Asian man who looked very happy.

*

Mona asked me if I would go with her to church. Sometimes we talked when we passed shifts with each other. I had told her about life when I was younger, losing touch with everyone, and then about the drought, the famine. She nodded. "I hear you, honey, I hear you. “How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and the birds have perished.”"

That Sunday I sat next to her, in church for the first time since Ruwa...

And the preacher said:

Three days and there was a flash in the sky above the schoolyard. Three holy spirits in silver ships, angels' spaceships running on God's Eternal light -- they landed and the looked in the astonished faces of the children. And they said, See, We have set before you today life and death, good and evil; and the we will bless you in the land you are going to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish…

And the children heard the words though they did not open their mouths, and in from their conscience came a rumbling like a great ships through the darkness.


*

Time for your medicine.

LYNN: No, no sleep..

What's wrong? What do you mean?

MONA: She's just being difficult, aren't you Lynn?

LYNN: NO! No sleep!

Why no sleep?

LYNN:

MONA: Don't touch yourself! What's gotten into you?

She's scratching... let me see, Lynn, what have you-- oh, Mona!

MONA: Oh Lord what is that?

LYNN: He did it...

Oh Mona we have to page the nurse... who did it Lynn?

LYNN:

MONA: Don't act like you don't hear her, Lynn ------. Who is he?

LYNN: He did it. See?

Oh Lynn...

LYNN: See?

*

Please pray for the Christians suffering in Zimbabwe. Without speaking, open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause for all of us appointed to die.