Hunters are taught to follow the foot trail of prey with deft precision,avoid scaring it away and honor the kill with a ritual to appease the ruling deities for safe passage in the underworld!But tell me,how do you hunt for dead bodies and breathing ones at the sametime without making noise for the alive to hear and scare away the death that awaited to make them prey with a reply? It's trick isn't it?but let me tell you that like a DJ we mixed it up and came with a plan that made sure that everyone was grooving to one tune, gongs! Yes,you heard that right,each group travelled with a large gong and hammer that was only struck using a very distinct tune that all groups could relate too. If it was struck 5 times then a survivor had been found but if it was struck two times it was a signal to walkie-talkie the helicopters to come with more coffins! We carried everything, every equipment that could lift or brake a boulder using manual labor we had it but it wasn't enough! There were some rocks that were the size of main houses in the city centre of some prestigious city centre's! So tell me, would you have spent months trying to move just one rock inorder to find shear pain or would you have accepted the fate of whoever or whatever was under that boulder just like we did?
Some situations were beyond us as we scattered allover searching and obsessing over finding our people as if they were some lost treasure. Human beings seat at the top of the ladder when it comes to being the ultimate resource in this life but there were instances where we were literally picking pieces of teeth as if someone had thrown them into a grinding mill like maize! This made me question our value and if maybe for a moment we over-priced ourselves in the world market and natural disasters were here to checkmate us up on that lie! Village after village and ward after ward we searched but on some wards there where stories that broke our spirit and questioned our faith even as we soldiered on. In Chipinge, in ward 9, about 50 school kids ,the headmaster and clerk were missing and they still haven't been found even up to now! One kid was paralyzed on his right side when a boulder fell on him partly on its smaller side whilst other victims hadn't received any form of assistance just because the numbers were just too much for the NGOs and government to aid at one go! People survived to suffer! Sounds a little bit strange huh? Believe me l know, l lived on donated food for a longtime until it began to feel like l was getting it just outside the tent l now lived in!
When we finally got to my in-laws' village,l was overwhelmed with complex emotions. I didn't know what to do or say when we got there so l just followed the group leaders as we searched the first ruins we saw. Now let me lend you my eyes,l want you to close your eyes and picture the best scenery you have ever seen and double that by ten. It looks unbelievable right? Now open eyes and see the disappointment of the world you saw and the one you stand upon now! This feeling sucks doesn't it? The "you can see it and almost touch it but you can't have it , atleast not anymore" type of feeling.Well multiply that by infinity and what you get ladies and gentlemen is beyond loss. This is exactly how l felt when l stepped on to the door that l used to open and hold for my babies whenever we visited their grandparents when they were younger! There was nothing left,the fields where swept away, the livestock, and even the scarecrow that l had made and placed on the tallest tree to chase away the birds in the fields didn't survive!. I fell down, cried,screamed and cursed but my group mates just uplifted me and brushed my knees and shoulders almost like they were telling me to take it like a man and go with it but how could l? What made it worse was that we found a Bible and this Holy book and relic was a gift that l had given my wife as a present to my father in-law for finally getting baptized that very morning before the disaster! I was shook to the core but as l took it all in and made my peace with it,pouring soil and saying my goodbyes,one of the villagers came in and dropped a bomb on us! Some of the corpses, well most of them in that village had floated to the river bank but the kicker was that there were being attended by an unforeseen or warranted pair of hands, crocodiles!