Every day is a Vale Day
WITH SEKURU TAURAI
14 Feb, Valentine’s Day, here we come and when we come there will be tonnes of flowers and lots of flowery love messages on numerous flowery cards, flowery WhatsApp messages and flowery cellphone conversations. Some people will be taken to dinners where they will eat and drink goodies they never ate before on flowery tables. Others will receive surprise beautiful love gifts of different types and tastes.
St Valentine’s Day started as a feast day celebrated in honour of an early Christian martyr by the name of Valentine. He was a priest of Rome who ministered to persecuted Christians under the Roman Empire in the third century. While in prison Fr Valentine restored the sight of the daughter of his jailer, Asterius. Before his execution he wrote her a letter, the first ‘’valentine’’ card, on which he signed ‘’Your Valentine’’, an expression that was later adopted up to today. It is said that he performed clandestine Christian weddings for soldiers who were not allowed to marry by Emperor Claudius ll who believed that married men did not make good soldiers. Another legend has it that ‘’as a reminder of their vows and God’s love, he cut hearts of parchment’’ and gave them to the soldiers and persecuted Christians, hence the use of the heart as a symbol of love on St Valentine’s Day. He was buried in Rome on 14 February in the year AD 269. You see, your Sekuru Taurai is quite knowledgeable in spite of his age and being a BBT (Born Before Technology).
Now coming back home, on Vale Day we will soon be witnessing a lot of Vale activities going on all over Chibhoraniland, Vale Day, a day that should be all about love. Here I mean real, genuine love, not fake love. Yes, there is a lot of fake loving going on especially with gender based violence on the increase and couples divorcing each other, with some divorce cases being quite acrimonious. Cheating husbands often visit their small houses while wives secretly meet their ‘’lovers’’ in secret locations with some daring to invite them into their own matrimonial bedrooms. Now tell me where is the love when the living married couple sleeps on separated beds in the same room or even in separate rooms in the same house? You then hear the wife saying,’’Ndakangogarira vana vangu.” I am here just for the sake of my children as one flesh separates to become two. So where is the love till separated by death when there is no love any more before death?
As far as I am concerned for those in genuine love every day should be a Vale Day. Of course it will not be possible to give each other flowers, cards and expensive gifts daily. All the same the precious gift should be continuous love expressed every day even in small ways like a kiss, a hug, a helping hand and that conversation which shows that the two really love and care for each other with their love increasing by the day. Wouldn’t that be heaven on earth for them? As I write these few words your Mbuya Taurai is sitting very close to me and peeping to see what I am doing, heaven on earth for us. Kkkkkkk.
