HARD LIFE 😭

HARD LIFE 😭

Chapter One: Dust Before Dawn

The rooster crowed before the sun dared to rise, its sharp cry slicing through the cold darkness of the rural Zimbabwean morning. The sound did not wake Tariro she had never truly slept. Sleep was a luxury for people whose stomachs were full and whose hearts were not heavy with fear of tomorrow. Tariro lay on the reed mat beside the dying embers of the fire, her eyes open, listening to the wind scrape against the mud walls of their hut like a warning whispered by unseen spirits.

Outside, the land waited in silence.

The fields were dry again. Cracked earth stretched as far as the eye could see, scars of past harvests that had promised life and delivered hunger instead. Tariro knew those fields like the lines on her palms. She had bent over them since she was old enough to walk, her small hands pushing seeds into soil that refused to be kind.

She rose quietly, careful not to wake her younger brothers, Tawanda and Nyasha, who lay curled together like frightened puppies. Their ribs showed beneath thin blankets, rising and falling with shallow breaths. Tariro paused, watching them, a tight pain blooming in her chest. If she lingered too long, she would cry, and tears were dangerous. Tears slowed you down.

She stepped outside, the cold biting her bare feet. The moon still hung low, pale and tired, as if it too had worked too hard and rested too little. Tariro wrapped her torn sweater tighter around herself and picked up the plastic bucket by the door.

The borehole was far—farther than hope sometimes felt.

As she walked, memories followed her like shadows. Her mother’s laugh, once warm and loud, now only an echo. Her father’s back as he left one morning years ago, promising to find work in South Africa, promising to return. Promises were easy things; keeping them was the real burden. He had never come back. No letter. No money. Just silence.

Her mother had tried to be both parents, but sickness is cruel and patient. It crept into her bones slowly, stealing strength one breath at a time. By the time Tariro was fourteen, she had buried her mother under the same red soil that fed their maize.

That was the day Tariro stopped being a child.

At the borehole, a long line of women and girls had already formed, buckets balanced beside them like silent companions. Faces were drawn, eyes dull with exhaustion. No one spoke much. Words cost energy, and energy was precious.

“Morning, Tariro,” an old woman murmured.

“Morning, Gogo,” Tariro replied, forcing her lips to move.

The handle creaked as she pumped water, muscles burning. With each pull, she wondered how much longer her body would obey her. She was thin too thin but her responsibilities were heavy. When the bucket was full, she lifted it onto her head with practiced ease, though her neck screamed in protest.

By the time she returned home, the sky was turning pale blue. The boys stirred as she poured water into a cracked clay pot.

“Is there porridge?” Nyasha asked, his voice hopeful and fragile.

Tariro swallowed. “Later,” she said softly. “Go wash your faces.”

There was no porridge. Only a handful of maize meal left in a tin, barely enough for one meal. She had to make it last.

The sun climbed higher as Tariro worked sweeping the yard, feeding the scrawny chickens, checking the small vegetable patch behind the hut. The leaves were yellowing. Another failure.

School bells rang faintly from the distance.

Tariro froze.

She used to love school. Books had once been her escape, her proof that life could be more than survival. Her teachers had said she was clever, that she could go far. She had believed them. Now she watched other girls in faded uniforms walk past the homestead, laughing, complaining about homework, their futures still wide open.

Tariro’s future felt like a locked door.

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By mid-morning, hunger gnawed at her insides. She ignored it and picked up her hoe. If the fields failed, they would starve. If she rested, guilt would crush her.

The sun beat down mercilessly as she worked, sweat soaking into the dry earth. Her hands blistered, then hardened. Pain became just another companion.

Near noon, footsteps approached.

“Tariro!”

She looked up to see Mrs. Muchengeti, the village headman’s wife. Her expression was unreadable.

“You are needed at the headman’s place,” the woman said. “Now.”

A chill ran through Tariro despite the heat. People were rarely summoned for good reasons.

She washed her hands quickly and followed, heart pounding. The headman’s homestead stood larger than the others, a symbol of power Tariro had learned to fear.

Inside, the headman sat with a man Tariro did not recognize. He was well-dressed, his shoes clean—city shoes. His eyes moved over Tariro slowly, too slowly.

“This is the girl,” the headman said.

The man smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

Tariro’s stomach twisted.

“She is strong,” the headman continued. “Responsible. She looks after her siblings.”

The man nodded. “Good. Very good.”

No one explained why she was there. No one asked what she wanted.

Tariro stood silently, every instinct screaming danger. She thought of her brothers. She thought of the empty maize tin. She thought of school bells and broken promises.

The man leaned forward.

“We can help each other,” he said smoothly.

The words hung in the air like a storm cloud.

Tariro felt the ground shift beneath her feet.

And for the first time since her mother’s death, fear wrapped its hands tightly around her heart not the fear of hunger, not the fear of hard work, but something darker, something that threatened to steal what little of herself she had left.

Outside, the wind rose, carrying dust into the sky.

Tariro did not yet know it, but her hardest days were only beginning.

End of Chapter One😭..