Upon entering this country they found only birds and people. There were no animals. Animals followed afterward, trailing behind Soko’s children. Animals arrived here after people, but birds preceded them.
At that point some people proceeded further south while others went north, and still others went north along the coast in order to return where they had come from, to see how those who were still there were faring. So they continuing dispersing, until they were spread throughout all of this land.
So they say that when they arrived here, they found there were short people, the Khoisan. It isn’t known where the Khoisan originated, but they say that the birds preceded them. After that, the Khoisan arrived.
The Europeans called them Hottentots because they were giving them alcohol, that hot stuff. And the Europeans gave them that name.
We called them the Mandionerepi, which means, “Where do you see me?” Because they would ask you, “Where do you see me?” And if you said, “I see you are right here,” they would fight you. They would fight you! Because they didn’t want to be considered short people.
So they would ask you, “Where do you see me?” You would say, “Oh, I see you are all the way over there!” They would say, “This is a good person.” They would call you a good person. But if you said you saw they were close by? They would fight you unto the death.
So those are the people who were here already. Those people were driven further and further away, until finally they arrived in Namibia. That is where they ended up living.
They were hunters, who ate honey and meat. They ate so much honey that if you left loose stool on an expanse of rock they would think that perhaps someone had dropped some honey there. They would come right up, and say, “Oh! No, that’s feces.”
They ate honey because they were not agriculturalists. So those who came next were agriculturalists, and they grew finger millet, which we call njera. Another name for njera is zviyo. So that was their primary crop, and that was the type of sadza eaten here.
When they were hungry during their migration, they would pray for sadza beneath the mumvumira tree. Finally, when they had settled in their own areas and the boundaries of people’s territories had been established by Murozvi, they began cultivating finger millet.
They brought finger millet with them on their migration. Those who stayed behind in Ethiopia also have it. Those who stayed in Mali and in Somalia all have njera. All the way to Eritrea, they have njera. And here, we also have it. I don’t know if they still have it in Malawi, and I don’t think they still have it in Zambia.
But here in Zimbabwe we have it, and it makes the type of beer that people enjoy best. That is the beer of the vadzimu ancestral spirits, so they call it doro remukono. It is very strong, so it is preferred by the vadzimu.
So that is the journey that they took.