The Sunday News
Clifford Kalibo, Ekasi stories
“In vain have I struggled, it will not do. Allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you”.
This classic line from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a typical example of a love proposal letter which suitors would send to girls during the days of old.
Love letters were the main form of proposing love to a girl.
Having written the letter, the next step was to deliver the letter to the girl. Hand delivery was a very daunting task because unlike these days the guys tended to be shy to face a lady, and it was the same with the ladies.
One would slip the letter in a novel, usually a Mills and Boom or a Pace Setter and send his young sibling to pass on the book to the girl. The girl would accept the book without any question.
Another method would be to post the letter through the Post Office, notwithstanding the fact that the girl was a neighbour!
Having delivered the letter now came the waiting period. One would wait for as much as six to eight months before finally getting a positive response. The response would come through the same novel and delivered by the girl’s sibling.
Falling in love those days was not a random and hurried thing. It was a due process. Love letters were always beautifully and poetically written.
The letter format was generally standard, save for a few changes here and there. I remember some letters would go like this:
Address of Love
P.O. Box Heart
Romance Street
15 Sept 1975
Dear Love
My heart is leaping with joy as my fountain pen scribbles to you my sweet chocolate. I am the tea and you are my sugar. I am the bread and you are my Sun Jam.
I am the water and you are my Rexina soap. You are my Sugar Pie, you are my Fanta. Can you please open up your hearts of hearts for me and be my girlfriend?
It’s me your Cream Bun penning off now.
Yours in love,
Kelvin.
The girls were playing hard to get and the suitor would get an “acceptance” letter after many months of struggling. It was pure love those days as no money was involved. It was common for the new love birds to go for a movie on weekends to Kine 600 or Elite 400 where they would enjoy a movie whilst munching pop corns and drinking cool drinks from plastic containers. After the movie it was time for Fish and Chips at either Royal Sunflower or Beefy Hut which were situated along Grey Street in Bulawayo.
Other weekends would be spent at the Centenary Park ( e Park ) where the love birds would sit down on the fresh green lawn and enjoy Lyons Maid ice cream.
The most common feature is that most of these “letter love affairs “ resulted in marriages, and these marriages still exist and were rewarded with lots of kids and grandchildren plus “izizukulwane”. Cases of infidelity were isolated during those days. I recall a certain incident sometime in 1978, whereby a friend of mine Leroy sent his girlfriend a letter reading:
“ I am sorry, I am now in love with another girl, beautiful, and intelligent, so I no longer love you, please send all my photos back.”
The girlfriend Ayanda sent him an envelope containing more than one hundred photos of different men and she replied:
‘‘I don’t remember your face, so select your photos and return the rest to me”.
Come “ama 2000s”, the so called love affairs are an instant recipe, “khonapho khonapho’’.
It is no longer the preserve for the boys to propose love to girls. Girls are fast becoming the proposers. The love for fast bucks and good living has destroyed the moral fibre that existed hitherto. A boy will meet a girl in the street or in a kombi. After a very brief chat the two will exchange names and phone numbers.
Believe me, in less than an hour the pair would be on the phone chatting on WhatsApp telling each other how much they love each other. You hear such lies like: “Ngiyakuthanda so much that ngiyehluleka ukudla these days” or
“Ngitshaywa luvalo uma ngicabanga ngawe”.
Gone are the good old days of letter writing. It’s now come easy go easy. I thank you for reading this article which
I hope will be a game changer for ama 2000. Till we meet again next Sunday.
Feedback : Clifford Kalibo / 0783856228/0719856228/
email : kaliboc @gmail. com
