The Endless Trail by Sarudzayi Elizabeth Chifamba-Barnes

• Paperback: 196 pages


• Publisher: AuthorHouse (13 Mar 2008)


• Language English


• ISBN-10: 1434375153


• ISBN-13: 978-1434375155


• Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 12.2 x 1.3 cm

Our attention is captured immediately by the attractive cover design. A woman is seen sitting on the ground. She has her back to us and we can sense that she is in distress - she is sad. The ground that she sits on is a pathway that leads off somewhere into the distance - we wonder if that is the Endless trail. Overlooking the woman is the face of a man, almost looking remorseful. Already the excitement wells inside you to find out who the woman is, what happened to her, why does she seem sad and what has the man got to do with it !

A young, hardworking couple from the remote, rural Mpatsi Village in Zimbabwe, decide to sell their prized possession - a cow. The money from the sale is to be used to send their daughter Jenny to one of the best boarding schools in the country. It is out of the norm and general custom to send a girl child to school however, Jenny's parents are adamant that they want the best for their daughter. They want to one day see her rise up and out of the poverty and hard life they have experienced. The young Jenny is presented as a shy and timid young girl that is regularly picked on at school. Girls at school gang up on her and make fun of her rural background. She does not have the clothes, money or the social status of the other girls therefore she quickly finds herself isolated. This forces her to be buried in her studies. She works hard mainly to find something that will make her "better" than her peers. Despite the isolation she eventually makes friends with another student Letwin who she manages to find some common ground with.

With one year left of her education, her father, the main bread winner, dies. Her education is threatened and jealous relatives threaten to take her out of school as they feel that the tuition is too expensive. Her mother is driven away from her home by unreasonable relatives and her siblings are scattered from one family to the next. What seemed like a bright future of education and social climbing is obviously falling apart. However, a miracle happens and the nuns at her high school offer to sponsor the remainder of Jenny's education. There is a sense of relief for the protagonist as we see her finish her education and, later, her higher education. Her goal is to look after her mother and her siblings. She marries her college sweet heart Edwin. They have three children together and life seems to be going as planned.

Unfortunate circumstances strike again and Jenny finds out that her mother has full blown AIDS which she contracted from her husband - Jenny's father. When her mother dies she is distraught but resolves that her mother and father contracted AIDS due to their' lack of Education'. The older Jenny is presented as a woman who is proud of her achievements and looks down on those who are 'not educated'. Her focus seems to be on social status and achieving the next thing. Whilst working hard, her relationship with her husband unexpectedly turns sour as he has an affair with their domestic worker and leaves her.

With the economic hardships in Zimbabwe and no hope of salvaging her relationship, Jenny decides to move to the UK to earn more money and hence improve her social status. She moves without any legal documents to live or work in the UK. It is when she moves over that her husband dies. He has died from HIV and AIDS. Jenny is then advised to take an HIV test. She finds it ridiculous as her notion is that HIV infection is for the uneducated and after all she had been separated from her husband for a while. After much persuasion from friends Jenny has the test done. She is suddenly brought down to earth and humiliation when she finds out that she too is infected - infected by Edwin. The story then goes on a sometimes exhausting trail of Jenny finding out about the HIV status of every person that she knows including her old school friend Letwin. Even one of her children is HIV infected. Then in a mad twist another child of hers gets HIV infected after being raped by their HIV infected gardener. We soon learn that the story is an Endless trail of HIV infection.

At the close of the story we see Jenny trying to come to terms with her condition with health regimes and medication. She makes plans to return to Zimbabwe to look after her children. Her goal is to run education workshops to support people with HIV and to educate people about the condition. She comes to terms with the reality that she was in fact 'the uneducated one'. Her work in Zimbabwe, she hopes, will help the Endless Trail to come to an end.

This is a good fictional resource for HIV education workshops in Zimbabwe. A wonderful fiction novel for Zimbabweans in the diaspora and people of all cultures that enjoy a good story.