Robson Beans 🇿🇼

Some deem it divine retribution - a penance for rebellion. Others, a cosmic duel between good and evil. Yet the enigma persists: Why does the battle endure? Two millennia post-Calvary, the faithful still grapple. The battlefield eludes sight, yet its echoes reverberate. Our strategy? Our leader? The truth crystallizes: We fight not against flesh and blood, but against unseen principalities. Our battleground? The human heart - the theater of choices. Our strategy? The armor of God - truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, the Word. Our leader? The One who conquered death - the risen Christ. robsonbeans.com/2020/05/28/the…

The strongest Christians I know are the ones who read the Bible themselves and don't outsource their theology to a man in a suit. I genuinely believe faith and critical thinking are not enemies.

I’d say Both. He belongs to both and, that’s the gift and the complexity of where he comes from. But which he identifies with more will depend on two things: where he feels accepted, and where life takes him. I can give him Shona. I can give him the stories, the food, the roots. What I can’t control is which world embraces him back. That part is his to navigate and mine to prepare him for.

@BeansRobson @JumasJohn41791 Which world do you believe he belongs to?

The children of Zimbabwean diaspora parents grow up in two worlds and belong fully to neither. They are too Zimbabwean for their peers and too foreign for kumusha. It sounds more like confusion but, that is a new identity being formed. Diaspora parents: do you raise your children to identify primarily as Zimbabwean or as citizens of your host country?

@Royal_Rozvi 😂 hamungavasiiri nhamo

@BeansRobson I have told mine to apply for citizenship, Zim has no future for them. Once they get it, ini ndodzoka zvangu paMhondoro

Thank you for this. Your observation is spot on. I agree with you that these are questions that touch something real. And your point about 3rd generation kids is exactly the evidence. Identity doesn’t follow a passport. It follows the stories, the food, the language, the grief. Three generations later and Zimbabwe is still in the room.

@BeansRobson @JumasJohn41791 @MaiZuKitchen An interesting topic, unfortunately your audience is quite defensive and I wonder for what reasons. 🤔 Diaspora kids are usually always caught in between especially for first generation diaspora parents. I know of 3rd generation kids who still identify with original country

@MaiZuKitchen @JumasJohn41791 I’m Zimbabwean, the mother is South African. When he was 2 he understood me in Shona and also the mother in local vernacular. I’ve kept it that way with everything.

@BeansRobson @JumasJohn41791 And how are you raising him?

@MaiZuKitchen @JumasJohn41791 Yes ma’am. I have a son.

@BeansRobson @JumasJohn41791 Do you have kids?

@JumasJohn41791 @MaiZuKitchen We actually agree. You just said culture is carried by humans, not fixed to place. That’s precisely how Zimbabwe shaped diaspora children - through the culture their parents carried across borders. That’s not nothing. That’s the whole point. We’re done disagreeing.

@BeansRobson @MaiZuKitchen Culture is not bolted in the place you were born in, humans make and carry culture. We control culture, culture does not steer us. You are trying to make an issue out of nothing.

Inheritance by proximity… That’s a fair distinction you make. But I’d push back gently and suggest ‘the country that made us’ isn’t only about birthplace. It’s about the culture your parents carried In other words, Zimbabwe shaped those children through their parents. Even without setting foot in Zimbabwe. Also consider there’s a group of kids born in Zimbabwe and left as minors. They’re now diaspora kids.

@BeansRobson @MaiZuKitchen Well if your issue is "what we owe the country that made us...". That doesn't apply to kids born and raised out of Zimbabwe.

@FigoTongai Only one way to find out

@BeansRobson 😅 😅 Don't worry, today is the day!

Liverpool is about to do a comeback we've never witnessed in the history football. Famba Rio Ngomahuru🔥🔥🔥🔥

@MeyahMeya I’ll definitely be watch this. Thank you.

This is what raising your kid well in the diaspora looks like. youtu.be/Afy-lxKb6m8?si…

I’d say It’s not. For example,Shona, Xhosa, Sena and Ndebele experiences of Zimbabwe are different. Again, urban and rural experiences are different. Pre-2000 and post-2000 generations carry different wounds and experiences. The diaspora fractures it further. But the question of what we owe the country that made us runs through all of it. That’s what I’m pulling on. For the record, I suggested in the original post that identity is not monolithic: this is a new identity being formed, not a fixed one being inherited. The diaspora child doesn’t receive Zimbabwean identity. They construct it.

@BeansRobson @MaiZuKitchen Is “Zimbabwean identity” monolithic? These twitter philosophers…

@AmandaSkinSA_ That’s an interesting take. But I’d say scale isn’t just a difference of degree but a difference of kind. When one’s contradictions can impoverish a nation, starve 6 million, and erase a generation’s future, it’s hard to universalize.

@BeansRobson Every life is contradictory. We contribute in some places n cause damage in others. The difference is scale, not nature. Maybe we are all little Mugabe’s.😉

How do you assess Mugabe's legacy? net positive or net negative for Zimbabwe? Complicated?

@BeansRobson History isnt net positive or net negative. Mugabes legacy sits in tension: real progress in education, real damage in the economy. One doesn’t erase the other.

@BeansRobson @buhle_matsha @the_Dzimbabwe To the youth: chase your dreams, whether at home or abroad—but never lose the thread of Zimbabwe. Build or invest where you can and where returns, equity and rule of law is guaranteed and you can always cash out right time. Carry yo hopes where you must but keep the vision alive.

@EmmanueI_zw @Ndabasayie @buhle_matsha @the_Dzimbabwe I feel you brother. But no one else is coming to build Zimbabwe into what we dreamed it could be. Every generation that leaves hands the next generation a smaller dream. We will outsource our agency until when?

@BeansRobson @Ndabasayie @buhle_matsha @the_Dzimbabwe try to live somewhere is the only working alternative unless you join them

Being Zimbabwean in the diaspora means carrying a country in your chest. Not the country it is. The country it was supposed to be. That weight is both burden and identity.

@Ndabasayie @buhle_matsha @the_Dzimbabwe What would be your advice to the younger generation? Chase the dream or try to live it elsewhere?

@buhle_matsha @BeansRobson @the_Dzimbabwe Zim is something else beyond what we dreamt of and what can possibly be the outcome. Normal function doesn’t exist anymore. We live in fragments, carrying the country we dreamed of against the one we endure. Yes we continue to mourn for that State!

@BeansRobson @the_Dzimbabwe I'm in Zim, but I can relate. Maybe because I'm in my 50s and grew up at a time when we thought things would go a certain way and they didn't. I grieve for that country. But I live in this country. Hoping against hope. Two worlds fighting within me. Chaotic. Messy. Frustrating.

@buhle_matsha @the_Dzimbabwe I could have never imagined this same grief has other variations. And, from where you stand, I guess it aches constantly because the reminder is constantly in your face.