To stay active in my community is not simply a matter of physical presence. It is a philosophical choice—to remain engaged, to refuse apathy, and to insist that the small rituals of care and resistance still matter, even when the system insists otherwise.

I write. I write with the urgency of someone who knows silence is a luxury the poor cannot afford. My community is Zimbabwean, but also continental, diasporic, imagined—bound together not just by location, but by the shared ache of those navigating the daily inheritance of economic injustice, political betrayal, and generational grief. Through essays, opinion columns, and stories, I try to make sense of what we’ve lived through and what we refuse to normalize. To write in such a context is to stay active—because every word is a record, a refusal, and sometimes, a roadmap.

But I do not only write for the page—I write in conversations, in WhatsApp groups, on dusty street corners where the news does not reach. I believe staying active means showing up when the headlines move on. It means attending local council meetings even when decisions are already made behind closed doors. It means mentoring young writers and activists who are told their voices don’t matter, and reminding them that truth-telling is also a form of power.

I stay active by remembering. Remembering the names of those evicted under Operation Murambatsvina. Remembering the students jailed for protesting tuition hikes. Remembering that our history is not just what we are taught, but what we live—and sometimes, what we bury to survive.

Staying active does not always look heroic. Sometimes it’s standing in line at the clinic with neighbors and listening—really listening—to what is breaking them. Sometimes it’s sending an Ecocash transfer to someone who needs to get to Harare for a job interview. Sometimes it’s helping draft a petition when no lawyer will touch the case. The work is rarely glamorous. But it is necessary.

To be active in my community is to believe that even in a broken state, people can be whole together. And that change doesn’t always begin with a revolution—it often begins with a conversation, a refusal, a name remembered, or a story told well enough to shake the silence.