Lise Nova Berwadushime interviews Mimi Machakaire, the Zimbabwean-born writer, journalist and publisher. Lise asks 9 questions which highlights Mimi’s journey through her creative writing career and motherhood.
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- Please tell us in brief who you are.
My name is Mimi Machakaire but I recently got married so my new name is Mimi (Mat’sepiso) Kobile. I am a Zimbabwean born writer, journalist and publisher. I live in Lesotho with my husband, who is a Mosotho. I love telling stories, spending time with my family, one or two good friends every once in a while, travelling, eating good food, drinking coffee, watching Netflix, taking pictures and more. To be honest I’m more of a homebody kind of person, I enjoy my own company a lot and just being on my phone or my laptop browsing the web, maybe reading some articles online etc.
- We want you to take us through your writing journey. How long have you been writing? How has been your writing adventure and evolution?
I’ve always loved writing. From the time when I was maybe 10 or 11, I was a heavy reader of many novels. I got into Harry Potter at a very young age and that became my comfort story for a long time. Then I said to myself, okay I probably need to read some other books once in a while and then I eventually build a collection of different things from Stephen King to John Grisham and others.
Then I learned about the Twilight series and I hated it so much, I told myself that I could actually do something better than that and then that’s where it all started. However, JK Rowling was and always has been my inspiration to write and tell beautiful stories. I wrote a book called Princess Gangster by the time I was 17 after years of practising different genres and to my opinion it was the best I could have written for my age at the time. I worked so hard to try and find a publisher and used millions of publishing websites l could find. I’d stay up night after night using my moms Wi-Fi to try and find anyone who would publish me and then one day, it happened. I saw an email written, we would like to inform you that we’re interested in publishing your book Princess Gangster and that sent me over the moon. All the sleepless nights finally paid off! They contacted me with a proposal and I accepted.
They organised a book launch with 10 copies but we were not selling them, we were giving them out for free and well I didn’t mind at the time because I was 19 when it was published so I didn’t really need the money. Then they promised me 5 more copies of my book that never came and they never printed a new batch, which broke my heart because I thought I’d always have at least one copy of my book but sadly I don’t anymore. I’m not sure up until today if anyone really has it with them after all this time but it’s okay. That experience led me to say that if it happened once, it can happen again and so it did. Maybe not in the way I thought it would like in the past but in a different way.
My writing adventure continued into journalism thereafter. I was working for an online website who suggested a career in the field. They gave out the name of a school called Rutherford Hayes University (School of journalism) based in the US but it was an online school. From there I got experience working in newsrooms for years in different countries. The first was in South Africa where I was sent on an attachment. By then my family was already living in Lesotho where l travelled with them. After the SA job the school sent me on another attachment, this time l stayed local (Lesotho) and worked in another newsroom called Lesotho times and Sunday express for one full year. I finished my diploma in journalism and continued working but this time not in a newsroom, I worked in public relations for a media company. I continued to work for a long time and for a while, my creativity was starting to fall off a bit because the company was doing more of events and organising than writing. Later it closed due to covid and l lost out on the job but I never let my guard down.
I started a blog where I found all the creative people in Lesotho telling their stories of how they started their passions and when I was tired of that I started to write again but in poetry. This is where I was published for a second time! I went to a writing workshop in Lesotho who offered a deal. They said if you submit your poetry to our email, we will select the best ones and put it all in a book. This ended up being a collaboration with other Mosotho writers and I was the only Zimbabwean whose poetry was published in the book.
The 10 of us were so happy we got our poetry published and this time the book was reprinted a few times over, which helped me keep a copy or two for a change. Then later on I found a self publishing company which is coincidentally located in Zimbabwe and to my surprise was actually a one-man operation. He was very good and affordable, he still is. We worked together to publish more books and I got to tell my stories in the time frame that I wanted. This helped me stay in the game because honestly, I never wanted to be forgotten in the first place. With my books I’m able to go around Lesotho talking on different subjects and telling people all about the joys of creative writing and how they can tell their stories.
- You like to talk about mental health/mental wellbeing. Why mental health? Do you perhaps have a personal experience that sparked that interest in you?
I like to talk about mental health because it’s a topic that relates to a lot of people. I started to write about it when I did an article for my blog about a person who had bipolar and she expressed how hard it is to balance work life while being a mother all at the same time battling her mental health challenges everyday but she ended up starting her own organisation where she actually gets to spread awareness all over the country.
So, I shared this story on the Writers Space Africa platform and Anthony approached me to do a series called mental health for creatives. I wrote on it for a long time and I loved it because I had no idea, I could write about a topic like this. Especially because I have no experience in health or psychology in the first place. I mean I’m not a doctor or psychologist so I panicked at first but I did most of my research through interviews and the internet, while asking my mom questions who actually is a doctor and eventually the stories just flowed, sure I got help with the editing and making sure everything is factual but I got the very essence of what I wanted to talk about in all the articles I wrote. I eventually turned it into a book with the same title and added stories from people who have personal experience with mental health challenges. I wanted to show the world that we are all going through a lot in this lifetime and it’s okay not to be okay.
To be frank, yes, I do have a personal experience with it. What I mean is I’m an overthinker and I always jump to the worst-case scenario in different situations in my life everyday and while doing my mental health book I learned a lot about myself. I found different therapists in Lesotho to speak in the book about their own experiences which led me to finding my own therapist. She’s great and even does sessions with me over the phone, while I’m in Harare visiting my family but having a therapist or going to therapy doesn’t always mean you have mental health challenges or mental illness. Maybe, it just means you need to view some of the events you have experienced in your life from a different perspective and sometimes therapy helps with that. I have family members who also deal with mental health challenges everyday of their lives and therapy also helps me understand them better. I hope they know I’m always here for them, no matter where I am in the world.
- You recently blessed this planet of ours with a baby. Congratulations once again. Now tell me, how has being a mother changed you?
Thank you so much. Being a mother has changed me in the sense that I now realise what my mother has been going through in a nutshell while raising me and my siblings. She had to put in a lot of work to just keep us alive and I’m grateful for that even more than I ever was. There’s a lot of sleepless nights, energy and money that goes into raising a child and she did that like 3 times!
It also changed me in the sense that I’m never truly alone these days. Now, at the back of my mind for as long as l live, I’ll always be thinking of my little one. No matter what I’m doing or who I’m with, if he’s not with me, he’s in my head. These days even if I leave him alone with someone for just 5 minutes I’m wondering if he’s okay, does he have enough milk? Is he sleeping well? And most importantly is he safe? By the time I see he’s happy and laughing and in a good mood, my mind settles for a little while until the next time. Overall, I’d say that Motherhood is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life but I’m happy everyday, I see my baby healthy, laughing and playing and I can’t wait to see how he grows up.
- Has becoming a mother affected your writing?
Yes, everything is kind of now baby related. My mom gifted me a book for Mother’s Day that lets you record all of your baby’s milestones and I remember when she did one for me when I was a baby. It’s very easy to forget these things from the moment your little one laughs for the first time, crawls and more. So, as I was writing some of the things I could remember I noticed my calligraphy needs work because I haven’t hand written anything in the longest time. I’m always on my laptop or on my phone, so much that I forget to exercise my skills. This is something so simple we learn in primary school, that has become forgotten now all because of technology. So, part of me feels like I’m working towards using this information to maybe one day turn my baby book into mommy diaries and mention everything that I experienced in my pregnancy and raising a child, so that other women my age can see how I handled certain challenges that don’t get talked about enough.
- What would you tell us about WSA and your writing journey?
WSA is a great writing platform for those who need new ideas to practise something everyday. I’d like to thank WSA for giving me an excuse to write something different every once in a while. I wouldn’t have tried writing on a topic like Mental Health if it wasn’t for me joining a group like WSA and I hope to experiment with something new any time from now on. I have grown a lot in my writing journey from writing news articles, to blogs, to writing books and being able to publish my stories. It has been a great life experience for me and I hope that I can only continue to learn more.
- Mimi, how many books have you published so far?
I have 3 books under my name titled, the land of Koala Bears and other stories, Mental Health for creatives and Princess Gangster (I’m republishing this book with a new cover soon). The last book is a collaboration between me and 9 other writers in Lesotho called Echoes of the kingdom.
- How would you like to be remembered, that is, when your time to leave this world will come?
My mom always says I have a childlike spirit in the sense that it is like a light that brightens up the room most of the time, someone who never really looks their age and I think I’d like to be remembered for that. I’m not sure if anyone else ever had that sort of perspective from me as a person but I’d like to be remembered for my creativity and light.
- Which message would you give to young writers, and to writers with too many responsibilities outside creative writing?
Keep going, no matter what. Don’t let outside influences dull your light because your creativity can die out very fast. Just maintain that discipline, as much as you can. If you want to write a book, take 20 minutes out of your day to come up with a plot or a title and then that’s all you need to do for that day. Then come back to it and write a sentence, write a page or two and then take a break and go back to your life. Come back over and over again and allow yourself to work on that book as part of your leisure time, until you have a whole book and see what you can turn it into.
We are not robots in this society, where we have to shut down all of our creative energy and put it towards surviving. It’s okay to write, paint, do your music once in a while or whatever it is you like to do and enjoy it. If ever your creative side can support your lifestyle, then that’s great but it’s also okay, if it doesn’t turn into anything big. Live your life the way you want to, hustle and make money and also do your creative projects all at the same time if that’s what you want to do. Just live freely and unapologetically.
Read – Divine Okpe – Winner of the 2023 African Teen Writers Prize (Prose)
