A gem gone too soon:
REALITY sunk painfully in my emotions as Sophie’s casket slowly sunk into her grave at Juru Growth Point Cemetery last Friday.
Sophie Chese-Msowa was our Arts Correspondent, a promising young journalist with all signs of a budding flower. A flower that was snatched when it had just started blooming.
She died after a short illness in the early hours of last Wednesday.
As I stood by the graveside, staring plainly at the white casket that will forever linger in my memory as the last sign of a reporter I supervised for two years, I felt powerless and remembered the adage about the invisible hand of death. A hand that takes lives indiscriminately, at times striking the most vulnerable spots of our emotions.
I turned away as the feeling of grief got the better of me, but that artificial retreat from reality worsened the situation. I found myself face-to-face with a portrait of smiling Sophie that one of our colleagues Muchaneta Chimuka hoisted high in honour of our departed cadre.
It was a painful reminder of the smile that naturally brightened her face when she came to my desk proudly announcing a big story she had just got. And she got so many of them.
She had a humorous way of saying it: “Sir, nhasi ndine scoop. Nezuro maiti diary rangu rakadhakwa”.
I would sense good news from that smile even before she said anything. This was the same smile on this portrait that Muchaneta held. I almost asked the still image: “So what is the story today Sophie? That you are gone forever? That you will never come to my desk again?” Reality can be unbearable.
It has happened and it is not reversible. All we will have about Sophie are the memories of how we worked together. We will cherish the good memories that we had in the newsroom and on the ground covering stories.
She joined us in 2015 on the Entertainment Desk and told me how she had covered arts stories when she worked at The Voice. Her first stories exhibited she was already in the groove.
She got even better with time and she enjoyed tackling challenging stories.
After she got married last year, one of our staffers Pauline Mhuka came to me joking that our desk was blessed with weddings because Sophie’s wedding came after another former arts correspondent Yeukai Karengezeka had tied the knot.
We joked about it many times and would always tease others on the desk to get married and wed. That was how we spent most of our days with Sophie and the Entertainment Desk family, working and joking.
Sophie always had lighter moments with colleagues from other desks and she would often jovially argue with Felix Share, Daniel Nemukuyu and Freeman Razemba. They enjoyed aiming jibes at her. She would hit back with unexpected humour and others in the newsroom would laugh their lungs out.
One thing I always teased her about was her name. She did not want to be called Sophia.
“Please don’t call me Sophia, I am Sophie.”
Sometime this year she asked to be excused to go and replace her lost particulars.
She came and showed me her new identity card and I asked “But that I.D says you are Sophia. I will always call you Sophia.”
She took it away and went away laughing without saying a word. In 2014 we went to cover Zimbabwe Music Awards together and came up with an interesting story about how Cde Chinx had broken down after getting a house from ZIMA chairman Joseph Nyadzayo.
“I am happy I have shared the by-line with you Sir. I want to cover more events with you.”
We met at various other events but never got to do another joint story again. She would always ask when we would go to another story together and before she fell ill she had promised to accompany me for an interview with yesteryear actress Mai Sorobhi saying she is one of her favourite artists.
Most times I spoke to her as she was ill, she would always, “I am doing well, I am coming on Monday.”
When we last visited her at Parirenyatwa Hospital last month she was in pain, but she smiled when I wished her a speedy recovery and told her that I would be expecting her at back work the following Monday.
That was our last conversation. She was moved to Juru and I regularly spoke to her husband who said she was improving until he texted me a message just before 4am last Wednesday to announce that Sophie was no more.
May her soul rest in eternal peace.