I couldn’t sleep. I follow twimbos (Zimbabwean Twitter users) and am part of several WhatsApp groups, none of which has anything to do with politics; yet all were a flurry of news — real or fake. Family members on the ground were less sure of what was happening, while those in the diaspora were supplying the information. It was surreal.

President Robert Mugabe, who had been in power for 37 years, was under house arrest. The military said they had taken over the country but it was not a coup. While the uncertainty was unsettling, there was reason to hope.

I was born and raised in Zimbabwe, which gained its independence in 1980 after more than a decade of civil war. I grew up in the 1980s euphoria of a newly free country where former Rhodesian companies, schools and houses were taken over by black Zimbabweans. The history of my country loomed over me, but I had a good childhood. Zimbabwe became known as the “breadbasket of Africa.” We exported maize and tobacco, among other goods. Our education remained British-centered. Our school desks still had 1950s-era ink bottle holes. With one foot we were marching to a future of success while the other firmly held to the past colonial influence and tribal tensions.

Image My school photo in 1985 in Zimbabwe. I was 9.

In this seemingly idyllic life for which Zimbabweans had fought and died, cracks emerged. There was still the question of how to silence the opposition party, Zimbabwe African People’s Union, which was mainly populated by the minority Ndebele tribe. (The main party, Zimbabwe African National Union, was made up of mostly the majority Shona tribe.) From 1983 to 1987, through a series of military actions called Gukurahundi, tens of thousands of Ndebeles were killed in the region of Matabeleland. In the capital, Harare, our lives stayed the same — though my aunt and uncle moved from the Matabeleland capital, Bulawayo, to Harare because of the unrest. I was too young to know the details. We heard rumors, but Mr. Mugabe was popular at home and abroad, so we ignored them. Joshua Nkomo, ZAPU’s leader, escaped the country for a time. In 1987, an agreement was signed between the two parties and Mr. Nkomo became vice president.