By Theresa Rézeau

There are years that quietly disappear into history, preserved only in government reports, weather records and fading newspaper headlines. Then there are years that never truly end. They continue to live inside those who survived them, returning unexpectedly through the smell of rain, the sight of an empty field, or the sound of hail striking a roof.

For me, one of those years is 1992.

When I look at Vincent van Gogh's The Potato Eaters (1885), I do not simply see a family gathered around a table. I see something far more familiar. I see dignity sitting beside hunger. I see exhaustion without complaint. I see people who understand that even the smallest meal is not an ordinary thing but a gift.

The painting was created in nineteenth-century Europe. My memories belong to rural Zimbabwe. Yet the distance between them disappears the moment I remember that year.

I was still a child.

I remember sitting inside our thatched hut as hailstones fell with a violence I had never witnessed before. They struck the roof relentlessly, each impact echoing through the small shelter. The sound was deafening, and the hailstones were so large and fierce that stepping outside would have been painful. As a child, I was frightened. Yet when the storm finally passed, I remember looking outside. To a child, the hailstones looked almost beautiful, white pieces of ice scattered across the earth. I did not yet understand that every stone was destroying food we had not even harvested. I did not know that those few minutes would shape the months that followed.

The adults knew. Their silence told the story long before anyone explained it.

I often think about my grandfather. Blindness had taken his sight, but it had not diminished his understanding of the world around him. He could not watch the hail destroy the crops or see the empty fields stretching into the distance, yet he lived with every consequence they carried. He sensed the anxiety in every conversation, every delayed meal, every silence that lingered a little too long. Hunger did not need to be seen to be known. It arrived quietly, settling into every corner of our home until it became part of everyday life. Looking back, I realise that although my grandfather could not witness the devastation with his eyes, he saw something many of us miss even when we can see perfectly: the quiet courage it took for ordinary people to face another uncertain day with dignity.

Soon, one meal a day became normal.

We ate yellow maize meal that many Zimbabweans simply called "Kenya." Unlike the white maize traditionally used to prepare sadza, this bright yellow maize had been imported as drought relief, much of it sourced from East Africa. The name became a way of distinguishing it from the maize people had always known. To us as children, it was simply what we ate. Only years later did I understand that a single word had become part of Zimbabwe's collective memory, carrying with it the story of one of the country's most difficult years.

As a child, I believed this was simply how life was.

Only years later did I understand that Zimbabwe was living through one of the worst droughts in its modern history. Harvests failed across southern Africa. Millions depended on emergency food assistance. Statistics would eventually tell the story of the disaster.

But statistics never tell you what it feels like to wait for a single meal. They cannot describe the quiet dignity of grandparents who tried to protect children from fear they could not protect them from. Nor can they measure the weight of a handful of flour.

One afternoon, a woman arrived at our home carrying a baby on her back. She was crying.
She had nothing.

My grandmother listened without interruption. Then she walked inside, opened the container that held our own precious flour, and gave some of it to her.

We did not have enough ourselves. Yet she gave.

That was the first masterpiece I ever witnessed, though I would not understand it until many years later.

I have forgotten many conversations from my childhood. I have forgotten countless ordinary days. But I have never forgotten that moment.

Looking back, I realise my grandmother taught me something no classroom ever could.

Poverty does not automatically make people selfish. Sometimes it reveals a generosity so profound that those who have always lived with abundance struggle to understand it.

There are memories that no photograph can preserve. I cannot remember every face from my childhood, nor every conversation that drifted through our home. But I still remember the sound of hail striking the earth. I remember looking across fields that only days before had promised life, now lying broken beneath the sky. It was the first time I understood, even without fully knowing it, that hope can disappear in a single afternoon.

That year also changed the way I think about abundance. Whenever I see food wasted, or hear people complain because a table is not filled with enough choices, my mind returns to 1992. Hunger has a way of stripping life back to its essentials. It teaches that gratitude is not measured by how much we possess, but by whether there is enough to keep another day alive. Those lessons never really leave you.

For many years, I did not realise these memories were shaping the way I looked at the world. I certainly did not realise they were shaping the way I would one day look at art.

Looking back, I often wonder whether those early years shaped not only the person I became, but also the art that continues to move me. I have always found myself drawn to artists who understood hardship, not because suffering is beautiful, but because they discovered beauty without denying suffering. Vincent van Gogh never painted wealth as the measure of a meaningful life. He painted labourers, worn hands, humble meals, weathered faces, and the quiet dignity of ordinary people. That is why his work has always felt strangely familiar.

Art became a language for memories I did not yet know how to express. In paintings, I found compassion without words, hope without certainty, and love that endured even when circumstances did not. The works that stay with me are rarely those that celebrate luxury or perfection. They are the ones that remind us that every human life, however overlooked, possesses an irreducible dignity. I think I recognised that truth long before I could name it.

This is why The Potato Eaters continues to move people nearly a century and a half after it was painted. It is not merely a picture of poverty. It is a portrait of human dignity. It reminds us that the greatest wealth around a table is not what is served upon it, but the humanity shared between those who gather there.

This is why stories of famine and hardship deserve to be remembered, even when they make us uncomfortable. They remind us that history is not only written by presidents, economists, or relief agencies. It is also written in the quiet decisions made inside ordinary homes: a grandmother sharing flour she could scarcely spare, a family eating together without complaint, neighbours choosing compassion over fear. Long after the rains returned and the fields turned green again, those acts of mercy remained the richest inheritance of all.

(My grandmother, whose quiet act of generosity during Zimbabwe's 1992 drought has remained with me ever since. May she rest in peace.)

When people ask why I have devoted my life to art, I could speak about aesthetics, history, or culture. All of those matter. But the deeper answer began long before galleries, books, or exhibitions. It began in a small home in Zimbabwe during the year 1992, where I learned that the greatest masterpieces are not always painted on canvas. Sometimes they are lived. Sometimes they are found in the hands of a grandmother who, despite having almost nothing, still chose to feed someone else.

The year 1992 left scars across a nation.
It also left something else.

It left me with the memory of a blind grandfather who endured what he could not see, and a grandmother who believed that even in hunger, mercy should never go hungry.

Years pass. Governments change. Harvests return. Children become adults. But some years never leave us.

1992 is still sitting at that table.