What I Learned From Dodger During And After His Life

Whenever life gives us lemons, it forces us to step back and explore its meaning from other perspectives. Recently it literally squeezed lemon juice into the corner of our eyes and punched us in our chests as we received bad news. Donald Dodger Marindire is no longer with us.

I suppose the creator decided it was time for his son to come home, having carried his cross. We can now only experience Dodger by decrypting the life lessons written down by our experience of him, whether as a brother, a student to some, a teacher to others, a friend, a police officer and to me a fellow blogger and hip-hop enthusiast whom I regularly shared perspectives with.

We have a lifetime to unpack his brilliance and his significance to our movement. The brilliance of those who stand for something cannot be encapsulated in a single blog post.

Lesson 1 - Give people their flowers while they are alive

Dodger found his purpose in giving other artists a medium to promote their voice through his various platforms. He gave them their flowers weekly through his time-lime. His Facebook timeline is full of self-less posts and less self promotional posts.

Yet sadly, I am only beginning to dedicate such long pieces to him after his demise. I wish I would have told the world some of these things while he was alive so he could read it. Yes definitely as fellow bloggers, I did tell him in person or dedicated one or 2 lines in broad blog posts.

But just as we always ask "who police police?"... I guess my question is "Who blogs the blogger?".

The untimely demise of Dodger has just inspired me to  be more pro-active in giving flowers to all those people whose brilliance I see daily. To be more deliberate in making them aware that they impact me. I do  not want to make any early promises or commitments, but the idea of doing so has been planted.

Lesson 2 - Service Above Self

Now those who are in the Rotary Club identify with this statement perhaps. As a police officer, brother  and blogger Dodger clearly chose to be of service to others above self. From my understanding, based on those close to him, taking up police work was something he took up selflessly to take care of his siblings.

His energetic signature of being such is also seen in being a cop. A lot of bad things may be said in rap about police but from another angle of things they sacrifice their lives to make the collective safe from criminal elements. It is a job whose idea is to serve and protect.

He did the same with the music. Side-tracking his own aspirations to be a rapper to promote others. Just as police face flack for being police and are often criticized, sometimes he as a blogger faced criticism for one reason or another. He mentioned this in his farewell note.

The stigma of local bloggers being often called "failed" rappers and such but that did not stop him because service above self is doing what you are here to do regardless the stone being thrown by a few.

Lesson 3 - Do it for the love

When you do what you are here to do with love it will impact multitudes of people. There was no financial incentive behind what that man did. I am not saying one cannot monetize by the way.

It however is the pure love that he did things from that motivated him to do it for as long as he did. Had he been doing it for the wrong reasons he'd have bailed out the moment it didn't pay or the moment it didn't materialze as  one accolade or another.

Not only was he pushing local Hip-hop, but he was speaking on Hip-hop globally. Whether it was a Pusha and Drake beef story , Cassper and AKA or contributing at Zim Hip-hop summit.

Lesson 4 - Don't Beef with Artists

As a fellow blogger, if you know my track record of run ins with artists. Dodger sometimes joked about me being a "drama queen".

Here is how the conversation went!

Spekktrum : Once upon a time people thought me and Mcpotar were the same person.

Dodger: Nehu Drama Queen hwa Potar nekunyarara kwa Spekk imajeni. I don't see Spekk dropping a diss track for a Peels or Comic Pastor.

Apart from the jesters he of course used a lot of flowery words of praise to my name with every project I dropped (Including for the mentioned disses lol)

Well perhaps I will also do my best to not clash with artists now and then (even though I love war), but in honor of my brother I extend peace to anyone I have ever aimed my piece at. 

Lesson 5 - Be humble

Dodger was always humble enough to ask questions. He didn't say he had all the answers. He would debate to learn not to win. Winning for him was to actually get the lessons from other people.

Every engagement we had was constructive whether it was our interest in visual art, Michael Basquiat and Andy Warhol or the direction blogging should take to let voices be heard.

Final Words

There is still more that can be written about one of the most peaceful and selfless bloggers to contribute to Hip-hop. I see a lot of people doing tracks, artwork, blog articles in memory of you. You will reincarnate in more ways than that rap song you spoke of when i said, "Nah, you'll be back."


May your legacy be perpetuated by all who loved you. Salute!