African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe Page 23

  Then I began to talk about how one becomes a writer, since I’ve learned that in any audience anywhere there are always people who write novels, or intend to. This went better because there was in fact a man there who was writing, a teacher from another school some miles away.

  Jack said afterwards, ‘It doesn’t matter. What mattered was that someone thought it worth it to come and talk to them. No one takes any notice of them, you see.’ And he went on to tell us how ‘one of those fat cats from Harare came, an inspector’.

  Jack was delighted, hoping he would point out deficiencies to the negligent headmaster. The pupils waited for days in expectation of the event, a visitor from Harare. ‘But he went around the school as fast as he could, didn’t stop in any class longer than a minute, in some of them he didn’t even sit down. He didn’t notice the lack of textbooks, he didn’t ask questions. Then before he left he said the washing-line should be moved from where it was to somewhere else. The teachers obediently moved it, and moved it back when he left. Off he drove, sweating into his three-piece suit.’

  ‘There are three stages in the flight from the Reserve,’ said Ayrton R., ‘All right, a Communal Area. The first, a tie. The second, a jacket. The third, a three-piece suit. Then you’ve made it. You’re free for ever from the bush.’

  We walk back. The cow, thwarted at the fence, is standing outside the window of a store shed. In the glass she can see another cow who is tossing her horns, and snorting at her. The cow is in two minds about putting her horns right through the glass. Some small children stand watching. They are amused by the deluded cow. Jack calls them, and together they all shoo away the cow from her threatening rival, and persuade her to return to the water tank where there is some new grass. The cow, goes, but looks back at the window where she saw the other cow who, she obviously thinks, might decide to pursue her.

  In the playground of the junior school the children are squatting on the ground, playing that game that looks like draughts, with smooth stones laid out in holes in the earth. They crowd up to the wire of the playground to watch us, laughing and waving and delighted by the cow.

  It is midday. Four or five hours before they get anything to eat.

  In Jack’s shack we ate bread and tinned herring, feeling like sybarites. Teachers and pupils kept dropping in. What they needed was to see Ayrton R., breathe the same air as he did, be near that elusive paradise, the University of Zimbabwe.

  In the afternoon we walked a long way into the bush, which was in the process of ceasing to be bush. Fields were in every stage of preparation. Some had the stumps standing in the bared earth, some stumps were smouldering. There were fields cleared, but untilled. Many trees were ringed for felling. In the bush that was still bush every tree had branches lopped off.

  The population of Zimbabwe will triple by 2010. That is, in twenty years. There seems something impossible about this figure.

  ‘Plant trees, we must all plant trees,’ urges Comrade Mugabe, shoring what must often seem vain hopes against these ruins of bush. And plant trees they do, miles of the fast-growing blue gums, disliked by everybody as much as we hate the conifer plantations that disfigure Britain. The trouble is, the beautiful indigenous trees grow so slowly.

  Mushrooms grew in thousands all along the road. The local people say that mushrooms are poisonous, and came to warn Jack not to eat them. He said that in other parts of the country mushrooms are eaten. But they were unconvinced and await–Jack said–his certain death.

  When the sun went down we ate our supper of bread and mushrooms, and tried to listen to the radio. It was not working. Is there no radio in the school? Yes, the other teacher has one, but he is not here. The trouble is, it is hard to get batteries; for most Africans impossibly expensive.

  In this school and the other one like it twenty miles away there is no electricity, no telephone, unreliable radio. There is nothing in the way of civilization nearer than that hotel where we had lunch, fifty miles away. When Jack wants to ring up his family in England he takes the bus to the hotel and stays the night there, enjoying electricity, clean water and a decent meal. But often the lines are down, or the connection bad and he can’t get through to England on that trip.

  His mail comes to the little town where the hotel is. He asks friends to send him books for the school library and we do. The Zimbabwe post office does not encourage an interest in literature. Any parcel of books over about £10, you have to pay to receive. If the friends in England are foolish enough to send two parcels, both under the £10 limit, at the same time, the enterprising Customs officials tape the two together and you pay as if they are one parcel. Jack, ever charitable, says he supposes the officials have trouble feeding themselves and their families–like the teachers here. Jack does not have any money because he ‘lends’ it to the teachers. He has even lent a good bit to the headmaster–the man without a character.

  Next day is the last day of term and there are no classes. Some of the senior pupils are planting maize: this school has Agriculture as part of the curriculum. The pupils become barelegged gangs, dozens of them invading a field all at once, dropping the maize seeds into holes along lines determined by strings stretched between pegs. They enjoy this work, and sing and even dance at the edges of the fields. Jack works with them. The other teachers, he says, are too good to work in the fields, but he is white and entitled to eccentricity. The teacher called the Agricultural Instructor did not know when to plant the maize, and asked Jack, who did not know, but found out. The maize from last year’s crop was improperly stored, because of the no-good headmaster, and it all went bad. It is still sitting, full of weevils, in a shed.

  Two end-of-term parties were in preparation. Form One’s meal was to be stewed goat and sadza. The goat had been killed and its parts were divided into bloody heaps on the ground. The good bits were already stewing. Form Four were having superior food–white bread, a treat. Jack had ordered twenty loaves from the store. They would be eaten without butter or jam. When he was invited to supper with the parents of a pupil, he was offered white bread and tea, and they said, ‘We are poor people, we can’t afford margarine.’

  Before we left we tried to visit the clinic but it was closed. One of the teachers said bitterly that there was nothing in it but anti-malaria pills and aspirin. Another said, smiling apologetically, we should take no notice of the first–he was exaggerating, we must understand they were all feeling sad because it was the end of term. A doctor visited the school once a month. When there was an accident or someone got really ill, they were taken to hospital. Please remember that not long ago there was no clinic here at all.

  It was hard to say goodbye to Jack. By then we had understood that it was he who was running–or at least tried to–this school. His was the real authority. An impossible position, for no one could acknowledge that he was: not he, not the other teachers.

  We drove away under the cold sky, and to the hotel and found the space of the dining-room wantonly, wastefully large after the tiny rooms in Jack’s house. We ate cold meat and salad, apple pie and ice-cream, surrounded by black people, mostly local businessmen, shopkeepers and Chefs, all lucky enough not to be in a bush school with little hope of escape. We thought–of course–of how electric light and clean lavatories, a telephone and running water were not to be taken for granted; reminded ourselves that both of us had been brought up in the bush in houses that had no electric light or running water or indoor lavatories. We were afflicted by that sense of division, foreboding, and anxious incredulity that comes from moving too quickly from utter poverty to the amenities of the hotel in the little provincial town which owes its importance to being on the road north to Zambia.

  Then we visited a woman who is involved with the recruiting and supervision of teachers from America and countries in Europe. She said, ‘You would be surprised how many of the headmasters go bad.’ We told her a version of the current joke: What is the most dangerous occupation in Zimbabwe these days? Answer: Headmaster. You’ll be l
ucky to get away with five years. (Told us by a teacher in Harare, when he heard we were off to visit a secondary school.) She said that when a headmaster ‘goes bad’ often his school is run by youngsters from Britain, Sweden, Germany, but she tells them, ‘Don’t do it. Do what you are supposed to do, no more: you are doing these people no favour by taking over the responsibility. All right–the place goes to pieces. Then one of them will have to face up to it.’ She said it was very hard for young people full of idealism to stand by and watch things go to pieces when they have skills to deal with them. She tells them, ‘You must remember that from the moment you were born you’ve been absorbing the skills of the modern world–you’ve acquired them without even knowing it. But they haven’t. How do you think they are going to learn if you just do it all for them?’

  One of the Chefs has just made a speech saying that the ex-pat teachers should all be sent home, there was no need for them. How did she feel about that, we asked?

  ‘If you’re going to get upset by that kind of thing, you shouldn’t be in Zimbabwe,’ said this strong-minded lady. ‘Anyway, half the speeches they make are for popular consumption.’

  We have come away with copies of the school magazine, which Jack started: there wasn’t one until he came. He has taught the senior pupils elementary journalism and lay-out, and has taken them for trips into Harare–at his expense–to visit printing works and the offices of newspapers.

  Because of Jack fifty or so of these young people can claim they know at least the basics of how to make a newspaper.

  Here is a poem written by one of the brightest girls, who has succeeded in spite of difficulties at home in finding a place and light enough to study, or even read. Her father has three wives, her mother being the senior wife. There are twenty children. She is the seventh of eight children. Her family has great expectations for her. She has a thirty-year-old brother who is a primary school teacher.

  Where next dear Brothers and Sisters?

  I can’t forget the day I came to Kapfunde.

  I was full of love and joy for the beautiful school.

  Happy students cheered for our arrival.

  We were received in a hospitable manner.

  I couldn’t believe I was at last at Kapfunde.

  When I think of leaving Kapfunde

  Where students and teachers live in harmony

  I just feel strength going out of me.

  I can’t bear the thought of leaving Kapfunde,

  But there is nothing to do.

  Time to part, from friends and teachers of Kapfunde is drawing near.

  But the problem is where next, Form Fours?

  We have enjoyed every activity,

  And every scrap of food at Kapfunde.

  We have stayed here four years.

  But sooner or later the problem is to come.

  The problem is where to go next, what to do,

  Whether you will be behind the headmaster’s desk,

  Or somewhere in the streets, Form Four, think of it,

  One day you will find yourself prowling and haunting streets,

  Wandering in search of jobs.

  Goodbye teachers and students of Kapfunde,

  I am grateful for the good times we had together,

  Students, please keep the Kapfunde alive in you

  Be proud of your beautiful school.

  But Form Four, where next from Kapfunde?

  by Comrade Ruth Chakamanga

  This girl took six O-levels. She passed two, was ‘the second-best girl’. She got an A in Shona. She passed maths, the hardest exam. She failed English. Later she retook exams, and now is in teacher training college.

  Out of the more than eighty who sat English, six passed. But last year no one passed English.

  In Zimbabwe today you need five passes to get a job. With three you can train to be a nurse.

  Here is a letter from the school magazine:

  Dear Editors. I have a problem concerning our textbooks. I think every student at school has paid $120 but I have found out that when we are in our lessons we always share textbooks. So where is our money going? Does it mean that the money we are paying is not sufficient to buy books? I have noticed that it is a big disadvantage for the Form Fours to share one book between seven people. As we are the people who pay school fees we ought to have one textbook per each person in order for him to get good advantage when reading.

  And

  A DISASTROUS MEAL

  The vagaries of the weather create extremes, periods when food will be abundant and periods of less or no food. This is particularly true with relish problems. There is abundant relish in summer weeds, muboora and okra known as derere. It was in summer, the rains were still going on and people were beginning to fear that the rains would never come to an end. Finally, the rain was over. Muboora and derere were inedible. It was dirty and wet. We had to choose either to go without sadza or to think of something else. Our option was obvious, to think of something else. We had to go and fetch mushrooms. I did this with my two colleagues who were brothers. My mother was happy about our decision.

  We arrived at the popular mountain, Chembira, the highest point of Gutu. We found many varieties and many of these were strange to me. I told my other colleagues to adhere to one variety but they just ignored what I was saying. We went back home and we had a delicious meal.

  All of us were very much surprised the following day, no one was moving about at our neighbour’s yard. Cattle were complaining that they were still in the kraal while some chickens were giving warning that they would break out of their house. A villager then gathered courage and opened the door. He was flabbergasted and petrified by what he saw. They were dead.

  The bodies went for an examination at the hospital which was very near. The very first and the obvious targets were the witches. It was an issue debated for a long period. The majority agreed to consult a nganga. Some asked what will be done to the person. One man stood up and said, ‘Let’s not reason like cowards. When a child comes and defecates on my floor, will I just glare at him? No, I will take a stick and break his head.’ The man encouraged the people to take stern measures against witches.

  The person suspected was a doddering old woman, probably of ninety. Her speed was fifty metres an hour. She asked them to look at what they had eaten the previous day: it was mushrooms. The truth was starting to reveal itself. Suspicion of witchcraft was still great. Probably they were not cruel but wanted to find a reason for the deaths.

  The post-mortem examination revealed that they had eaten some poison.

  WITCHCRAFT

  This subject arrives in every conversation, sooner rather than later.

  The Passionate Apologists at once insist that in Europe ‘everyone’ reads horoscopes, that fortune-tellers flourish, that the United States thinks nothing of voting in a President whose schedule is ruled by an astrologer. How about the revival of witchcraft everywhere in Europe? How about Satanism? What do we have to say about those men of priestly magic who so confidently undertake to exorcize evil spirits? Is it not possible that we may yet see (we: Europe) the burning of witches, and mob violence against Satanism?

  (If we have not seen mob violence, we have observed the forces of Reason, that is to say, social workers, using methods of interrogation identical to those once used to convict witches on young people and children suspected of complicity with Satanism.)

  In other words, who the hell are you (critics from outside Africa) to talk? Put your own house in order first.

  FORTRESS HOUSES

  We drove in a few hours right across Zimbabwe, west to east. In Harare we had to drop in at several houses before going home. The verandahs of these houses built for air and sun are barred, making them like cages: all windows are barred now. Around the houses and gardens of the new rich (black) the walls are going up, so that you can’t see inside. Every evening in a certain place you may watch young men being drilled. The unemployed former Freedom Fighters have created an organiz
ation that supplies guards for houses. They drill in the late afternoon, using their expertise from the War, and report for duty at the houses as the light goes. They patrol while the owners sleep. As we drive up to the suburb where Ayrton R.’s house is we pass the President’s house. The high walls are heaped with coils of razor wire, and inside patrol guards. When the President drives out through these streets, it is in a limousine with tinted windows, so people cannot see in, and he is in the centre of a motorcade, with armed motorcycle riders. If you are driving through these streets and you hear the sirens of the President’s motorcade, you must drive off into a side street. Otherwise you will be shot at. This is no threat to cow the citizens: people have been known to be shot at if they didn’t get out of the way. I personally know a rather absent-minded young man who was on a motorbike, and did not understand that the sirens meant the approach of the President. People on the pavement yelled at him to stop or he would be killed. He stopped just in time. A doctor was driving along listening to a pop singer called The Wailer on the car radio: he did not hear those other, more urgent, wailers; did not stop or get off the road. His car was sprayed with bullets, though he was unhurt.

  When we got home, the house was opened from inside by Dorothy. The locks for the front door are efficient. At night one part of the house, the bedroom part, is locked against the part that can be entered through the glass of the patio. When I am in my room at the end of the house, I have the door open, but the moment I leave that room, which is on the garden, I lock it and remove the key, inserting a little barrel-like device that makes it impossible to open the door from the outside. The windows of the rooms are barred. At night the car is locked with a chain around the steering wheel. Ayrton R. has had one car stolen already. Everyone you meet has had a car stolen.