Mashumbi High School:  When things fall apart

straightening off again into former white-owned farms.
Then suddenly, one comes face to face with the brutal reality of colonial Rhodesia. Rhodesia yaidzvi-nyirira, so Thomas Mapfumo would sing.
That is the Bakasa communal lands where colonialism used white political dominance and the geomorphological splendour called Matuzviadonha (corrupted to Matusadonha) Mountains to condemn blacks they removed from prime farming land.
Here homes perch on mountain slopes, like birds perching on tree branches.
At some stage one is forgiven to think the huts in Bakasa would fall downslope.
The whites then aptly named their “new” acquisition, the Horseshoe Commercial Farming area, due to its hoofed shape between Dande River and Matuzviadonha Mountains. Here, the journey slows down, the road making uncharacteristic rounds, intermittently breaking into hairpin curves and a sharp drop of 6km within a 15km stretch.
At Bakasa Shopping Centre, men hover by whitewashed shops in faded clothes and women carrying bananas for sale on their heads saunter by the tarred road’s grassy verge, children hanging precariously on their backs with toddlers on their heels.
Being the last stop before the final descent into Mbire, jam-packed chicken buses, tractors and lorries take a deserved breather, their drivers checking the brakes ahead of the curves.
Donkey drawn carts also take a crawl. Just as the road starts its final descent, it makes a wide curve round the edge of the escarpment and a spitting distance away, yet another dangerous curve named Mudzimundiringe — a way of travellers summoning ancestral spirits to protect them beckons. Thereafter, the Zambezi Valley spreads out, flat and wide, north, north, further north, east and west.
For most people Mbire is unknown territory: Waenda Mbire, waenda chose . . . waenda Mbire hauchadzoka, waenda Mbire . . . wakaenda Mbire baba vevana handichakuona!
This is a place of wild animals where it is uncommon to see baboons preen each other’s glossy coats, an elephant nudge its calf with a hind foot under a huge baobab tree or a lion sweep through the grass.
Here the sun sucks moisture baking mother earth into a cracked cake. The heat is fierce at up to 40 degrees in summer before the rains come, if they ever do come, for, rains here are less reliable than anything else. The soils are poor.
There are a few conventional shops, only one boarding school and several satellite schools.
The boarding school is Mashumbi Pools High, built juxtaposing the confluence of Dande and Hunyani rivers. In terms of 2011 results Mashumbi is not among the top 50 but is certainly not on the last 50. So these statistics work in its favour.
Built in the late 1980s, as part of a free Zimbabwe’s quest to bring decent education to a long forgotten place, then with more tsetse flies and wild animals than people, this villager, who never attended that school, can tell you that it has produced quite a number of professionals. It has made its mark!
Mashumbi High School can best be described as an oasis in the desert. We will go back to the Mashumbi very soon but dear reader, allow this villager to draw a parallel with another school up the mountain called Kadzimwenje Primary School.
On August 15, 1998, this villager was part of the entourage of then Mashonaland Central Governor Border Gezi and then Australian Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Peter Leitebauer that visited Kadzimwenje for possible donor funding.
We were greeted and baffled by ramshackle classrooms, whose inside was full of scattered broken pieces of furniture, used paper, mounds of sand and livestock dung.
Flies and butterflies somersaulted at will as the buffet of cow, donkey and goat droppings attracted them. Gezi being a man of action immediately demanded the expulsion or transfer of the headmaster describing the school as “the worst managed and dirtiest school of my life.” His wish was granted, promptly by the Ministry of Education.
Back to Mashumbi Pools, two weeks ago, this villager joined parents at an annual general meeting at the school. The first impression was that it was good to send one’s children there.
Firstly, because it is a reputable institution of learning, secondly because it is far away from the hullabaloo of urban life that disturbs our children and thirdly, because it is far away from food courts where marauding kombi drivers and touts, take our schoolgirls before abusing them.
The pupils at Mashumbi — drawn from all over Zimbabwe — seemed a happy lot and there was every sign of decency and African humanism in their reception and greetings. The problem started when a tour of the school was conducted.
Hey, the classrooms were no different from the Kadzimwenje of 1998. Mounds of sand, goat droppings and scattered furniture. Uncut grass!
But, and a big BUT, at Mashumbi the doors are there, all they can’t do is just close the doors to keep the goats out. Whoever owns the goats is not subject of this instalment.
Cutting grass at the school cannot be a big job. There was heckling between parents and the School Development Association and the headmaster over cleanli             ness.
Of course, this villager never expected the SDA to superintend over the locking up of classrooms. What is the duty of the groundsmen? The headmaster is new and must have been struggling to put things in order but hey, he can’t even supervise the cutting down of grass?
But quite honestly, on a day when parents are officially visiting the school at the invitation of the headmaster and the SDA, this villager would expect the school to be clean.
At least on this particular day, any sane leadership would ensure that the school was clean. This villager wished Border Gezi was still alive, for, he so loved the school as the cradle of education in Mbire.
Border Gezi should be turning and twisting in his grave with anger, disgust and disbelief, for, the school he so laboured to develop and turn into the best in the province, has seemingly gone to the dogs.
Just cleaning the school should not be an issue. It reflects bad management.
What irked this villager at the Annual General Meeting is that there was this local councillor, this villager can’t quite remember his name but he was quite a menace, quite disrespectful and really disturbed proceedings, intermittently dashing from his seat to grab the microphone from the master of ceremonies. It was a free circus.
At the end of the day the parents lost bearing, focus and everything and indeed the AGM was abandoned, amid accusations and counter-accusations.
There was another rift, between parents of boarding pupils and those of day scholars, over fees. The day scholar’s parents insisted they wanted to pay a paltry US$30 per term, instead of the stipulated policy of paying a third of the boarding fee of US$380.
Such was their retrogressive behaviour. Yes, Mbire villagers are poor but this villager does not expect them to stoop so low. Education by its nature needs commitment and funding.
That the AGM was abandoned with no issue resolved speaks of the story of a school in the wrong hands administratively and in terms of parentage.
The school could be better and all and sundry can do better. Being the only boarding school in the area and indeed the only A Level school, this villager thinks we can do better.
This villager will not forgive all those who wish to throw spanners on such a life investment, because all the villagers must go to school.
This villager has always been and will remain a vital cog in the development and promotion of education at this school, dating back from the early 1990.
For the record, it is this villager who wrote several stories about the bizarre bouts of hysteria that hit the school in the early 1990s, the third and worst being on July 20, 1995.
The school was closed down prematurely for the August holiday and there was a lot of negotiations,                   this villager involved, until the Government decided            to allow the spirit mediums of the area pacify the school.
The story has it that during the war, Rhode                      sian forces killed captured liberation fighters and buried them in a mass grave on what is now the girls’ hostel.
The high spirit medium of Nehanda led other mediums like Chidyamauyu, Nyamapfeka, Nyamapfeni, Gumboremvura, Musumha and others through a weeklong pacification ceremony. 
Beasts, including gnu, cattle, goats and sheep, were slaughtered. Beer was plenty and the Shona tradition was followed in situ. For a week, the Korekore drum thundered all night, always sandwiched by song and dance.
Since then, there has never been hysteria at Mashumbi Pools. This is the reason why to date, Mashumbi is not a Christian school. They open all their events with a traditional prayer via the ancestral spirits of Mbire.
The village soothsayer, the ageless autochthon of knowledge and wisdom, says the school administration and the parents require change of attitude.
“Attitude . . . attitude . . . attitude! Otherwise the efforts of the ancestors will go to waste. Things fall apart at Mashumbi Pools.”

 

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