Zimpapers Logo

Dr Josephine Shambare

Correspondent

I enrolled for Sub A (now Grade One) in the late 60’s and my entrance test was the shortest ever. 

The headmaster beckoned me as I clutched my mother’s dress: “Huya kuno mwana. Mira apa. Bata nzeve yako noruoko rorudyi”. (“Come here child. Stand here. Touch your left ear with your right hand; with the arm across the head”). On so-doing he remarked: “Yaah, wakura. Wawana nzvimbo” (“Yes, you are old enough. I award you a place”). 

It was fun learning to write in the sand with my forefinger and using my palm to erase after the teacher had marked the work.

As school kids, we used to walk or run long distances to school barefooted, carrying some food, a piece of firewood for the teacher and a tin to water the school garden. The food was normally sweet potatoes or mangai (plain boiled maize) packed in a ‘sun sweet’ brown sugar plastic pack serving as a ‘snack box’. We normally hid the food under small shrubbery, for consumption on the return journey.

The school start was signified by the sound of a gong (simbi) – an iron piece hit by another iron piece; heard from all surrounding villages. The first sound was a warning that school was about to start and the second meant that school had started. School started with song, prayer and announcements at an Assembly held in an open space. Punishment for lateness, in the form of caning, was also meted there.

Every time I hear the song by the late local singer Andy Brown ‘Ooo ticha, simbi yarira ndiri murwizi, ticha, ndiregerere ndanonoka…’ (Oh teacher, I heard the school gong whilst crossing the river, please forgive me for being late); I just say to myself, “Here’s my contemporary”. The same singer goes on to recount how painful the teacher’s cane is as he sings “… Ayuwi yuwi chamboko chandirwadza, ayuwi yuwi chamboko cha ticha…” (Ouch ouch so painful is the cane, ouch ouch the teacher’s cane).

As I got to Grade three, we did some ‘hot sitting’ due to shortage of classrooms with school starting at 1000 hours. We went to school as individuals or in smaller and isolated groups compared to bigger groups during normal schooling times.

One morning my mother called me back when I had walked about one hundred metres from home. I obliged but begrudgingly because I was afraid of being late for school. 

Her concern was that she had observed Ronald (not his real name), a brother to one of the nurses at our local clinic, stalking me. He had just emerged from the gumtree plantation adjacent to our township and started following me. My mother thus wanted to warn me before letting me off to school. On the sight of my mother, Ronald diverted his route. 

My little heart pounded for a while as I proceeded to school — Was Ronald a ‘hyena’? Why did he behave like that? 

There was minimal crime awareness during the bliss of my childhood and I knew little about the police. 

Later in life, I realised that my mother was very conscious of sexual offences especially against the girl child. She was privileged to have a father who was a village head (sabhuku) and used to eavesdrop at his traditional court hearings as a little girl.

The return journey from school was punctuated with a hive of activities like games, singing and fights. This was also the time we ate our packed lunch hidden under shrubberies earlier on the way to school. By then the food would be infested with insects but we would simply remove them and eat the food. We happily shared our food but others were notorious for being thrifty. On being denied food, one would go begging “kumbira kumbira karema, unozvara mwana akadai” with the forefinger and middle finger twisted meaning “if you deny me some food, you will bear a child with deformities like this” (twisting the fingers). We were so innocent and did not realise how offensive and discriminatory such utterances were.

We supplemented our food with wild fruits, roots and succulent tender stems. The fruits were in abundance and ranged from some that had bitter taste to others that were sweet — maroro, tsvanzva, mazhanje, nhunguru, matamba, hacha, tsombori and many more. We enjoyed the fruits because they were both food and medicine. It was forbidden to utter derogatory remarks such as ‘rotten’ or ‘tasteless’ fruit despite being true. The belief was that we would invite the ire of the spirits and disappear into the wilderness and never return home. After satisfying our bellies, it was common for children from one village to insult those from another and start fighting. 

A boxing ring would be drawn on the ground. Inside the ring, two soil mounds were formed denoting the opponent’s mothers’ boobs. 

The two contesting fighters would challenge each other to the fight by destroying the opponent’s mother’s boobs; hence invoking anger and the appetite to fight. Children formed around the ring jeered or cheered ferociously. 

The fights ended up as either entertainment or long-standing feuds. If these fights were discovered by parents or school authorities, stern disciplinary action in the form of caning or manual labour, was taken against the naughty children.

After all the hype and excitement, we would clean our hands and wipe off dust our feet with the leathery mutukutu leaves; brush our teeth with the muhacha stick and leave for home.

Dr Josephine Shambare writes on Social issues for entertainment and awareness; in her own capacity. Excerpts are taken from her unpublished autobiography; and PhD thesis: ‘The Enigma of Child Sexual Abuse in the Zimbabwean context: Beyond Statistics’.