Some of my Twitter friends were commenting on having heartbreak 🥰in your teens. So at the end of 1993 after writing national O’Level exams I got an embarrassing job selling bread in the township from a hoarder bicycle 7 days a week, some of the girls I knew pretended like they no longer knew me. I had two shifts from 5:30am to around 10am and from 5pm to 6:30pm and in between I went to hang out with my friend.
In one of those days in the company of my friends we met this new girl and we debated on who would approach her and I approached her (I will not say her name because her cousin is a friend of mine here on Facebook). It turned out that she was a border and was a grade behind me and was going to Marondera High School a local model C School or former group A school as it is called in Zimbabwe. Her parents were both teachers and she stayed in the middle income section of the township. I was going to a school in a township Secondary school or St Nyoka school a derogatory term for such schools. I rarely saw her after that firs encounter as she barely went out of her house and I decided to write her a letter. I went to Kingstone bookshop bought coloured paper. There was a lady in Yellow City who designed the papers for a fee. I then wrote a love letter in my best English to her🙈🤣 I even included a self-addressed stamped envelope.
After a week I came home and my two sisters who come after me Rosemary and Phillipa were laughing at me🙈🤣 The girl had marked my english with a red pen and returned the letter and wrote, “next time fly a kite don’t ever write to me”. For months my sisters reminded me about flying a kite 🪁. My mum had opened the letter and she was cross with me saying instead of concentrating on school I was busy chasing girls. Three years later when I was now working as a temporary teacher another girl wrote a love letter to me and my mum opened it again. When she wanted to give me the letter, I didn’t read it and i proceeded to burn it and from that day my mum never opened any of my letters again. So early 94 O’Level results came out. It was not surprising I got a C in English, 4As & 3Bs in the rest of the subjects.
Weeks later my A’Level acceptance letter came from Mutambara High School my 3rd choice. My 1st and 2nd choice on the sixth form selection form was Fletcher High School and Gokomere High School. The day the letter came, I boarded the overnight train to Mutare and took the B&C bus to Chimanimani. I arrived at the school around lunch time and went to the office, I had been given the combination I wanted Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry and I was happy. Later we went to see the dormitories. I was not impressed, it reminded of Nhowe Mission nearer to our village in Murehwa (my uncle my mother’s elder brother Mr Teddy Kagoro had for years taught at the nearby Waterloo Primary School). I decided there and then that I would not come to this school, got a lift to Mutare road and the another to city of Mutare and got there in time for the train to Harare. I got home and told my mother about my decision and she never argued with me.
I started looking for a place went to Bernard Mizeki College, Marondera High School, Allan Wilson High School, Goromonzi High School (at Goromonzi I was given arts subjects and I refused , I was not going to do Mutauro (Shona), Bhaibheri (Divinity) and Ngano (History) at A’Level🤣🙈 Eventually I was enrolled at Marondera High School. In 1994 there were only two day schools offering A’Level in the town of Marondera, the other one being Nagle House Catholic Girls High School. A few weeks after starting school, I bumped into the fly a kite🪁 girl at school when my class was going from the maths class going to the lab. I greeted her cheerfully and for the rest of the two years we were civil to each other but I never asked her out again. My best friends Osten and James were now going to Allan Wilson High School in Harare and they considered any girl who played netball as not so cool. She played netball and was in the school team. I last saw her in September 2002 at Murehwa Growth point she said she was waiting for a bus to a school around Mutawatawa, she became a teacher like her parents.
No comments:
Post a Comment