2
New Horizons
I WAS SIX YEARS OLD IN 1989 AND IT WAS TIME TO START SCHOOL. No more afternoon naps. The world suddenly seemed a better place. For me, big school was Chipembere Primary, which was located within the local police camp. This meant that most of the children who enrolled there were from families where one of the parents was a police officer.
The main di?erence between schools in the UK - which my children have been taught at - and schools in Zimbabwe is the number of children in each class. There used to be around 50 other kids in my classrooms. That's a lot, and it was difficult for our teachers to deal with that.
The method of teaching was also very di?erent. We were basically taught to cram as much knowledge into our heads as we could. We weren't taught how to learn or figure things out, just to cram. Take being in grade two or three, for example: we'd walk in the room to be told that we were doing multiples of five. We wouldn't be able to sit down until we had each answered a question relating to the subject of the day correctly.
It was quite a rigid way of doing things. When it came to exam time, we would do this thing called 'spot the paper'. That meant collecting all the exam papers that had been used on your grade in the years before and going through them methodically. We knew that pretty much all of the questions we were going to get would be in those papers. That's why we called it 'spot the paper'. There was no real practicality to it, we just had to fill our brains with information.
Broadly speaking, the students at Chipembere came from very humble backgrounds. In my grade, I was one of the few who were privileged to have the full required school uniform, thanks to my Dad's thriving business. The fact that I was sent o? every day smartly turned out, with my shirt tucked in and my socks pulled up, meant some teasing, but I knew I had to do well at school and behave in a disciplined manner. Failure to do so would result in consequences at home. Mrs Washaya was my first-year teacher. She was a motherly influence and no stranger to the family - she had taught my sisters before me. She was very patient with me, so I took a liking to her and tried hard to impress. My education was o? to a fine start, but like most other children of my age, I longed for break time, where with a new group of friends I would play all sorts of games, my little legs covering a lot of distance. What a joy it was to be in this place.
At home, things were still difficult, especially for my mother. Tapiwa had come into the world, while at the same time Joseph Jr's drinking sprees continued to cause heartache. Dad would still spend his days watching over the barbershop and his evenings drinking with his friends, meaning the burden of looking after us all still fell on Mum. She was under immense pressure. One day at school, I was caught talking out of line by my teacher Mr Tekere, and he promised I would su?er the consequences of my ill behaviour. In other words, I would be getting the 'rod' the following day. Back at home my mum was already struggling to keep us disciplined, and I was meant to be the sensible one. This did not sit well with me, so I had to devise a plan: I simply wouldn't go to school the next day. Of course, my parents could not find out about this plan, so the next day I allowed my unsuspecting mother to send me o? as usual, though I made sure I left without my siblings. Once out of sight, I took a detour from my usual route and hid until classes commenced.
Once I believed the coast was clear, I allowed myself a walk around the neighbourhood to kill some time, only to then spot my cousin. Though I tried to run away, my little legs were no match for his, and he eventually caught up with me. I was taken home, and so had to draw an excuse from my burgeoning bank of wisdom. I tried to claim that the teacher had not been present, and therefore there had been no point in staying. It didn't wash, and so I was taken straight back to school. Thankfully, when I did eventually show up the rod stayed in Mr Tekere's draw. I had gotten away with it. It was only when I got home later that evening that I su?ered the consequences. As I was playing in the backyard, I was felled by a massive slap across my face. I felt dizzy and numb. I was in a state of disbelief and then pain. I had never seen such a display of anger from my Dad. What was he even doing home at this time? Is this how disappointed he was? I would have taken a beating at school anytime over this.
From then onwards, he was intolerant to any sort of mischief. A little later, in grade five, I remember becoming annoyed with a girl at school, who kept claiming I had a girlfriend. It was not a cool thing to do at that age, and so I confronted her. It did not end well. In an e?ort to stop it all, I hit her. My Dad found out, and he spoke words to me that I was to remember for a long time: 'Don't you know that you never hit a girl, no matter what she has done?' He accompanied this lecture with a heavy slap.
During most of our assemblies, the headmaster would call out the name of a student and ask them to come to the front of the hall. He'd then go on to praise them for their academic progress in front of everyone else, with the intention of motivating us all to keep working hard. On one of these mornings, I found myself listening intently to the words of our headmaster: 'This boy is excelling in all his subjects and this has a lot to do with the choice he has made to participate in a sport that teaches him important lessons: respect, obedience, discipline and so much more,' he said. That was where I needed to get to. I could save myself from the slaps, while having fun playing sport at the same time. I was hugely encouraged, and I was going to make sure to get close to the boy in question: Stuart Matsikenyeri.
When you grow up in a township you have to make do with what you've got. You create your own fun; you make your ball out of nothing. To make our cricket stumps, we'd find bricks with holes in them and put sticks in the holes. For our gymnastics, we used to collect the leftover grass on the fields after the council had cut it. With this we'd form a grassy mound, which would act as our cushion. We'd then collect old car tyres and pile them on top of each other, which would form a trampoline for us. We'd take a run at this loose structure, bounce o? it, do a somersault mid-air and then land on this mound of grass. It's only by God's grace that nobody broke their neck.
Gymnastics was not our only use for these disused tyres. Like most other countries in the world, football is the most popular sport in Zimbabwe among children. All you need to do is make a ball and then you are away. In Zimbabwe the milk used to come in plastic bags, and we'd collect these bags once people were done using them. We'd blow up two of these plastic bags, tie them together and put them in a paper bag, which we would twist and cover. In the meantime, we'd also have collected a number of tubes that used to come in car tyres. We would tie all these together, forming a sort of continuous tube. This tube would then be tied all the way round the paper bag. We now had a ball that bounced.
This sort of innovation meant that when it came to organised sport, we often did not have to be taught the basics; we were already well-versed. The same applied for cricket. When we started proper training at school, we were already very comfortable throwing the ball. How? We often spent much of our spare time trying to hit birds with small stones. Our accuracy was honed. You would hardly find a youngster who couldn't throw the ball properly. We'd also create our own traps from disused wire to catch rats - I could still make one to this day. We'd leave our staple food, maize (which is corn) on this carefully-made trap, and wait for the rats to come. Hand-eye coordination wasn't a problem for us kids who had grown up in Highfield, so when it came to cricket the first thing we were taught was how to hold the bat in the correct manner.
In 1992, with the sport still dominated by the white minority, the Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU), as Zimbabwe Cricket was then called, had formed a programme to develop cricket nationwide - especially in high-density schools like ours. Three centres were opened at the Mbizi, Chengu and Chipembere primary schools. Coaches were stationed at these centres to scout for talent in young boys. Cricket was practised as part of Physical Education in the morning and there would be afternoon sessions for those that wanted to take the sport more seriously.
Stephen Mangongo, Bruce Makova and Walter Chawaguta were the coaches assigned to these three centres. During one of these sessions, Mr Mangongo asked me to attend a practice at the neighbouring Mbizi Primary school in the afternoons; they had a concrete pitch and we did not. I had learnt that Stuart - the boy who had been singled out in assembly and was becoming a close friend of mine - was playing cricket, so it was not a tough decision for me to say yes, even if football was my first love. I quickly learnt that practice was compulsory every afternoon, and that ill-discipline would simply not be tolerated.
Mr Mangongo was at the centre of this strict regime. Mangongo, or Steve as we used to address him, was an interesting character. He had an ability to instil a love for the game in you. When he knew he had you hooked, he changed, becoming a stern disciplinarian. We feared him once he took this turn, but he was a very e?ective coach all the same. Punctuality was non-negotiable; alertness crucial. Failure to meet these criteria would result in hefty punishments,...
