The Beautiful Tree (31 page)

He speaks to Joy and Tichaona for some time; they argue with him; he is having none of it. Then he turns to me:

He laughs for the first time, but it’s not a happy laugh: “Business is business, research is research. You need a completely different permit to do research. You’re here illegally.”

“Oh,” I respond. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. I don’t feel proud later of how I implicated my new associates in my visit, who might prefer not to be so implicated: “I’m visiting friends. I came to visit my friends here, who happen to run a school, to see if I could
come back
to do research. I would have got permission; of course, I wouldn’t do anything illegal.”

He shakes his head contemptuously. “No, you are here illegally. All countries are the same, this is all a matter of immigration; we wouldn’t be allowed to visit your country and go to a school without permission; we would be thrown out straightaway.” This thought seems to remind him of other, more painful thoughts. He continues: “There are many Zimbabweans who are being thrown out of . . . Britain,” he spits out the word disdainfully, as if it is vile even to utter it. “Zimbabweans are being thrown out of Britain every day—how dare you throw out Zimbabweans, it’s so embarrassing to us, can you imagine it, the shame it brings on us?”

He pulls his handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wipes the copious beads of sweat off his forehead. I feel no sweat on mine, although it is pretty warm down there. “The trouble with you British is that you are still colonizing us, you still think you are our masters. . . .”

It was true; my notebook was pretty gruesome evidence. What had I written? Just normal stuff. About how I’d been in Zimbabwe staying with an old friend from my teaching days of 20 odd years ago, Peter, a white Zimbabwean, and his Shona wife, Caroline. About how they’d said there were definitely no private schools for the poor in Zimbabwe; that perhaps it was true this time, as,
oh dear,
“
Zimbabwe is unique in having Mugabe as leader: uniquely bad, uniquely evil.
” Then about my normal detective work, trying a different tack, asking Caroline, who was a lecturer in a government teacher-training college, what morale was like in the teaching profession, in government schools? And recording what she had told me: “Morale is at rock bottom. Teachers are not paid enough. Most of my students are just there to get the diploma so that they can get their secure government job that they’ve been promised. ‘If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys,’ as the old saying goes, and monkeys are lazy.” Then recording my observation that, if government teachers are really so bad, this means that there are likely to be low-cost private schools, if Zimbabwe is anything like any other country I’ve visited.

Then there were details of my further detective work, following many dead ends, nearly believing Peter and Caroline and everyone else I spoke to in Harare, but eventually finding what I was looking for in Dzivaresekwa. This was one of the “black townships” built by the Rhodesian government some miles outside of Harare on the main Bulawayo road to house the African workers, seemingly as far from the white suburbs as was possible. It was still one of the poorest settlements, home to many more people than it was built for. We’d gone there after we’d happened to give a lift to Leonard, a worker at a small game reserve just outside Harare near the airport, who was to become my guide as I traveled to Marondera. We’d seen wonderful birds: iridescent kingfishers, African pied wagtails, jacandas, and fork-tailed swallows, I recorded. But most exciting to me, I obsessively wrote in my notebook, was hearing Leonard say that he had a friend who was teaching in a low-cost private school in the township.

About Dzivaresekwa my notes were more positive, had my interrogator read them. I’d favorably compared Dzivaresekwa with places like Kibera and Makoko, saying it all seemed positively rich by comparison—neatly planned, charming if tiny, brick bungalows with small gardens, not poor in the way that the slums of Kenya and Nigeria were poor. It was true that many people were also living in sheds in these small gardens, but these tin shacks were no different from where
everyone
lived in the slums of other African countries. I’d been positively surprised by what I’d seen of living conditions in Zimbabwe. But I wished I hadn’t recorded some of the graffiti I’d seen on the walls, though, proclaiming, “Mugabe must go.”

From Dzivaresekwa there were copious notes about the low-cost private schools I’d found—but my writing was so bad, he couldn’t have understood any of it, could he? Like Fount of Joy School, renting the eponymous church property, but having nothing else to do with the church. I recorded the low fees and why the owner Edwin, a very friendly, articulate, erudite, and soft-spoken man in his late 30s, told me he had opened the school—which wouldn’t make very favorable reading to a government official, let alone my interrogator. I’d recorded that many migrants from the rural areas were not allowed in the government schools, as zoning had been introduced. If you weren’t an official resident of the township, you couldn’t go to the government school. “We take students from wherever they come, we don’t discriminate,” I’d recorded Edwin saying. “Unlike in the government schools,” I’d observed. And Edwin reporting that his school “upholds good Christian values, good orientation as far as morality and religion is concerned. In the government schools, they have . . . divergent values, and parents prefer what we offer.” I’d also recorded Edwin’s views on a private primary school he knew of nearby, where children sat under trees rather than in classrooms, that was threatened with immediate closure: “It all comes out of a quest for education. Sitting under a tree is not a criminal activity.”

Another low-cost private school I’d taken notes on was Daybreak College, a secondary school that had just opened nearby. The owner, 25-year-old Watson, had been a teacher at another low-cost private school but had decided to go it alone. His father had recently died, and with the “small money” left to the family, Watson had extended his home to create a brick building for six classrooms. The family lived in the original two rooms as you entered the school. I recorded why he too had opened the school—because there was an acute shortage of secondary schools in and around the township, so he wanted to cater to this demand. Because the government schools took only those who scored highest in the state exams, those less clever had nowhere to go. Watson himself had originally wanted to go to university but couldn’t afford to; with his father’s passing away, “Automatically I became the breadwinner.” I recorded that his fees were lower than the government schools’ and that he now had 72 students but could—and would soon—accommodate 300 in two shifts. I recorded that Watson seemed to have thought a lot about marketing, even down to wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the school name. And I recorded, word for word, how Watson had told me: “Our own market research shows that the reasons why parents prefer our college is the teacher-pupil ratio; in government schools, it is 60 to 1, in ours it is 20 to 1, so in a government school pupils have much more divided attention. Sometimes classes in government schools reach 200, so teachers are discouraged that they can make a difference. Teachers too rarely turn up, they absent themselves from work all the time. But in my school, once you absent yourself from work, you have to explain yourself, and if your explanation is not satisfactory, then you’ll be out.” In the notebook too, I had a copy of Watson’s carefully devised code of conduct for his staff, copies of which were handed out to all new staff members, and which hung on the office wall. And I had recorded Watson telling me that government schools had a real problem with staff behavior. (I’d recalled similar stories when I’d been a teacher in Zimbabwe: reports of teachers having sexual affairs with students. And when the girls had become pregnant, as they often did, they were expelled while the teacher remained in post.) This is item number one on Watson’s code of conduct: “1. No member(s) of staff is allowed to fall in love/have an indecent affair with a student both in and out of the school. Any member of staff caught in a love nest with a student will be automatically dismissed and handed over to the police.” It is followed by strict instructions about punctuality (“Every member of staff must report for work by 7:00 a.m.”), absenteeism (“No member of staff shall absent him/herself without a genuine reason. In case of absenteeism due to illness, a medical proof must be produced. Failure to produce medical proof/give notice is an offence which carries a fine.”), and other important matters. I had written in my notebook how Watson seemed to be dealing very positively with “the very real problems that are present in government schools.” I’d also recorded that, because my visit coincided with the penultimate day of term, the school was having a drama festival, with plays created by the students themselves. I’d written how “the students are great actors, full of life, exuberant, joyful.” This was no cram school.

And many other details too, of the many other low-cost private schools I’d found. And how one parent had told us about Bright Dawn School in Marondera, where her family lived, and my journey with Leonard to visit its proprietor Joy—who sits beside me now, shooting me a glance that seems to say it will be all right, while the Zanu-PF regional head of security continues his tirade.

“What shit are you writing here? You British, you are still colonial racists.”

I’ve told him already that I came to Zimbabwe as a young man, laid it on a bit that I’d given up years of life to work for his people. I had told him, truthfully, that I loved Zimbabwe more than any other country I visited, because it had been my “first love,” the place where I’d spent my formative years. I didn’t know what more to tell him. But I say it all again, my voice uncomfortably pleading now. He growls back: “Look, how do I know that you are a friend of Zimbabwe? So you came here 20 years ago as a teacher, but then so many of your compatriots, they come here and pretend they care for us, and will do this, and do that, do all for us, but then you leave, go back to your own country and write so much evil about us; you’re all like this, we don’t want your interest. You British imperialists, you all think you still run Zimbabwe, well you don’t, we are sovereign and independent now, and you’re here doing illegal things.”

Then he turns to Joy and Tichaona, again they go back and forth, his glowering at me then ignoring me, as they all converse in Shona. How is it all going to end?

But then it does end. He gets a phone call. He listens. And he then says, “Go.”

The three of us stand up. He refuses my handshake and Shona farewells. But I leave with the others! We pile into my waiting taxi, drive out of the compound to find Leonard anxiously waiting for us. “I was really worried for you,” he says. And the funny thing is, before that interview, I would not have written anything bad about Zimbabwe—as my friend Peter had remarked, I was feeling only good things about the country that I loved so much, convinced that journalists had exaggerated the problems for their own self-aggrandizement, to make their own adventures sound more glorious. Poverty and corruption in Zimbabwe, it seemed to me, were nothing compared with the other African countries I visited. And I had been traveling unharmed and untouched, at ease, into the townships and rural areas, talking with whomever I liked, seeing whatever I wanted to see. The Zanu-PF regional chief of security had put a bit of a damper on all that.

We drive off, now laughing together, my relief palpable. Now I’m sweating! I tell them that of course they don’t have to speak to me now, that I don’t want to put them in any more danger. No, no, they insist. Equally I insist too, I’ll drop them off and leave them in peace. But their insistence is greater. “My dear,” Joy says, “we all need a good cup of tea.” Yes, I feel very much in need of a cup of tea. So we drive off, significantly though not to her school but to her sister’s place some miles out of town.

We laugh together now; the shared experience of being cooped up in the interrogation cellar has, of course, brought us closer. I tell them what I’ve been seeing around the world on my journey. And as they tell me of what they’ve achieved, and what they plan, I realize that I’m meeting two wonderfully dynamic entrepreneurs, who were creating something of immense value here in Zimbabwe. Joy’s school had grown from 15 students in 1998 to around 300 now; it is the only indigenous preschool to high school in the whole country, she told me. Joy had also started a second school deep in the rural areas, in Weya, near Headlands. Here, in addition to academic subjects, children took other courses, such as poultry raising, welding, pig farming
,
and dressmaking, and they also ran a shop—technical subjects that were also used to raise funds for the school and to train entrepreneurs. She had also been asked to open a third school in Macheke and to extend her chain to Mutare, Odzi, and Nyazura—all in the Eastern Highlands where I’d lived so many years before—where the local communities have promised her land, inspired by what they have seen her achieve in Marondera. And she wanted to extend her Marondera operations to a university. “My dear,” she said, ‘I want to have a ‘one-stop shop for education.”’ And Tichaona, her son, taking seriously the running of the financial side of the business, was currently enrolled in an MBA program with the Zimbabwe Open University, from where he already had a diploma in financial management. We share stories, and I feel inspired by all they have achieved and want to be involved in their future.