Towards an Anthropology of Survival
Exploring the narrated experiences of private and government school youth in Bulawayo: Navigating the self in a sea of schizophrenic moralities
MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology Graduate School of Social Sciences
Giada Serena Sabbion 11046627
Amsterdam – July 6th, 2017
Master thesis submitted to the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology.
Word count thesis: 27.450 Supervisor: Dr. Yatun Sastramidjaja
Second reader: Dr. Rachel Spronk Third Reader: Dr. Ria Reis
Plagiarism Declaration
I hereby declare that this thesis meets the rules and regulations for fraud and plagiarism as set out by the Examination Committee of the MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. This thesis is entirely my own original work and all sources have been properly acknowledged.
Giada Sabbion July 6th, 2017
Disclaimer
For the purpose of ensuring the anonymity of my interlocutors, this version of the thesis,
Towards an Anthropology of Survival, will only be available within the Anthropology Department of
Abstract
In spite of the official political agenda since independence to re-establish black authority and foster indigenous empowerment, the memory of Zimbabwe’s colonial past and the remnants of its irreparable influences still permeate the country’s contemporary ideological and structural framework. Carrying out ethnographic research amongst youth within private and government schooling in Bulawayo led to the uncovering of discourse indicative to the existence of a conflict between a nation striving for a western-centric ideal of socio-economic modernity whilst seeking to maintain traditional pre-colonial socio-cultural values through the philosophy of Ubuntu. By examining youth’s narratives and experiences within formal education structures, this paper explores the way in which this conflict is played out within the schooling system and the implication it has on the way in which youth conceptualise their sense of self. It presents a brief genealogy of Zimbabwean formal education and youth socialisation structures before examining the dynamics of the contemporary moral systems within which they operate particularly with respect to figures of authority. It goes on to look at the way in which youth experience schooling and the value that they attribute to it in relation to the expectations and aspirations they have for the future. Looking at two situationally opposed micro sites of society is aimed at exploring how the need for Zimbabwean youth to navigate ‘themselves’ in and around this underlying conflict is a struggle which is shared, albeit in different ways, across the two spectrums of Zimbabwean society. This sets the path for arguing in favour of the existence of a unified culture of survival, as through this struggle, youth work towards the subjective interpretations of what anthropologist Joel Robbins termed, the ‘pursuit of the good’. Ultimately what this paper seeks to clarify is how youth feel they need to behave and what they think they have to do in order to achieve it given their situational circumstances.
Acknowledgements
I would like to begin by thanking the participants of this research who entrusted me with their stories, making me feel welcome and included in their daily routines and experiences. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Averys who opened their home to me during the three months I spent in the field and to my parents who have supported me throughout this this process.
I am indebted to my fellow classmates whose invaluable council and encouragement fueled my writing and whose friendship has been a source of great joy.
Finally, I would like to give special thanks to my supervisor Yatun Sastramidjaja whose advice, patience and dedication gave me calm in moments of crisis.
Table of Content
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1- WHAT WAS IT LIKE MUM? 1
1.2- LIVING IN A TIME CAPSULE 2
1.3- CHOOSING A SCHOOL IN BULAWAYO 4
1.4- TOWARDS AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF SURVIVAL 7
2. LOOKING FROM THE INSIDE-OUT 11
2.1- SITUATING MEANING IN EDUCATION 11
2.2- I AM THEREFORE WE ARE 16
2.3- CULTURAL AMNESIA 18
2.4- UNCOVERING THE MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION 21
3. CONNECTING PARALLEL REALITIES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLING 23
3.1- WHO IS THIS MAKIWA? 23
3.2- IDLE HANDS AND PRODUCTIVE PLAY 25
3.3- THE KEY TO SUCCESS 28
3.4- THINGS COULD BE BETTER 31
3.5- PAYING TO PROVE FRIENDSHIPS 33
4. NEGOTIATING THE SELF 37
4.1- QUESTIONING THE UNQUESTIONABLE 37
4.2- ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? 39
4.4- CONFESSIONS OF YOUTH 44
5. THE BURDENS ZIMBABWEAN YOUTH 48
5.1- PURGING OF THE PAST 48
5.2- IN AMERICA I WOULD BE A DRUG LORD 51
5.3- JUGGLING DREAMS OF WORK AND PLEASURE 54
6. CONCLUSION 57
1. Introduction
1.1- What was it like mum?
Touchdown. I arrive in Harare international airport with my father who against his will had accompanied me after much insistence by my mother whom I had tried in vain to convince that I would manage very well on my own. “Giada” she said firmly, “you don’t understand, Zimbabwe is dangerous, people there are desperate and that makes them dangerous.” Born a coloured woman in Rhodesia, my mother had told me stories of her life as the child of a successful and proud businessman who, with the privileges bestowed on him by his wealth and characteristically arrogant sense of self entitlement, insisted on every occasion to ignore the racial restrictions imposed by the colonial government and permit himself and his family all the freedoms normally reserved for white Rhodesian citizens. This included sending his children to private schooling, the memory of which my Mother describes resentfully,
“I went to Convent, a private all-girls school. We were taught by Catholic Nuns, they were so evil, very unkind. They would beat the girls at every occasion, luckily my father would not allow them to touch me or your aunties but they were still very cruel, all the coloured girls were made to attend basic secretarial lessons, typing, shorthand etc. that’s all we were good for you see. I used to beg grandad all the time to send me to a normal school but he wouldn’t listen.”
As she recalls this reality, she is further irritated by the memory of her subordinate position as a child and the religious impositions that were forced upon her, surrounded by a cloud of conservative discourse: “We were constantly reminded that children should be seen and not heard, and certain topics were off limits as it wasn’t even proper to say the word pregnant in the house.” The environment within which all this occurred however was in direct contrast to the bitter tone with which she described her relationships with adult authority. She spoke fondly of the spatial freedoms she enjoyed whilst growing up, portraying an idyllic setting with large houses and even bigger gardens with swimming pools; all within a temperate climate of warm sun and refreshing rain storms that allowed the subtle scent of mango, guava and avocado trees to fill the air during their respective seasons throughout the year.
My mother left Zimbabwe for the U.K. in 1981, only one year into what is now Robert Mugabe’s thirty-seventh year as President of the country. Having visited sporadically over the years, she has not lived the gradual changes and transitions of an independent Zimbabwe. Instead, she witnessed stark moments of systematic decline in infrastructure, resources and rule of law with every trip, describing the very setting that she spoke so fondly of as now being a relic of what once was.
The reality of my mother’s childhood is largely unrepresentative of broader Rhodesian society at the time as within the unofficial hierarchy of races, being of mixed Chinese and Indian heritage placed her in a superior socio-political position to the majority black indigenous population. By indigenous, I intend those individuals who identify their heritage as being with one or more tribal groups in the region. As such, my mother’s own heritage disassociated her from any knowledge of pre-colonial Zimbabwean culture and customs. Long before she was born, the imperialist goal of bringing the native population into civilised modernity was executed through systematic Christianisation and the colony-wide imposition of British institutional structures. In present-day Zimbabwe, the white and coloured population has greatly decreased, with many who are able to, having opted to emigrate out of the country. In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city and historically industrial hub, this fact in combination with the government’s efforts to promote black social and economic empowerment, has led to private educational institutions, previously attended and staffed by a majority white students and teachers, now seeing a reversal in racial ratio with most teachers and students being predominantly black. Government schools in poor urban high-density areas on the other hand have remained solely indigenous and have maintained much of the organisational structures that had originally been implemented under colonial rule; what has changed are the architects of the curriculum and its content. Considering the substantial changes that have occurred in postcolonial Zimbabwe over a relatively short period of time, my interest lies in exploring the way in which this has affected the dynamics of socialisation and knowledge acquisition within these educational settings; particularly in relation to the significance it has on youths’ formulation of the self.
1.2- Living in a time capsule
I spent my three months of field research being hosted by a coloured Christian family of Seventh day Adventist denomination, the Avery’s with whom my mother had been acquainted, four members of which I had the most contact with. Ellard, the head of the family, was an energetic man in his mid-seventies who spent most of his time working and living at a gold mine he owned on the outskirts of the capital city of Harare. Sandra, his wife in her late fifties, dedicated her days
to caring for her elderly mother. She lived in a spacious four-bedroom bungalow in the Bulawayo suburbs, encircled by a large yard filled with booming flowers, the front of which framed an area of luscious green lawn. Behind the house were a vegetable patch, and two large guava and avocado trees. Stepping inside was like being in a 1940’s time capsule; everything was perfectly maintained like an exhibition I had seen in the Imperial War museum in London depicting how people lived before and after the Second World War. The kitchen was made of pale blue metal cabinets and counters, the living room was floral and the thinning carpets were faded green and dark brown throughout the house. The immaculately polished twelve-seater dining room table was made of a heavy dark oak; this is where I lived.
In spite of their work in the gold mining industry the family was in an economically precarious position having little disposable cash as a result of the many complications that came with working in their particular sector with regards to weather complications, political compromises and long-fingered workers. The country’s overall cash shortage has been aggravated by the fact that banks are only allowed to release around $500 a week to account holders if indeed they have sufficient cash to do so. In addition, the government has issued Zimbabwean bond notes leading to the systematic withdrawal from circulation of the US dollar that has been used as currency since the country’s steep economic decline in 2008. Bond notes are valued 1:1 to the dollar in spite of not being formally recognised as a currency on the foreign exchange market, making it difficult for businesses to pay for the imported goods they require.
Explaining this to me were Ryan, one of Ellard and Sandra’s five children, and his wife Aysha, a young couple in their early thirties with three sons, who lived on a farm in a rural area a hundred kilometres away from Bulawayo. When they had business in the city, they often came to stay at the bungalow for weeks on end during which time they provided me with much information on racial and political sensibilities and advice on how to best approach sensitive topics and with whom, making them my principal gate keepers. Given my mother’s forewarning about what she viewed as Zimbabwe’s social disarray I felt particularly anxious in my ability to gain relevant access to the field during my first couple of weeks. At first appearance, what she told me seemed to be true; the city was riddled with deep potholes and suffered sporadic power cuts. All the houses in the area in which I lived were of a similar size and structure however the majority were badly maintained having broken roofs, overgrown gardens and crumbling security walls with collapsing razor wire. Amongst them were few tidy exceptions such as the Avery’s household however, even in their case, they looked after what they had as opposed to updating it with something new. These are just a few of the elements which supported the notion that, at least in Bulawayo, once a booming industrial city, people were living in a shell of the past. Having said this, amongst the
numerous 1980’s Nissan Sunny’s that were on the road, it was not unusual to see brand new imported Japanese cars; mostly double cab pick-up trucks, indicative of the existence of a counter lifestyle of which little insight was provided to me by those I met. Only Ryan briefly elaborated,
“There is a lot of money to be made in Zimbabwe, in fact it is one of the few countries in which there is so much opportunity to make something out of relatively little, you just have to be resourceful and of course you need to know the right people because as soon as some government minister gets to know that you are doing well, they will either try to shut you down and take over or have a share of the pie.”
Despite the opportunity to which Ryan alluded, his account indicated that the route to achieving and maintaining economic success was strenuous and volatile. Up until that point it appeared as if people’s livelihoods predominantly depended on their resourcefulness rather than the qualifications they held as they seemed to contribute little in helping school leavers obtain formal employment. With this information, I began wondering and making assumptions about what I might hear from the youth that I had framed my research around as I questioned what it was that motivated them to go to school in the first place given the apparent lack of employment opportunities. I expected to hear stories of frustration and disillusionment with regards to the lifestyle structures in which they found themselves and their vision of the future. However, I was surprised at the underlying circumstantial acceptance and even faith in the prospects that they thought the overall societal system could offer.
1.3- Choosing a school in Bulawayo
Discussing my topic with Aysha on our five-hour car journey to Bulawayo from Harare, she appeared particularly knowledgeable on the subject of education as she herself had looked at the pros and cons of different schooling options and had decided to home school her three boys. She described the future of Zimbawean children as being precarious telling me, “the overall sentiment throughout the country is one of survival, having an education is a tool that might help ensure that survival. Although some of the private school children may just bank on the idea that they will simply inherit their parent’s occupations.” Being coloured, her children would typically be expected to go to a private school but with fees starting from $1500 per term, this was not financially viable. She went on to explain, “private school children are spoilt, they prioritise sports over academics”. Government schools on the other hand cost around $65 a term but placing her coloured children in an all-black school was simply not an option. “Education in government
schools is good, the standards are high but I don’t want my boys to be mixing with the wrong type of people, kids there are from very poor homes and don’t really share the same culture and values as my kids.” These comments left me perplexed as I had assumed that her own mixed heritage and economic position would have led her to be less categorical on the subject of race and social standing. Instead, her remarks implied the existence of a hybrid conceptual conflict between race, class and culture, some of the intricacies of which I will be discussing as they became more apparent within the school settings I entered during my research.
It is due to this apparent conflict that I chose to conduct my investigation in two contrasting socioeconomic contexts; namely the second year of a co-educational private school, St. Mary High and a co-educational government school Nomvula High. In doing so, I examined the different ways in which the shared socio-cultural and socio-economic structures are experienced by youth and reproduced within or influenced by these two educational settings. Ultimately my line of investigation seeks to look at the difference between how students in private and government schooling come to understand and narrate their experiences and sense of being in the world. Through participant observation, i.e. attending lessons and school activities, one on one staff interviews and group student interviews, I was given insight as to the values that are promoted within their respective educational settings, the concerns that are fostered and the thought processes that are triggered, contributing to the conceptualisation of the self.
Aysha informed me that I would likely need permission from the Ministry of Education in order to carry out research at a government school whereas it was up to the head teacher’s discretion whether I be allowed access at a private institution. Having familiarised myself with some of the city’s schools beforehand I went through them with her and it turned out that she had been a student at St. Mary High. Her tone was very relaxed and confident as she explained that I would simply need to approach the head mistress whom in all likelihood would have no problem in letting me conduct research. In fact, a couple of days later I was in the head teacher’s office, Mrs Shaw, a white British lady, who received me without appointment and requested a written outline of my intent which I provided. By the start of the following week I was attending classes with the year group of my choice; the form twos, generally aged between thirteen and fifteen. Although Aysha had told me otherwise, I had still not expected it to be that easy though I had done my best to re-assure Mrs Shaw that I would not interfere with the student’s schooling meaning that I had to abandon my intention to hold anthropology workshops as their commitments ran from 08:00 AM till 17:00 PM; their day being divided into two, between morning lessons and compulsory afternoon sporting activities.
As a school, St. Mary was very scenic with the entrance to the staff building being surrounded by a flowering garden, full of luscious green shrubbery and grass. The rest of the school was neatly divided into subject blocks, sciences, humanities, languages etc. The classrooms were large but simple; bright with tall ceilings, traditionally set up in rows of desks all facing a large blackboard, comfortably seating up to thirty students. There was a well-stocked library, mostly used by more senior years as a study area, adorned with student made posters on William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. The rest of the campus was equipped with an outdoor swimming pool, basketball court and two very green rugby and soccer fields.
I was surprised at how equally simple it was to gain access to Nomvula High, having expected a foreign researcher to be met with suspicion. As it turned out this was not the case and with Aysha’s help, I found the correct person in the ministry of education whom to submit a short outline of my motivations to and within three days, permission was granted. I had been given a lot of warnings principally from Ellard and St. Mary students about the school, given that it was in a notoriously poor neighbourhood making it a hotspot for crime, particularly theft. It was clear as I entered the neighbourhood, or ‘location’ as it was referred to, that it was indeed underdeveloped and densely populated with people’s houses being small concrete structures, the front of which normally served as a makeshift market stand for electronic accessories or fresh produce. I imagined the school as having a tense atmosphere with the grounds being run down and unkempt. Instead as I walked in I was met, as in St. Mary, by a smartly dressed guard at the gate looking onto a green and grassy courtyard with blooming flowers being watered by a groundsman. The structure of the classroom blocks themselves were also not dissimilar to St. Mary, being of the same size and set-up. They were however crammed over capacity with more than fifty students and very bare classroom walls; the library also being noticeably understocked. The one sports field they had, was a dusty brown colour as watering priority had clearly been given to the front of the school. There was a shortage of chairs and the wooden desks were very worn but as with everything else, that which was available was kept tidy and maintained.
Making my way around the school all eyes were on me, unlike St. Mary, I sensed that it was more than a case of simple curiosity; all of a sudden I became very aware of the colour of my skin and was soon familiarised with the Ndebele word makiwa, meaning white person. In spite of living in the second biggest city in Zimbabwe, many children in the school would have only ever seen a non-black person on the rare occasions they went into the town centre. I was therefore the first non-black person that they had ever been in direct contact with. Being of mixed Italian, Chinese and Indian heritage their vision of me left me perplexed as having grown up in Europe I had never been considered as such. I tried to explain this to them however I was met with
bewildered stares as they remained unchanged in their opinion, “but look at your hair… your skin compared to mine, you are white.” With this I understood that to them my whiteness was directly proportional to the ‘white’ physical features I had rather than to my racial background. Race was not an insignificant factor at St. Mary either. Although the presence of both black, white and coloured children took the attention off me, amongst themselves there were clear group distinctions. St. Mary had three form two classes; in lessons away from their friends, black and white students naturally sat together and mixed, at break time however there were clear groups of white children separated from the rest of the majority black children although this distinction was much less pronounced amongst boys who integrated a lot through sporting activities.
The topic of race is clearly meaningful. Although it is not the principal subject of enquiry, as my research proceeded it became apparent that the narratives recounted by indigenous children resonated most strongly with my topic of investigation reason for which their accounts are more heavily referenced in this study. The element of race distinctions will be addressed as one of the socio-cultural dynamics within the context of the two formal educational structures. It is however, primarily the economic aspect that differentiates St. Mary and Nomvula High, and that allows me to posit them as microsites that represent the hierarchical structures through which broader socioeconomic and sociocultural dynamics are played out. The relevance of such structures in educational settings is noted by many scholars; as linguistic anthropologist, Stanton Wortham’s argues, educational institutions are pivotal players in the formation of society and culture, acting as bodies of authority and principal disseminators of ideology (Wortham, 2008: 39).
1.4- Towards an anthropology of survival
The role of narrative will be central in my thesis, in that it will be the accounts of youth and their educators that will be at the forefront of my representation of events and supportive of my analysis. I take inspiration from anthropologists Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps in their interpretation of narrative as being that through which the self is expressed and is able to portray the “reflective awareness of being-in-the world, including a sense of one’s past and future” (Ochs & Capps, 1996: 21). Given the multidimensional ideological frameworks of which I posit Zimbabwean society as being comprised of, I find it particularly fitting that their interpretation of narrative allows for the realisation of a multiplicity of partial selves recognised by the narrator as components of a single being (Ibid.: 22). My exploration therefore will be based on the way in which apparent incongruences between partial selves, that inform and are informed by societal structures, are in fact part of an ever-evolving construction of identity allowing for the reconciliation of determined contradictions (Ibid.).
I will begin my first chapter by exploring the theoretical principles that support the reason for which education is an important channel through which youth’s formation of the self can be examined. In the context of Zimbabwe, I intend to make reference to the transformative effects of colonialism whereby schooling was significant such that it was a site in which the process of modernisation could be triggered. The practical societal impact and significance of educational structures in both re-asserting and transforming culture and notions of selfhood will be traced by carrying out a genealogically framed analysis. Briefly examining narratives regarding pre-colonial through to post-colonial forms of youth socialisation structures, I will seek to identify some of the consequences of social restructuring, brought about by the changes made by these up to the present day. I present the efficacy of institutionalised modernisation as resulting from the restructuring of Zimbabwean society such that citizens were rendered participant to the modern experiences promoted in the formal organisations of the state, both during and after colonisation. In doing so allowed them to develop and internalise new ‘untraditional’ systems of meaning. This resulted in the creation of distinct identities and collective, ‘modern’ and ‘civilised’ imaginations of the world (Appadurai, 1996: 5). Consequently, I will highlight the systematic undermining of pre-colonial knowledge structures which I identify in the post-pre-colonial context as being a point of conflict between the aim to pursue both modern neo-liberal market goals whilst still promoting indigeneity. The primary framework through which this indigeneity will be explored is that of the southern African philosophy of Ubuntu traditionally associated to the region. I posit that, particularly in the school setting, the existence of such a conflict problematises those elements that contribute to youths’ conceptualisation of the self, such that an ideological struggle is created whereby the suffering or trauma incurred by colonisation has not become a ‘bridge between cultures’, as suggested by anthropologist Joel Robbins (2013: 453), but rather an unresolved point of cultural contention.
Robbins argues that anthropology has undergone a shift in focus recognising the discipline as having started from the examination of subjects as the ‘savage other’, a framework that reinforced the binaries produced through the civilising processes of colonialism and Christianisation, which in recent decades became untenable and was replaced with an all-encompassing notion of the ‘suffering subject’ (Ibid.: 448). Moving beyond this latter framework, Robbins rather views the pursuit of “the good’ as being that which unites the study of human cultures in his interpretation of the universally shared goal to overcome the all-encompassing, but contextually specific, notion of suffering (Ibid.). However, Robbins’ understanding of all societies universal goal of pursuing their own version of the good, is complicated by the fact that given the
prevalence of oppositional ideologies in any society – e.g., neoliberalism and Ubuntu in Zimbabwe – a clear and socially unifying understanding of the good is difficult to reach.
In my ethnographic analysis, I will depict the contrast between the reception I received when first becoming acquainted with the students at the two sites; principally looking at what my initial interactions revealed about the attitudes they have towards the time they spend in school and the value that they attribute to it. Drawing from their accounts, I will determine the similarities and differences in students’ conceptualisations of the purpose of education and the nature of the challenges that they purported to face both inside and outside the schooling environment. From this I deepen my investigation, presenting students’ accounts of the relationships that they have with their peers, what their friendships are based on, and what the sources of antagonism are that strains them. By unravelling the dynamics of these relationships, I uncover the underlining principles that foster these tensions and grievances revealing the practical realisations of the conflict I recognise as existing between traditional and modern neo-liberal ideologies.
More directly addressing the subject of the formulation of the self, my third chapter will explore the parameters within which youths’ agency is expressed primarily exploring the disciplining structures and mechanisms that they are subjected to. More specifically, I will outline how youth came to discuss their values and matters of morality, looking at both the scholastic elements and subjectivities that influence their conceptual construction of ‘the good’ (2013: 458). These are significant such that it is through the acquisition of determined values and moral codes, that notions of, what the good is comprised of, are formed. Robbins will be further referenced with regards to his portrayal of the way in which morals and values are fostered whereby he builds on James Laidlaw’s argument against the interpretation of societal structures being responsible for the acquirement of morals such that it disregards the significance of personal reflexive choices (Robbins, 2007: 294). Robbins’ account brings to light the existence of conflicting value spheres, understood the as the significance prescribed to the multiplicity of individual concepts that make up a society, upon which a determined culture is structured. He argues that by exercising freedom of choice, over time, these conflicts are resolved and new stable structures are formed once, though these choices, the dominant sphere succeeds in superseding that which results in being subordinate (Ibid.: 302). With this in mind, I argue that the youth I interacted with in Bulawayo are faced with a stalemate in the struggle between old and new value spheres making it difficult for clear and stable structures to develop. Philosophy professor Pascah Mungwini problematises this phenomenon particularly referring to the Zimbabwean context identifying the existence of an irreconcilable moral pluralism where “the good is not identified with any one particular moral system” (2011: 774).
Finally, my last chapter will discuss the narratives constructed by students in their accounts of the experience and rapport that they have with enduring aspects of traditional practices within the context of contemporary modern societal structures. In addition, by looking at the way in which youth discuss their setting and aspirations for the future, I will demonstrate how the struggle persists when trying to define belonging and articulate what they have come to view as being the good and how they intend to achieve it. Within the analysis of these chapters I will show the differences and similarities between how youth from the two school settings manage the respective struggles with which they are faced. I intend to conclude that ultimately regardless of whether a clear conceptualisation of the good is reached, the unifying ideology that is created is one of survival. This is not fuelled by suffering, but rather spawned from the valorisation of resilience; compatible with the present multifaceted societal product of pre-colonial and post-colonial structures and ideologies. As such, I recognise survival as being the defining element of present day Zimbawean youth’s identity that transcends societally antagonistic elements such as race, class or culture.
2. Looking from the inside-out
2.1- Situating meaning in education
The structural purpose and societal influence of formal education structures is a topic that has been examined in depth amongst all branches of social sciences. Parallel to the world of academia are those transnationally geared institutions such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a branch of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) whose mission is based on promoting “policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.”1 The PISA rankings represent the
quality of an educational system by measuring data against statistical indicators representing academic performance and demographic equity indicative of a given nations success in promoting the OECD agenda. The underpinning rhetoric linking economic development to education, is similarly promoted by the United Nations’ (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals(SDG) seeking “to wipe out poverty through sustainable development by 2030” 2 partly by ensuring
“inclusive and equitable quality education.”2
It is not the link between socioeconomic improvement and education that I intend to bring into question, rather the assessment through which a given educational system is deemed to be positively influencing the wellbeing of its student population. In his critique of post-colonial schooling in Zimbabwe, education sociologist Edward Shizha presents an argument which challenges the neo-liberally framed systems of measurement adopted by institutions such as the UN and OECD. Shizha contends that the Euro-centric model upon which Zimbabwean schooling is based disregards indigenous knowledge. As a result, students are alienated from the experiences and perspectives of indigenous life-worlds, thus making their educational realities contextually inadequate and disenfranchised from broader sociocultural realities. (Shizha, 2006: 21).
In line with this critique, anthropologist Carol Worthman proposes an alternative adoption of the Inside-Out and Outside-In dual development model underpinning UN and OECD missions. The logic of this model is such that outside-in investments of society to the individual, in the form of health and education in early life, will in the long run result in a return “through reciprocal gains in lifetime productivity that benefit society as a whole (inside-out).” (Worthman, 2011: 433). In the typical adaptation of the model, units of measurement are determined by an economically driven system of logic whereby monetary investment in health and early education
1http://www.oecd.org/about/
is deemed necessary in order to increase citizens’ material capability to achieve an acceptable standard of living (Worthman, 2011: 434). Given the subjective nature of determining what an acceptable standard would be, Worthman argues that, rather than being solely driven by economic investment, this model should rather also consider the sociostructural elements that influence the output of human capital and wellbeing that is produced. These elements include opportunity for social mobility as well as choice of, and access to goods that are perceived to provide added value to quality of life (Ibid.). Particularly in relation to early education, Worthman lays out the case for it carrying out a mediatory function between the welfare of the individual and broader social development such that it is aimed at empowering and equipping students with the necessary knowledge to make informed choices that will allow for effective participation in both the local and global social community (2011: 435). It is therefore what this knowledge is comprised of and promotes, that Worthman posits as requiring careful consideration as it is a key component of youth socialisation and determinant for their conceptualisation of what constitutes and what is required to attain a “well lived life” (2011: 440). It is also for this reason that I argue that contextually relevant qualitative aspects, such as the issue of the inclusion of indigenous knowledge, should be considered in the assessment of the quality of an educational system. Such an approach lays out the path for a more qualitatively based analysis than those proposed by the above-mentioned organisations, providing a more closely human centred mode of enquiry and understanding of the function and effect of education.
In the case of Zimbabwe, the government’s compulsory education policy has resulted in high literacy rates, but appears to have done little towards providing youth with the sociostructural elements proposed by Worthman such as job opportunities and consequently choice through economic empowerment. When I asked Mrs McQuillan, both a form two parent and French teacher at St. Mary, about the future of students her response was very clear,
“At home right now my motto is Grow and Go. There is nothing for them right now here. Everything is hard, even if you finish at NUST3 or UZ4, you can’t get a job it’s not guaranteed,
you’ll sit for another five, ten years and end up doing something you never even trained for so I try to Grow and Go. Get whatever you need to do here in high school and leave.”
At another encounter with two St. Mary mothers Milly and Riya, I asked what would happen once their daughters acquired their diplomas, would they be able to find work in Zimbabwe? Both of
3 National University of Science and Technology
them responded firmly, "No". " So, you are both fully expecting your children to go and work abroad?” I asked, “I can imagine that to be tough." Milly began to explain, "Yes we just get them educated … " Her voice broke and trailed off as she became emotional at the thought that it would be difficult to take time off and obtain visas to go and visit them. I couldn’t help but ponder on the fact that these were parents of youth who had the opportunity to consider leaving the country to work or study abroad enabling them to situate the notion of “the good life” outside of Zimbabwe leaving me to question where less economically affluent government school youth placed their prospects for the future.
In spite of the apparent ineffectiveness of schooling in helping youth find work in the country, the educational structures in which they find themselves persist in playing a formative role in the conceptual frameworks through which meaning is ascribed to both their immediate lived, and broader imagined, realities. Edward Bruner posits meaning as being integral to an individual’s experience such that it allows for the interpretation and recounting of the past, the reflexive self-awareness of the present and for the imagination of future expectations (Bruner, 1986: 8). Meaning is therefore also the foundation upon which core values are formed, although Burner recognises that values are not necessarily meaningfully connected, resulting in an array of “discords and harmonies” between them (Ibid.: 36). Through the knowledge structures fostered within the educational environment, youth make sense of their subjective experiences and construct the reality, within which they use the systems of meaning they have acquired to make informed choices on how to best navigate within it so as to achieve what they have come to understand as a good life. With this lies the possibility for knowledge structures to be operationalised by the state for the purpose of promoting a determined ideological, political and/or economic agenda; influencing the significance of the good.
By examining the interplay between the educational structures through which meaning is disseminated and the mechanisms behind subjective interpretation, I will consider education scholar Linda Graham’s (2007) reflection of modern educational structures being geared towards the formation of the ‘ideal’ citizen. According to both Graham and fellow education scholar Stanton Wortham (2008), these educational structures play a pivotal role in the development of society and culture, acting as bodies of authority and principal disseminators of ideology. Taking inspiration from Foucault’s work on the development of modern state mechanisms in The Archaeology of Knowledge, Graham (2007: 202) goes into particular detail on how prescribed discourse is institutionalised and used to promote desired morals, values and conception of the common good. The disciplining function of educational knowledge systems is expressed through the narratives they disseminate that allow for the regulation of students’ formulation of the self; in
order to promote truths that will encourage citizens to comply with the state’s sociocultural and socioeconomic agenda (Ibid.: 203).
In spite of the fact that Nomvula is a government school compared to St. Mary which is privately administered, the discourse encountered in both settings alluded to them both having the objective of nurturing socially minded and productive individuals, which would in their perspective, contribute to the development of an ‘ideal’ citizen. In an interview with St. Mary’s headmistress Mrs Shaw, she told me:
“Their schooling is meant to prepare them for life, is not just for university or for a career, is actually meant to be realistic which is why we do their academic, the cultural, the spiritual and sporting so that they are able to go out of function in society and have an understanding of what their contribution should be. So, we want them to go out and have what I would call the value-added… we need to be giving them values and moral codes that allows them to go out to make a difference.”
When asked what he expected from an Nomvula student, the headmaster Mr Nkala gave a similar albeit more pragmatic response,
“I expect students to be well-groomed generally, hard-working. A student who is cultured. Let me give you one example. The University of Zimbabwe in Harare medical school, 90% of the students and doctors are from this school, so this is what we aim for, to produce students who can fit anywhere and be usable, cultured, well-behaved so that at most it benefits them by way of their working environment… By cultured I mean someone who is composed, well behaved generally because there is an element in our ministries motto which says Ubuntu, that’s human. That element is the one that I’m talking about.”
Mrs Shaw’s open-ended and romanticised response reflected a more abstract and universally inclusive notion of an ‘ideal’ citizen whereas Mr Nkala clearly referenced wanting to promote the nation state’s developmental objectives, introducing the culturally specific ideological structure through which this would be sought after, namely via the conceptual framework of
Ubuntu. It is this indigenously focused perspective that African linguist Jacob Mapara argues in
favour of in his analysis of pre-through to post-colonial education. He champions the effectiveness of traditional forms of Zimbabwen education in relation to the values that it was intended to endorse; namely the wisdom of elders in guiding youth through the “experiences of the past that
they should emulate or avoid” with the use of proverbs, riddles, folktales, songs, legends and myths (Mapara, 2009: 142). With this in mind, Mapara views colonial education structures as being “incompatible to an African child’s experience” such that the ‘modern’, neo-liberally driven framework has transformed what Bruner would refer to as the ‘meaning’ of that which is thought of as being a good quality life. As a result, aspirations and expectations for the future have been structurally manipulated (Ibid.). In an Ndebele class at St. Mary for example, the class teacher took the time to explain to me that often white students outperformed black students; this is due to their approach to the subject from a purely academic standpoint. For some black students however, to the subject was attached a stigma related to social status in that their parents did not encourage them to learn the language preferring for their children to only speak English; indicative of the persisting subordination of traditional culture in favour of the pursuit of modernisation (Mhloyi, 1998: 243).
Although Nomvula is attended solely by students of indigenous background, the school was founded under colonial rule and has maintained what education scholar Norrel London (2002) denotes as the western humanist educational structure of the time, with the core subjects being Mathematics, English, Science, History and Geography, all of which are officially taught in the English language. Zimbabwe’s ministry of education has explicitly sought to address the concern over cultural loss by advocating the traditional southern African philosophy of Ubuntu. Mungwini supports the integration of the principle of Ubuntu within formal education as a way of addressing what he recognises as being “the moral decadence that seems to have set in and is running through all the strata of [Zimbabwean] society” (Mungwini, 2011: 774). He recognises societal issues as being rooted in the enduring ideologically oppositional, individualist and rationalist ideals promoted by colonialists, acknowledging the Zimbabwean commission’s endorsement of Ubuntu in schools as a way to “help to prepare the young to participate in the global world without losing their Zimbabwean identity” (Ibid.: 777).
I posit however, that if this was indeed the foundational philosophy through which pre-colonial society operated, it may be problematic to endorse the sentiment of Ubuntu outside of the functionally significant practices carried out within the context of traditional lifestyles and social organisation. The nature of this communally based philosophy may therefore struggle to realise itself within the modern educational systems geared at producing an economically productive workforce. Without the support of the complementary meaning creating practices carried out within traditional societal structures, certain values and moral frameworks may result in being less socially useful if not incompatible in helping to achieve determined economic goals therefore undermining their relevance within such a context and abstracting Ubuntu from its intended
practical function. With this, a contradiction arises within the ideological and economic position promoted by the state, supporting my argument that the formation of identities of Zimbabwean youth is subject to both moral and systematic inconsistencies.
2.2- I am therefore we are
When considering Zimbabwe’s pre-colonial setting, the state’s efforts to produce the ‘ideal citizen’ through a marriage of modernity and tradition is diluted in its significance. This is true such that the geographic region contemporarily known as Zimbabwe, contained multiple ethnic and tribal groups each of which had their own laws and customs enforced outside of the structures of a modern nation state and contemporary notions of citizenship. The transmission of values and culture was carried out at a local level via oral accounts and everyday enactment of customary practises and duties. It is through these practices that the philosophy of Ubuntu was legitimised and sustained in its facilitation of safeguarding the survival of the community by ensuring the appropriate socialisation of youth (Maunganidze, 2016: 2). Polygamy and worship of ancestral spirits for instance, was a common aspect of various tribal cultures as were particular ritualistic customs normally used for healing purposes, which later became denoted as witchcraft (Stambach, 2010: 366). In origin, the philosophy of Ubuntu is based on the practice of traditional customs and ways of life, enshrined within the structures of African communalism (Mungwini, 2011: 780). From this standpoint, it is defined as being a common moral position whereby “a person is a person among other persons” (Mangena, 2016: 67). Ubuntu also provides a specific existential framework though which the self can be conceptualised, the essence of which is best captured by philosopher John Mbiti’s statement “I am because we are, since we are therefore I am” (1969: 215).
The restructuring effects of colonialism referred to by Mapara altered sociocultural trajectories and priorities such that the drive for western modernisation models saw the development of urban centres resulting in the erosion of traditional family structures through which determined values were customarily transmitted. In present-day Zimbabwe, the economically driven national development narrative paired with the apparent lack of internal opportunity has contributed to the further disintegration of household organisation across all strata of society but primarily within the urban setting. Ida, the accountant at St. Mary told me that since her arrival in 2008 there had been a consistent increase in the amount of school fees that arrived from abroad as more and more parents left the country for work, leaving their children behind with relatives or in boarding houses. Similarly, during my interview with students at Nomvula, many of the students described their living situation as being headed by older siblings
or other family members as their parents, in search of income, were forced to move elsewhere in the country or migrate to South Africa. Consequently, in such cases the school setting by default becomes the principal authoritative site of value formation and cultural acquisition.
Speaking with students in both schools, those of indigenous heritage were easily able to tell me which tribe they belonged to. When I asked about the difference between the tribes however I would receive different versions of the same answer, “the languages are different but otherwise it’s the same.” I always pushed for more information about tribal customs; out of the twelve groups that I interviewed, only one respondent was able to elaborate. Joshua was a thirteen-year-old boy at St. Mary, I had been eager for him to participate as he immediately stood out as having a strong mischievous but jovial character to which his classmates responded positively. He explained, “It’s a complete different language and ways of calling family members. In Ndebele, if my older brother has a daughter, I am her uncle and in Shona, if my older brother has a daughter, she is my aunty.” “What about the things they do?” I asked, “Are there things that they do differently from one another?” to which he responded vaguely, “I was told that in Ndebele, to show that they are Ndebele, they put a huge ear ring, they put a hole in their ear but no one really does that anymore.” Not getting much definitive information, I broadened my questions asking about how Zimbabwe compared to other countries, “Is there something that you think Zimbabweans do better than other places?” Another boy in the group, Tinashe responded, “Yes, culture. Us in Zimbabwe we take culture to the max, like the weddings for example – they are crazy.” Joshua expanded, “Like in other weddings that I watch on TV they have the ceremony and you may kiss the bride and all that and then they just do slow dancing. But then here, there is singing, the bride’s parents come and talk and they dance and it’s not slow dancing.” Other than this however, I found there to be little interest or knowledge in traditional practices.
The extent of cultural disassociation was made apparent to me when interviewing Nomvula students who in their vague accounts of traditional customs, expressed disdain for blood rituals in which an animal would be sacrificed and the blood drunk by the participants. This anecdote is particularly relevant in that the aspect of blood is seen to be symbolically significant in the representation of Ubuntu to the extent that a society is characterised by those peoples who share the same blood. As such, the connection created through blood also denotes the sharing of societal responsibilities and experiences such as praise and blame (Mangena, 2016: 67). With this becomes clear the effectiveness of the restructuring mechanisms implemented during colonialism. They not only systematically re-arranged societal structures, but also significantly eroded and supplanted long-standing knowledge systems and ideologies in a relatively short period of time.
2.3- Cultural amnesia
Playing the tourist in Bulawayo city centre, I often walked past the long parade of souvenir vendors in front of City Hall. Alongside the keychains and various soapstone carvings of hippos, lions, crocodiles and giraffes, were colourful and intricately beaded bracelets, head dresses and paintings depicting warriors and hunters. Accompanied by Aysha, she would smile as I picked up an item for inspection; noticing her amusement one day I asked her why she reacted that way, “I used to make these you know,” referring to the head dresses. “A lot of the materials come from South Africa, it’s very easy. They are just for tourists anyway as the indigenous people don’t really wear them anymore, and those paintings, it’s so silly they are Maasai warriors, they have nothing to do with Zimbabwe.” I had been completely prepared to be exploited in my status as a foreign visitor by being sold overpriced imitation artefacts, but as Aysha continued in her account of how or where the souvenirs were made, a deep sense of disillusionment swept over me with the thought of the degree to which they were disassociated to the Zimbabwean context to the extent that another nation’s cultural imagery was being borrowed from. As I picked out trinkets for my friends amongst a swarm of fervently competitive vendors, I had expected to be metaphorically courted with tales of the processes of traditional artisanship or the meaning behind the symbolism being depicted on a tapestry or wooden bowl. Instead, they simply appealed to me to buy from them as a favour, as if I were making a charitable donation to a good cause; reducing my purchase to the type of marketing tool intended to symbolise the struggle that is being sought to be overcome.
The corrosive effects of the socioeconomic hardships being faced by Zimbabweans were continuously being confirmed by people I met on a daily basis. The dairy farmer, Vera, from whom we would buy our milk, was a white lady in her seventies. Aysha informed me that years ago she used to breed racing horses. She went in to tell me that Vera had been the best breeder in the region but with the arrival of the country’s economic crisis the market soon dried up. As she explained Aysha could not hide her pity “She’s not married and now the cows are now her only income, it’s not easy at her age.” In school, the teachers I spoke to would tell me about how students couldn’t afford basic resources. In my interview with David, a Design and Technology teacher at Nomvula, he explained, “A pencil costs a dollar, but you will find that in class students don’t have anything to write with or on, so they share amongst themselves because they don’t have the money to even buy a pencil.” St. Mary school children were not exempt as the French teacher Mrs McQuillan told me, a lot of resource issues were dealt with in a communal manner:
“We try to network because I know now in school we have this thing that children should provide their own textbooks to try and help or ease the school’s burden because there are not many right
now in the classroom…Parents ask why aren’t we using the latest edition of this and that, and we were like, we can only go so far considering the economic situation and you have got to get the books from outside of the country and it’s expensive so we said ok, let’s get our own text books. Some children can afford and others can’t so sometimes we network, do you have this or do you have that.”
As my research progressed, I began to build a picture of the deeper significance behind the ‘struggle’ that I saw as being represented by my souvenir purchases, a struggle that went beyond economic hardship and that had triggered the uncomfortable feeling I had experienced. The first moment of reflection was triggered by a History lesson at St. Mary. The teacher, Mrs Ngwabi an energetic black woman in her forties, began the class with the students outside the classroom. She threw a handful of small sweets into the air that the students then had to compete for. She had made it a point to not have enough in order to insight a sense of urgency for everyone to grab a sweet before they all finished; this is how she introduced the topic of the Scramble for Africa. The students appeared to respond well to the exercise, sitting with their textbooks open in front of them, they were fully engaged in the discussion and seemed capable to grasp and interpret the concepts of the scramble, imperialism and colonialism. From a swarm of hands one of the girls, Abigail was chosen and confidently answered, “Colonialism is when you take something and you give it your own influence.” Mrs Ngwabi expanded, “Yes, it has both a political and social impact.” It was the next question however that left the class in silence:
“What does it mean to be civilised? Africans were seen as savage and barbaric with their practices and religions but they could not be called uncivilized as they had clear social structures. Did you know that slavery for instance, existed in Africa long before the Europeans arrived? Capturing slaves was common practice between warring tribes. Who has been to the Christmas Pass in Mutare? That was built by slaves.”
“What goes around comes around then” mumbled Declan, one of the white students. No one reacted and Mrs Ngwabi appeared not to have heard the comment but instead was taken aback when no one in the class seemed familiar with the winding mountain pass to which she referred, “I am sure most of you have been to places in South Africa and not seen your own country which has many beautiful things to offer.” She went on to reel off several other cultural sites to which only a handful of students had been to visit.
The atmosphere in the classroom had now changed; students stared blankly at the teacher. Information on pre-colonial Zimbabwean civilisation was not included in their textbooks for them to be able to construe a comment from. What struck me was that in spite of the fact that the large majority of the class was of indigenous background, no one could offer any personal knowledge on the discussion. Only Suzie, another white student in the class commented, “I’m not being racist Miss but before white people came there was nothing here, it was just black.” Again, there was no reaction from the class and this time Mrs Ngwabi clearly ignored the comment. The lesson continued with the class being made to analyse an image in their textbook that had been published in a German socialist magazine during the colonial era. The sketch was of a black man being held in a vice which was being kept in place and tightened by a soldier. The man had gold falling out from the bottom of the vice into a bucket. A priest was standing on the side preaching with the bible open as another man poured whisky in to the black man's mouth. She used this image to discuss the divisive use of alcohol and Christianity in the processes of colonisation, “I am a Christian and I am grateful to the whites for bringing the Bible but the holy book was misused as a manipulative tool.” She explained that missionaries had arrived before colonialism and had been widely unsuccessful in converting the native population.
“The tribal chiefs were accepting of the missionaries because they wanted to establish trading ties with Europe. The only people who converted to Christianity at that time were captured slaves and outcasts who wanted to distinguish themselves from the ruling authority. Although some missionaries sought to protect local cultures, others welcomed Colonialism as they saw it as the only way to allow for the spread of Christianity… although the advantages of colonialism may outweigh the disadvantages, it does not make it right.”
A similar narrative was portrayed at Mpopopma with the students there being taught about the same period of history. In the class I attended, the teacher went through the pros and cons of the arrival of the British; the pros being the structures that were built and again, the introduction of Christianity. She described how Lobengula, the Ndebele chief at the time, had been tricked into signing away the rights to his land because he was illiterate and was lied to by his advisors who had told him that he was entering into an exchange whereby he would grant exclusive rights to the British to mine in his territory in exchange for gold and weapons. This fact led to the teacher proclaiming, “Although Lobengula was cheated by his advisors, he was also not cheated because he had a lust for the precious goods that he wanted”. The phrasing alluded to assignment of fault
on moral grounds allowing for the communication of the idea that the responsibility for the occurrence of colonialism was to be shared by the native population.
This representation of events left me perplexed in its recognition of cultural loss but appreciation for the augmentation of social arrangement and ideology principally with respect to religion. The narratives recounted by the teachers and anecdotes referred to by students, demonstrated the awareness of a past which was starkly different to present-day society in structure and belief system. However, in spite of the unsolicited ousting of what once was, there appeared to be little memory of, or love lost for the sociocultural elements of that time. With regards to the effects of colonial education systems, London recognises a link between the internal curricular and pedagogic practices and external structures whereby education systems were used to nurture the acquisition of culture, norms and knowledge forms in order to produce agents who would “contribute to the ideological hegemony of dominant groups”, i.e. the British colonisers (London, 2002: 53-54). This meant promoting western civility and cultural heritage through subjects that encouraged the advancement of the humanist tradition the values of which comprised of “knowledge of ‘the truth’, love of ‘beauty’, and cultivating the habit of doing ‘good’”, all of which contributed to the enduring dependence on the super-imposed culture (London, 2002: 55). It is this mechanism of the re-education of values through manufactured reliance that was being represented in the depiction of the restrained African man during the history class at St. Mary. The fact that the man was being restrained portrayed the forcible prescription of these values; The bible representing the enforced submission to Christianity, the liquor, the creation of dependence and the extraction of gold, the exploitation of peoples and resources.
2.4- Uncovering the mechanisms of social transformation
I view the conflicting narratives around which youths’ ‘selves’ are formed to be that which constitutes the ‘struggle’ that they contend with (Ochs & Capps, 1996: 21). It is through this lens that educational institutions have been particularly significant in their function as bureaucratic micro sites of knowledge legitimisation, production and transference around which the boundaries of broader sociocultural structures are defined and reproduced, hence the success of colonialism (De Rada, 2007: 215). I also argue however that the creation and reproduction of culture and meaning is not a unilateral top-down imposition of power, as the role of schooling holds further importance in its function as a ‘theatre’ for identity formation and ultimately for the promotion of social change (De Boeck & Honwana, 2005: 2). The process of identity formation amongst youth represents a moment of cultural transition whereby in order to establish selfhood, the legitimacy of subjective truths is negotiated by challenging pre-existing knowledge structures through their
own discourse and embodied performance of the self (Turner, 1986: 12). It is in this way that the theatrical element of schooling comes about, in that youth use it as a platform upon which to experiment and negotiate into existence various characteristics of themselves by confronting them with others. London refers to this process of compromise as “politics of official knowledge.” (London, 2002: 55). In this process, new meanings and cultural realities are introduced and it is therefore via this intersubjective exchange that youth can be recognised as being creative agents of sociocultural transformation (LeVine, 2011: 428). As such, the formative impact of the ideologies promoted within a given educational system can be examined by looking at the culture and values that are produced. This production is dependent on youths’ reflexive expression of agency in the context of differently situated and structured educational entities.
Through this understanding, this chapter examines the role that formal education structures in Zimbabwe has played and plays in influencing youths’ formulation of their sense of being. I have sought to demonstrate this by examining the ideological heritage upon which their present-day subjective realities are built, to then be able to contextualise how and what sociocultural, political and economic grievances are expressed and experienced in the respective institutions. Building on this framework will allow me to confront the two sites by scrutinising the unique ways in which these socioeconomically stratified institutions impact student’s development of selfhood and identity. Consequently, my ethnographic analysis will present the distinct cultural factors and contextually determined logic through which their life choices are devised. In doing so, I will be able to make explicit the different ways in which the societal mechanisms of Worthman’s ‘outside’ influence the ‘inside’ subjectivities of individuals (2011: 433) depending on the content and structure of the educational system in which they find themselves.
3. Connecting parallel realities of public and private schooling
3.1- Who is this Makiwa?
“School is our first home, we spend so much time here,” said Miriam during my first week at St. Mary. Ndebele class had been cancelled that day to fit in a library orientation session, teaching the students about the different research resources available. I sat around a large square table with five girls, Eileen, Charlize, Suzie, Dani, and Miriam, most of whom looked quite bored, Eileen explained that she had used the library quite a lot the year before to borrow books, “I like adventure books but there is not much here, the library is pretty outdated, they need to get more”. The rest of the table agreed, “Yeah, we need more variety,” said Dani, a petite coloured girl with a mousey voice who whispered her words when she spoke. The class was informal enough for me to engage in conversation whilst the librarian called students up table by table to show them how to use the Encyclopaedia Britannica collection.
This is how I was first able to familiarise myself with St. Mary’s form twos who up till then had only seen me sitting in their class, taking notes and walking around the school, finally they had the chance to interact with me. My performance in that moment was crucial as it would determine what would be communicated about me to other students and ultimately the amount or type of information that I would receive during my time there. I felt the pressure as I had noticed students suspiciously glancing over at me when I took notes. I had not been given any introduction so they knew nothing about why I was amongst them; was I a spy, there to report bad behaviour? Very politely albeit a bit abruptly, Suzie asked, “May I ask where you are from?” I explained that I had arrived from Amsterdam but that I had grown up in London. “I knew that already you know, I could tell” announced Eileen, “That’s because I used to live there.” Charlize continued the inquisition, “Are you here to join the school, our class?” Though their curiosity I was able to go into detail about what I was doing and as I answered more of their questions about my age and background I eventually had the opportunity to ask them about their school and what they thought about it. Leila began, “Well I get up at around six thirty and with sports and homework, my day ends at ten, there is just too much sport.” Three of the girls nodded in agreement.
By then I had been in Bulawayo for a little over two weeks, the environment was all very new to me so simply walking in the town centre through vegetable stands, houseware and electrical stores had been sufficient to curb any boredom. There was no “nice” part of town where one might imagine young private school children might meet up and not having seen one, the students confirmed that the city’s cinema had also been shut down leaving me to question what students did outside of St. Mary. It became clear that school took most of their time as even the week ends
