By Munhamu Pekeshe

NEWS about completion of the national sixth form selection exercise and subsequent mailing of offer letters reached me while I was busy weeding our maize crop field, in the company of my mother.
She had been doing most of the talking, as in recent days, enjoying extended celebrations for me having passed my ‘O’ Levels.
Mother counselled son, recalling troubled childhood aptly captured in my first name, as she spoke on the virtues of a successful and cultured future. Zivakwavakabva was the title of a Shona novel she had read years before.
We put away our hoes.
I headed for a bath at the local river.
The Chigumba bus to Harare via Chivhu would leave very early the next morning. Mother headed for Unyetu Primary School to collect mail box keys so that we could intercept the mail at the local post office in Chivhu.
We got to the post office quite early, collected the all-important mail and later phoned father who was working in Mutare.
I had been offered a lower six place at Chinhoyi High, Stuart Hostel.
By mid-day I was with my father buying uniforms at Barbours.
Quite intimidating and very different from the atmosphere at Nathos and EnBee uniform stores I was accustomed to in Mutare.
Before long I was in my new uniform kit on my way to Chinhoyi.
I dropped in town around dusk.
I decided to sacrifice part of my pocket money for a taxi ride to a school whose whereabouts I was clueless.
I got to Stuart House when the other boys were lining up to enter the dining Hall.
The House Master arranged for my trunk to be taken to a dormitory upstairs and invited me to join others in the dining hall.
Everyone appeared to look at me with curious eyes.
It was my first time to be so close to white, Indian and coloured boys.
This was also my first taste of boarding school.
Food was in abundance.
There was macaroni cheese, bread and fresh milk.
I easily copied how others were serving themselves.
Horror came when I now had to hold folk and knife.
I had never come across such stubborn cutlery before.
I cursed my ancestry for the cruel initiation.
Twenty four hours before I had been weeding our maize field in Unyetu; sadza and muboora my farewell dinner.
Junior black boys at the tabled worsened my torment through their constant giggling.
The head of table tried to come to my rescue by offering me a spoon.
I was too upset and unsettled to proceed.
I indicated I was not hungry and opted for a glass of milk and bread.
For the next few months my stay was characterised by a struggle to fit and belong into this new society.
Speaking with a new accent, trying not to mind race odours or pretending not to like sadza was never going to be easy.
Consequently I was slow off the blocks in class.
Even the sports curriculum I found intimidating; rugby, cricket and athletics standards.
Quite a number of the black boys mixed easily on white terms.
Some spoke to us new comers of the good old days when the majority of the school pupils had been white.
Others pitied my rural manners.
It was only much later that I found my feet.
I had started to talk to ‘KT’, who was in Upper Six.
He had been an enigma until then.
Withdrawn, studious and a physical fitness fanatic, things had been said about KT. He was also said to have been the dark figure behind a pupils strike against racism the year before.
It was a strike that saw the exodus of white pupils to found Lomagundi College. Many black rebels had been expelled.
KT, the suspected mastermind had somehow escaped the net.
White shepherds and their black flock looked at him with suspicion.
The more I spoke to him the more I got to understand how pleasant and intelligent he was.
Three decades later he has remained my sahwira.
KT, during our shared year at Chinhoyi, taught me that to win white respect you must be fiercely yourself and proud of your identity.
They will respect and hate you.
If you mimic them they will like and disrespect you.
I chose the former.
KT, a true son of Chinhoi, was proud of his Unendoro roots.
He spoke passionately about his origins in the Chinhoi people of the Nzou totem who originated from Dande.
They are an early migration from Tanzania.
Myth has it they crossed the Zambezi after Biri split the Zambezi waters Moses style.
Some of them settled in Chinhoi while others went to Chihota near Marondera. Those that settled around modern day Chinhoyi town used Chinhoyi caves for refuge from Nguni raids.
The pool in the caves was used for rituals.
During one of the ceremonies Mawurukira, son of Kudavaranda, went into trance, dived into the blue waters and never resurfaced.
Akarovera mudziva hence the name Chirorodziva.
KT also reminded us that it was in Chinhoyi that the Second Chimurenga began in earnest.
I found it amazing that KT would proudly recall his roots so passionately in an environment in which most of his peers at this school were in a vicious struggle to wash away their black identity.
I was just 17 years old when I went to Chinhoyi High, marginally older than the famous Chinhoyi battle that heralded the Second Chimurenga.
December of that year, back in the village for Christmas, Munaro, a war veteran who had not finished his Grade Seven, spoke eloquently about that battle and the seven martyrs.
I captured the name Peter Guzuzu, thinking he was making it up.
Years later I discovered Munaro probably had his facts right.
Last week I was back in Chinhoyi for our Annual Conference.
I was overwhelmed by nostalgia for KT, the Chinhoi people, the Chinhoi seven and Munaro.
I was sitting next to a very old delegate from Mberengwa.
As the President delivered his opening address, referring to the machinations of the West, my neighbour made a one word entry into his notebook; Mabitishi. Education is no barrier to political education, I reasoned.