African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [103]
Two end-of-term parties were in preparation. Form One’s meal was to be stewed goat and sadza. The goat had been killed and its parts were divided into bloody heaps on the ground. The good bits were already stewing. Form Four were having superior food–white bread, a treat. Jack had ordered twenty loaves from the store. They would be eaten without butter or jam. When he was invited to supper with the parents of a pupil, he was offered white bread and tea, and they said, ‘We are poor people, we can’t afford margarine.’
Before we left we tried to visit the clinic but it was closed. One of the teachers said bitterly that there was nothing in it but anti-malaria pills and aspirin. Another said, smiling apologetically, we should take no notice of the first–he was exaggerating, we must understand they were all feeling sad because it was the end of term. A doctor visited the school once a month. When there was an accident or someone got really ill, they were taken to hospital. Please remember that not long ago there was no clinic here at all.
It was hard to say goodbye to Jack. By then we had understood that it was he who was running–or at least tried to–this school. His was the real authority. An impossible position, for no one could acknowledge that he was: not he, not the other teachers.
We drove away under the cold sky, and to the hotel and found the space of the dining-room wantonly, wastefully large after the tiny rooms in Jack’s house. We ate cold meat and salad, apple pie and ice-cream, surrounded by black people, mostly local businessmen, shopkeepers and Chefs, all lucky enough not to be in a bush school with little hope of escape. We thought–of course–of how electric light and clean lavatories, a telephone and running water were not to be taken for granted; reminded ourselves that both of us had been brought up in the bush in houses that had no electric light or running water or indoor lavatories. We were afflicted by that sense of division, foreboding, and anxious incredulity that comes from moving too quickly from utter poverty to the amenities of the hotel in the little provincial town which owes its importance to being on the road north to Zambia.
Then we visited a woman who is involved with the recruiting and supervision of teachers from America and countries in Europe. She said, ‘You would be surprised how many of the headmasters go bad.’ We told her a version of the current joke: What is the most dangerous occupation in Zimbabwe these days? Answer: Headmaster. You’ll be lucky to get away with five years. (Told us by a teacher in Harare, when he heard we were off to visit a secondary school.) She said that when a headmaster ‘goes bad’ often his school is run by youngsters from Britain, Sweden, Germany, but she tells them, ‘Don’t do it. Do what you are supposed to do, no more: you are doing these people no favour by taking over the responsibility. All right–the place goes to pieces. Then one of them will have to face up to it.’ She said it was very hard for young people full of idealism to stand by and watch things go to pieces when they have skills to deal with them. She tells them, ‘You must remember that from the moment you were born you’ve been absorbing the skills of the modern world–you’ve acquired them without even knowing it. But they haven’t. How do you think they are going to learn if you just do it all for them?’
One of the Chefs has just made a speech saying that the ex-pat teachers should all be sent home, there was no need for them. How did she feel about that, we asked?
‘If you’re going to get upset by that kind of thing, you shouldn’t be in Zimbabwe,’ said this strong-minded lady. ‘Anyway, half the speeches they make are for popular consumption.’
We have come away with copies of the school magazine, which Jack started: there wasn’t one until he came. He has taught the