The power of a believing teacher

I went to Zimuto High school in Masvingo Zimbabwe. It was a Mission School. Now I do not know about other Mission Schools but at my school there was this arbitrary systematic caste system akin to social stratification only it was based on your prowess as a mathematician or your grasp of science. So the Crème dela Crème of Mathematics went to the East Class where they studied such fancy things as computer science and Pure Physics, the Blue collars went to the West Class, the Journeymen to the North Class and the chaff to the South Class. I happened to go to the Chaff Class where we washed pigs, fed chickens and learned how to sow a straight line. In my defence my default choice had something to do with me preferring agriculture to Fashion and Fabrics because I could never sew a straight line, needles just give me too much grief and besides I love planting and getting my hands dirty.

OK I protest too much. Yes I was and I am that terrible in Mathematics. And there began my travails with teachers who considered us to be just another class they absolutely had to visit in order to get a pay check. The hate went both ways, we didn’t care too much for them either. We were having too much fun playing up to their prophesies of our lives as being doomed to get pregnant on or before our 16th birthdays, good for nothing but to get mediocre jobs or none at all. When you are told you will not amount to much the sad thing is you kind of start believing it. So we would make noise, bunk class and study and make sure we got into as much trouble as we could just as long as it was just a little shy of warranting us getting chased away. Just to keep things interesting.

I shudder to think what this story would be like if it were not for one pretty lady who one day waltzed into our Commerce class. She was young and pretty and full of energy but best of all she believed in us. She refused to see the doom the others saw in us and that we believed of ourselves, she refused to shirk off her duty as steward of our young , impressionable and corruptible minds. She sowed the seed of hope and slowly but surely we began to believe we could make it, that we could get any number of A’s we wanted, that we could be whoever we wanted to be. She was so sure of our fate that we had no choice but to believe her. Such was the tremendous power and effect she had on us. She only stayed for less than a term but she had a lasting impression on our minds her name is Apollonia Mutafera. She was my saving grace.