Memory Lane: Mototi, 1986

School children performing my play Ndizvo Zvawaitsvaga in 1986 at a Parents' Day. I was in Form 3.

From Grade 7 onwards, until my temporary teaching days at Glen View High 1 in Harare, I wrote plays for immediate performance by (at first) fellow students and (later) my students. It was writing on demand, one act at a time, until a performance was ready. The community theater days, whatever happened to them?

That tree, the ageless Muunga tree at Mototi, the primary school I attended, is a common feature in my poetry and fiction. Even after we had moved to our "uppertop", the secondary version of the school, which we named Gwavachemai High School, because we had to vote for a name for our new school, we kept coming back to this huge Muunga tree at the primary school to hold important meetings, to present our plays, et cetra. I once acted as Julius Caeser under this tree,and I remember that day, walking arrogantly talking about my Rome, and how invincible I was, etc...

Ndizvo Zvawaitasvaga was a moralistic play about Fungai, a female student who gets impregnated by a teacher. I remember resolving the plot by punishing the teacher with insanity, or something to that effect, while the student....blah, blah, blah...
Teacher-student affairs were common at the new secondary school because the teachers had just graduated from Form 4 themselves and were within an age range close to the students; some parents sent their daughters with gifts to the teachers: eggs, boiled sweet potatoes, maize, mukaka, to thank you, sir, for the great work you do in this our newly independent country, in this our beautiful village....