Summary
Nancy Mbaura is a passionate woman from Norton/Zimbabwe, who, from early childhood, fought for her right to education. Later she transformed a beer hall into a school for almost 2000 children.
The school is now financed through training for single women in truck driving.
From Nancy we can learn something important for all of our future: how to turn a few resources into high value.
– by Nancy Mbaura
After hard work of gold panning, fish poaching, and tilling farmland, men from all walks of life in my district Norton, usually go to the Ngoni beer hall to take a drink or two to cool their throats. Some come to make friends, others are running away from responsibilities, or hide from their critical wives. At times, you see some men dancing to the loud music in the beer hall, buying drinks as if they own the world. And again, Others use the space to find prostitutes, and hidden in the darker corners, thieves, local politicians, and shady businessmen are planning their weekly evil. These were the day-in and day-out activities before we grabbed the beer hall and turned it into a school.
Well, it wasn’t easy. Every man was against the idea. Even fathers of children, who wouldn’t have had any other option to be educated, preferred Beer and prostitution. And yet, when we started our operations, Tamiranashe became the “talk of the town”
Now, children sit on the floor as their teacher writes notes on a makeshift blackboard, made from broken wooden doors and black slates. A bell rings. Break-time at Tamiranashe primary school. Many children stream out of the hall, holding worn-out books, most are in torn clothes, barefoot, and their faces are signatures of poverty. In this part of the world, uniforms are a luxury, but smiles are many.
I felt sorry for people in my district, who see nothing but poverty and are therefore vulnerable. But are these children really vulnerable? Looking at their love and ownership for their school, an old, shabby building, with far too small classrooms, walls made of cardboard, no possibility for sports, and no other spaces for socialisation, the main term that comes to my mind when describing these children, is “resilience”!
At Tamiranashe, all we want is to give access to quality education to those who are usually left behind, a simple quest that I had during my entire childhood.
My childhood was a lonesome struggle to fight for my right to education.
In Zimbabwe education is not free and thus it is hard for the children of the poor to go to school. Often, I had to cry to my parents to get school fees. It was not easy for them because my father’s salary was not enough to educate all four of us.
At the age of seven, my teachers sent me away from school because again there was nothing left for school fees. Being alone at home, a neighbour took advantage and raped me brutally. From that day onwards, I understood, School was not only a place to learn but also a place of refuge!
And then, my father misused money to feed us and was sentenced to one year in prison. My mother was so dependent on my father that she suffered from a breakdown, and relatives took her away from us, and thus I, being only 12 years old, became a mother to my younger siblings.
We had no means to survive, so every day we went to the market to pick leftovers, almost rotten vegetables from vendors.
One day our aunt came, and we moved to a farm, the farm owner had no shame to involve us in child-labour. Early in the morning, we started to work in tobacco fields until it was noon. Our major job was to remove worms from the leaves.
The farmer was so “generous” to make us decide whether we wanted to work for money or for education. Not a quality education, though. Only one teacher, who was barely educated himself, was in charge of teaching all grades from one to seven, and all children were sitting in the same rundown classroom.
Therefore, all my siblings choose to go for the meagre salary and dropped school. I, however, continued because inside of me I knew that education alone was my way out of this prison life of poverty.
After my father came out of prison, we relocated again to a rural home. My elder brother and his wife, parents to four children, died, and I became a young replacement mother for their children.
Later I got married to a school headmaster and gave birth to two children. This marriage didn’t last long, and when the abuse of my husband became too much, I had to leave, taking all six children with me.
Living in a rural area was the only option for us. There we didn’t have to pay rent for a house but we had no money for medicine or soap either. We all developed skin problems due to malnutrition and lack of hygiene. Some of my children got ringworms and the teachers at School forbid them to come.
My own dresses were all torn and my hair looked wild. When People saw me, they called me a “mad woman”.
Inside me, I knew, life would offer more to us. And indeed, one day, a great opportunity came: all my children received a scholarship! Life started to change, and the madness was gone. I studied gender science and joined the ministry of women’s affairs.
This job was unique because it made me understand how other women survive. I interviewed hundreds of single mothers, widows, married women, and teenage girls. And out of these experiences, Tamiranashe Trust was born. I introduced the thought of studying hard and being economically empowered to fight poverty. But when I told women to go back to School, most of them refused. “How can we study, if our children cannot go to school?!”
Seeing the struggle of these women, I then opened a school for their children by chasing drunkards out of a beer hall and using simple cardboard walls to create spaces of learning.
On the first day, 500 children were enrolled, and soon we counted almost 2000 students for primary up to tertiary level.
But then we experienced resistance from politicians, other schools that took fees, and especially from men who wanted their beer hall back to get drunk.
Day by day, district officers and policemen came and insulted me right in front of our pupils and staff. It was so embarrassing. It felt like being accused of murder. Luckily, the parents stood by me and wrote a petition. Thus, justice was done, and we were given a chance to continue.
Due to the high demand, our students sit on the floor or on a flat wooden plank, that is balanced on bricks. The teachers, who, for little pay, must entertain more than 80 children at once, are tired of talking from early morning till late afternoon. Therefore, we are now glad that we managed to find a plot of 15 hectares.
The property is flat, so we don’t have to move more mountains. There are many shadowy trees and stones. To demonstrate how to use natural resources in a responsible way, we will construct new learning spaces with mud, stones, and grass.
Eventually, the government cleared my Trust to operate in 4 districts of Zimbabwe Chegutu, Zvimba, Makonde, and Mhondoro Ngezi. Now our students own their path to education, and they understand that their quest for knowledge tramples poverty.
Oh… there is one detail I forgot. My first husband, who threw me out, is now employed by me!
