LIFE: WHAT A JOURNEY Column, Sunday Mail November 23, 2014 By CHARLES CHISALA How cassava thief escaped expulsion I THINK I was in From II that year. Our headmaster then was the charismatic and inspirational educationist Mark Nafumbu Mutale, whom we fondly called ‘Jimmy Young’. That time Nchelenge Secondary School wasn’t as dilapidated as I have heard it is today. That’s why we called it Nchezy. We were in our classrooms for the afternoon prep, studying or making noise. It was almost impossible to concentrate on whatever you were reading because of the sweltering summer heat. Even our prefect-in-charge (kapini) was dozing in the front corner of the classroom. With my eyes half closed I listened to the monotonous drone of the cicadas (banyenye). The chirping and cooing of the birds taking refuge in the trees were sedative. They were the only violations of the serenity of the afternoon. A bead of sweat appeared from my hair and slowly coursed down the left part of my forehead, making a brief stopover on my bushy eyebrow before dropping on the page of the book I was reading. Then the silence was rudely broken by shouts, laughter and whistling from the southern direction of the campus. The noise grew louder as more classrooms joined in the jeering, cheering, laughter and whistling. We were all craning our necks to find out the source of the commotion. Even our kapini wanted to know what was happening. When I finally saw what was exciting the pupils my heart sank. A Form I (Grade Eight) pupil with whom I shared the same wing in my dormitory in Zambezi House was huffing and puffing like an exhausted dog under the weight of a big bundle of cassava stalks on his head. The poor boy was being escorted to the administration block by a boisterous horde of villagers and a prefect. Every now and then someone would roughly prod him and he would stagger around with the bundle of cassava stalks swinging precariously before regaining his balance. Some pupils dashed out of their classrooms to join the multitude ‘escorting’ the pupil. “Akasokobwe kamuletelela, akasokobwe kamuletelela (stolen cassava has landed him in trouble)!” they were shouting. Prefects (bakapini) had a torrid time trying to chase the excited pupils back into their classrooms. It was still prep time. At the administration block the headmaster, Mr Mutale, and some members of staff were standing in the corridor watching the approaching party with keen interest. When the crowd arrived the villagers roughly pushed the pupil towards the headmaster, his arms still wrapped around the bundle of cassava stalks on his head. The leader of the villagers laid his case before the school’s authorities. “See, your children have destroyed our cassava fields because you don’t feed them. Our fields are desolate. They have brought hunger in our homes. We caught this one stealing cassava in my field. “Here is the loose cassava we gathered around the field,” the man said and threw about a dozen tubers of cassava to the ground. Again the pupils shouted, “akasokobwe, akasokobwe!” In case you were not a pupil at Nchezy in those days akasokobwe was the code name for illicitly obtained cassava. During both day and night lone pupils or in small groups would foray into the cassava fields, not very far away from the school, to pacify chronic hunger. In those days a full tummy was as rare as an eleventh finger among lower grade pupils (Forms I to III) at government run rural boarding secondary schools because of inadequate food. I can’t tell you whether I personally participated in those daytime and nocturnal raids on cassava fields. For now that remains my guarded secret. The leader of the villagers from the nearby Kashikishi spelt out the ‘charges’ against the cowering and sobbing boy amid boos and taunts from his schoolmates, especially the girls. Nchezy was a mixed gender school. Of course the pupils did not boo and taunt the poor sod because of what he had done, but for allowing himself to be captured while on a ‘high-risk’ mission. Being the compassionate father that he was Mr Mutale politely apologised to the villagers and asked them to give him an estimate of the total cost of their loss. He promised to deal with the thieving pupil severely and asked the villagers to take the stalks and tubers of cassava since he and other members of staff had seen them. In the past being caught stealing cassava attracted expulsion. But Mr Mutale only punished the pupil and allowed him to continue learning. Jimmy Young understood the extreme circumstances that had driven the boy, away from his parents for the first time in his life, to such an unorthodox survival tactic. I have been wondering where Mr Mutale could be now. I haven’t heard of or seen him since 1984 when I left Nchezy. Does anyone know? charles_chisala@yahoo
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 07:51:22 +0000
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