(*1932)
My father came up from South Africa when he was around 19 years old to look for work. A lot of young people came over to Rhodesia, as it was called back then, to look for work, you know? There were a lot of Coloured people in Bulawayo. In those days, the only jobs that Coloured men could get were on the railway. And so, my father went to train with my grandfather, who was a plate layer. He also became a plate layer and that’s how he met my mother, and they got married, around 1930, here in Bulawayo.
I was the eldest of my eight siblings. We grew up in the bush, and since my father was a plate layer, we moved with the railway line. At the age of seven in 1938 I had to go to boarding school at McKeurtan primary in Bulawayo – the only Coloured school at the time with a hostel. Coloured children came from different parts of Rhodesia to board there. In those days, Europeans, Indians, Coloureds and Africans had their own schools. We did not mix.
Now in those days they had separate hospitals and [residential] areas for each group. Barham Greene, where we are now, was built for Coloureds. After completing primary school, as girls we had two choices – to become a teacher or a nurse. Other than that, we could go work in factories. The boys went to work in the trades, where they did apprenticeships, for example as boilermakers. Only Europeans could become typists or rise to the rank of manager. But we grew up with that segregation, so we were used to it.
In Zimbabwe, us Coloureds couldn’t mix with the Whites. We still had to sit at the back of church. We couldn’t ride the buses or buy liquor, without a liquor license. Sometimes we couldn’t go into shops, we had to go to the windows to buy things.
The government needed Coloured teachers and nurses, because Whites wouldn’t want to work in a Black school or hospital. So when we finished primary school, if we wanted to pursue a secondary education, they sent us to South Africa. The government paid for everything. I was 13 years old when I left for Zonnebloem college, Cape Town in 1946, to train to become a primary school teacher, since there was no high school for Coloureds yet back home in Rhodesia. There was a teaching college – but for Whites only.
In 1950 I came back to Bulawayo to teach at McKeurtan. I got married and went on to have four children. I must say, I enjoyed teaching very much, but between having children and teaching, it wasn’t an easy life. I taught more than eight subjects.
A few years later my family came to live in Barham Greene. I taught at Barham Greene Primary School. I knew every family in the neighbourhood, because I taught all their children from 1953-67. They all had to come through me!
When [neighbouring] Zambia became independent in 1964, my family moved there and stayed for over 20 years. I taught at a convent on the Copperbelt. That was the first time I taught in a mixed school, attended by Europeans, Coloureds, Indians and Africans. I did a lot of things in Zambia that we could never do as Coloureds in Zimbabwe. I learned to drive and bought myself a second-hand car. I belonged to the theatre society and the Women’s Institute. I even took up karate and judo as self-defense and to keep fit. I used to train three times a week after work! When we came back to Zimbabwe [after independence] I continued teaching. I retired in 1994. I feel so sad sometimes as none of the people my age are alive anymore. All the other teachers I taught with have passed.
