So, its late-morning and I’m suffering from period cramps and a significant sleep hangover…a perfect way to start the day, right? In any case, Mayela, Mitchelle, and I are here in Bulawayo to do some stuff for work. We drove here from Harare (a good 5-hour drive) and after dinner at Cattleman’s I holed up in my room, lit a candle and took a long soak in the bathtub. I haven’t done that in years…but it allowed me to clear my head and think. There have been a lot of things on my mind lately.
Anyways, I’ll write more about that later. Now I need to go out for the day, and seize it…although I’m struggling somewhat.
[Later]
Okay, so today turned out to be a pretty great day! Bulawayo is a really neat town, and I wish I had more time to explore it. The best part of today was going to the Luveve High School in which we, representing the U.S Embassy, delivered $1000 worth of textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference materials. I hung back a little from the group and was accompanied by a young man, probably 17/18 years old named Mpilo (pron. “m-bilo”) Mpilo means “life” in Ndebele, and he certainly was one of the few students grabbing onto it at that school. The headmaster of Luveve High School told Mitchelle, Mayela, and I that only 7% of Luveve students passed final exams at the end of their years there. Being a private institution, the only funding comes from the parents, without any subsidies from the government to make ends meet…and it’s definitely noticeable not only in aesthetic appeal but in test scores. Also, the school was recently struck with tragedy when a boys hostel caught fire due to an electrical surge. Everything was destroyed, although the buildings structure stands eerily charred against the bluest blue African sky. Fortunately, no students were harmed. However, walking through the scorched building I knelt down and discovered lesson books and assignments, with neatly scrawled, practiced handwriting, in ashes. And that’s when it struck me. For those 4-8 students directly affected by this fire, they have nothing left except what remains in their brains. Stripped of every possession, man is rich with knowledge. It empowers him to take on his world even when it so unfairly throws him down, as it often does here in Africa. Even poverty is reversible for the individual who is trained to help oneself. Such ideas of empowerment bypass the traditional notions of foreign aid dependency that just throw money at problems, a rather topical solution, as compared to a foreign aid plan that could invest into long-term skills training, self-sustenance, and education.
But I digress.
Overall, the experience at Luveve High School was just so incredibly humbling. Meeting students whose futures have the potential to be so bright, yet due to teacher/resource shortage and hence the inability to perform, are snuffed out immediately upon failing senior exams. Even good students struggle to make it into Zimbabwean universities. There was a period of time Mitchelle said that the University of Zimbabwe would only accept straight “A” students…think of all those individuals with the raw ability to progress but without the resources to do so! Think of so much talent that ends up wasting away on the streets of Zimbabwe! An A/B student selling newspapers for many years, or like most of young African men, restless and unemployed! And this returns us to an original questions posted weeks ago, what is needed first? Economic change before political change, or political change before economic change? Chicken or the egg? I don’t feel ready to weigh in right now on this debate…
Which leads me to my afternoon spent with Dr. Sifobela, Dean of Students at the National University of Science and Technology, who I approached to promote student visas to the United States for aspiring undergraduates. However, we mainly discussed the “brain drain” happening in Zimbabwe, in which students studying abroad never return to contribute their skills on home soil. I asserted to Dr. Sifobela how the current lack of structures and available opportunities for students to return to in Zimbabwe is prohibitive to his desires for the repatriation of Zimbabwean students abroad. Dr. Sifobela largely agreed, however remained convinced that without Mugabe students would automatically find Zimbabwe a more attractive destination than the U.S. However I wasn’t convinced. When questioned about the time delay inherently associated with waiting for a post-Mugabe world (just look at Castro for example…still going, and going, and going…) and if there was any faster way towards social change, he just flatly shrugged his shoulders and sighed. When I asked him about Mugabe’s potential successor and the likelihood that the successor would fill Mugabe’s tyrant shoes, Dr. Sifobela said, “You ask all the right questions, but we (Zimbabweans) don’t think that far. We only see to the end of Mugabe’s reign.” Such a cop out from a man of such academic standing! Viewing higher education and the fruits of the labor as the first step to nation-building, he assumes that a regime change will change the attitude Zimbabweans have been developing about their country for decades! Zimbabweans in fact have so little faith in their country that they are running away! Topping the charts, Zimbabweans have the highest asylum rate in the world, beating out even war-torn countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq! No, it’s going to take more than a simple regime change to bring Zimbabwean students back to Zimbabwe. It’s going to take a creation of jobs and employment structures, and a shift of mentality at how Zimbabweans view and portray their country to the rest of the world.
So who leaves Zimbabwe? Poor people, who have nothing to lose, and students. Rich people live like kings here. Everyone else can get by…if not barely. But it’s the poor and the newly educated that find life unfulfilling and unsupportive here in Zim. That stigma will have to change if there’s any hope of restoring confidence and keeping Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe. And so far, social change hasn’t been instigated because anyone who is discontent just leaves for greener pastures. And they don’t come back.
Anyways, more food for thought…more fodder for my cable to D.C. I better get crackin’ on that. I’ve got to get that done before I leave. A product of all my nights spent awake and thinking…
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