The Sunday Mail
GHETTO WHISPERS with Rosenthal Mutakati
SWEENY came home early Thursday morning demanding a new set of textbooks and exercise books.
Their class monitor, who was charged with keeping the books, is no longer coming back to school.
She is now someone’s wife.
It is the same situation in the next class where Bridget, who had collected money from other learners to buy covers, has joined the mothers’ guild after she fell pregnant.
Rotina is seething with anger after receiving news that Rhoda, who had borrowed body lotion and canned beef from her, has called it quits to attend to matters of the heart.
“I have nowhere to start from? I blew my pocket money thinking I would recover my lotion and tinned beef from Rhoda.
“However, I hear she is no longer coming back because she eloped to her lover’s place,” she said, while wearing a lean and hungry look that betrayed a troubled soul.
The case is even worse for Sharon.
She lent a pair of school shoes to a colleague, who unfortunately is no longer coming back to school.
“How am I going to explain this to my parents? I have no school shoes as we speak. Dzakarova pasi! Apa ndaita mutserendede parazor. This is going to be too heavy on my father because he only started going to work recently. I just do not know where to start,” she said in between sobs.
Betty has been cast between a rock and a hard place.
Her friend Merciline, who borrowed her laptop, has not reported back for school.
“Now, if she does not return to school, I am doomed. I just do not understand why I agreed to give her the laptop. But, if it is true that she is now married, I am doomed. Ndomubatira kupi? Argh! apa ndanyura,” she said while shaking her head in disbelief.
The boys are equally affected.
Some are now peddling drugs, while others are doing time in prison for robbery.
Whenever boys enter adolescence, they start doing abhorrent things like drugs and alcohol abuse.
A good number will not be going back to school after falling for dangerously potent drinks like lawidzani, mutoriro and other home-made spirits that take them at least four days to regain sobriety.
These are the challenges various learners are facing following the recent reopening of schools after a six-month Covid-19-induced hiatus.
A lot of ground has been lost.
There are so many missing pieces to complete the jigsaw puzzle of this year’s school calendar.
Schools closed in March and a lot has happened since then.
The situation at some schools paints a graphic image of the negative impact Covid-19 has had on the education sector.
Most senior girls are sadly going to miss out on their education after they got married due several reasons.
School life is premised on sharing.
Learners naturally share a lot of things to make their school experiences wholesome.
The situation is much more prevalent in boarding schools, where sharing extends to clothes and toiletries.
Some learners borrow pens, soap, toothpaste, uniforms, jerseys and even money from their peers after promising to pay them back when they get supplies from their parents and guardians.
“Ndikweretesewo book remaths ndozokusota kana mudhara wangu auya (Can you lend me a maths exercise book, I will cover you when my father pays me a visit?)” are common lines you hear from learners.
But, honestly, how does one borrow from an unemployed person? And how does one unemployed person make a decision to lend goods bought for them by someone else?
It just does not add up!
What is largely discomforting is that most of the learners who went back to school may fail to concentrate on their studies by thinking about the goods they have lost.
The reopening of schools comes at a time when the new Education Act makes it illegal for schools to expel learners who fall pregnant.
The new measure was meant to prevent girls from dropping out of school.
The prolonged school closures raised the spectre of increased cases of child sexual abuse and unwanted pregnancies.
“I am expecting every parent and guardian and everyone else to understand that every child must be assisted by all of us to go to school,” Ambassador Cain Mathema, the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, said after amendments to the Act.
“Every child, whether boy or girl … has a right to go to school in Zimbabwe,” he said.
In 2018, 12,5 percent of the country’s roughly 57 500 school dropouts stopped attending classes after falling pregnant or opting to get married.
Let us ensure our children remain in school.
Inotambika mughetto.
