John Mutonono . A Tale of Intervention,Redemption and Achievement

                                     John Mutonono

         A  True  Tale of  Intervention, Redemption and Achievement 
                   (and closure thanks to Facebook)
                                                by Kenneth Margo-kennethmargo@gmail.com


In early 1984 I saw a notice in the Guardian asking for teachers to apply to work under contract in Zimbabwe. I applied and was accepted and sent to Masvingo (formerly Fort Victoria), to teach at the previously whites only school, Victoria High.

Zimbabwe had received its independence in 1980, and the education system had been thrown open to all. High schools were offering the British Cambridge curriculum. By 2008 entire education system has collapsed. Teachers had disappeared, many having been killed and beaten for allegedly supporting the opposition MDC. But in the mid 1980s, five odd years into independence, the rampant cruelty and mismanagement and pillaging of the country hadn’t started. Mugabe was still treading carefully.

Victoria High School in Masvingo province was then a well equipped former white school with a boarding facility and extensive playing fields. I taught Geography Cambridge A level certificate there in 1987. The opportunity offered meant that even the children of poor rural families could gain admission to these former ‘whites only’ schools if their grades were good enough and they could afford the modest fees.

John Mutonono was one such poor student. John was tall, nearly two metres, and strong and gentle and respectful. He was an average student but had made it into his final A level year through hard work. It was January, the beginning of his last school year.

Then one day John wasn’t in class, and the next day he wasn’t there either. We teachers were told in a staff meeting that John had gone rather spectacularly off the rails, and was in the hospital, pumped full of drugs to keep him quiet. The story was bizarre. One day the usually gentle and quiet John had started bothering female students, by proposing marriage to them. Then he had marched to Mr Dube the headmaster’s office, barged in, and demanded the keys of his car, saying that he needed it to see some officials in Harare. The headmaster had agreed, and told John to wait outside, while he wound up a few things. Then he phoned the police, who came quickly, and took John away to hospital.

I was concerned about him, I knew that the hospital was drugging him, but couldn’t hold him indefinitely. And I was also concerned that if this ‘illness’ would last too long, his prolonged absence would jeopardize his chance of passing his A levels at the end of the year.

I knew nothing of his family, but kept up with the news of his condition from the school secretary. But I was also puzzled at the attitude of some of the other teachers. The Zimbabwean teachers didn’t seem to be overly concerned about John. Did they know something I didn’t? Was there something ‘cultural’ that I was missing?

In a subsequent staff meeting we were told that he had been discharged from hospital and was now at home with his mother about 100 kms away , deep in the rural ‘tribal trust’ areas. I proposed that some of us teachers go to visit him to find out how he was progressing. Two other expatriate teachers volunteered to go with me. But none of the Zimbabwean teachers did. Very strange, I thought, he is after all one of their own.

We drove along  dirt roads through interminable bush, and eventually found the collection of modest round huts and one rectangular building with a zinc roof that was John’s family compound. It was almost dark. His mother, an almost wizened woman in a doek (headscarf) welcomed us into the one roomed zinc roofed building and we told her our business. She listened sadly and then told us that John was not better, in fact he was very wild and she couldn’t handle him.

Then John burst into the room. He was manic, jumping up and down, hugging me and my two fellow teachers. He announced that he was going to kill a goat in my honour and rushed off into the night. I asked his mother if he had other male relatives to help her restrain him. She said that his father was dead. And then from her perspective the story came out.

His paternal grandfather who lived with them was jealous of John .He thought John was getting above his station (‘putting up his shoulders’ was the literal term) by getting an education and going to a ‘white ‘school. So he had spoken to the ancestors who were now possessing John and teaching him a lesson.

I was appalled. This was way beyond anything I could handle. But I was also angry. Was this going to be the reason why John, a poor boy of peasant upbringing, was going to lose all the prospects he had worked so hard for?

I realized intuitively that to cure John we would need to balance the situation ancestrally.

‘Do you have any male relatives?’ I asked her.

‘My brother works in Hwange’ she replied indifferently.

I asked her for his contact which she gave me reluctantly. That night I called John’s maternal uncle and explained the situation. He promised to act. And he did.

Three weeks later he phoned me and told me that John was with him and getting better. Three weeks after that he brought his nephew back to school. A very quiet almost emaciated John Mutonono. How his uncle had cured him I then had no idea, and he didn’t volunteer anything.

John greeted me gravely. He had lost much of his intensity and some of his intelligence. But not so much to stop him, after some intensive coaching from me and other  teachers, from writing his A Levels six months later in November and scraping a pass.

He came to see me the following term to thank me. I reckoned that he was well enough to be told about what we had all experienced during his illness. He confessed that he remembered absolutely nothing of that three month period, except he had been told that his uncle had taken him to a famous sangoma (spiritual and herbal healer) in Bulawayo where he had stayed a few days. He didn’t remember what had happened at the sangoma’s house.

Then I ventured to ask him something which had been puzzling me. ‘Why didn’t any of the Zimbabwean teachers get involved?’ I asked.

John shrugged. ‘They suspected’, he said,

‘Suspected what?’ But I understood now.

‘About my ancestors Mr. Margo, and they were afraid.

Postscript

Twenty five years later  in May 2012 I found  John on Facebook. I started corresponding with him ,and he sent me his CV . John has done well for himself. He has a MSc in Finance and BCom honours , and is today the  manager of a large  bank in Zimbabwe, is married with  six children and owns a prosperous stock farm in the Midlands . This is the email reply he sent to me on reading the story  I wrote about this incident  and which I sent him  on 11 May  2012

John Mutonono Johnmu@kingdom.co.zw	2:00 PM (42 minutes ago)
to me

Thank you very much for the story, I will keep it for my children to read. Thank you very much Mr Margo Only God knows why and how I managed to meet you. I will never forget your assistance to me, and the help you gave me when I was starting temporary teaching. I pray that one day we will be able to meet again. Please let me have the other stories if you are free to do so. Zimbabwe is still struggling economically because of sanctions and dollarization. Not much is being produced by our own local companies. Unemployment levels still soaring and liquidity challenges as people lack confidence in our local banks. A lot of things have changed some for the better others for worse.

My uncle my mother brother  who was in Hwange you talked to is now late. We also lost the last born sister she died  at the age of 21 on 11February 2009 in a way which shocked all of  us  she was not suffering from anything.  The other three brothers and four remaining sisters are all qualified teachers and they now all have their families. My mother is still alive though growing old.

All those other relatives who were trying all sorts of funny things on me and our family  are now late  together with their wives. God punished them, one of them hanged himself inside a hut.

Thank you.

Will want to continue keep in touch with you.

Regards

John

From: Kenneth Margo [mailto:kennethmargo@gmail.com]