"That's So Young!"

When I tell people in countries outside Africa that I was sent to boarding school at the tender age of 6, it often draws some raised eyebrows and expressions of shock. “That’s so young!” is usually the sentence that accompanies these reactions. In Zimbabwe, it’s not uncommon for this to happen, especially before the late 2000s when there were a lot of farmers who were not close to a good day school to send their kids, and who had gone to boarding schools themselves – so they didn’t really have a problem with shipping us off that young.

However, I know my parents found it heart breaking. Bryden Country School where I went, was not their first choice for their eldest little girl. They had wanted me to go to a girls’ school in Harare which was close enough for me not to board – but I didn’t get accepted. Obviously six-year-old Colette wasn’t so bright.

So, they sent me to Bryden which was just over an hour away from our farm. A tiny school with only about 180 students across 7 grades, from ages of 6 to 12. Apparently during the first few weeks when I came home on weekends, I didn’t speak except for short answers to questions. ‘Fine’ was the standard response when asked how school was. My parents begged the other school to accept me, but it didn’t happen, so Bryden it had to be.

When I try to think about why I wouldn’t have spoken I don’t come up with much, but one of the reasons must have been that our hostel matron was an absolute bitch. I remember that my shiny new school shoes had a buckle that was impossible for me to do up, so I had to ask her to help me every morning and I absolutely dreaded it. She always had a snarky comment or pulled at the buckle so tightly with her false-nailed fingers that it would hurt. Later, when my hair had grown long enough to be in a ponytail (my mum had cut it into a bob when I started to make it easier for me to look after), the matron had to brush it and tie it up for me, and she used to pull and scrape with those nails, leaving me with a headache most days. Now I wonder what had happened to this woman that made her take her rage and bitterness out on the little girls she was supposed to care for. One memory that clearly stands out is a day when one of my friends was tying up my mosquito net for me, because I had not yet mastered the skill. The matron came in and asked my friend what she was doing – my friend explained, and the matron turned to me with such an expression of hate that I recoiled. Without turning away from me, she said to my friend, “Well you know, I think Colette is big enough and ugly enough to do that herself.”

Another reason I may have found it hard to settle into hostel life must have been the food. Most of the time it was foul, and we had to clear our plates and show the evidence to our matrons or teachers before we could leave the meal. We came up with lots of inventive ways to avoid eating the worst morsels, such as stuffing them into our cups, because we didn’t have to show those. I learnt early on that my best chance of survival was to make friends with the kitchen staff. I could ask them to give me a lot of what I liked, and almost nothing of what I didn’t like, when they were serving up the food. They also turned a blind eye when I brought up a cup stuffed with steamed cinnamon-seasoned cabbage. I was driving past the school last year and I stopped in to see some of my favourite old teachers. I dropped into the kitchen and all my friends were still there. Over 12 years later, and we still had lots of smiles and hugs to share. I couldn’t have done it without them.

So yeah, it was tough to get used to the boarding school environment, but once I did it wasn’t too bad. Being in a dorm with your best friends is something I wouldn’t trade for anything, and we were given so much opportunity. We were all forced to learn the recorder when we started – for some this wasn’t their calling, but for me it was truly a blessing. I learnt to read music from a very young age and discovered my talent for classical instruments and voice. We all had to try multiple sports – hockey, swimming, netball, athletics and tennis. Some were the bane of my life – I realised from a very young age that I would never be a runner, but that tennis and swimming were something I would do and love for the rest of my life. Contrary to the reaction of ‘That’s so young!” my reaction when I hear about most of the schools in the UK and Australia is “What – you didn’t do sport at your school?” partly envious (I cannot describe to you the level of hate I have for cross country running) and partly sympathetic (imagine a life without tennis, or knowing how to swim!)

Now that the years have passed, and the bad memories have mostly faded, I have many stories to tell and reminisce with my sister, cousins and old friends, that leave us with tears in our eyes, shaking with laughter – but many of those stories deserve a blog on their own.

The things I appreciate the most about boarding school are the discipline, manners and resilience that it taught me. To this day, I have not met anyone with the same standard of manners as a Zimbabwean school child, and I would never have been able to leave home and start university in a completely new country, entirely alone, if I hadn’t done a similar thing before all those years ago. You will often hear Zimbabweans who have left the country state that they want to go back there to raise their children. I don’t want children, but if I did, I would whole-heartedly agree.