67) Tuck-Shop Duties
Living so close to the school I had no excuse for not helping out there. I offered to do a duty at the tuck shop and found that the tuck shop was in danger of being closed, as there were not enough mothers to help open it each day. So instead of doing one day a week as I had intended I ended up taking charge of the whole thing. It meant trying to find other mums to help out, to coordinate the roster, buy stock, and fill in when there was no one else to open up.
The school office gave me a list of the mothers and I rang them all but did not have a lot of luck. Many of the European families were leaving and the African mothers were reluctant to help out. I think most of it was due to shyness. They had never done anything like that before so were not sure what was expected of them and if they would be capable of it. Also most of them were much busier than their European counterparts. They had for the most part bigger families, worked outside their homes and did not have any servants. But I did manage to persuade one or two to come and help and it meant that we could carry on.
When I started the tuck shop there were so few helpers that there was only one lady on duty each morning but that was chaos as one person on her own could not serve all the children during the short time that the boys were on break so there was always a huge rush to try and get served first. The bell would ring and the boys would run from their classes and push and shove to get to the top of the queue. The counter was not fixed to the ground and with the weight of all the boys pushing it would move right back until the person behind it was just about squashed against the back wall. So to try and get them all served faster I tried to get two mothers each morning to help out. Which in fact just meant that I ended up going up every morning to help the lady on duty. This helped the boys get served before it was time for them to go back to class. However they still wanted to get served before anyone else and so continued to push and shove. When things got too bad, we would stop serving, and refuse to start again until they all behaved themselves. It would work for a little while but it would not be long before they were pushing and shoving again. Jonathan and Dominic would not come to tuck-shop at that time. They were embarrassed when I shouted at the boys, refused to serve them and generally lost my temper. One of the teachers saw the problem we were having and arranged that there would be two of the senior prefects on duty with us each morning to control the queue and that did help. To keep control they would let them come in by one door about six at the time and then let them out by another door and as one went out another was let in. It was fine when the prefects remembered to come and help out but some times they would forget and we would have all the pushing again.
It was a typical school tuck-shop of the time, we sold carbonated drinks – all the ones with the worst reputations, we sold sweets, chocolates and potato chips, in fact everything we sold was high in calories and low in food value but I don’t recall that we had a problem with obesity. I suppose that was because all the boys had to play a certain amount of sport, a lot of them walked or cycled to school and computers were things their parents might have access to at work but not many homes would have had one. So they just did not sit for hours with computer games.
At the time there was a young African woman working in the school office and she kindly offered to help out when I did not have another mother to assist me. Her name was Mavis and she said it was a good chance to get out of the office for a while. As there were so few mothers involved I was often short of a helper and so Mavis and I spent quite a lot of time working together. Her husband was a manager of a Bata shoe shop and they had two little girls. Mavis showed me how little I knew about African women and how prejudiced I was without realising it. We would talk about our husbands and our children as we walked to and from the tuck-shop. One morning Mavis asked me about cosmetics to hide or cure the brown blotches on her face. She told me that she had had an even coloured skin before she fell pregnant with her first child but then these blotches appeared and she had never been able to get rid of them. I had no idea what the answer to her problem was but I remember thinking, much to my shame, that I was surprised that it bothered her, as they were not very noticeable. I would not have been surprised at a European woman being concerned that her skin was blemished and I knew that European women spent a great deal of money trying to keep their skin looking good so why shouldn’t an African woman feel the same. I have learnt a lot since then and although I don’t think I would say, as I have heard some people say, “I love Black people”. I have learnt that just like white people, there are some that I do not like and some that I am very fond of. I have also heard people say “I love children” or “I love old people” and it really annoys me. How can one lump them all together like that. To me, it sounds rather insulting, would you like to think that you were liked because you were a child or an African or just old. To lump them all together and say you like them all is almost as bad as saying you hate them all. They are people, just like me and my friends and family. Some of them are nice and some aren’t. I am grateful to Mavis for showing me this, she never realised how much she helped me and I did miss her when her husband was given a promotion to a larger shop in Harare and they all moved to Zimbabwe’s capital city.
I was seconded on to the PTA, Parent Teachers Association, at that time too. Once again, there were not enough people to do the job so anyone who was prepared to help out was accepted with open arms. Another thing I did for the school was to help out with a bit of the typing. Jonny had given me a typewriter for Christmas and I had come a long way since I had typed reports for Brian Morris at the Manchester Gardens, with two fingers. I was not a very fast or accurate typist but if left quietly alone to work at my own speed I could manage. The lady in charge of the office was very over worked and needed someone to type out stencils for the exam questions and as I could take it home and do it in my own time I agreed to do it. The English and History exams were not too hard but the Shona exam was a nightmare. Shona, the local language, was now compulsory in all schools and for me to type something that I did not understand was very hard and I did make some mistakes but my work was checked before the stencils were fed into the duplicating machines and the exam papers were printed. I wonder why the school did not have a photocopy machine. I remember a photocopy machine salesman approached one of the PTA members and asked if we wanted to buy a fancy new colour photocopier. He brought a large coloured photo of Robert Mugabe to our meeting to show us what the machine he was selling could produce. We were very impressed. I had never seen coloured photocopies before but the machine cost over $4000 and our funds would not stretch to that. That was in 1982, what a difference in technology, now I can get that same or even better quality from my little computer printer that would probably cost about $60 in the shops. I am not sure of the price because at the moment I am using a printer that Jonathan found put out on the side of the road for the refuse collection. It works well and I get great prints with it.
The school office gave me a list of the mothers and I rang them all but did not have a lot of luck. Many of the European families were leaving and the African mothers were reluctant to help out. I think most of it was due to shyness. They had never done anything like that before so were not sure what was expected of them and if they would be capable of it. Also most of them were much busier than their European counterparts. They had for the most part bigger families, worked outside their homes and did not have any servants. But I did manage to persuade one or two to come and help and it meant that we could carry on.
When I started the tuck shop there were so few helpers that there was only one lady on duty each morning but that was chaos as one person on her own could not serve all the children during the short time that the boys were on break so there was always a huge rush to try and get served first. The bell would ring and the boys would run from their classes and push and shove to get to the top of the queue. The counter was not fixed to the ground and with the weight of all the boys pushing it would move right back until the person behind it was just about squashed against the back wall. So to try and get them all served faster I tried to get two mothers each morning to help out. Which in fact just meant that I ended up going up every morning to help the lady on duty. This helped the boys get served before it was time for them to go back to class. However they still wanted to get served before anyone else and so continued to push and shove. When things got too bad, we would stop serving, and refuse to start again until they all behaved themselves. It would work for a little while but it would not be long before they were pushing and shoving again. Jonathan and Dominic would not come to tuck-shop at that time. They were embarrassed when I shouted at the boys, refused to serve them and generally lost my temper. One of the teachers saw the problem we were having and arranged that there would be two of the senior prefects on duty with us each morning to control the queue and that did help. To keep control they would let them come in by one door about six at the time and then let them out by another door and as one went out another was let in. It was fine when the prefects remembered to come and help out but some times they would forget and we would have all the pushing again.
It was a typical school tuck-shop of the time, we sold carbonated drinks – all the ones with the worst reputations, we sold sweets, chocolates and potato chips, in fact everything we sold was high in calories and low in food value but I don’t recall that we had a problem with obesity. I suppose that was because all the boys had to play a certain amount of sport, a lot of them walked or cycled to school and computers were things their parents might have access to at work but not many homes would have had one. So they just did not sit for hours with computer games.
At the time there was a young African woman working in the school office and she kindly offered to help out when I did not have another mother to assist me. Her name was Mavis and she said it was a good chance to get out of the office for a while. As there were so few mothers involved I was often short of a helper and so Mavis and I spent quite a lot of time working together. Her husband was a manager of a Bata shoe shop and they had two little girls. Mavis showed me how little I knew about African women and how prejudiced I was without realising it. We would talk about our husbands and our children as we walked to and from the tuck-shop. One morning Mavis asked me about cosmetics to hide or cure the brown blotches on her face. She told me that she had had an even coloured skin before she fell pregnant with her first child but then these blotches appeared and she had never been able to get rid of them. I had no idea what the answer to her problem was but I remember thinking, much to my shame, that I was surprised that it bothered her, as they were not very noticeable. I would not have been surprised at a European woman being concerned that her skin was blemished and I knew that European women spent a great deal of money trying to keep their skin looking good so why shouldn’t an African woman feel the same. I have learnt a lot since then and although I don’t think I would say, as I have heard some people say, “I love Black people”. I have learnt that just like white people, there are some that I do not like and some that I am very fond of. I have also heard people say “I love children” or “I love old people” and it really annoys me. How can one lump them all together like that. To me, it sounds rather insulting, would you like to think that you were liked because you were a child or an African or just old. To lump them all together and say you like them all is almost as bad as saying you hate them all. They are people, just like me and my friends and family. Some of them are nice and some aren’t. I am grateful to Mavis for showing me this, she never realised how much she helped me and I did miss her when her husband was given a promotion to a larger shop in Harare and they all moved to Zimbabwe’s capital city.
I was seconded on to the PTA, Parent Teachers Association, at that time too. Once again, there were not enough people to do the job so anyone who was prepared to help out was accepted with open arms. Another thing I did for the school was to help out with a bit of the typing. Jonny had given me a typewriter for Christmas and I had come a long way since I had typed reports for Brian Morris at the Manchester Gardens, with two fingers. I was not a very fast or accurate typist but if left quietly alone to work at my own speed I could manage. The lady in charge of the office was very over worked and needed someone to type out stencils for the exam questions and as I could take it home and do it in my own time I agreed to do it. The English and History exams were not too hard but the Shona exam was a nightmare. Shona, the local language, was now compulsory in all schools and for me to type something that I did not understand was very hard and I did make some mistakes but my work was checked before the stencils were fed into the duplicating machines and the exam papers were printed. I wonder why the school did not have a photocopy machine. I remember a photocopy machine salesman approached one of the PTA members and asked if we wanted to buy a fancy new colour photocopier. He brought a large coloured photo of Robert Mugabe to our meeting to show us what the machine he was selling could produce. We were very impressed. I had never seen coloured photocopies before but the machine cost over $4000 and our funds would not stretch to that. That was in 1982, what a difference in technology, now I can get that same or even better quality from my little computer printer that would probably cost about $60 in the shops. I am not sure of the price because at the moment I am using a printer that Jonathan found put out on the side of the road for the refuse collection. It works well and I get great prints with it.
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