Since my parents were not wealthy, I had applied for a government scholarship and a government bursary, this latter paying for a large chunk of my studies but requiring in return that I teach for two years after graduation in a high school to which the government would send me.
My schooling ended at last when I was 18, after I had taken my A-level examinations. I was exhausted, having studied very hard. There was no graduation ceremony as there is in Canada and North America. We simply put down our pens after writing our last paper, handed in our textbooks, and departed just as we had done at the end of every school day of our lives. It was over!
Yet, I was much more grown up, or so I thought. I still had my mop of unruly hair, which I still hated, but I had gained in confidence, especially during my last year. I had made a couple of friends during my time at Girls High, but I was sad that my closest friend was leaving with her family to go back to England.
I felt alone again, because most of the students in my school classes were heading to the huge, all-White universities in South Africa. I wasn’t. French wasn’t offered there, which meant that I had to attend our local university with its multiracial population of only 350 students.
Originally called the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN), it soon became just the University College of Rhodesia (UCR). It was an external college of the University of London, England, where all the examination papers were marked. I knew that the standards were high and that my French Honours course would be demanding but I was still excited to be moving onto something new. Soon I would be living in residence, which like the schools, was single-sex. Nevertheless, I was bound to meet other students, I surmised, from Rhodesia, Zambia, and Malawi. It would be very different from school. For the first time since I had been in junior school, I would be at a place of learning with both males and females. That was exciting. At 18, I felt grown up, leaving home, moving into residence, but I was still completely innocent. I had never had a boyfriend, mainly because of the tremendous pressure on me to succeed academically. I didn’t know what, nor who, awaited me, but I could hardly wait to leave, wanting to experience life to the hilt, but worried again about the workload. Once again, I realized that I couldn’t afford to fail.
How long would it take me to get used to another new routine? I didn’t know. I was soon going to find out.
