This is story #13 in the series “Where Exactly is Home?”. The author recommends you read them in order.
Introduction:
“Where Exactly is Home?” follows the story of my parents, my two younger brothers and me, Susan, who emigrated from war-battered Britain, in the mid-late 1950’s, to Southern Rhodesia, Africa.
The effects of this move on our family were huge, as we struggled to adapt to such a different way of life. Only after further upheaval, and more long-distance travelling, did our family eventually settle in the city of Salisbury, Rhodesia.
However, we did not know then that we would not remain there for the rest of our lives, either.
When the family first went to Africa, I, Susan, was 9 years old. My two brothers, John and Peter, were almost 7 and 4, respectively.
Nowadays, as seniors, John and Peter live in England. I live in Canada. Throughout our lives, we have both benefitted from, and suffered because of, our somewhat unusual childhood.
I, for one, still sometimes ask myself which country represents home to me.
This is a series of stories under the title “Where Exactly is Home?” – I recommend you read them in order, starting with story #1.
13. Winning a Prize, I Didn’t Want.
How could I be so angry about winning a coveted prize? Yet, I was, and I knew, even at 10 years of age, that angry was the correct word to describe how I was feeling. I felt insulted, too. How could the headmaster, who was also my teacher, even write inside my awarded book, in his lovely, scripted handwriting, using his ink-filled fountain pen, my name, followed by the words, “The Most Progress” in Standard III? Was he serious?! Was this intended as an insult? I doubt it because I didn’t think he would stoop that low. He was an educator, after all. Yet I stare even now, decades later, at those personally inscribed words, and those same feelings rise to the fore. Yes, this book, “The Wind in the Willows”, by Kenneth Grahame, was the prize I was given on School Prize-Giving Day in 1957. Why was I so cross? Why didn’t I feel proud of my so-called achievement? Quite simple, really. Because I considered that the headmaster knew all too well, as did I, as did in all probability all my classmates, too, that I had, in fact, made very little progress all year long.
Having just emigrated from England and now living in Darwendale, a village in the Southern Rhodesian bush, I, like my brother, John, had simply started out in our respective junior school classes way ahead of our peers. John had been advanced a year, but I had not, mainly, I suspect, because I was more useful helping the less able students in my classroom containing 20 or more students in three different grades. So, no progress had I made in English, in Spelling, in Composition, nor in Mathematics. I had simply stood still for the best part of a year, and yet I was to be given this prize. I comforted myself, thinking that I had made tremendous strides in Rhodesian History and Geography, at least, since, until arrival in Darwendale, I had never heard of the two African tribes, the Mashona and the Matabele (Ndebele). I didn’t know anything about the African King Lobengula, nor of any of the treaties he had made with Cecil John Rhodes’ British South African Company, when the British had first arrived from South Africa. I had no idea that there were so few towns in this vast country, and that a lot of pre-colonial fighting was over mineral rights. I hadn’t a clue what a “kraal”, a “rondavel” or an “indaba” was. I was learning for the first time the geography and history of the Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland (now called Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi), so I suppose I must have made excellent progress there, at least.
