Stranger In Whitby, North Yorks

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it" - Oscar Wilde

Whitby Abbey: the main attraction in Whitby

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

I did not close my account in the North East of England properly because I left in a tearing hurry. My rental term had expired by a week when I left. The landlord, a reasonable man, let me stay free of charge for the 5 - 6 days I still needed to complete my MSc Defence, Development and Diplomacy thesis and hand it in. On Friday 5th September, the second last day of my stay in Durham, I almost burned the house down. You will be pleased to know that someone was watching over me. I will tell you all about that in later installments of this blog. The subject of today's entry is just to show you how there is nothing in my past to suggest I would successfully complete University education. A moment of sober reflection yielded this to me when I took a much needed break from thesis writing and visited a beautiful town called Whitby, North Yorkshire.

Whitby and its surrounding area is very beautiful and the pictures at the bottom of this story should communicate that to you if you ever want to visit. I want instead to talk about the thoughts that occupied me while I was out there. I had decided to clear my mind from my immediate dissertation woes so, instead, I focused on this question; should I even have passed secondary school? The answer to that question is: hell No!

Crazy but didn't know it

Do Girls Find A Russell Group University Degree Sexy?

The short answer to that is: I don't know and I don't care. But that's not the point.

My highest educational award todate 06. 11. 2014

The point I want to make is that my conduct at my improverished secondary school has no congruence with entry to any higher educational institution - anywhere! To do that, as a narrative device, I must rely on my relationship with girls at secondary school.

Back in Zimbabwe, my age mates who went to what were called Group A schools (your Etons in England) tended to get all the prettiest girls, while we, who went to what must have been - in a fair comparison - Group Z schools (no equivalent in England), got nothing. It bothered me for the longest time that no pretty girls wanted to go out with me as they all flocked to these blazer wearing, basketball and cricket playing rich kids. 

But, as you very well know times change

What's worse, long after we finished secondary school, some girls would still ask you that dreaded question; "what school did you go to?" It's the world we live in my friends, where people value you by what you possess. But on sober reflection, what is this a proxy of? This going to the Group A schools? This having nice possessions? Is it evidence of prudent planning? intelligence? God's favour? I don't know, but I can assure you no girl would have been making such complex calculations when we were at secondary school. On my day out in Whitby, I reviewed the evidence and reached the verdict that I just wasn't boyfriend material in my secondary schools years; it wasn't the school that I went to.

Arrival at Whitby Station, already planning my long awaited visit to Moscow next year

The Evidence: 

The secondary school you went to cannot be the only variable that determines whether you get a girlfriend or not, the laws of supply and demand do not allow such an anomalous condition. So we must look to other variables to determine why someone ended secondary school without a serious girlfriend. Let me venture that the dependent variable (the person) is also the major independent variable (his conduct).

At primary school, I fought with girls and my record in that is dismal, if memory serves, my record is; LLWD (Lose, Lose, Win, Draw).  Secondary school was when I became, what in the business is called, a hell raiser. Not even in an appealing way, but in the "most likely to end up in jail" kind of way. Girls in my background were cautioned by their parents against that kind of person and they listened. Even if they didn't listen to that advice, I was indiscrete anyway. Somehow, I was one of the clique whose task it was to expose - on the chalkboard - whatever little relationship we got wind of. If teacher X was dating teacher Y, we would put it up on the board, if student A was dating student B (from our school or another) it was my job to bring it to everyone's attention. What chance I wouldn't tell everyone everything if some girl went out with me? Who was the first student to break the news when in our last year of school one student impregnated another? Me. I don't even know how I found out because it's not like any of them would have confided in me.

Strangely, while I could get up to all these shenanigans, there is an incongruency there because I was hardly ever at school. If I wasn't suspended (failure to pay fees, breaking the science lab door etc), I would have been playing truancy. My clique and I used to like to go to the Army shooting range near Ruzawi to collect spent cartridges and wild fruits. To which we would be suspended for again, or punished every Friday, thereby further limiting the time I spent in an actual classroom. If we had a library lesson, it was a great opportunity for me to tear football pictures from the newspaper for my scrapbooks. I had 4 volumes; Local, European, Latin American and World Cup football. Punishment everytime I got caught. I can't remember exactly what crazy thing my friend George and I did, but I distinctly remember the Deputy Headmaster stopping assembly proceedings and plucking us from there, then walking us to the school gate, pushing us out, then him standing at the gate with folded arms shaking his head in an "I give up" gesture (there is a ham actor in all of us?). The point is, I shouldn't have passed secondary school.

But leaving my school conduct aside as a reason why no girl would date me, what about the girls who didn't go to my school who would not have known about my - for want of a better word - infamy? I think this is where it becomes slim pickings because Group A school status would have certainly helped, but still, I had something else. I played football, and in the small town I am from, we were accorded celebrity status because we were the next crop of players-in-waiting to play for the biggest local club. But the downside to that, for both my school work and possible relationship with girls, we were always gallivanting somewhere following football; 4 days training every week, game on Saturday, Sunday we would watch the first team either locally or follow it all over the country as far afield as Gweru, some 300 kilometres away from our home town - Marondera. 

If we were not away with football, my friends and I had Kung-Fu as one of our favourite pastimes. We watched every film at Dombotombo Hall. But what really took our time was our trek to our forest hide out - again for want of a better word - Dojo. We had a punching bag (a bag with sand) in the middle of the forest next to some sawdust heap from the local timber mill. The sand bag - hanging from a low tree branch - was for practising flying kicks, round house kicks etc and the sawdust was for practising our spinning techniques, with or without hands. Was it even real Kung-Fu we were practising? No, it was a mix of some self-defence moves my brothers in the army had shown us, what we saw in Chinese movies and the moves we spied on at the Dombotombo Hall Dojo. I wonder if the moves we saw at Dombotombo Hall were real Kung-Fu as well or their Sensei was just a make-believe sensei relying on Kung-Fu films like us. The truth of the matter is my time was fully occupied by other things than school or girls. 

Further, you don't just decide to be a hell raiser in school and a prince charming at home. My record in my town was almost as bad, we were doing it all. But I would say within acceptable limits because my brothers in the army would not have stood for it. So you find that stealing, drinking, smoking, and drugs was never one of the things I did because I wouldn't have lasted a day after that, but Fighting? Between fights! Playing truancy? Regular as clockwork! Climbing over the durawall at the local stadium for music concerts? Daily bread!

Which reminds me as well that the girls at my school did not hate me, they just knew one important thing; that I was too out of control to be boyfriend material. They liked me; in my last year of school the girls voted me to be the House Captain - Nehanda House. Our schools had the formative stages of a collegiate system (like I found at Durham University) whereby groupings are established to compete with each other in sports. On the eve of the big sporting event what I did I do? I tried to jump the durawall at Rudhaka Stadium into a Thomas Mapfumo Music Concert and cut my hand on the broken bottles that formed the top of the wall. The event went ahead without the Nehanda House Captain.

So there you have it, the few thoughts of reflection on my educational journey so far that my mind accorded itself when I said my long goodbye to Durham University and surrounding areas. I was going to stop studying now, but I have clear guidance from the military I will be re-joining to  do the PhD. I have already decided where I will be doing it; it is in one of the most beautiful places you have ever seen. I will keep you posted.

The Long Good-Bye to the North-East of England

Photo Essay:

Newcastle, Tynemouth, North and South Shields, Sunderland - Day One

Hartlepool, Middlesborough, Whitby - Day Two