Zimbabwe Absurdity

Shelton is my “professeur de Francais” and today he was recounting to me, in French, how last week he and some friends from his church had visited a rural school in the Hurungwe district near Karoi in the north west of the country. There are some 500 elementary pupils and 167 senior pupils. The fees for the term (about 12 weeks) for the juniors is $3 each and for the seniors $10. A large percentage cannot even afford that. The government is supposed to help out with the teachers’ salaries but given that the school is one hour off the main road not a lot of money gets to them (there are other reasons too). No wonder the rural education is such a mess and teachers so scarce. Private schools, mostly in the towns, are considerably better off and hopelessly difficult to get one’s children into. One I know of demands a $10,000 non-returnable deposit for each new child.

The Hurungwe school was very grateful for the gifts of exercise books, pencils, chalk etc. that Shelton and his friends took along.