Writing Lives

The Last Battle

85 Teacher Elias Gudo scans the room and flinches at the chafed walls and cracked cement floor that have become his nightmare. The room is stale and uninspiring. He didn’t like it from the day the headmaster showed it to him. Now, the way things are going, there’s no chance that it will be fixed soon, not with the headmaster prioritising the volleyball team’s trips to Mutare. He shakes his head, wondering where things went so wrong for him that he landed in this village. Perhaps, if he hadn’t shown an interest in writing in secondary school, if the interest hadn’t solidified his belief that he was good at English, he wouldn’t have taken a teacher training course, and – after the intense two years at Gweru Teacher’s College – been deployed to Rusitu Valley. He wants a decent room, even a whole house. But what does the headmaster say? You’re single, and as long as you stay single, you can only inhabit one room. ‘And, besides, Mr Gudo, a room is a room,’ said the headmaster. ‘You ought to thank your ancestors that we have electricity and running water. How many rural schools have such luxuries?’ ‘I need a bigger room, Sir,’ he said. ‘Is that too much to ask?’ The headmaster shook his head and said, ‘You don’t have furniture, The Last Battle Emmanuel Sigauke 86 Writing Lives not even a wooden stool. What do you need a bigger room for, Mister?’ ‘I’d have it if I had enough space,’ Elias rejoined, realising that he’d just lied to himself. Furniture, beds, and shelves required money. When had he last handled that? The headmaster gave him a look that seemed to say, ‘Don’t kid yourself!’ In the four months he has worked as a new teacher, his first salary hasn’t been processed. Money, real money, to afford even the basics – when will he get some? He pauses: ‘getting some’ doesn’t only apply to money. The thought of Tambu gnaws at him, as if not having money equals not having Tambu; to think that she hasn’t even bothered to visit him takes his breath away. No wonder teachers turn to students… and, as for them, no he doesn’t want to get himself into more trouble than he’s bargained for. Still, there is that Form 2 girl, with a body too big for her age, and how she distracts him from teaching with her juicy stare. Little sexy minx! He swats the thought away, remembering Mike, his former college roommate who committed suicide after he impregnated a Form 3 student in Ngorima. Right now, Elias just wants to kill something that deserves to die – roaches – delete them like stubborn words on a page begging to carry a life-changing story. His room is in a three-bedroom house, occupied by four other teachers , two of whom are sisters, who share the biggest bedroom. To Elias, this is a waste. Perhaps if he had a better room, he might entice one of them to hang out with him… and one thing might lead to another. The sisters are nearly twins, close as they are to each other in age; though the General Science teacher is darker, and he likes dark. The lighter one, the Shona teacher, is too short, but she’s still a lot of woman. And she knows it, making Shona jokes in the staff room; jokes from Shona praise poetry: husband and wife thanking each other after love-making – thank you the one from Guruuswa, you who dodged this and that and pierced here and there until you found your way and ruled where ruling was needed. She should just become a comedian and entertain Zimbabwe. At least, she receives a salary. They both do, the sisters. Elias has long set up his kitchen in a corner of his room. He tried to use the community kitchen, hoping to enjoy sharing the space with his colleagues, talking with the sisters, greeting the wife of the teacher 87 The Last Battle by Emmanuel Sigauke whose family occupies two bedrooms, but he was never able to cook, the burners were always occupied. Besides, what had seemed like an opportunity to socialise turned out to be toxic gossiping. The sisters even expected him to take sides, so he decided he was better off alone...