Many of them had traveled a great distance to attend the year-end prize-giving. Tarisai Mukombachoto’s parents sat in the front row. They’d never been to such an event. The two rarely left their rural village. They’d definitely never set foot on the grounds of a place as auspicious as Mutare Girls’ High. Opened in 1959, Mutare Girls’ High, or MG as they called it, was constructed along the lines of its sister school, Wolverhampton Girls’ in England. The founders named the buildings at Mutare after famous British settlers who came to Zimbabwe in the late 1800s and early 1900s: Alfred Beit, David Livingstone, Allan Wilson. The student residences took the names of famous English cities: Manchester, Liverpool, and the one where Tarisai lived: Cornwall Hall. During colonial days only white girls attended MG. But when Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, schools opened up to all students. A flood of talented young black girls rushed to enroll at MG. Most of them came from the newly emerging elite.
