stories

My son's very good at keeping a secret, one of his Shona teachers says.

"You know, in the war, the soldiers (she means the Rhodesian army, white and black) used to come to the villages. They'd find the kids playing outside on their own."

"Has anyone got a story?" they'd ask.

"And the brightest ones would say: Yes, yes, I've got a story. The comrades (black freedom fighters) came last night and my mother cooked a chicken and we fed the comrades and then they went."

The soldiers would gently ask more questions, all the while telling the kids "what good stories they had," she remembers. Then, of course, vengeance would come.

The teacher's story makes me feel sad. I've just taught Creative Writing at a school with kids my child's age and seen how they fall over each other to be the first to tell their "story."

Sad too, because my child's grandfather was a soldier in the Rhodesian army.