Growing up in a rural peasant family and community in Zimbabwe has always positioned me on the margins, both as a college student and a worker in Zimbabwe. I struggled to negotiate my background of rurality and peasantry in the new urban contexts of college education and work. This position of marginality often drove me to imagine the impossibilities of social justice that was peddled in public and political discourse platforms of educational equality and social mobility. More importantly, I realized that
few youths from similar social locations like mine could walk the road I travelled. When the ‘opportunity’ to pursue PhD studies was ‘offered’, (for marginalized others opportunities are rarely available) I embraced it as an occasion to understand in depth the circumstances of those whom I thought were severely experiencing marginality in my rural community. My first research statement of intent was to examine educational challenges facing rural school girls in Zimbabwe. This focus was solely framed on the basis of my experience as a boy growing up and also working with boys and girls in rural Zimbabwe. I was convinced that there was no justice for girls in school considering that most of them did not complete primary schooling. However, I failed to connect girls’ challenges in school to the broad structure of gender and patriarchy in society that subordinate women in general. I also could not understand how girls’ experiences at school in relation to boys and teachers militated against their achievement in school. Definitely, I was aware of the problem of girls, but I did not understand how deep that problem permeated the social structures and practice of gender. I was part of the system that worked against girls’ access to justice and enjoyed the dividends of that gender regime as a man. Considering that I was part of the oppressive gender machinery, my vision was blurred to the intricate ways in which my position as a privileged, professional male was implicated in gender injustice.
On more than one occasion, I have been asked, why I had to go Canada to study gender in rural Zimbabwe. Why could I not do my research in Zimbabwe? Often, I had problems in justifying my pursuit of gender studies about rural Zimbabwe in a faraway place like Canada. Such questions are often framed in essentialist and dichotomous notions of physical geographies of location. Logically, Zimbabwe seemed the most suitable place
for me to conduct a study of this nature. My stay in Canada taught me an important lesson, that is, the need to step out of one’s social location in order understand the depth of the problem at hand. This new position as a student in Canada provided me with a different perspective to look at the same problem and enabled me to generate new insights and understandings. My personal experience which was closely tied to the national circumstances culminated in both a “diaspora of despair and terror” (Appadurai, 1996). I relocated to Canada in 2007 at the peak of the crisis period in Zimbabwe, joining thousands of other Zimbabweans who had migrated earlier.
As I look back, the conditions of despair I experienced made this work possible. But it was not a linear academic journey. Having grown up in rural Third World context I was oblivious to the challenges and experiences of being a school boy in that context. As I reflected on my experience in school and at home, I note the ways in which my own subjectivity has been constructed in gendered ways.
One personal anecdote is relevant at this point. I can only imagine now how this experience and others of similar nature bore on my notions of gender. This incident was not just an isolated case, but it represents a series of moments in which most boys related to school power and the consequences of these social relations on boys and ‘others’. On that fateful day, I was caned severely for refusing to bring a sweeping broom to school which was part of the routine cleaning chores we were required to do as students. I became unconscious, only to wake up after being drenched in cold water- a resuscitation method in rural remote Zimbabwe in the absence of emergence medical care facilities. When I arrived home, my mother had already got the news of what had happened to me in school. She asked me about it. Knowing very well the intention
behind her concern, I denied that I had been beaten at school that day. Accepting would have meant that I would receive a further beating from her and later face embarrassment in school the next day when she would confront the headmaster about it. The best option available to me was to act like ‘a real boy’. I denied that something so dreadful had happened to me at school that day.
Division of labour on the basis of gender, enduring corporal punishment, the power of regulating one’s self, and body in this story reflect gendering practices at the school. This experience conveyed indirect messages of what being a normal boy and inversely
a normal girl meant. Working as an educator in one of these rural schools a few years
later, I noted that little had changed in terms of these gender notions.
As a teacher in Zimbabwe, I was involved in implementing some of the projects aimed at improving the lives of girls in rural schools, but was always disappointed by their outcomes. Despite these projects’ noble intentions, most girls still experienced many hardships in school and at home.
What struck me most as I read literature on gender and education from other places especially in the West is the silent attention given to the issues of boys in gender related educational programs in rural Zimbabwe. The literary journey landed me on feminist, postcolonial, gender and masculinities theories. In one of my PhD term papers which became a decisive turn in my research focus, I wrote a paper titled Feminism and Feminist postcolonial theory: Framework for understanding experiences of rural school girls in Zimbabwe. By claiming the need for “solidarity” between men and women in this endeavor (Mohanty, 2003), I argued a strong case for attending to the problem of rural school girls. However, I became convinced that I was leaving my dominant and
privileged status as a man in relation to women intact. I thought for once about my experience as a student and educator in Zimbabwe and about ways in which my experiences helped to further entrench injustice. I realized that there were many benefits for girls and even boys could change how they viewed themselves as social and gendered beings. Thinking along these lines led me to reformulate my original understanding of the problem of girls as an issue of the impact of masculinities on girls’ and boys’ lives.
The problem of the interplay of schooling and masculinities in rural Zimbabwe is an issue I experienced in my personal life as a student. It is a problem I unsuccessfully attempted to solve during my experience as an educator. In response to personal challenges of survival caused by broad national constraints, I moved to Canada. Now, I am stating an old problem which I experienced but in new ways, hoping to get a better understanding of the problem