9. A Magnificent African Sun

The Obsessive Diary · Aug 31, 2025 · 2m

A bunch of White, English, public-school kids off to teach in Zimbabwe. What could possibly go wrong. We gathered at Heathrow, I said goodbye to my mother, we flew to Harare via a skidding touchdown in snowy Sofia. At a farmstead we put up our brand-new tents and drank beer and tried out our thin camping mattresses on each other as if we were still in Chelsea. We met the priest in whose care we were placed. Also White, but large and old, he’d been a master at Sherborne. He read out the list of our pairings, strangers to each other, the person we’d spend the next year with, in a place we’d…