You are listening to We Need New Stories. All episodes in this series are available on major listening platforms and on Fifth Word's website, episode eight. Magline's story, A second class citizen written by Zodwa Nyoni and directed by Anastasia Anastasia Osei-Kuffour. This episode contains references to violence and racism. Are you comfortable? Yes, I am. Okay, so the story goes. The seventh child of the seventh son was born a girl. They named her Magline. It's Gogo to you.
You don't call me by my first name. I am your grandmother. I am always Gogo. Sorry, Gaga. Two more children would follow her, and the family of 11 would be complete. The nine siblings would grow up in Selukwe, a town founded in 1899 and known for gold mining. Their father had bought a farm after the fifth child was born. He was one of a few black farmers to do so in the area. I would love to live on a farm and have loads of animals.
If you work hard in school like your dad, maybe one day you will be like your great-grandfather and buy your own farm too. Keep going, Gaga. The siblings grew up during a colonial era surrounded by white families. They learned to get on well and looked after each other. But it would be the boys the world placed their promise in. The girls were expected to carry duty as Magline's mother had done when she was married off at 15 by her father, a wealthy Chief.
Magline watched as some girls left school at grade six while boys like her brothers graduated from universities. When they returned, they joined the police force. This was a respectable job for black boys and men. Magline's family had generations of men in service. Magline's paternal Grandfather came to Rhodesia from South Africa on missionary work with Cecil Rhodes, a mining magnet who aims to conquer from the Cape to Cairo in the name of the British empire.
The Methodist preached from the Bible while Magline's grandfather cooked for him. Accompanying ministers and other black workers, the congregation settles in Matopos, but the religious message spread far and wide. Magline's parents wanted more for their daughter. They tilled the earth all year to make money. If Magline wanted a better future, she too would have to dig her hands into the soil.
All summer, she workeded alongside the seasonal Malawian farmer workers to harvest cotton, potatoes, maize, tobacco and peanut. She studied hard and after her Cambridge exams, wished to finish form five and six and then go to university, but the expectations of girls crept up on her again. Magline's was called a white for wanting something different. She was reminded of her choices teaching or nursing.
She begged and pleaded with her teachers for more time, but she was forced to apply to nursing. That's not nice. You shouldn't force people to do something they don't want to do. This was very different time, my boy. I didn't have many choices like you do now. So what did Magline, I mean, the girl do. By late 1964, a telegram came informing Magline that she would begin her nursing training in the following January. And so before the rest of her life began, she hung out with her friends.
They'd been a strong group throughout high school. One boy had caught her eye. He was three years older and worked on the railways. Young love is intense and moves fast. They'd go to the cinema and attend concerts. Cliff Richards, Percy Sledge and Otis Redding were the soundtrack to their romance. By Magline's third year in training, they were in love. They had a traditional wedding. Lobola, her dowry was paid and soon they had a son, Thulani. My daddy. Your dad.
My precious boy, my sister is the one who came to the hospital to name him. He was so quiet. She said he needed a name that matched him. do you know what your dad's name means? No. The quiet one. Thulani. That's right. Now, everything seemed like it was going well, but Magline's husband, who promised her parents she would accomplish her goals of studying midwifery in England, just like her sister was doing in Nottingham, was starting to change his mind.
The closer her departure approached, the more reluctant he became for her to go. Magline's hands had dug dirt, carried books and broken bodies to end the right to learn. Do you know what it means to earn something. To work very hard? And that's what she'd done. In 1974, she left her son in the care of her parents at their farm and boarded flight 7 2 5 to England.
She'd expected the British sophistication, which had coated her life to be as such in the mother country, but here she found no milk and honey. The plan was to train for two years and return home, but the war against the colonial rule intensified. The village hospital where she would use her skills was no longer safe. Her family advised her to stay in England. they started sending nieces and nephews to her as their futures could not be promised during shelling and bombings.
Her son was not sent for as he was safe on the farm. Daddy told me about how much he loved living there and me too. I missed so much when I was working here. Magline was raising children and working at City Hospital. She had little time to party, unlike her white counterparts who'd often come to her asking to borrow her notes. Kindly she'd oblige, but would soon learn that the tutors thought she was the one copying their work. Her mark of 55% paled in comparison to their 96%.
Magline had already sacrificed a marriage in defense of herself. She would not lose a career. She marched to the principal's office and filed a complaint. The tutor was called to provide an explanation. They all knew what was happening, but no one would outrightly say racial discrimination. From that day, the tutor marked accordingly, and by the end of the year, the white nurses had failed. Go, gaga. Magline never tried to make friends with those nurses.
Her close friends were two West Indian nurses who also knew what being a second class citizen felt like. One was from Birmingham and the other came straight from Jamaica. The trio would travel the country together, meeting other mid wives. On longer breaks, they'd go abroad to Africa and explore Europe. They needed the respite to cleanse their spirits of the brutality of their hospital shifts while white nurses did paperwork at desks and drink teas.
Often the black nurses would be the ones assigned to treat serious infections, to clean blood bays and operating theaters, and to cradle premature babies as they took their last breaths in the snatched moments between patients. Magline would beg God to help her through it all. the first year of her arrival in England ended with her slipping three discs and being bedridden for six months because a doctor had ordered her to lift a heavily pregnant woman alone.
Though entitled to compensation, Magne was made to feel guilty for taking the money and being off sick by nurses who'd made careers of knitting in offices instead of caring for patients. Magline couldn't afford to quit, her pay took care of her nieces and nephews, and son and mother, and father and sisters and brother and sister-in-law. The girl who once had muddy hands and big dreams was now the custodial of other people's aspirations. She worked through the pain and loneliness.
The only relief came when her brother and his wife moved to Nottingham from Newcastle in 1976. They all crammed into a flat, which was sweltering in the summer and left you frost bitten in the winter. The Indian landlord refused to fix the heater. Magline's brother would soon escape to the tropics of Guyana. You all should have gone to the sun. If we had left, your dad wouldn't have met your mom here, and then we wouldn't have had you. So it was good that we stayed. God had a plan for us.
By 1978, urgent news would come from back home. Rebels who were killing black farmers, they believed were wealthy and made money from exporting their goods. Magline's Parents' Farm was no longer a safe sanctuary for Thulani. She quickly applied for his visa and sent for her son. In the hardship, Thulani was the beacon of light she needed. She waited for him at the airport with a brand new red coat for the winter.
When he came through arrivals, accompanied by the air stewards, they raved about how impressive and eloquent her son was. Of all the things in her life, Magline knew with this boy she'd be first class in raising him. Magline poured 13 more years of herself into the N H S when her body could no longer carry the weight of all that she'd sacrificed. She retired in 1991. Thulani was thriving in his studies. Magline's days was spent marveling at the man he was becoming.
She'd keep praying and finding strength to be in England. Her son could have many choices in her heart. Magline always kept a suitcase packed for when it was time to return to Zimbabwe. But when Thulani met, a beautiful Ugandan woman, got married and had a son. That's me. Yes, you Christopher. She knew that she would never leave. They were her home. Her greatest achievement. The end. Say it again. No. Oh, please, grandma. Tomorrow it's bedtime. Thank you for listening.
The next episode in this series is Nicole's story, Loving People from a Distance. If you enjoyed this series, please share with others all episodes of We Need New Stories are available on major listening platforms and on Fifth Word's website.