Ashwell and the Radio: A Different Perspective

I told Ashwell’s story in my last blog. I told a simple story of a minor offence – Ashwell entered my house and borrowed my radio while working on our high school soccer team’s equipment: without my permission. I noted also that Ashwell might have a different memory of this event than I do. I want to explore briefly some reasons that his memory might differ from mine.

I told the story as though the power differential between us was straightforward: I was the teacher and he the student. Of course, the setting was Rhodesia of about 1973, Smith’s Rhodesia. I grew up as a White Rhodesian. I went to boarding school at Hillside Primary School in Bulawayo at age seven, living in a hostel mostly populated by the children of White farmers. The school was segregated; Black Rhodesians (Africans, as we called them) had their own schools.

I went as far as Form Three in that system (studying at Hillside and then Hamilton High School) and then returned to Pennsylvania with my parents for Grades 11 and 12. In 1967, I went to Messiah College where I studied maths (not so well) and English literature (better). After graduation, I returned to my boyhood home (Smith’s Rhodesia) in January 1972 to teach at Matopo Secondary School, a high school for Black children.

This colonial dynamic – in which I was part of the system run by a White minority government – is missing from my original telling of the story. It is not just that I was a teacher and Ashwell a student; I was also a White Rhodesian (American) and Ashwell was a Black Rhodesian.

I acknowledged this dynamic in the original telling by saying that I lived in Zimbabwe. It was called Rhodesia then, but I named it Zimbabwe to acknowledge that all of us – Black, White, Asian – belong to something larger than the colonial reality. I miss Rhodesia; that is where I grew up. But Rhodesia was fundamentally flawed in its inception. A minority ranging between 2 to 4 % of the total population cannot control the lives of everyone in the country. I do not pursue the question of what we should have done in the 1950s through the 1970s; I simply acknowledge that the colonial reality could not continue.

But when I confronted Ashwell about using my radio, I do not know what that meant to him in light of the fact that I was (in his eyes) a White Rhodesian – by upbringing, if not by citizenship. I was also a missionary, and that is part of the equation; but the relationship between Black and White at that time involved a power dynamic much greater than our relationship as coach and player or as teacher and student.

That is the reason I say I don’t know what Ashwell’s memory of this event is. I do not understand the Black Zimbabwean experience from the inside. I have lived enough with that experience and with its consequences to know something about it, but it was not my lived experience.

I am fortunate to have returned to Zimbabwe as a teacher there before Mugabe’s excesses brought so much suffering to the country. I loved Rhodesia, and I love Zimbabwe. I grieve her current distress, the fruit of corruption and cruelty, and I love her people and my memories of her people. Including my friend, Ashwell the soccer player.

A short story: Ashwell and the Radio

Yesterday I did the children's story at church. Telling the children's story is harder than preaching a sermon any day. The sermon (Marg preached) was on Jesus' encounter with the woman taken in adultery (Jn 8) -- a contested passage, but also a fascinating story that Marg dealt well with. My story was a memory of an offence and forgiveness 45+ years ago. Here it is.

The Freedom of Forgiveness

Many years ago when the world was young, or at least when I was younger than I am now, I taught high school in a country called Zimbabwe. I taught English classes and Mathematics classes, and I coached the high school soccer team at a school named Matopo Secondary School.

In order to play soccer, you have to have good soccer equipment. Every Saturday morning, a high school student named Ashwell came to my house to check the soccer ball. We had a lot of thorns on the ground, and he often had to open the ball up and take out the thorns and patch the ball, so that we could use it for our practices and games.

One Saturday, I went into the nearby city of Bulawayo for the day. Ashwell came to my house as usual and sat on the veranda to take care of our soccer equipment. When I got home in the evening, I noticed something inside my living room. I had a transistor radio to listen to the news and sports and music and such. Well, my radio had been moved. It was easy to pick up and carry, and I could tell that someone had come in to my house and used my radio. It had to be Ashwell!

I went down to where the male students had their rooms and found Ashwell. I asked him if he had gone into my house and borrowed my radio. It was a creepy feeling, knowing that he could have walked all over my house and gotten anything he wanted to from it.

Ashwell was clearly scared. He admitted that he had gone into the living room and brought the radio out. You could see that he thought I was going to report him to the principal of the school and get him in real trouble. He apologized and said he was really sorry for going in to my house and using my stuff without asking.

When I went down to Ashwell’s room, I was really quite upset. As I said, it was creepy knowing he had gone into my house without asking. But when he apologized, something happened. I realized I didn’t need to stay angry. I didn’t need to get him in trouble. I said something like, “Well, you have apologized and I forgive you. Don’t do it again.”

Somehow, apologizing and forgiving set us both free from what he had done. It doesn’t always work so simply, but this basic idea is true. Admitting what we have done and being forgiven really does set us free to live the way that we should. Ashwell and I were able to resume a good relationship and he kept coming to my house to work on the soccer equipment.

Most important of all, when we admit what we’ve done wrong to God, God forgives us and sets us free to live a better life. Ashwell and I are actually no different from each other. We both needed to admit to God who we really were, so that God’s mercy could flow over us. Mercy’s a big word – it’s another way of talking about God’s love. God loved all of us so much that God’s Son (Jesus) came to pour out God’s love and mercy in our lives.

Postscript: It would be interesting to know what Ashwell (not his real name) thought of the whole incident. He might remember quite differently from the way I have just recounted. That's one reason I didn't use his real name; besides, I didn't ask him if I could tell this story.