MT DARWIN – Tuku has come in as a good Samaritan to the impoverished community of Dande where he will build a classroom block at Murongwe in the depths of this remote Zambezi Valley district, north-east of the capital Harare.

^ Tuku and AirForce of Zimbabwe AirMarshall Perence Shiri in one of the Murongwe school classroom shacks.

Pupils at Murongwe, in Kaitano, 15km from Zimbabwe’s border with Mozambique, learn in squalid hovels that tell an awful story of miserable poverty and stark underdevelopment in these Dande communal lands.

It is not only these appalling pole-under-thatch shacks, that catch the eye here, but also the conditions under which the young pupils learn.

^ Murongwe school classroom shacks and the first new conventional block under construction.

Benches, chairs or desks are another story of urban luxuries. Here the boys and girls sit on poles or bricks. Others sit right on the bare ground that they are unpleasantly dirty by the time they knock-off.

When it rains lessons are disrupted as the structures flood. The pupils are soaked in rain and cold.

^ Tuku will build this block from where parents at Murongwe left.

When there are heavy winds anything can easily happen to the skimpy thatch. Such has been the life here since 2005 when these huts were erected to serve as classrooms.

Tuku has set out to help modernize Murongwe for the sake of the children.

“I am adopting a classroom block and building it. These children are the future and leaders of tomorrow. We must love them…care for them. My heart bleeds when I see our children learning under such conditions,” Tuku said when he met the locals, teaching staff and the pupils this week.

Tuku is adopting a classroom block and building it that parents had constructed only to slab level but had abandoned as they could no longer afford cement and other building materials.

^ A young boy sits on a brick during lessons at Murongwe.

A Non Governmental Organisation, World Vision, is completing the first classroom block while the Air Force of Zimbabwe, under Air Marshall Perence Shiri’s initiative, who personally rallied support from Tuku and other well-wishers, will furnish the new block. Shiri, himself, accompanied Tuku on a tour of Murongwe.

Murongwe has an enrolment of 451 pupils and unqualified teachers. Trained staff is unwilling to work at the school because of the working conditions including perennial draughts and lack of electricity including other basic amenities – challenges that further worsen the plight of the children of Murongwe.

Before Tuku left Murongwe there were some very light moments when a young boy handed him an acoustic guitar and asked him if he could play just one tune.

^ Murongwe pupils and teachers in one of the structures that serve as classrooms.

And so Tuku chose to play Dzoka Uyamwe popularly known by fans as Dande and which beseeches, literally, a prodigal son to return and suckle on his mother’s breast. And so they danced and sang happily together with the young boy.

Tuku has committed himself to work with children and has done so for over 30 years now artistically and in humanitarian areas of life.

Recently Tuku was appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Eastern and Southern Africa and his focal area will be HIV and Aids advocacy amongst children but is yet to start his official UNICEF work. – Shepherd Mutamba / tukumusik.com