OBITUARY: I am Proud of what you made out of me Mama Anna Mercat Hans Poppe!

The late Mama Anna Mercant Hans Poppe
during her lifetime  with son Zacharia

By Danford Mpumilwa

I must have been a brilliant 14 year old young boy when I joined form one at the then just christened Mkwawa High School, formerly Saint Michaels and Georges, in Iringa region. The year was 1968. I say I must have been brilliant because out of 45 pupils who sat for the primary school leaving exam at the then Tandala Upper Middle Boarding Primary School in Ukingaland in Njombe, only three were selected to join secondary schools. And I was one of them.

Mkwawa was a very modern school, even by the present dot.com era. We had everything including a school bakery for our bread; laundry plant for our clothes, bed-sheets and blankets; refreshment rooms in our dorms with hot coffee and tea and sandwiches; a grass cutting tractor for our many sporting fields; underground tunnels connecting our sleeping quarters and classrooms and cafeteria for rainy days; three course meals and many other small luxuries including dish-washing

machines for our utensils.

Perhaps it was on account of these ‘luxuries’ spoiling me that I soon, after my form one, plummeted in my class performance, which had until then been top notch. From being number two or three in class to number 30 or so in a class of 35 students. I was young, enjoying my life and much worse not knowing or even caring little over such small matters as the importance of education.

This went on, much to the consternation of my teachers who knew I had great potential, until the end of form three when I met one very athletic young man Eddie. Now Eddie was one class behind me. His family lived in Iringa town and he liked most of the things I loved like music and field hockey.

We soon became friends. On weekends we could visit his mother and siblings in Iringa town where, I must admit, we greatly enjoyed his mother’s fresh baked buns and donuts. In no time we were always looking forward to these weekend visits.

That is when I came to know his mother, Anna Mercat, a retired teacher who took keen interest in my school performance. She insisted on going through my class-work. Initially I resisted but on account of her mouth-watering bakery products I had to relent. That is when all hell broke loose. What was I doing? With such a bad class performance I would simply finish form four with nothing. And what will I do at such a tender age? She fired at me.

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