For Malawi’s Future Elite, Old-Fashioned Virtues and Classic Studies Come First

The boys and girls in their neat green and gray uniforms rise from their seats with a clatter of knives and forks; the master’s voice echoes around the dining hall: “For what we have received, may the Lord make us truly thankful.”

And well he might.

For the 350 young Malawians standing in silence for grace are destined to be a new elite, nourished not only on roast beef and apple pie but on Greek, Latin and the old-fashioned virtues of an English prep school education.

No Expense Spared

Here in Kamuzu Academy, in the heart of the bush, Malawi’s President for Life H. Kamuzu Banda has spared no expense to create a school widely known as “the Eton of Africa.”

It was in this spot some seven decades ago that Banda was taught to read and write by Scottish missionaries, sitting under a kachere tree, which is now a national monument.

Thirsty for knowledge, he went on to study in South Africa, the United States and Britain where he practiced as a doctor before returning to Malawi after a 40-year absence to lead his country to independence.

Kamuzu Academy is near Kasungu, 90 minutes by road north of the capital, Lilongwe. It’s a 20-mile drive down a red dirt road past thatched huts where goats, chickens and children play in the dust.

Suddenly, the road is paved again and leads to a pair of imposing iron gates adorned with the Latin motto “Honor Deo et Patriae” (Honor to God and Country).

Inside, a sweeping drive lined with lamps and bordered by exotic flower beds skirts a man-made lake. On the other side is the school, a red brick building with a clock tower, rounded arches and turrets.

Deputy Headmaster Tom Jackson, like almost all the rest of the 35-member staff, is British. “I don’t think His Excellency, the President for Life, thinks we are ready for Malawian teachers yet,” he explains.

Not only the pupils have to learn Greek and Latin at Banda’s express instructions, but teachers have to know the languages as well. Many are happy to come to a school where the classics are still king.

Lavish Facilities

The school’s facilities are lavish by any standards, not just by the standards of Malawi, where only one child in two goes to primary school and one in 20 to secondary school.

The staff, on three-year contracts, are backed up by a host of auxiliaries, including a housemother or “Dame” (an Eton term) who looks after uniforms and supervises cleaning of the twin-bedroom dorms.

The gardens and sports grounds are looked after by a staff of 350--one per pupil. Uniforms are manufactured on the spot, though straw boaters for special occasions come from England.

The chapel, designed in Banda’s words “to reflect my Scottish Presbyterian connections,” has a Presbyterian chaplain all the way from Scotland. Attendance at interdenominational Christian services is, however, voluntary.

The annual intake of 80 students is comprised of two boys and one girl from each district of Malawi, selected largely on the basis of how well they did in grade school.

Entrance Test Pushed

Jackson says the staff is trying to persuade the school governors to rely less on the elementary school performance and more on an entrance test designed to identify intellectual potential.

“these are not the cleverest 80 nationwide. The standard does vary,” he says diplomatically.

Another problem in a country with no birth certificates is that some pupils are admitted well over the maximum age of 15 to begin the six-year course leading to English “O-Level” and “A-Level” exams.

Some pups are 22 or 23 by the time they leave, but Jackson says discipline problems are few. A few have been expelled for misbehavior and some girls have had to leave after becoming pregnant.

Though the education costs $6,000 per child, parents pay only the standard national fee of $100 and Banda pays the rest.

Adjustment Is Quick

Staff say the children, some of whom have never worn shoes before or eaten with a knife and fork, adjust fairly quickly to life at the school.

“How easy it is to go back from our carol service and Christmas dinner to a mud hut for Christmas, I don’t know,” says Jackson.

The school opened in 1981, and the first Kamuzu pupils have just started to arrive back in Malawi after attending university in Britain, ready to become their country’s future leaders.

Strangely enough, one British tradition has been forgotten--there is no old school tie. But Kamuzu graduates are unlikely to need one in order to recognize each other and if all else fails, they will always be able to swap a phrase or two from Homer’s Iliad.

“You never know,” said one teacher. “One day Britain may have to import its teachers of ancient Greek from Malawi.”