The 11th and 12th March are eventful days for me as since 1990, I remember two special things in my life. Last year I wrote extensively about 12th March and this time, I can pull out a short portion from autiobiagraphy and blog about the day I first went on air.
It was on Sunday 11th March 1990. I explain below how it let to that.
I arrived at Rumphi Secondary School with fears of being teased, bullied and beaten. I went to my hostel (Viphya) with my newly bought bag, half empty but some corner filled with locally prepared pop corn, two trousers only and one short trouser.
There were two guys (names withheld) who teased me during the first week. At times I still find painful to remember what they did. The first asked me to lie down flat and then jump. He also asked me to carry some stuff in the hostel.
The other day, his friend came and shouted at me in the face. He told me to close my eyes, and then asked for what I had brought from home to school and went away.
During the first two weeks we had a quiz where I came top of the form one class.I was then chosen to represent my Form One class at the MBC Top of the Class Quiz competition scheduled for later that October.
The Quiz competition was sponsored by one of the chain stores called Peoples Trading Centre (PTC). They made secondary schools to compete in four rounds. MBC had a quiz master in the name of Brightson Kalirani and Jeffrey Kazembe. The quiz could be prerecorded and then aired for 50 minutes on the state radio MBC. So being a Top of the Class member meant you were perceived to be one of the best in the nation.
In our first encounter, we had a tripartite facing St Patrick’s Seminary Secondary and Phwezi Boys Private Secondary at Phwezi on 24 October 1989. It was to air on 11 March 1990.I represented Form One and I scored 5 out of 12 for my class but then we lost at the end of the six rounds. Phwezi beat St Patrick’s Seminary and us. I was happy to have been exposed though we lost in the preliminary round.
It was during this recording of the competition that I met late Brightson Kalirani, one of the MBC presenters that I had met and admired years earlier. I first met him when he visited Mphompha in 1981 to record local music by Mr. Gehena Kanyenda.
The next four years were to take me to a mixture of success and failure in the quiz competition as a member of Rumphi Secondary School Quiz team. We competed against Ekwendeni Girls Secondary in 1990, Mary Mount Girls Secondary School, Nkhata Bay Secondary School in 1991, Chilumba Secondary School in 1992 and Bandawe Secondary School in 1993.
The quiz team kept changing each year with the departure of form four representative. Overall, I had the following team members over the four years: Schaeffer Chirambo, Joseph Chavura and Alick Mtika while I was in form one. Brussels Mughogho, Jairos Kondowe and Thom Longwe joined the team as I moved to older classes.
In the picture, you see me representing form four when we took on Bandawe Secondary School in 1993 on our home ground.
A lot of sacrifice and hard work was needed for the quiz team. As members, we were respected on campus but also expected to do well in our individual subjects if our dreams of going to the only university (of Malawi) were to be realized.
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