Welcome to Fifth Word's We Need New Stories.
Episode Three, Thulani's Story, The Quiet One Left
In the Loudest Way, written by Zodwa Nyoni, and directed
by Anastasia Osei-Kuffour.
This episode contains references to violence.
Sometimes I can see myself as a young boy on the farm,
sitting high up on a tree, observing life around me,
the warmth of the Zimbabwean sun on my face, and roughness
of the branches against my thighs feel like yesterday.
So it seems strange to be talking about 30 plus
years in Nottingham.
I guess I'll start at the beginning shall I?
Quiet children are deep thinkers.
We watch and feel the things that are unsaid.
Cradled in my mother Magline's arms in the hospital, my
aunt knew this about me.
And so she gifted me my name Thulani.
The quiet one.
I was always curious about the world.
When I was three years old, I followed my older
cousins to school to see what they did every day.
The school was only a mile from the house.
Teachers had taught generations of my family.
I couldn't wait for my first day of primary school
to come in three years.
The teachers were impressed by this toddler
who'd walked in alone.
They let me stay until lunch.
I thought my cousins played all day, but it turned
out they learnt a lot.
From that day, I became a studious child.
It was a good thing too because my mom was a nurse
and my dad was an engineer.
They had high expectations for me to excel.
My mother left to further her studies in England.
I am an only child, so leaving me behind was not easy.
But necessary for us to have a better life.
She left me with my grandparents and said that
she would be back soon.
On my grandparents' farm, we grew corn and cotton.
We raised cattle, chickens, dogs and horses.
Nature understood this quiet child.
It let me climb his trees and pick its
fruits from the orchard.
The farm gave me and my cousins discipline and
fertile ground to grow.
We respected life cycles.
We watched how resilient every harvest was.
It was an idyllic place to live
Away from the city, we almost forgot that we lived
in Rhodesia during colonial rule and a civil war.
Sometimes rebels would come to the farm.
They thought farmers were wealthy, but my grandfather
was a retired war veteran.
Rebels would raid our grain, take animals,
and sometimes money.
When I was eight years old, they came to the
farm late one night.
My grandfather had nothing to give them.
They turned to me and my cousins.
We were scared children, huddled behind an old man.
They cocked their guns and told my grandfather that
he would have to give up one of his grandchildren.
He pleaded for the lives he'd been entrusted to protect.
In a bid to save our lives my grandfather offered
to trade his war medals.
The rebels were fighting their battles, hoping
that history would reward them as honorably.
They too wanted what they hadn't earned.
As relieved as we all were, my grandfather knew that
one day they would return and we wouldn't be so lucky.
The next day I was moved from the farm to
Salisbury, now Harare.
Not everyone had a mother in England to escape to.
My grandfather called her and told her that Zimbabwe
was no longer safe.
She couldn't come back, and it was time for me to leave.
Within a week, she had organized my visa and
I was on a flight as an unaccompanied minor.
I had no time to process what was happening.
I thought that I would go back home once everything
was back to normal.
On the plane, I got to sit in the front with
the other children also heading to a foreign country
to join their families.
I was the only child fluent in English, and so I helped
the others to translate from Shona or Ndebele what
they wanted to eat or drink to the flight attendants.
I knew all sorts about England from TV, books and
phone calls from my mum.
When I arrived in Nottingham in 1978, I thought I'd just
fit into the world, but the bitter cold migrated
into how I was treated.
I was othered, the African boy who journalists wrote
news articles about, they were curious about how I
knew the Queen's English.
The Empire exported formality far more often than stored it.
I struggled to understand their local
accents and dialects.
I struggled with how relaxed their schools were.
Unlike the teachers at my cousin's school in
Zimbabwe, the ones at Hayden Road didn't push me.
In fact, they brought me down a year.
They couldn't believe that I could engineer racing cars
from bottles and balloons.
They thought my knowledge of the French astrologer
Nostradamus was plagiarized from a white student.
When I was eligible to go to high school, the headmaster
blocked my chances saying that I hadn't been in
the country long enough.
There was a friend whose bedroom I never saw because
his father never wanted my kind inside their house.
And let's not forget the skinheads that
roamed the streets.
I was born of people who raised children as well
as they'd done their crop.
I was built to withstand blistering heat and droughts.
I carried a briefcase to school because I meant
business about my life.
You couldn't tell me that I wasn't going to
be someone important.
The quiet child had found a louder voice
in this new place.
When it was time to go to college, I toyed with the idea
of being a vet or a doctor.
In the end, I followed what was singing to my heart.
Growing up on the farm, we had to make our own entertainment.
I loved learning crafts from Malawian and farm
workers who'd pass through for a season or two.
My cousins and I would do shadow puppetry with our
grandmother's clean linens.
The biskop showed international movies on
the big screen, and my mom would take me to the
concerts in the city.
Naturally, an arts degree seemed like
the right fit for me.
I couldn't afford to go to London and do
a four year course.
I registered at ARTS near York for an intensive year.
I studied film, theater and radio seven days a week.
We had classes and put on shows.
The only break I got was two hours on a Saturday
to do my food shopping.
I learned how to be onstage, backstage, in front of
the camera and behind it.
The course was preparing us to work in the industry.
I did countless professional plays and
theatre in the community.
My commitment eventually led to me winning the
Scotsman Award for the most outstanding play at the
Edinburgh Fringe in 1992.
I worked in London for a little.
But I always had my family's high expectations within me.
As much as I loved the arts and wanted to succeed
in it, I questioned the number of available
opportunities for black directors in the industry.
This is something the sector is still trying to combat.
In 2022, my mother had left behind a country
and family so that I may have choices in my life.
I wanted my life to be something she could be proud.
I wanted my children to have far greater
choices than I had.
It's not easy to step back from a passion, but I made
the decision to pursue a government job instead.
Over the next three decades, I worked for charities,
schools, and private companies in Nottingham.
I have won awards for volunteering and working
as a school governor.
I found ways to stay connected to the arts though.
I've been a part of adult theater groups.
I currently sit on three theater boards, including
Nottingham Playhouse.
Sometimes I'll sit just like that little boy did in the
tree and think about how things turn out in life.
There's been so much variety and pivoting in my life.
I've never lived in a straight line.
I've been able to do this because in my quietness,
in my moments of solitude, I find grounding.
I listen and trust myself to make a big impact in my way.
Thank you for listening.
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All episodes in this series are available on major
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The next episode in this series is Vinnie's story.
It was in love, I was created.