Welcome to Fifth Word's.
We Need New Stories.
Episode six, Ritah's Story.
Dear Ritah, written by Zodwa Nyoni and directed
by Anastasia Osei-Kuffour.
This episode contains references to racism.
This is you, 70 years from where you are now.
A lot of this letter you won't understand at five years old.
So many changes happen between 1955 to 2022.
Right now you are playing outside, covered in dirt.
You share your mother with the English and Afrikaans
boys who've been sent to study farming and piloting
in boarding schools, built in the outskits of the
Rhodesian town we call home.
Gwelo is the pit stop flights make to refuel
and stock up for the war.
It's probably best that you don't know this.
You don't need to learn fear so young.
Keep playing cowboys with the white boys on weekends.
Keep speaking to God, like our mother says.
You will need his strength throughout your life.
Keep your innocence as long as possible because
soon the differences will become apparent.
When you start working, you will discover that being
a black woman in Rhodesia means you will get paid less.
Mom will fight her hardest to get an education for you, but
even her efforts will still offer you only two choices.
Teaching or nursing, you will pick nursing
and become an auxiliary nurse working in Bulawayo
with the most vulnerable in Ingutsheni Hospital.
I'll warn you now.
Mental health hospitals won't be easy.
The war will spit out soldiers suffering from PTSD.
They will fill hospital beds next to murderers.
You'll be expected to clean after them while
the senior nurses sit and do paperwork all day.
The general hospital Mpilo won't be any easier.
The days will be long.
The nights will be excruciating, but you believe
in providing good care.
Some of the senior white doctors will
be less committed.
They will leave and go to South Africa.
You will become stressed and overworked, but help
will come all the way from Nottingham in England.
Eric will arrive to be the new church nurse.
He will cover the wards in St.
Luke one, and you will get to stay in Saint Luke two.
You'll rarely see him except on the days your
charge nurse is absent.
He will come in, give injections, and then leave.
You won't even pay attention to him until Mr.
Barker, your boss, has a Christmas braai at his house.
You'll be polite.
But the interaction won't be anything you need
to write home about.
The next time you are back at work.
You will find pinned to the notice, a handwritten
letter addressed to you.
You won't know what to do, so you will slip it
into your handbag and continue with your day.
When you do get back home and finally open it, it'll read.
Dear Ritah, it was a pleasure seeing you at the barbecue.
I wanted to ask, do you eat Chinese food?
There is a restaurant in town, I would like to take you.
What do you say?
Love Eric.
You have never eaten Chinese food.
You will agree to go but clearly state that
this is not a date.
This is a friendly dinner between
colleagues, nothing more.
You and Eric will go on several dates.
You will attend Christmas parties, Easter gatherings,
dances, and go to the cinema to watch King Kong.
On one date, you will eat too much popcorn and
chocolate and drink so much water that you get sick.
Eric will take care of you.
He's good like that.
He will love your children like his own.
He will love on your family and friends like
you grew up with them.
You will take him off and to visit your sister
Findo and their children at No.6 Phelandaba.
Even the most prominent black freedom fighter Joshua
Nkomo will take to Eric.
Nkomo will warn us to be careful after dark, the
rebels hunted white men.
Eric will return his kindness by making care
packages of Christmas pudding, cheese, and custard
for him and his comrades.
When the Ian Smith regime imprisons them
in Wawa for 24 years.
You will travel together to England to see where he comes
from and to meet his family.
They will welcome you.
On one visit to Nottingham, you and Eric will be
sitting watching snooker.
His mind will drift to the ever-growing
tensions back in Rhodesia.
Independence was close.
Everyone was anxious.
Eric wanted his family to be safe.
He will tend to you and ask, so matter of fact,
if we should get married.
You will say yes.
This will be in 1983.
The next day you will go to the home office in London
to find out if you are allowed to get married.
Permission will be granted and you will book an appointment
at the registrar in Nottingham by Shakespeare Street.
It'll take two years to pick up your girls
and life in Rhodesia.
You arrive in Nottingham on a bank holiday in 1985.
This is where I beg you to remember our mother's words.
God will carry you throughout your hardest moments in life.
The hospital administrator at the city hospital
will dismiss your vast nursing qualifications.
He will not believe that you have the experience
of being a social worker and an auxiliary nurse.
He will take you to the cleaning department
instead of giving you the job you apply for.
In the first house.
You will live in Saxondale.
You will be harassed by the landlord always asking when
you will be moving out.
Stand firm.
You have the right to be here.
There will be good people too.
You will share Christmas dinners with them in
the community center.
Eric's Aunt Cara in Shelford.
We'll teach the girls how to bake.
Eric's ex-wife Brenda will welcome you
and blend families.
You will gain two bonus children, my dear.
Two little white boys called Jeff and Trevor.
Some days you will chuckle at how you have
mimicked your mother.
Rita, the white children in England, were not like
the white children you are growing up with now.
It'll not make sense to you because all your life.
The white missionaries will talk of the Bible respect
and honoring your parents, but that only seems to be
instructions for Africans.
In England, the children will ask for fags and call
you by your first name.
You will work in one care home only for one night, and
then ask Eric to pick you up.
The culture shock will help you scared you'll get arrested
for disciplining them.
Eventually you'll start working in the
hospital as a nurse.
Unfortunately, you and the other black nurses
will be worked to the bone day and night.
Magline and Josephine will become your close friends.
You'll all want to scream and quit, but the hospital
will tell you in the climate of Margaret Thatcher,
trade unions, and protest, nurses do not strike.
You won't even be able to change jobs because
those you left behind will need your help.
HIV will claim so many lives.
You will work overtime to send back money year after
year for medicines and food.
Eric will understand, but also ask that we
don't forget the life we are building in England.
Finding a balance between where you are and where you've
come from will take a while.
You will see your girls struggle with racism before
they find some peace in who they are in this country.
You will contemplate returning home, but over the decades,
Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe will go from the jubilation of
independence to bleeding on its knees for basic needs.
Your family will recount tails traveling between cities
and towns just to get sugar.
They'll weigh the cost of paracetamol to bread.
Zimbabwe will always be home, but it'll feel different
over the years, especially when your brothers and
sisters start to die.
I know it's hard to think of them no longer existing
because right now, fishing by the Zambezi River
every summer with them, is everything to you.
For the things you lose, you will gain plenty more.
You will spend Sundays at car boot sales in
Redcliffe with Eric.
You'll watch the girls grow up and get married.
You have friendships that will age with you.
You will have your own home.
Eric's picture will hang pride of place and we'll remember
him long after he's gone.
And then one day a film crew will come knocking at
your door to ask you at 75 years old, what is the story
of your life right now?
You have no idea what is to come or what you hope for,
but I hope this letter shows you that you will have a full
and interesting life my dear.
Yours truly, Ritah.
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 Lawrence's
and Nyaradzai’s story.
As fate would have it.