Summary

When Zenzele asked her mother why she never studied in Paris or London, the letter-writer shared the story of Mukoma Byron Makoni, one of her childhood friends. Mukomo, she remembers, won a scholarship to study medicine at Oxford. Over the next few years, he wrote to Shiri (the name of the letter-writer is finally revealed) with decreasing frequency. He did not return to the village. Eventually he stopped writing even his mother letters, and only sends money.

Fifteen years after he left, Mukoma Byron returned. In his telegram, the “i” was missing from his last name, “Makon,” which Shiri attributed to the British telegram operators. When Mukoma arrived in Harare, he introduced his wife, Eleanor, and referred to Harare as “Salisbury” and Zimbabwe as “Rhodesia.” In the letter, Shiri writes about the differences between “Zimbabwe” and “Rhodesia,” noting that, “I had inhabited Rhodesia, but...