Online Reporter
Veronica Gwaze-Zimpapers Sports Hub
AS the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) Advanced Level exams begin, classrooms across the country hum with anticipation.
Most learners are currently imagining the promise of university, careers and new beginnings.
For Charles Chitedzi, though, this moment is shadowed by hunger, loss and the constant dread of what will follow when the last paper is written.
As a volleyball star with the world at his feet, he should be walking tall.
Instead, his future feels fragile. His dream of studying law teeters on the edge of collapse, weighed down by homelessness and an empty silence where family should be.
Behind the powerful spikes and commanding presence on the court is a young man carrying scars too heavy for his age.
Charles’ life fractured early. His parents divorced when he was still at Hilltop Primary School in Murewa. His mother — a nurse at Murewa Hospital — left for South Africa with his four siblings.
Charles remained behind with his father — a hospital driver — because he was apparently named after him.
“My father was a driver at the same hospital where my mother was a nurse, and we lived a modest life. Our school and home needs were well taken care of,” he recalls.
“I helplessly watched as my siblings left with mum. I prayed for my mother to have a change of heart but the prayer was never answered.”
He buried the hurt in sport and books.
At primary school, he ran faster, jumped higher and learned quicker.
At Hilltop Secondary School, he traded athletics for volleyball, the court becoming a special place for him.
Each thundering spike was a protest against his broken family. Then life tilted again.
His father remarried, and his stepmother’s cruelty was relentless.
When his father travelled, Charles often went to bed on an empty stomach, chores delaying him deep into the night.
His father’s health deteriorated soon after, as yellow fever left him bedridden.
Charles, still a teenager, was suddenly a caregiver.
Every morning before class, he bathed and fed his father.
At lunch breaks, he would rush home to check on him.
Homework was done between chores.
His grades slipped. His hope faded.
Medical bills drained the family.
His stepmother disappeared for days on end.
To survive, Charles took on odd jobs — offloading delivery trucks at the local shops, washing cars and cleaning yards.
“Through these efforts, I would earn around US$80 in a month, which helped me cover essential expenses,” he says.
“I still remember the sleepless nights I used to have, stressed as my father’s condition deteriorated while my stepmother was nowhere near.”
In April last year, his father was admitted to Harare Hospital.
Calls were their only link, until one day a stranger answered, saying his father could no longer speak.
Days later, the inevitable happened.
“I had unsuccessfully called several times and knew something was not okay. Around midday, my father’s two colleagues paid me a visit. Looking at them, I could see death all over and I just broke down in tears,” he remembers, his voice breaking.
“I felt my entire world collapse under my feet. I literally died with him that day.”
Three months of solitude followed.
Then he was forced out of the hospital residence and started living in Morris village.
Poverty gnawed at him. An aunt in Mozambique sent groceries once, then vanished into thin air.
School was no longer an option.
Volleyball, though, remained his solace.
His talent shone through the grief.
He clawed his way to provincial competitions.
There, coach Aaron Mutede noticed him.
“When he talked to me during the games, I thought it was just coaches’ talk and nothing fruitful would come out of it,” Charles says.
“I had been through a lot, so I gave him my number but a few days later, I lost the phone. For months, I was unreachable until he reached out through one of the school teachers. The scholarship message finally got to me. It felt like a dream.”
Mutede secured him a full scholarship at St Collins High School.
Suddenly, he was back in a classroom, now an Upper Six Arts learner.
He was back on the court, too, and this time not just for distraction but as a leader.
Today, he captains the junior men’s national volleyball team, having led them to the Region V Games and African Championships in Namibia and Egypt.
It is a remarkable turn of fortune. But even in victory, shadows follow him. Where most classmates brim with excitement about life after school, Charles feels the ground beneath him is shaky. His dream of studying law seems distant without a home, family or financial anchor.
What he has is the court. There, amid the rhythm of play, he feels possibility stir again. There, he believes that maybe, just maybe, someone will come along with the next lifeline. Until then, he fights on, spiking against the weight of life, chasing a future he refuses to abandon.
Tinaye Agere