Riverside College, perfect vision

Morris Mtisi
WHILE some people dream conflict, back-stabbing gossip and destroying others, visionaries crystallise ideas guided by purpose and vision. While some people are busy in-fighting and making useless noises, others are busy building the nation and empowering and preparing individuals to succeed in life.

And while some people are busy destroying education by useless dreaming and futile wisdom, others are mapping out educational best-practices.

Such is the new story about a new college that pristinely stands along a running river, Odzi, North West of the beautiful city of Mutare.

After seeing aggressive advertising in the media, both print and electronic, curiosity overtook this writer. No story about education, good or bad, ever escapes my attention, now my genuine readers and followers know.

This writer, in the company of a friend and colleague in education support, she is a service provider, visited this new college at everyone’s lips nowadays. It was easy to secure a quick and warm welcome from the owner and director, one Samuel Mushambi.

We went, we saw, we came back.

Here is the short and sweet story:

Riverside College is a little Jerusalem, perhaps a little Bethlehem, where something priceless is being born. That will impress God-fearing people. It is a little England intimately show-casing world class attraction and prestige. That will impress a tourist.

For down-to-earth sincererists like this writer and his friend visiting this private college for the first time the Riverside story is state-of-the art at its best.

In the words of the college head, Emias Mushambi, this project aims to offer only the best.

“Riverside College is Zim-Asset compliant. It will offer employment to lots of staff, both academic and ancillary. It will offer a curriculum in line with the new vision of a new curriculum transformation intended to produce students who are developed mentally, physically, vocationally but above all spiritually,” summed up the college head.

Answering a question about what makes this college different from many mushrooming elsewhere, Mr Mushambi sighted that Riverside College was a Church school insulated by Adventist values.

“This college shall run on a purely Adventist philosophy of God is the All, the Beginning and the End of it all, without whom there cannot be educational business guided by wisdom. We are not building a Seminary here, where students shall be orientated or trained to become priests and priestesses, No! But we want our school to be strictly guided by the principles of Ubunthu / Hunhu you are eloquently articulating in your Manica Post columns every day these days.”

Added Mr Mushambi , the college head, as we were enjoying the tour of the state-of art college: “ By the way I want you to know I read every word, comma and full stop you so beautifully write every Friday in The Manica Post. I am personally highly impressed and intrigued by your writing and learn a lot from it every Friday.” Guess how I felt.

Mr Mushambi revealed that the college would begin to enroll as it is already doing, Form 1, 2, 3 and 5 students for year 2016 studies and Forms 4 and 6 in the year 2017.

For such a state-of- the- art college, one and half million dollars would be justified, but the school head said fees per term would be only US $1 600. Only Heaven knows how much that would be in Chinese yuan when we have them soon.

We toured the classrooms, dormitories and kitchen and dining hall-everything is genuine state-of-the art. Teacher-pupil ratio is pegged at 1 teacher to 25 pupils. The dormitories are compartmentalized into 8 students to a compartment with its own shower for 8 and each one with a personal locker. While the standard is 25 to one hole, ablution facilities, at Riverside College it is 8 to one in-house toilet.

“The dining hall and Science lab furniture and equipment were imported from China,” said the college owner and Director’s wife Mrs Sheila Ellah Mushambi. It is indeed state-of-the-art. This writer and my friend saw it. We cannot remember anything quite like it in the schools and colleges we have been together before.

The first stage is done and well done. Congratulations Riverside College! Perfect vision, perfect infrastructure! We hope the dream of an Ellen G. White right education will kick start and flourish come January 2016. Many schools and colleges begin big but proceed poorly before they nose-dive into hopeless quandary. Even some of the past beacons of quality education in Zimbabwe, once known in all the capital cities of the world for producing role models of excellence are now miserable shadows of their previous glory. You know them by name.

We hope Riverside College will continue to be a pace-setter and model of both Adventist Ellen White and Minister Dokora’s dream of an ideal school offering an ideal education; an epitome of Zimbabwe’s very best, modeled on international best-practices. On behalf of The Manica Post and in particular this writer,we wish you the best in your endevour to produce the best Zimbabwean learner through guided moral rearmament coated by genuine Adventist values.

We will keep watching. Certainly this writer will remember to report on the progress, or lack of it, on this new project, telling it exactly as it is or will be, without fear, exaggeration or favour. In God we trust.