I was still in the sixth form when I first heard of Kamuzu Academy. My Greek teacher had read about a school in the African bush where pupils in boaters and Eton collars sweated over Homer and Virgil in the glare of the tropical sun. The school, he told us, was the obsession of Malawi’s dictator, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Banda wanted his country’s most gifted children to learn Latin and Greek as a preparation for political leadership. Equipped with the lessons and ideals of antiquity, they would one day govern with wisdom and moderation. Plato’s ideal Republic would be reborn in central Africa.
The idea appealed to me, but I did not think of it again until many years later. I had just finished my Classics degree and the cold appetency of London was jarring after the languid delights of Oxford. I began looking for work in Africa, and one day a vacancy at Kamuzu Academy came up.
In all directions, vast, featureless plains extend to the horizon. For the length of the journey from the capital there are only smallholdings of maize and cassava, a few tobacco plantations, the odd derelict trading-center, and scrub. The thatch roofs of mud-brick houses are reinforced, here and there, by scraps of plastic bag weighed down with stones. After many hours, you arrive at a dismal town with an empty shop, a
