---

The fictional and factual depiction of schooling, the coming of age or the peculiar experience of boarding house life as a major social leveller has with only some few exceptions been conspicuously ignored in African literature studies. This volume explores the significance of colonial and post-colonial schools and schooling in various Anglophone African countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South-Africa) as an essential trigger of literary, musical and cultural creativity: The contributors assess the depiction of schools and their social environment in the novels and (autobiographical) writings of renowned writers such as Chinua Achebe, J. M. Coetzee, Buchi Emecheta, Dambudzo Marechera, Ngugi wa Thiongo and Wole Soyinka, examine the lasting impact of mission schools and boarding houses on the development of particular cultural codes or genres, and last but not least report on some current literary activities in African primary and secondary schools.

---

Table of Contents

Schools and Schooling as a Source of African Literary
and Cultural Creativity: Introduction i
TOBIAS ROBERT KLEIN

I. Cultural Creativity and Institutional History

Gyama Songs in Ghanaian Schools:
A Note on a Student´s Musical Creativity
DE-VALERA BOTCHWAY

Holy Aruosa School and Development of Creative Arts
in Edo Language in Benin City, Nigeria, 1945-1973 33
UYILAWA USUANLELE

The Missionary Factor and the Development of the Eve-Pandora
Complex in the Shona Novel 51
JACOB MAPARA

How to Make Gun-Powder: St Augustine´s Mission School,
Penhalonga in the Days of Marechera and the Second Chimurenga 63
FLORA VEIT-WILD IN CONVERSATION WITH FR. KEBLE PROSSER

II. Faction or Fiction? Schools and/in (Auto)biographical Writings

"They were among my happiest days":
Future Nostalgias and the West-African Boarding School 77
TOBIAS ROBERT KLEIN

"Knowledge Gained... outside a Formal Setting":
Invisible School Curriculum and Ngugi´s Formation as Writer
in In the House of the Interpreter 93
SENAYON OLAOLUWA

Childhood Autobiographical Memory and Literary Development:
A Reading of Chinua Achebe´s There Was a Country and
Buchi Emecheta´s Head Above Water 111

CATHERINE OLUTOYIN WILLIAMS

J.M. Coetzee´s Boyhood: Ashes of Childhood 125
HILMAR K. HEISTER

III. School Writing(s) Today

Creative Writing Competition Experience
at a Tanzanian Primary School 135
NGENDA SEBAHENE AND IMMACULATA KAIZA

School as Place of Literary Inspiration:
Analysis of Three Poetry Anthologies from Northern Nigeria 143
YUSUF M. ADAMU

---