St James Mission School

St James Mission and School is an Anglican Church School for girls, situated about 50 miles from Zimbabwe’s second biggest city, Bulawayo, near Nyamandlovu.

The school was founded in 1958 by Father Francis Boatwright, on land which had been given to the church at a time when there were increasing demands from the local community to provide a school in the area.

The school is in an isolated position and surrounded by farmland, mostly used for cattle grazing. The area is sandy, as it lies on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, and the climate is largely hot and dry. However, the winter months from May to June are surprisingly cold, particularly at night and in the morning.

St James began as a farm school for boys and girls, and some of the older boys helped to pay for their keep by cutting back the thick bush, making roads, creating a school vegetable garden and even making the bricks for the first classrooms of the Primary School. In 1961 it was decided to develop ideas to build a secondary school for girls and this opened in 1964 with 36 pupils in Form 1. Over the following years, the school increased its numbers, with children coming from all over Zimbabwe, especially from the rural areas.

New buildings went up: a dining room, kitchen, clinic, community house for the teaching staff, dormitories, classrooms, staff accommodation, and a church (started in 1967 and consecrated in 1970) strategically set at the heart of the Mission