The chapter opens with a recollection that Nhamo started formal education at age seven because Babamukuru, educated in South Africa, believed early schooling kept children’s minds “malleable.” Babamukuru soon leaves the mission for England to study further, taking his children Chido and Nyasha with him, while his own mother stays behind. This departure creates fierce debate in the family about who should care for the children; the narrator’s grandmother argues the children should stay at home, but Babamukuru insists on taking them to avoid the hardship he endured.

Back at the homestead, a poor harvest leaves the family without money for school fees, so the narrator’s brother Nhamo is forced out of school after a successful Sub B exam. Their mother reacts by boiling eggs to sell at the bus terminus and expanding her garden to sell rape, onions and tomatoes, scraping enough cash to keep Nhamo in school. Meanwhile, the narrator, denied a place in school, vows to earn fees herself. She begs her father for seed, promises to clear a plot, and begins market gardening in December 1962, working alongside her grandmother, who shares oral family history about earlier generations and their migrations.

Her maize crop grows, but in February the cobs are stolen, prompting a quarrel with Nhamo, who dismisses her pleas for help. Frustrated, the narrator attends Sunday school, where a fight erupts between her and Nhamo on the football pitch. The teacher, Mr Matimba, intervenes, chastises both children, and later offers to help her sell the remaining maize in town.

On a Tuesday, Mr Matimba drives the narrator in a school truck to the magrosa bus terminus, then to Umtali. She experiences a motor vehicle for the first time, asks questions about roads and cars, and is shown the landscape of the town. At a glass‑front shop, she presents her green maize to a white woman named Doris and her husband. Doris rebukes the child‑labour implication, but after Mr Matimba explains the narrator’s situation, Doris gives ten pounds toward her school fees. Mr Matimba explains how the money will be kept by the headmaster with a receipt.

When the narrator tells her parents about the ten pounds, her father argues that the money belongs to him and confronts the headmaster. The headmaster produces the receipt, confirming the money is hers. The dispute escalates, drawing Mr Matimba into a heated argument, but the money remains earmarked for her education.

The narrator returns to school the following year, repeats Sub A, then tops Sub B, while her brother Nhamo, now in Standard Three, places fourth—a result he downplays. Babamukuru returns from England during this period, prompting her father to flaunt his hospitality and plan a journey to the airport for Babamukuru’s arrival. The father and Nhamo must navigate unreliable bus timetables, decide whether to stay the night at the aunt’s homestead, and secure provisions (cornmeal, sweet potatoes, chicken). The mother’s miscalculations force the narrator to fetch cornmeal from the aunt’s neighbours, while a last‑minute message announces Babamukuru has sent money for a goat, allowing the trip to proceed. The chapter ends with the family’s chaotic preparations and the narrator’s internal conflict over her father’s expectations versus her own educational aspirations.