Cambridge University is a school Tsitsi attended school in 1977 to 1980 when she returned to Zimbabwe. Tsitsi originally went to Cambridge to study medicine but decided to return for her reason of, "began to feel the need for an African literature that I could read and identify with," (Dangarembga). She returned shortly before the independence of Zimbabwe which can be shown in the text by the difference in treatment between her time in Zimbabwe and her time that was referenced in the story. Her time at Cambridge University is what I believe to be Tsitsi's realization of interest, choosing to abandon medicine in the pursuit of reading and writing.
According to the text, "During independence celebrations, she heard a beautiful Shona poem recited—an oral arts performance, not a written poem—and "it brought back to me that we have an oral language here. It isn’t written, it’s oral, and when it is reproduced in the medium in which it is meant to be, it is absolutely astounding. But it was also a painful experience: to think we’d lost so much of it." (195)" (Cora). This truly was the moment when Dangarembga realized what literature meant to her.
Work Cited
Agatucci, Cora. “Tsitsi Dangarembga & Nervous Conditions.” HUM 211 Course Pack, Central Oregon Community College, 3 Jan. 2010, http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/CoursePack/dangarembga.htm…;