It is 1979 just outside a remote Zambian village when seventeen-year-old Chimuka meets Sara, a white woman near his school. The thirty-three-year-old mother of two and the young, naïve man begin a relationship that will transform both their lives in ways they never could have imagined. As Chimuka shuns conventional African living for the dream of higher education and a liberated life, he decides to follow Sara. In the midst of a struggle for dignity and pride, he soon finds himself immersed in a maelstrom of cultural clashes, social opprobrium, and personal upheaval. Torn between the roles of lover, friend, breadwinner, and mother, Sara is also lost in her own tumultuous battles. After five years together in Zambia and Kenya, the two finally part, but loyally write hundreds of letters to each other that maintains their emotional connection despite the distance between them. Thirty years later, Chimuka convinces Sara to meet him under the shade of a fig tree and awaits the conclusion of his unforgettable odyssey from the heart of Africa into the soul of the woman he has always loved as his mother.
The Father of Andromeda
By Birgit Berggreen Dixon Kelvin Chimuka SikabotaTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2011 Birgit Berggreen and Dixon Kelvin Chimuka Sikabota
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4269-4767-4 Contents
Part one – Zambia 1979—1985..............................................1Young boy............................................................................3Cousin Gordon's farm.................................................................11Passport troubles....................................................................29Part two – Kenya 1985—1991...............................................43College..............................................................................45Kemuma...............................................................................61Exams................................................................................75National Anthem......................................................................91Accounts Clerk National Certificate..................................................105Slum dweller.........................................................................121Debt ridden..........................................................................133Part three – Zambia 1992—2002............................................143Accountancy assistant................................................................145Invisible voices.....................................................................155Some answers.........................................................................171Part four – Zambia 2004—2008.............................................181A Christmas card.....................................................................183Drought..............................................................................199Slasher boy..........................................................................213Magic................................................................................229Voice hearer.........................................................................245Floods...............................................................................263In comfort...........................................................................277Face to face at last.................................................................285Part five – Under the fig tree 2008—2009.................................297Childhood dreams.....................................................................299Adult disasters......................................................................309Andromeda............................................................................329Old father...........................................................................335Family tree..........................................................................337Words and expressions in Tonga, Kisii, Swahili and Zulu language.....................339Maps.................................................................................343Africa...............................................................................343Zambia...............................................................................344Zambia, detailed.....................................................................345Kenya................................................................................346Kenya, detailed......................................................................347Notes on monetary values.............................................................349
Chapter One
Zambia 1979—1985
Young boy
Itezhi-Tezhi Zambia
November 2008
Thirty years earlier, when I came to Zambia with my two children to work in his village, he wrote his first letters to my parents. He was seventeen then, and obsessed with an absolutely uncritical enthusiasm for the older woman he had only just met.
Sara
* * *
Chief Mapanza area Zambia Africa
25 December 1979
Dear Mr and Mrs Green,
I, a perfect stranger, must begin to offer you sincere apologize for writing to you, but there is no other way to handle this situation.
Before I go any further, let me introduce myself.
My name is Dixon Kelvin Chimuka Sikabota. By nationality I am a Zambian. By race I am a black African. By tribe I am a Tonga, which is one of the earliest tribes to settle as farmers in Zambia about 1200 AD. Tonga is a Bantu tribe originally known for piety, wisdom and power of settling disputes without weapons.
My home is in a small village called Nalube in Chief Mapanza area in the southern province of Zambia. My father is an old man born in 1897. When he was young he used to work in Boer farms in South Africa and Rhodesia. Later he became a farmer and so is the rest of my family. The main crop is maize and our stable food is nshima made of mealie-meal from maize. We also grow vegetables, and we keep cattle and poultry.
I was born in my village Nalube in 1962, brought up at the same spot throughout my childhood and I was happy with my life. I started at the nearest primary school in 1970 where I did my grade one up to seven. In grade seven we sat for examination, and if you happened to pass this examination, you were allowed to continue your secondary school education.
Luckily enough I managed to pass and I started my academic education at St. Marks secondary school in Mapanza. This is where I am now. I have been here for three years already and these days I am waiting for another important examination results, which can allow me to continue for another two years and thus complete my secondary academic education. I have been studying politics privately because politics will be my career in future. Anyway, I do not find life easy at all, because I am still struggling for my personal development.
That was a brief history about my life.
I was trying to look for a job to do while waiting for results of my exam, but all ended up in a failure because the country is in division of corruption, tribalism and nepotism. That is to say, all is not well, it is just a struggle for survival and deep in the bottom of my heart is fear. It's fear of being a failure in life. But I have experienced that fear is a journey. Fear is a terrible journey—sorrow at least is an arrival.
Please keep me in your memories, remember I am a young future politician of the world as well as a freedom fighter. I am here to fight oppressors of the black man in Africa, eulogizing people convicted of terrorism and subversion and sabotage and I do not care for death or arrest. I am determined for the liberation of the black man. We are on a stage of the world where every person has a part to perform, but mine is a sad one. It should not worry you though, because I am just experiencing life.
It is love, peace, unity and development, which I hope to achieve. Those who hate let them hate, that is their own sin, to weep is a waste of time. It is time to grab arms and aim at the blue-eyed enemy who is lurking in the bushes of our motherland. Those who hate my colour, let them hate, it...
