UP FROM THE DUST: THE BACKSTORY OF MY JOURNEY OF HOPE AND SUCCESS

By Lester Mkanda

Lester Mkanda is a Malawian Irish Inspirational Entrepreneur. Born in a dusty ghetto of Malawi Lester lost both of his parents by the age of 13, with so many deaths in his family, his childhood was filled with tears, poverty, fear and loneliness a very unpleasant situation which forced him to grow up fast and become mature beyond his age. In search for greener pasture at a young age Lester migrated to South Africa hoping to get any kind of odd jobs to help him get by, but things got even worse there before they got any better. With absolutely nobody around to lend him a helping hand Lester became homeless in that foreign land sleeping on cardboard boxes outside shops from where he would wake up each morning not knowing where his next meal was going to come from. Despite all the hardships that Lester was going through, he maintained a positive attitude towards life, worked hard and remain optimistic that things would someday get better. That dream came to life when years later he landed at Dublin airport to start his new life in Europe with absolutely nothing but a backpack carrying few pairs of clothes, he had holes in his socks and big dreams in his heart. From there he went on to building a business empire for himself. Lester is married to a fellow immigrant lady of Hungarian origin and together they have 2 children and lives in their family home in Ireland. His current mission is to unashamedly use his life story and experiences to inspire and motivate those that are going through the challenges of life so they will begin to see themselves differently and begin to look for ways to turn their very own lives around and start to rise UP FROM THE DUST.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798823088121

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© 2024 LESTER MKANDA. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 06/20/2024

ISBN: 979-8-8230-8813-8 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-8812-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024911603

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To my departed parents for being a vessel through which God brought me into this world.

To my wife, Ramona, and our kids, Lester Junior and Leyna, for always being there for me.

When first arriving in Europe, I landed at Dublin airport in Ireland with nothing except a backpack, a pair of worn-out shoes, socks with holes in them, and a heart full of big dreams—so, this book is also dedicated to the wonderful Irish people, wherever they may be in the world, for welcoming me into their land and giving me a fair chance to pursue my dreams. The warm welcome I received and the sense of inclusion in Ireland made it possible for me to realize my potential and turn my life around.

CONTENTS

Introduction

PART I

Chapter 1 Childhood

Chapter 2 The Birth of the Traumas: My Darkest Years

Chapter 3 The Birth of the Itinerant

Chapter 4 The Taste of Liberty

Chapter 5 The Reform Struggle

Chapter 6 The Love Test

Chapter 7 The Pulling Force

PART II

Chapter 8 The Road to Expatriation

Chapter 9 Perception versus Reality

Chapter 10 The Faith and Works Formula

Chapter 11 When the Going Gets Tough

Chapter 12 Do More than What You’re Paid For

Chapter 13 Cast Your Net Wide

Chapter 14 Goodness Shall Follow

Chapter 15 There’s Another Way—Look for the Alternative

Chapter 16 The Helping Hand

Chapter 17 Persistence Pays Off

PART III

Chapter 18 The Progress Assassin—Do It Scared

Chapter 19 In the Tobacco Fields

Chapter 20 Back in South Africa

Chapter 21 The Courage of an Underdog

Chapter 22 Back in Malawi

PART IV

Chapter 23 Kempton Park

Chapter 24 Dublin, Ireland

Chapter 25 A New Foundation

Chapter 26 The Birth of Lestersworld

Chapter 27 Family

Chapter 28 The Restoration

Chapter 29 Launching in a Crisis

INTRODUCTION

Having lost both my younger sister and my father when I was age ten, followed by my mother when I was age thirteen and many of my uncles all around the same time, I was overwhelmed by so much death in my family that my childhood was a life of constant fear and confusion with life taken me on a journey of darkness and turmoil. Then, when I lost all the inheritance I had gotten from my parents, I came face to face with the bitter truth that my life ahead was going to be uncommonly difficult. When I was still quite young, my hunger for a better life forced me to leave behind the country of my birth, Malawi, along with all that I was accustomed to—my family, the culture, the food, and my friends—and everything I had ever known and migrate to an unfamiliar place, South Africa, where initially my life got even worse. I ended up homeless—living on the street—and sleeping rough on pieces of cardboard.

Every morning I would go around to the rich neighbourhoods of Uitenhage, South Africa, knocking on doors and looking for any kind of job, such as cleaning or cutting grass, but nobody would hire me. At most of these houses whose doors I knocked on, I would get nothing but abuse, being shouted at, insulted, and asked to leave the doorstep at once and never return. I would respond to these people very kindly, not taking personally anything they said or did. I just kept on going. Sometimes I would meet really nice, polite people who, even though they had no jobs for me, would offer me slices of bread, biscuits, and cool drinks, which I gladly accepted.

I kept doing this same routine until one day I discovered a way of making money so I could survive. I would go and stand at the car park of Afri-Save supermarket at 50 Mel Brooks Avenue in Uitenhage and voluntarily push customers’ shopping trolleys from the supermarket doors to their cars with the hope of getting a tip. Some people were very generous, giving me fifty cents, one rand, or a maximum of two rands on what I used to call a lucky day. Then I could buy myself a half loaf of bread and a small tin of beans for my meal for the day.

Up From the Dust is my own rags-to-riches story, from the time I was orphaned as a child, broke, hopeless, and homeless in the dusty streets of Africa, to the time of my working extremely hard to enable myself to move to Europe and create a world of my own with success in business, happiness, and peace, along with the wonderful gift of a family. In this autobiography, I have allowed myself to be vulnerable, sharing details of my darkest experiences and the trauma I was forced to endure growing up. I tell of how I conditioned my mind to refuse to use those unpleasant experiences as an excuse to resort to a life of crime or turn out bitter, miserable, and a menace to society or simply give up on life and feel sorry for myself. Herein you will read of how I chose to recycle all the pain I felt growing up and turn it into something positive; the sacrifices I made; and how I reprogrammed my mind by being creative and relentless, constantly looking for ways to better my life and mastering the art of living well with other people. This I have done in hopes that the pages of Up From the Dust will be of help to any reader who is experiencing difficulty and feels like giving up. I believe that by reading Up From the Dust and learning of the challenges I went through and what I did to get to where I am today, you will, despite the odds, be inspired and begin to think differently. Most importantly, I hope that you will be motivated to embark upon the journey of turning your own life around and start to rise up from the dust.

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHILDHOOD

My father came from the Lomwe tribe, the second-largest ethnic group of the Republic of Malawi, living mostly in the southern part of the country. After escaping civil war, many from this ethnic group left their native land, what is now known as the Republic of Mozambique, and moved, mixing with the native Malawian Chewa tribe. This migration of the Lomwe to Malawi took place long before the arrival of the missionaries, White traders, and colonialists in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Lomwe were a rural people. Mostly subsistence farmers, they loved to hunt, were creative, and were good with their hands.

On the other hand, my mother came from the Sena tribe, an ethnic group living at the far southern tip of Malawi and across the border in Mozambique. Their migration into Malawi began just after World War I. The Sena people have a very rich culture. To marry a Sena woman of the Shire river valley region required a dowry called lobola, a payment made to the family of the bride to compensate them for the loss of her labour in the home of her birth. In 1980, my father travelled from the central region of the country, a place called Salima, all the way to the southern tip of Malawi in Nsanje District, a 450-kilometre trip that took him about eleven hours, changing between trains and buses, in search of a sweetheart. It was on this trip that he met my mother. The two got married, and the story began.

Judging by the standards of his time, my father was the most successful man in the small township of Chipoka in Salima, where we lived. As far back as I can remember, he operated a garage on our property where he fixed cars. One end of our compound looked like a scrapyard with dead cars parked everywhere. As a young boy, in the company of friends from around the neighbourhood, I would spend most of my time after school pretending to be a driver in those old cars.

Apart from the garage business, my father also had a driving school with one car, namely a Hyundai Pony, and two old trucks, both of which he owned—a Daihatsu and a Bedford. He was one of the lucky driving instructors to have secured a deal with the Malawi Defence Force giving driving lessons to the wives of all the soldiers who had been deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for a peacekeeping mission right after Africa’s World War—the 1996–97 DRC civil war.

My father believed in the power of investing, but he never put all his money into any single investment. He worked both in the auto industry, which was supplementary, and as a farmer, which was his true calling. Coming from Mulanje District in the southern region of Malawi, my father was born and raised in a society where the main source of income was agriculture, so he grew up learning to farm and mastering the trade. When he moved to Salima, he had two farms, where he grew corn, groundnuts, cassava, and potatoes, and raised dairy cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks. Things seemed to be going really well for him.

It was into this environment that I was born on Tuesday, 12 January 1988, preceded by my two brothers with three years’ difference between each of us. I also have a younger sister who was born in 1990. My parents adopted two of my cousins, John (who was the same age as me) and a girl named Dzilimbile—same age as my younger sister, Ruth. We had one maid, Mrs Naphiri, who helped my mother with various household chores. We also had two cowboys, named Esau and Letford, the latter of whom we nicknamed Zeze, who helped look after all the farm animals. Lastly, we had Mr Chikwawa, a very spiritual and rather chatty gentleman who worked as our security guard around. They all lived with us at the boys’ quarters my father had built behind our main house. We all got along very well and were just like one big happy family.

Between the time I was seven to the time I was nine, I and my siblings spent most nights outside sleeping beneath the moonlight, listening to Mr Chikwawa tell us riddles and stories about his bravery when he fought in the Mozambican civil war back in the seventies. When we got fed up with his stories, we would all go start playing phada, mabo, and hide-and-seek, or we’d dance with other boys and girls from nearby villages. Trust me, TV was the biggest luxury a house could have; not every household had a television set back then. In fact, my parents were the first ones to have a television in their home, followed by our closest neighbour, Mr Mandevu, who worked and lived in South Africa at the time.

During summer holidays, my father would make posters and send me and my siblings to stick them up on trees and utility poles, inviting the entire community to come on a certain night and watch movies outside our home free of charge. Then he would take his wood-encased television set, place it on the table outside on the veranda, where everybody was able to see it clearly, and connect the audio output to his gumbagumba radio system to amplify the sound. Parents from around the area would come with their kids to watch action/comedy movies such as The Hard Way directed by John Badham, The Big Boss with Bruce Lee, and Hard Target with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and music videos by Yondo Sister. For some of these families, this was the first time they had ever watched television, and they were thrilled—very excited. It was simply a wonderful experience, and everybody respected my father a great deal for having made it happen.

Christmas was the best time of the year. Two weeks before Christmas Day, my parents would take all of us, including all the workers, to the capital city, Lilongwe, which is about a hundred kilometres east of Salima, to do our clothes shopping. When we got there, he would tell each one of us to choose whatever set of clothes we would like to wear on Christmas Day. We would have our lunch in a luxury restaurant, then we would spend the rest of the day checking out some of the city’s famous sites. Then we would head back home. Every Christmas morning, my parents would slaughter a goat and distribute some of the meat to their friends and siblings who lived in the area, then we would have our Christmas meal, after which we’d each take a bath and put on our new clothes and shoes, then take a cold bottle of Fanta and walk around the whole village showing off. By the time we got back home in the late afternoon, those bottles of Fanta, of which we wouldn’t have taken even a single sip, would be boiling hot. Later, in the evening, we would have a mini disco outside our home. All the kids from the village would come and dance the night away.

Some days during school holidays, my father would take me, my brothers, and Zeze out to the mountains and the forests to hunt. He would bring along his four greyhound dogs, a sniper rifle, and a shotgun. We would always bring some food with us that my mother would prepare as we would spend all day out in the fields hunting. I neither knew nor cared about the names or the types of animals we got, but I enjoyed sitting down and watching my father and Zeze dress them and prepare the meat.

My father was a very generous man. Whenever the hunting went well, I would watch as he put the meat in small plastic bags to send to my uncles—no matter how small the amount of meat he’d taken, he made sure to share with those around him. He would also give some to my mum to cook for dinner, a meal which the entire family would relish while sitting under the moonlight.

School holidays were the best times of the year as these were the only times we were allowed to do small chores and help my father at his businesses. Sometimes he would pay us a small amount of money after completing each task. Not only that, but he also encouraged us to come up with ideas for businesses ourselves, and if we had one that made sense, he would support us.

My brother Titus loved to work with my father at the garage fixing cars. My brother Mathews loved playing soccer with other boys from the village and the surrounding area, so he was rarely at home. I was more interested in sales and saving money, so one day I presented the idea to start selling fresh milk at the market. Both my parents approved.

After that, I would wake up around four o’clock in the morning and, with the help of our head boy Esau, start milking the cows. We had no milking machines; instead we used our bare hands and a small stick, with which we gently massaged the cow’s backside to keep her immobile and at ease until the milking process was over. The milk was then mixed with a bit of water to add volume, then I would set off and go door to door, selling milk to people in our township. It would take me about two hours to sell the whole five litres, which I did daily.

In the afternoons, I would climb the mango tree behind our house and get a bucketful of mangoes to go sell at the market. Whatever money I earned from mango sales, I would put in a tin, seal it well, and bury in a hole which I had dug beside our house. That was what I called my savings account. I saved whatever money I got, and I used some of it as pocket money to buy whatever I wanted during schooltime.

One summer holiday, the weather was extremely hot. Because few households in the township had the privilege of owning a refrigerator, I came up with the idea to start selling cold soft drinks at the market. I used all the money I had saved from my milk and mango sales to buy a cooler box and two crates of soft drinks, each holding twenty mixed bottles of Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Sprite. Within three hours at the market, I was out of stock. It was a hot business. I restocked and went back the following day, and the same thing happened. After two weeks, I bought a second cooler box and convinced my cousin John to come and help me with the business. Within a month, I had three guys working for me, two of whom were selling at the market, while John and I were selling at the bus stop, where we targeted all the tourists coming to visit beautiful Lake Malawi in Salima District. Of course when it was schooltime, I was forbidden to engage in business of any type. And before I knew it, it was time to go back to school. I had to close the business and wait until the next summer holiday.

Schooltime was very exciting. I loved studying. I never made it to the top ten in my class, but I always passed my exams, being an average student. Mathematics was my favourite subject. I just loved numbers from the day I first set foot into a classroom. Zuze Suluma, now deceased, was my best friend in my first year of primary school. We were together almost all the time. After school, we would go to his house and do homework together. Unlike me, Zuze was always on the top-ten list, seeming never to struggle with his studies. He was the best dancer, and in addition to that he was an artistic genius, the best in the entire class at drawing and sketching. Many admired him and his many talents. Sometimes Zuze and I would run away from school and go straight to the river to practise karate and backflips. Nature was our playground. We started getting good at it, and eventually we formed an acrobatics group and started performing at the school talent shows.

Zuze’s family and mine became very close. His father was an associate pastor at a local church which my family attended. Zuze and I were in the same Sunday school class, and eventually we joined the choir together. He had a strong influence on my faith and my spirituality. I loved choir practice, especially when we had choir festivals coming up where I would get to meet kids from different cities. And once a year children missionaries from Europe and North and South America would come play with us, showing us different magic tricks and helping us memorize Bible verses. This phase of my childhood was happy and amazing!

CHAPTER 2

THE BIRTH OF THE TRAUMAS: MY DARKEST YEARS

The Republic of Malawi came under British control in the 1891, and by the year 1907, it was being called the Colony of Nyasaland, part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. After World War II, the desire for self-rule grew all over Africa and the federation was dissolved. On 6 July 1964, the country declared its independence from Britain and renamed itself Malawi. Every sixth of July, there are special flag-raising ceremonies, patriotic speeches, and political rallies held throughout the country. The streets are decorated, and there are various celebratory public events and private family get-togethers—a big day with much joy and revelry all across the nation.

I am not feeling very well tonight. I will just go straight to bed; I think I need some rest, my father said on the evening of 6 July 1997. We had just came home from a nearby army base where we had spent the whole day watching soldiers perform traditional dances, do acrobatics, lift weights, and fly helicopters, among other things, in celebration of thirty-three years of Malawian independence. I noticed a worried look on my mother’s face. Seeing as it was tradition in our family to finish off the independence celebration with a disco outside the house, and seeing as my father had never before missed this occasion, I suspected that something was amiss.

The following morning, my father was late waking up, and I heard my brother Mathews asking Mum if everything was OK. Everything is fine, Son, Mum answered. Just your dad says he feels really weak. I guess he is just a bit tired from yesterday’s parade. But you know your father is a strong man. I am sure he will soon be well. He probably just needs to get some decent rest. Now go and play with your friends. I love you.

I love you too, Mum, Mathews replied.

My father spent that whole day sleeping in his bedroom. When he came out the following day, we noticed that he had developed a cough, which we thought was likely from all the dust at the parade, so we weren’t worried about it. I thought, It will clear up within the next few days.

That cough persisted. Days turned to weeks, and eventually we just got used to it. And though my father continued working, going about his business as usual, we noticed a difference in him. By nature he worked very hard—a workaholic really. He would work on cars first thing in the morning after he got up and keep going until sunset without taking a break for lunch. He loved fixing cars, a skill he had learned while working as an errand boy at Mandala Motors in Blantyre when he was a teenager. Be it a small repair or a total engine replacement, once my dad started working on a car, he wouldn’t stop until he had fixed the problem, at which time he would be very happy. He managed and ran all his businesses himself, never delegating tasks or easily hiring full-time workers. Was he trying to save money to expand his business? Or was it just a business strategy? Those are questions I can’t answer. But I do know that he had to juggle a lot, and I think that at times his workload was just too much for him.

Since he developed that cough, we noticed that he often took naps during the day, something he never would have done in normal circumstances. Sometimes he would take my mother—just the two of them—on day trips, saying later that they had gone to the city. We learned later that they had gone to visit a traditional healer for my father’s treatment as he believed that he had somehow been bewitched. And of course as children in rural Africa at that time, we were not allowed to ask any questions of our elders, especially not about just anything, as doing so was perceived as a sign of disrespect, so I just observed.

After a few months, my father’s health deteriorated substantially. The cough was severe, especially at night. At this time, his driving school had lost its contract with the Malawi Defence Force because of his inability to attend because he was sick. Once or twice a week he would go out to the garage and work on cars, but given the circumstances, sales started to slow. Now at age nine, I noticed that our family life had changed drastically. I no longer went out to play with friends. Neither were any of my siblings going out to play with theirs. Everybody looked very stressed and worried all day long. Mr Chikwawa, our security guard, resigned from his post, then there was no one to tell us riddles at night. Nor was there any longer any singing or dancing at night around our house. It became very dark and quiet.

Some Sundays, people from church, straight after service, would come to our home and sing and pray for my father and our whole family, asking for healing and for the strength to get us through what we were experiencing, but nothing seemed to help. A decision was made to take my father to the hospital. The first time he was admitted, he spent about three weeks there. I couldn’t even eat, I was so worried about what would happen to him, to my mum, and to us kids. It was a most challenging experience for a nine-year-old. With the doctors saying that all my father’s tests had come back negative, they discharged him, but within two weeks he was back in the hospital, this time diagnosed with tuberculosis and having to be admitted for about a month. My mother stayed at the hospital to look after him. She would come home at the weekends to pick up some fresh clothes and gather other essentials to take back with her on Monday morning.

As kids, we had to look after each other, so we had no time to play. We had to cook, go to the lake to wash our clothes, study, pray, and encourage each other. Especially, we three boys all made sure that Ruth, our one and only sister, who was the last born and was seven at the time, was well looked after. She loved coming to the market to help me sell soft drinks. With the money we earned, we would buy ourselves some biscuits to eat on our way back home. She and I were very close.

One weekend Mum came home from the hospital and, as usual, gave us an update on Father’s condition. Relieved to learn about my father’s welfare, I decided to go sell some drinks at the market. I asked Ruth if she would like to come and help me again, but she said she wanted to stay with Mum, so I left by myself. I made no sales on that day. At around two o’clock in the afternoon, I decided just to wrap things up and return home. When I was about two hundred metres from the house, I heard some people screaming, so I ran as fast as I could. When I arrived, I saw my brother Titus and everybody at my house crying out loud. Lester, it’s Ruth! Lester, it’s Ruth! Lester, our only sister, Ruth, is no more! Those were the words I heard from Titus.

In shock, I dropped the cooler box which I was carrying, not knowing how to respond. My body, which felt as if it had been zapped by a 240-volt current of electricity, just froze, then I started shaking uncontrollably. I fell to the ground, then I cried and cried and cried. As I lay there crying, I asked myself, How did this happen?! Why did it happen to her? She was only seven years old. Why her? Why?! It just didn’t make sense. I cried until I lost my voice. Later, I was informed that the moment I had left for the market, Ruth contracted cholera. She was rushed to the hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. Now that my father had been admitted to the hospital and my sister had passed away, I was devastated, and my mother cried every time she laid eyes on me. She was overwhelmed. I could see it in her eyes. I really wished I could do something, such as turn back the hands of time or at least ease the pain we were all feeling.

My father came from the hospital to attend the funeral accompanied by one of the hospital staff. Having lost a lot of weight, he looked different. At the funeral, he lay on a mat which was placed under one of the mango trees, where our whole family sat. We talked. He asked me and my brothers to stay strong and promised that things would get better somehow. That was the first time and the last time I had ever seen my father cry. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, using it to wipe his tears. After the service, he went straight back to the hospital.

The situation at home went from bad to worse. We had run out of money for our daily needs. None of my father’s so-called friends ever came to check up on us—little kids!—to see how we were getting on. At times I went to bed hungry. But none of that really mattered. All I wanted at this point was to see my father get well. I was young, but my faith was very strong. I would lock myself in my room and start praying to a God about whom I knew little except for what I’d learned from the Bible stories at Sunday school, such as how this God had delivered the nation of Israel out of Egypt, where they suffered as slaves of Pharaoh. I would get mad at this God, asking him why was he allowing me to go through what I was going through. I don’t ask him much, I thought. I just want my father to get well. I want to see my parents back home. I want us to be a family and be happy again. Little did I know that this was a mere wish that would never come true.

In January of 1998, exactly one week after my tenth birthday, my aunt came to visit us and spend some time. Around three in the afternoon that same day, we heard a knock on the door. My brother ran and opened it. Standing there dressed in civilian attire were two local police officers I had seen a few times before at the market. They looked very sad and distressed. I was scared, thinking they had come to arrest us, but then again I thought, For what crime? None of us had ever been on the wrong side of the law. I composed myself as I watched my brother greet them and invite them inside.

When they came in, they greeted each one of us. Not wanting to keep us in suspense, one of them, cutting to the chase, said in a slow, calm voice, We received a telegram a few minutes ago from Ngodzi hospital. We are very sorry to inform you that your father has passed away. We … He kept talking, but I could no longer hear him. My entire body just shut down, the news having numbed all my senses. I sat there like a zombie. I could see everybody all right, but I couldn’t hear a single thing or understand what was happening. I felt as if I were in a dream. Eventually, my entire body started to shake uncontrollably, the same way it had the day I got the news that my sister had died. Everybody, including the police officers, started crying. After some minutes, I realized that this was real. This was really happening! My father was no more.

My father died in early January 1998, exactly two months after my sister’s passing, and their deaths were followed shortly by the deaths of two of my uncles. It was funeral after funeral, crying all the time, a very trying time for my family—such a hard time to go through. Some days I would wake up terrified, thinking, Who’s going to die next?

About two weeks after my father’s burial, my paternal uncles came to visit us. They had not been all that close to my father when he was alive, and they very rarely visited us, so I was excited to see them that day, unlike my mother, who had a worried look on her face. I guess she knew something was off. They called for a meeting, where they started to address us. One of them said, shouting, Well, the reason we are here is that we have come to take possession of all that has been left by our departed brother. As a widow, your mother will be released. She is free to go back to her family. And seeing as you are kids, you can either go with your mother or stay here and live with us. The choice is yours.

A great commotion arose as we kids started screaming at our uncles, saying, It’s not right! Our mother stays! We choose to stay here and grow up under her care.

My mother, who by nature was a very quiet person, surprised me that day by standing her ground. In a low voice, she said, I and my husband built this place, and everything you see around here belongs to my kids. I don’t think it’s fair that you want to rob them of their inheritance. I have lost my daughter and I have lost my husband right in this house, and I will not allow you or anyone else to separate me from my kids, because these kids are the only thing I have left.

In a slightly quavering voice, the uncle who had spoken earlier said, Well, that’s all we came here for. So, we’ll let you think about everything we have discussed today, then we’ll return. And off they went. We didn’t hear from them again for some time.

It is funny how some people will use the times you are down to abuse you and take advantage of your unfortunate circumstances, with an eye towards their own personal gain. Right after my father’s death, a number of people came to us claiming that my father had owed them large sums of money before he died, but we later discovered that these people were fraudsters. One morning a gentleman came to us and threatened my mother. He beat us and took all tools from my father’s garage, claiming that my father owed him. We reported the incident to the local police, and of course we later found out that what this man had said was all lies. He had made it all up just to take advantage of our situation. May God reward him for the trauma he brought to my mother and all the pain he made us go through.

A Tradional Lomwe House similar to where we would sleep when visiting my grandparents during school holidays

My mother was a woman of faith and power. I noticed her attending church quite often, especially right after my sister and my father died. She prayed a lot and got very involved in the church, encouraging us to follow suit. Church was therapeutic. I think it was vital to her healing process. She lived with us four hundred miles away from all her family, including her mother, her brothers, and her sisters. She was all alone, but she worked very hard with us, trying to ensure that we had food on the table and lived a happy, normal life. She was very creative. At one point, she hired drivers and converted some of the cars that my father had left into taxis, also continuing to work on the farms. I was about eleven or twelve years old at this stage, and my family circumstances forced me to grow up very quick mentally. I just had to start thinking and acting like a grown man. So, I no longer went to play with my friends in the fields. During school holidays, sometimes with the help of my loyal childhood friend Chriford Lemon, I would spend the whole time helping my mother at the farm, which was fun. I just loved it when I saw her smiling.

Life transmuted to a new normal. As time passed, I adjusted to this new way of being. One day in the summer of 2000, there was a dance at the community hall. My mother suggested that I and my friend Chriford go and meet some of other friends as I had not been around any of my other friends for almost the whole month of my school holiday. When Chriford and I got there, almost everybody was very happy to see us. We started dancing. I was a very shy lad, especially around girls, and to some extent I still am. So, there I was busy dancing, and right in the middle of the dance someone grabbed my hand. When I looked, I saw it was Prisca Kampira, a very beautiful girl from my school. I had been telling all my friends that she and I were dating, though I had never talked to her.

Lester, would you like to dance with me? she asked. I accepted. We danced to two or three songs. I didn’t talk the entire time we were dancing together. It was one of those moments of mixed emotions. On one hand, I was very excited to be dancing with this girl who I had always hoped would be my girlfriend. On the other hand, I was shy like never before. My legs were shaking. I wished I would just sink into the ground and disappear, but I tried my best to hide my feelings.

The dance was great fun. Afterwards, Chriford and I talked about it on our way home. Prisca and I became very good friends after that, but eventually she moved to a different city and we lost contact.

One Saturday morning in December 2000, I was out at the farm working with my mother and the pieceworkers who had come to help weed one of the cornfields. After spending about an hour working in the cornfield, I heard my mother complaining about pain in her stomach. I gave her a drink of water from the plastic cup we all used. She took a sip and went to sit under one of the trees which was right in the middle of the farm, where she stayed for about half an hour, later rejoining us. I think we can call it a day now. Let’s wrap up. What do you think? she suggested. We all agreed, ultimately working very little that day.

After that day, my mother started feeling very weak. It happened quite often. She also mentioned that she had pain in her stomach. Although she had gone to the hospital a number of times to get checked out,