The Father of Andromeda

Sometimes I am off! I don’t know where to go and what to think, I pity myself and I pity Mother Africa! Everything is going to be mud! We claim to be better than animals, both tamed and untamed. We claim to be more civilized than other creatures, but to our shame we still kill, mistreat, oppress and misunderstand each other - just like cows are stabbing each other with their horns, hyenas fighting for a bone. We have not reached further than animals, we destroy what we claim we had reached and we are back to zero. Looking straight on the wall I see a small picture of a person. I am the one who pinned the photo on the wall, it has been there since I occupied this small room, and every morning when I wake up I face it straight ahead, as if the person is just about to talk to me. Well, I say to myself, I think I am going crazy, this is the beginning of trouble in my head. How can I sit down on my bed and look at that picture and wait for that person to say something. I know it is a mere paper, but why do I expect that person on the picture to talk to me? She is a white woman I met about ten years ago. She had come to my village in Zambia to help my country with manpower in her special field of profession. I came to know her and we came close to each other, but after some years she left, heading back to her country in Europe. After I had completed my form five I said farewell to people in my village and went to Lusaka, looking for a career. Later this woman was an expatriate in another third world country, and she invited me to take a chance on education in East Africa. I joined her, of course, not as a friend but as a family member - as one of her sons. Life took its own channels, my life was now shaped in an unexpected way, and after some more years she went away, leaving me to finish my studies. We departed at Kenyatta International Airport, not as a white lady and an African boy this time, but as a son and mother having agreed upon a serious plan. I look at my beautiful cracked house inside the partitioning wall, a house not yet collapsing. The afternoon sun is quite hot but the air passing through is fresh. This comfort makes me forget all worries completely. I am just absorbed in my reflections, reviewing success and failures and I end up mingled in peace of mind, just accepting whatever unfolds in front of me in every moment of existence. I have brought a long bench and I lie down on my back and look up at the clear blue sky, peaceful as its dwellers. I can imagine the angels, clear, transparent and blameless. While undergoing this peaceful transit, just a few meters from my shade a group of boys and girls play football with a ball made of wrapped up pieces of old cloth and discarded plastics, and for sure it all works very well, just as if they derive happiness from a modern sports ball. I admire them with their little concern because as a boy I too passed through this sort of entertainment and its still clear in my memories. These are the children of the peasant workers, traders and farmers of low class citizens in our economy, those who survive on less than a dollar or nothing at all per day, but here they are, enjoying their happiness in full. When I turn my ears to the north side of my shade, I hear sweet melodies of a church choir in session, doing their rehearsals in singing. The drums are throbbing, percussions are rattling and women are singing to the height of their last peak of voices. The songs about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are so captivating and emotional, as if Jesus will descend upon this evening. I am lying on my back looking up in the deep blue sky, and surely, Jesus is just around. It is refreshing and beautiful and makes you forget about all hurdles of life. At this very moment it seems to be the best share of life I can ever have, I have no regrets at all. On the east part of my shade, as I stretch my ears and listen to a conversation between two middle aged married women exchanging greetings, one woman has just returned to her home, she is from her fields far away and has picked vegetables for cooking on her way back. She has a bundle of firewood on her back and vegetables, green maize and some fresh groundnuts in a basket on her head. She has been away for the whole day without eating, her only meal will be late evening after she has prepared supper. I hear the first woman cursing and complaining bitterly about her foolish ever drunk husband, who does not care about feeding his children, he only drinks the illicit brew in the township compounds. The woman is threatening to divorce her husband for his irresponsible behaviour. When he comes home from beer parties late in the night, he starts shouting and demands food from his poor lady. This is why this lady is telling her friend that enough is enough, she is serious about divorcing her irresponsible husband, whose only job is to drink all day long and at night giving her a bunch of babies. He knows nothing about family planning, and as soon as she weans one baby, again another one is to be delivered. He cannot support eating, clothing and other requirements adequately. This woman regards living as a nightmare, as if hell has been let loose into her life. I tell you, there are many suffering women in this category. I just listen with sympathy and whisper to myself: Please continue shouting, one day you will free yourself from that bondage. Just go on comrade! While listening to these activities around me, my mind wanders to far away issues, political situations in Zimbabwe, Sudan’s Dafur war, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally refugees hell in Iraq, and I question myself about humans being killed, not fish, tomatoes or cockroaches, but human beings - God’s creations! What is up on our planet Earth? And here I sit peacefully, I am not starving, here is no violence, there is just a stupid worry of a cracked wall and floor, due to too much underground water and improper structure according to the environment. A problem of little importance, so minute a problem compared to these worldly human catastrophes of war, hunger, flood victims and civil strives, kidnappings in Niger delta region and crisis in refugees camps. Yes, it all sums up to one thing: I am alive and peacefully stretching on my bench. I turn to my God and mumble a few prayers of thanks for his grace. Next time it could be me dancing helplessly in any human catastrophe. As I peep on the west side of my wonderful shade, I can see some of my pupils coming, and I must get up from my bench and get ready to start the ball rolling for the evening class. But my neighbours, the nearby Christian evangelical choir and the group of young football stars still enjoy. Goats are bleating, heading to their shelters, housewives are busy pounding in their mortars whilst singing, and I am to start my ABC class. I am too making a living at the end of the day.