I RECENTLY visited my childhood town, Chipata, which was once called Fort Jameson and still enjoyed the hilly surroundings that lovingly cup the main town with wings of new settlements spreading outwards.
Older settlements like Mchini, Magazine, and those other areas as you drive along the Umodzi Highway, essentially the part of the Great East Road that takes you to Mwami border and then Mchinji in Malawi all look much, much better with newer and upgraded buildings and tarred roads than when we used to live there as kids in the 70s.
Just being in Chipata brought back lots of fond childhood memories particularly some of the naughty things we engaged in. I remember spending much time in a residential area called ku Maholland, ostensibly playing soccer with boys from that area on an abandoned tennis court, when all the time, I had my eyes on my little 12-year-old girlfriend, hoping at one time or another, her parents would send her on an errand and I would have my chance to walk her along and chat.
Talk about football on the one-time tennis court, the ‘pitch’ was ‘abandoned’ so it was no longer the smooth playing surface the mzungus might have once intended it to be. It was soccer played at owner’s
risk and with the regular personal differences opposing teams had, a game of soccer rarely ended without deadly sliding tackles or shin kicks that resulted in falls so bad you needed to pass by the nearby Kapata clinic for some GV paint or even bandaging.
With fist fights often high and expected on the agenda, especially after the winners sang the victory anthem “Tabawina…” and referred to the losers as pieces of human excrement, there were the not uncommon broken limbs and swollen lips and bloody noses which got our parents so worked up soccer eventually became a banned sport we engaged in only secretly.
In this latter part of my life, which I seldom talk about, my father had been promoted to the position of Manager of Schools and we lived in the so-called Mayadi, the residential areas with big houses (with big ‘yards’) and which were the envy of many of our friends.
In fact coming from Mayadi itself was like a crime among some of the boys from other parts of town, the high-density areas like Maholland,
Chimwemwe, New Houses, Ma Six Room, or even worse still, the miserable slum called Gonankunzingwa. Guys from Mchini could also sort you out for staying in Kalongwezi or ku Moth.
The town was small and so we generally knew who came from where. Much as I was from Mayadi, I detested the company of the boys where I stayed because they tended to be very rough and fond of fighting.
Even though they formed a protective shield around me and were generally considered to be brutal and were avoided – they watched every Western movie at Moth Club and fashioned themselves as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Yul Bryner and many of the old crop of movie stars so tended to batter others easily – I hated their regular unprovoked fights.
Additionally, friends or neighbours like Godfrey, who I am told ended up as a commando in the Zambia Army (suits his rough-tough macho character like maggots on decomposing meat), even tended to steal from money his parents to buy Coca-Cola and vitumbuwa at break at school, or to buy tickets for the movies and the like. I was so well-brought-up on that score by the Chichayeni Padadzis the very thought of pocketing anything that I hadn’t been given scared and put me off utterly.
The Mayadi boys said I was proud, arrogant and pompous because I opted to play with ‘mafala’ from ‘kukomboni’. Godfrey even waylaid me one day as we walked back home from school and gave me a sound beating which inevitably started such a big war between Mrs Chichayeni Padadzi and Godfrey’s mother. The boy was so stubborn he even threatened to manhandle my mother, much to the shock of his own parents who were trying to be apologetic and end the hullabaloo in a civilised manner.
Our school head then, who was a close friend of and lived next door to Mr Chichayeni Padadzi, the Manager of Schools, only got involved in these inter-family feuds when Godfrey and the headmaster’s son stole some chips and sausages from VMI Club, and were spotted.
The mastermind, Godfrey, escaped while the headmaster’s son was apprehended, locked up at police and had his parents and everyone out in a cold sweat looking all over the shore as nobody at that time knew what had actually transpired. Everybody knew that these two were always together but when Godfrey was asked he denied any knowledge of
his friend’s whereabouts as that day they hadn’t been together.
At the police station, where the worried parents went as a last resort, they discovered their son, beaten up and who readily confessed they had stolen chips and sausages from VMI Club together with Godfrey. Man, was the school head furious! He succeeded in having his boy released, returned to his house and reappeared shortly after
loading his shot gun!
He went to confront Godfrey’s parents demanding that Godfrey be let out of the house failure to which he would start shooting through every possible opening, including the windows. There was much panic among Godfrey’s relatives as they didn’t know what this furious parent would do with that weapon.
It ended well, all the same, as the school head was convinced to put away the shot gun and discuss the naughty boys’ actions peacefully.
Every parent banned their children from associating with Godfrey though I knew that the school head’s son still played with Godfrey far from home, secretly.
I remembered the happy Saturday afternoons we normally spent at the Beit Stadium watching our local soccer heroes like Kakungu, Batutu, Stuna (the Congolese guitarist who used to play in a rhumba band at Willima’s Hideout Bar in the night and played as a supper striker during the day) and many others. Barclays and Swallows were the in-things in the early days until Dr Kaunda unleashed the army men into Gondar Barracks, whose ever fit team, Panzers, totally dominated the league thereafter.
School at Anoya Zulu Primary School (now a secondary school) used to be fun for many reasons, including my regularly winning the weekly “Mr Anoya” title, an accolade spared for the neatest child in uniform during assembly on Mondays. Mum and dad would never let any of their children go to school in dirty uniform with unkempt hair and the like.
They made you polish and super-shine your shoes (almost military style), wash and press your uniforms and pass scissors and razor through your head you just had to win that title! While I went to Anoya, older sister Mbikazi went to the former whites-only Hillside Primary and my cousin to Mpezeni Park. Some of my classmates mocked me over that title calling me Mr Anoya all the time and teasing.
By this time, of course, my female cousin, whom I have referred to previously in other write-ups, who was several years older than me, had already initiated me to sex and very young as I still was at 13, I had several sexual encounters with different persons across the town.
My girlfriend, like I said, lived across in Maholland and I reckoned I loved her because I was genuinely obsessed with her and even got upset when I saw her talking to other boys. We exchanged a lot of silly love letters with addresses like Love to Love, Kiss to Kiss, P.O. Box 4 Legs in Bed, Chipata, where we said unbelievably adult things to each other.
But I also had regular hide-and-seek sexual affairs with one of the school head’s daughters and with another girl from Mpezeni Park, who I met through her older brother who for some unknown reasons liked me so much he often called me to their home, even if he was far too old to be my play mate!
Back home, I now had the courage to order my older cousin, approximately 17 then to sneak into my bedroom and do unthinkable things when she was sure everybody was asleep. Previously, she used to be the one ordering me about and giving me lessons how to do the unthinkable things.
Chipata is a big town now, craving for city status, its lifestyles completely changed but being in there still gave me such great nostalgic moments about my boyhood days there I could stand or sit atop the mighty Kanjala hill and spend long hours just staring around the town, identifying the various locations where we once stayed and where I did one thing or another with friends, many of whom are now long departed to the world of the deceased.
This was a true homecoming! – njombwinjo@yahoo.com