ATTENDING a funeral back home in Eastern Province last weekend, I was accosted by a childhood friend I had long forgotten about and whom I had never imagined I would meet again.
How he remembered me, I don’t know.  Perhaps it has to do with my un-shapely head, which I myself do not notice anyway, believing I have one of the handsomest heads in these parts of the world even when others might find it as an object of unpaid-for laughs!
When he did tell me his name, I realised it was him, indeed, who for unknown reasons his parents had christened Orgasm Zgambo (though spelt Ogazimu and pronounced with a heavy Tumbuka accent – the emphasis being on ‘-zi’).
The teachers, who probably knew the uncomfortable thing about that name, especially if mentioned in public, tended to cut his name to Oga or Ogaz, or even Ogzy.  But he didn’t appreciate such short cuts and made clear to the rest of us he only loved his name when it was called out in full.
The teachers could call him whatever they wanted but for the rest of us, it was the full Ogazimu he wanted unless we were looking for a beating, which was not uncommon from bigger boys in those days.
Now you can imagine during those endless football matches when he had the ball and we had to call out to him to pass it.
It was always “Orgasm! Orgasm I am here!  Pass to me Orgasm!” Isn’t it brutally fortunate that we had no Englishmen living in our parts those days who would have thought us so totally demented that we could call ourselves such things in public, never mind the spelling reducing the impact of the obscenity of the name!
I hear my father, the Headmaster, Mr Chichayeni Padadzi, did call the parents of this gent to school and in a long-winded, indirect manner tried to convince them to rename the child.
He didn’t say why, so they got upset with him and threatened to bewitch him if he belittled the name they had given their son in honour of his grandfather who they said was the original Orgasm (Ogazimu).
They even gave an interpretation, suggesting the full name was Onga Bazimu (Praise or thank the Spirits in Tumbuka).
Wow, that is fine. But why not just call him Ongabazimu?  That would produce less nightmares for those who knew the English meaning of what they were insisting on calling their son.
Fearing to be bewitched, for indeed the prospect was so uniquely possible as it was unpleasant – what with stories of certain people who were considered arrogant arousing from sleep in the morning only to find they are stark naked at some burial site when they could clearly remember that they gone to sleep in their beds at night – our father, Who art the Headmaster, quickly abandoned this renaming thing for Ogazimu.
Seeing him in these latter times, I was reminded of his brother named Zizims.  I doubt that anybody bothered to discover what holy or evil spirit in their family he was named after who could be a Zizims.
To us as kids though, these were fancy names that we admired so heartily.  When so many colleagues and playmates had Nyau-like names like Makombe Phiri, Chidyake Ngulube, Pansipaitana Sakala, Kalembenikathabe Banda, and so on, who but the likes of Zizims and his brother Orgasm could steal the show with their names?
If they were in the habit of calling me Meexy, like most of you do nowadays, I might have been in the same league with them but for reasons best known to them, they always called me by the full version: Mixture!
Some couldn’t even pronounce it properly and called me Mik-Tcha or Mikischa and the like.
Of course even with Zizims and his brother of the obscene name around, my favourite name in those parts was Sloppy!
Now this thing about names having meanings close to the image they represent… it took until I had secured a good university education and had also fraternised with Pentecostals to see the relationship between some of my friends and their names.
Chidyake (literally meaning Step-on-it) was rough at the soccer field.  He was a player who opted to play in central defence, confining himself to the penalty spot and the area around it, waiting for the ball to roll towards him so he could give it the wildest kick you ever saw.
He often booted the ball so far upfront the usefulness of it all amounting to nothing as he always created goal kicks for the opposing team instead.
You thought the idea was to pass the ball forward for strikers to plant in the net.  Not with our Chidyake.
He would bang the ball hard and high as the spectators happily and fondly roared “Chidyaaaaakkkeeee!”
That was ancient soccer fun, I tell you! Not as you love it today.  Our Chidyake liked it even better when some of the local Zooms, who thought themselves adept at dribbling, brought their raw skills into his penalty area.
At such points, he delighted in ensuring that he took both ball and the legs of the Zoom (player) simultaneously.
They both tended to fly away, the ball heading out of the playing grounds and the player headed for the nearest clinic!
Chidyake was indeed stepping on them as implied by his name.  Whenever his local township team was guesting us, I either refused to play or steered very clear of the guy while on the pitch.
They said in those days that his feet were so cracked even when he missed both you and the ball but managed to touch you a bit with the sores of his feet, your skin would split open and blood start gushing out.  He was more of a menace than a player, I tell you!
Sloppy was another amusing player.  That’s the guy who missed more penalties than many teams (including Zimbabwe and Manchester United) put together.
He was such a bad player who could hardly ever score in open play but who believed dead ball situations such as free kicks and penalties were his best chance of gaining some heroism with the township girls who never tired of watching our games and roaring us on.
He was bigger than many of us so he bullied his way to the penalty spot, not just to balloon the ball over, but to balloon it so off target the resultant play would be a throw in!  You heard me.
When people miss penalties, mostly they end up creating goal kicks for their opponents.
With Sloppy, the fellow was so sloppy he skewed the ball so badly it would head towards the corner flag and then roll away for a throw in!
Sloppy was the guy who even when put through so beautifully that he should be getting his first goal of the season would rather miss his step, fall into an untidy heap in front of a yawning goal mouth, goalkeeper having already been bamboozled by the player who passed the ball and now stranded off his goal line behind the strikers!
We would often get the relief we wanted – the inevitable substitution when he finally tried too hard to do things right and dug his toe into the ground and so needed treatment.
Ordinarily, whoever tried to substitute him was promised a beating and that’s how talk of subbing Sloppy always ended.
Come to think of it, we never saw Sloppy beat up anybody.  Why we gave him so much respect, only heaven knows.
Wouldn’t he have gone tumbling down all over the shore, as clumsily as he did during soccer matches, if he ever attempted to fight?
Anyway, continuing with my colleagues and their names, there was also Pansipaitana.  Pansipaitana literally meant the Ground Underneath is Calling.
It was a name that connoted death and my mother made it clear that as soon as any of us saw Pansipaitana, we should head home if we didn’t want to die premature deaths.
I didn’t imagine how just the name could exude such intimidating airs.
Maybe because I had grown up believing he was a merchant of death, someone who blew life out of others by merely being in their presence, I grew to dislike his looks.  Fear is the best word.  Whenever I saw him cycling to wherever he was going – for he had an old bicycle with worn-out tyres and a chain that came off so regularly he might as well have been walking all the distance, I would bolt so hard and fast, and get as far away from him as I could.
But sometimes, Pansipaitana came and joined the game of football when we were already halfway through.
Then I would start limping and cry to be substituted because I had hurt myself and that’s how I would head home.
I would tell mum I had seen Pansipaitana and had run away.  Truthfully, I don’t think what we believed about him made sense.
None of my colleagues who bothered to hang around with him died anyway!
But well, back to Mr Orgasm Zgambo, we met last week and he is still kicking.  He says he is too old to be called by the first name so, for the last 30 years or so,  he has been known only as Mr O. Zgambo.  Period.
Queer names?  Go to our place in the Eastern Province.
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