This is part 2. The first installment was published April 26.
After 18 hours of exhausting flying from Washington, D.C., to Zambia’s capital city of Lusaka, and riding the bus for 13 hours to the remote small rural district of Lundazi, I was now minutes from seeing my father in my village. That’s what it takes to go and see my 98-year-old father.
During the last stretch of driving, we pushed through 16-foot-tall grass until there was a clearing that had just been slashed that morning. We emerged to a sparkling small 100 square feet clearing. There was a small three-room red brick house with shining iron roofing and a concrete floor that my brother and I had built for my parents in 2012.
My father was expecting me because I had sent a phone message to my younger brother about my coming and My father had heard the commotion in the village as the men and boys were digging out my taxi car stuck in a deep trench in the remains of a narrow dirt road. As I excitedly came out of the car, I saw my father hunched over standing at the door of his little house holding on to his thick walking stick watching the spectacle unfolding in front of him.
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“Odi! Adada!” I shouted excitedly. “Ndine mwana winu Yakhobe!! (Hello father!! I am your son Yankhobe!!”) The name Yakhobe is my deep cultural umbilical cord intimate naming custom which only parents and grandparents know. This is from a very complicated Tumbuka custom.
“I was wondering what the commotion and the sound of the car was about!” my father responded.
It took my father five long slow minutes to walk the 30 feet, leaning on his walking stick, from the door entrance to the small grass structure we call mphungu, equivalent to a gazebo. This is where he spends most of his day in the open fresh air receiving guests, relatives and other visitors daily.
We settled down and exchanged malonje. Malonje is a deeply Tumbuka formal greeting custom in which the guest describes in detail the purpose of their visit. The host takes a turn in explaining how they and their family are doing.
Each time I have visited my dad the last couple of years, I have feared it might be the last time I see him. Last year I had a scare in which my nephews texted me that dad was in the hospital during late June, which is the coldest month of the year in Zambia. He was hospitalized for two days for mild pneumonia and bounced back. He has a sharp memory, is passionate, healthy, and continues to describe events in great detail that happened growing up in the 1920s and 1930s before the end of British colonial rule. This time I had specific questions, and I whipped out my digital audio recorder.
When was he born? I knew his birth date and year already. I expected him to just tell me the date and year. But what he disclosed for the first time stunned me. He said he started Sub A or Grade 1 on June 19, 1926. He then said as he continued schooling, his subsequent teachers began to repeat or believe that my father’s birth year was 1926 but this is the year he had told all his teachers he had started school. Eventually it became his official birth year and date. I had the biggest laugh.
“Dad! When were you actually born then?” I asked as I couldn’t stop laughing.
He said he was born soon after his dad, headman Zibalwe, had returned from fighting during World War I for the British. I asked when was the First World War? He said it was from 1914 to 1918.
“So, you must have been born either in 1919 or 1920,” I said as I was wiping off my tears of laughter. “So, Dad, you must be anywhere from 100 to 105 years old.”
Over the many decades since 1960 when I was 6 years, my dad spent many evenings describing major events of his life. He often described growing up as an orphan. A lion mauled his father to death in 1942. His mother died a few years later.
I asked him how he remembers his childhood. He became very animated. He said it was so much fun. He and his friends would swim in the Lundazi River and play dangerous games especially when the river was flooded during the rainy season. They would play games in which they buried each other in the sand. He emphasized that in all the dangerous and risky play in the river none of the children ever died in drowning accidents.
In the two days in which we had very intimate talks, my dad as usual explained the genealogy of people living nearby. He was there when the first village was established, that was our village Zibalwe; and how the rest of the villages followed. He named them all. For the first time, I saw my dad very emotional about some of the personal family history and tragedies. Three of my siblings died.
What my dad reminded me is what America’s greatest generation experienced who fought in World War II. Many of them never talked to their families about the traumas they experienced. My dad is that way, too. He is a stoic man. He experienced so much trauma but he is still alive, can find happiness and is going strong today in 2024.
He surprised me when I was about to leave as he told me that he finds life sweetest and at its best right now in 2024 at age 98, or is it 105?