𝗔𝗻 𝗢𝗹𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗻’𝘀 𝗥𝘂𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀

INTRODUCTION

If you are in the Diaspora and, given your life circumstances and aspirations, what is, or what can be the crux of the matter, the deal breaker, as to the decision you’ll finally make regarding how you’ll deal with your fate as an aging retiree far away from home in Africa? That in view of, as you’ll define for yourself, the key factors that you have, or you do not have direct control over.

I have in mind here a memorable moment in a Religious Studies class in Std. 2/ Grade 5 at one of my former schools in South Africa, 1972. The class teacher, Mrs Tshehlana, asked us about the one thing we’d each ask God to give us, if we could meet God in person. Money and freedom dominated. Of course.

Wisdom Value

But Mrs Tshehlana thought that it’d be better if we asked for the one thing that King Solomon did ask God for: wisdom. Huh? Oh, yes, and King Solomon became the wealthiest man in the Bible. Decades later in the Diaspora, I’d learn that wisdom was also a hyper power trait of Mansa Musa, the wealthiest man that’s ever lived.

In the first Book of Kings, Chapter 3, verse 9, King Solomon is quoted by AI Copilot Search as saying, “So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

Copilot Search elaborates the quotation by stating that “This verse reflects Solomon’s humble request for wisdom to lead his people effectively, highlighting the importance of moral discernment in leadership. It teaches that true leadership begins with recognizing one’s limitations and seeking divine guidance.”

Anchoring the true leadership principles awareness defining my personal Life Philosophy, wisdom is an infinite, ever evolving body of human knowledge guiding me in the making of major decisions in my life. I don’t always get it right. But if I can think about it and find a plausible, functional explanatory model, I’m happy. I keep moving on.

My final decision to stay in the Diaspora or return to Africa forever as an aging pensioner shall have been objectively measured, philosophically tested and wisdom curated as to the fairness or lack thereof to myself and those to whom my presence in their lives matters.

Well, here is the Serenity Prayer’ starting line, underpinning the decisive value of wisdom:

And I quote, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Close quote.

NORWAY

I’m a Diasporant in Norway. I’ve lived here since 1988, at age 28. I had the world dancing in the palms of my hands, then. The future seemed super bright. What could go wrong? Now, approaching age 66, so much has gone wrong along the way. So much joy and beauty have reigned supreme in parallel, though.

Diaspora Retirement Quagmire

I present to you here my continuing story and thoughts on the “to be or not to be” Diaspora retirement personal dilemma facing a split-emotions African woman and man growing old overseas. It is my hope and wish that it’ll assist you with some useful fresh insights into this matter that is troubling thousands of Diasporants of my generation the world over.

My paramount guiding principle since my early teens remains a constant. And that is: on the basis of what people know or not, they’ll always make the best decisions for themselves.

ZAMBIA

On the one hand, in keeping with my father’s Zambian Tumbuka people’s dominant patrilineal culture, I proudly acknowledge Zambia as my traditional home. And, by extension, transcending to beyond the colonial subjugation period and its attendant destruction of African culture and identity, I feel a deep sentimental connection with the entire immediate Equatorial Africa north to south of the Equator, west to east.

SOUTH AFRICA

On the other hand, South Africa, my motherland, the land of my birth, vibrates in my whole being as the home of my homes. This is not an intellectual standpoint. It’s a personally visceral emotion that words cannot adequately articulate. The impact of the South African vibe in me is comparable to no other place I’ve ever been to in the world.

It’s not so much in the people as it is in the magnetic rumbling of the earth I register all the time under my feet whenever and wherever I step in the land; it’s in the atmosphere aptly captured in Letta Mbulu’s There’s Music In The Air song. This South Africa is my land!

Sense of Belonging Paradox

As I’ve just hinted, the paradox is, though passionately proud of my dual heritage, I’ve never socially felt a sense of belonging in either land. To this day, I’m still forced to be constantly on the defensive about my identity contra other South Africans and Zambians at absolutely all levels of relational interactions anywhere.

Vis-à-vis my Zambian-South African belonginess ambivalence, ending up in the Diaspora was both a blessing and a curse. The Diaspora detached and protected me from wearisome daily scrutiny, everywhere, and in every endeavour I partook in back in the binary homelands of mine.

I still must explain myself to the numerous other South Africans and Zambians I meet overseas. The only difference being that I’m now in a position of personal strength.

Diaspora King

The little existential domain I’ve materialized for myself out here in the Diaspora is necessarily ceaselessly operational. Even then, under a variety of never-ending trials and tribulations, it has allowed me to be king.

It’s not for nothing that my inner family nickname is Morena, which translates to king, in my mother-tongue, Sesotho. On my father’s side, I come from a lineage of chiefs and headmen. Works for me.

Diaspora Curse

The curse of the Diaspora is that the Diaspora daily expands in more ways than one the already vast distance between me and my people back home. The sense of my African identity pride is an intrinsic personal attribute that no one can take away from me in any way.

Be that as it may, my fiercely intense self-sufficient, contemporary streak has led me to live and organize my life in ways that are hugely divergent from or are directly contradictory to mainstream African culture normative values, diverse as African demographics and topographical features are. In my world, therefore, and, to begin with, Africa is not a cultural normative values monolith.

Controversial Viewpoints Contra African Conservatism

For example, three of my strongly controversial viewpoints in the conservative African context are as follows (socio-cultural conservatism is not a unique African feature, of course):

1. Purely from modern scientific and sociological perspectives, and independent of race or ethnicity, even origin and faith, keeping a pregnancy through to birth ought to be a woman’s right to choose to carry on with it or not.
   The role of the man is to be with, love and support his woman through and through given the prevailing conceptual, material, and health circumstances in the woman’s life.
2. The sentiment of love is a chemical response outcome. Read about feel-good hormones called dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin, respectively. Free your mind.
   
   Mature people will love who they love consentingly regardless of established social norms relating to the hanky-panky. Uganda, or any other country’s killing of same sex people in love is anti-science, wasteful of national developmental resources, and fucking time.
   The African in me cannot reconcile with this. And this has nothing to do with having succumbed to so-called Whiteman’s culture or some crap talk like that. Remember that, for instance, USA’s Trump MAGA homophobia is as white as they come.
3. I’m pro-marriage and for procreation. Absolutely. Where they work. Otherwise, it’s just fine to divorce, re-marry, or stay single. It’s okay to adopt or foster children too. Just as it is okay to be childless as to your life conditions and choices.
   
   I personally have thus far desisted perfunctory husbandhood and fatherhood as symbolic manifestations of my supposedly truly cultured African manhood. My life cannot be defined by marriage and fathering of scores of children I cannot raise. I cannot disrespect my fertility, my ancestral heritage seeds, that way. Take me or leave me. Simple.                       

THE STORY: Origins

I find my having been born in a round year, 1960, convenient for calibrating my life’s progressions in clean decades. Although I first became consciously aware of my surroundings at age four-and-half years old, I rate the 1960s as the most joyous decade of my life so far.

I have reason to believe that, though not on a bed of roses with a silver spoon in my mouth, I was born into a loving and protective family environment in an acutely oppressive, racist, White Supremacist South Africa of the time.

There were, of course, the occasional unpleasant moments here and there. Such as the lasting blight that the raw domestic violence towards my maternal grandmother by her lover, with whom we stayed at his house in Peka, Lesotho until Easter time, 1969, has left in my life.

But, overall, when I look back at that time, I get a bodily sweet sensation of like I sailed through the decade on a luxury yacht in peaceful waters of an ocean so wide. Yes, the 1960s were a decade of abundance in my world as I then perceived and experienced it with my child’s eyes.

• Crime. Violence

Besides his normal hotel restaurant job, my father ran a highly lucrative side gig facilitating transactions and distribution of precious metals and stones across South Africa and the neighbouring lands. In those days, illicit commerce and trade were the claim to wealth creation for many courageous enterprising Black African people. But, like some contemporary myopic, or simply ignorant socio-political commentators and active politicians, there are those that ignore the historical context of the endemic violent nature of the South African society. Violence and crime, including economic crimes, tend to go together.

• Corruption. Theft

If, for example, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has further destroyed the country through corruption and plunder of state resources, that’s because it’s the only thing they know. Any other South African political party would do the same if they were in power. Ultimately, a South African is a South African regardless of political affiliation, or even ethnicity.

South African news media is daily full of this and that politician caught up in one form of criminality or economic impropriety.

According to the Daily Maverick online news of November 18, 2025, Democratic Alliance (DA) boss, John Steenhuisen, reportedly has “big spender” tendencies which have led to his failure to settle his personal credit card bills of nearly R150 000, against an annual salary of around R2.69 million.

Such hassles expose politicians to all sorts of vulnerabilities regarding lobbyists and other agents of entities with ulterior motives against South Africa. But I digress.  

• Rockstar Parents    

My parents were undisputed Rockstars in our neighbourhood and the Malawi-Zambia-Zimbabwe migrant community in our city Welkom. Life was good, then Apartheid social mobility and interaction impediments considered. Much of my human relations skills, social etiquette, political consciousness, and appreciation of the arts, as well sense of freedom, independence, community, and responsibility for other’s wellbeing and mine had their foundations laid during this phase of the first decade of my life.  

TROUBLE WITH GOD: Conspiracy Theories

• Moon-landing End of the World

The Catholic Church school that I attended in Lesotho contributed hugely to the inculcation of the mentioned attributes in me in those critical formative years. That notwithstanding, by the end of the decade, I had begun to doubt the talk about the existence of this grand entity called God, and the son called Jesus.

It all started in 1969 with the fear spread amongst us children that landing on the moon would upset God so much that he would bring the world to an end much earlier than it should happen. I recall all the adults everywhere being so anxious.

There’d break out an inferno during which Jesus, together with Angel Gabriel, would be busy separating sinners from believers. The believers would go to heaven; and the sinners would stay on earth and get roasted forever. Since we were all sinners, we were all destined to burn forever on earth, which made the earth the dreaded hell, then. This was some scary shit anticipation.

“We were all sinners” applied to Black people only, we were told. White people were all destined for heaven, irrespective of their sins status. That didn’t make sense to me. Strange fellows, this God and his son Jesus.

• The Astronauts

Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins did, indeed, land on the moon and later returned safely to earth and lived happily ever after on solid mother earth with her challenges that seem to defy even God all the time. The next scare involved the end of the decade on December 31, 1969.

• End of the Decade, end of the World

We had been warned that at midnight of that date, God would make sure that we were all going to be wiped off the face of the earth by floods greater than Noah’s in the Bible, and fires more vicious than those that didn’t break out upon Apollo 11’s landing on the moon. That was my first encounter with Conspiracy Theories. Fifty years later, 2020, I’d write and publish a book titled COVID-19 & I – Killing Conspiracy Theories.

Antivaxxers Tragedy

This time around, Conspiracy Theories pushed by anti-vaxxers lead many of their adherents to much preventable diseases suffering, if not death. God and Jesus nowhere to be seen to save humanity from itself. Measles has resurfaced in the USA. Thanks to anti-vaxxers campaigns spearheaded by MAGA Trump’s Health Secretary, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Unnecessary suffering and deaths caused.

THE 1970s

1. Bitterness. Disappointment

I entered the 1970s decade very pissed off with, and disappointed with my parents. Having missed the 1969 school year due to an unplanned departure from Lesotho earlier in the year, I was looking forward to returning to my former school at Peka at the beginning of 1970. There, I’d start in Std 1/ Grade 3 afresh. And this I’d time be a boarder at the school, to be looked after by my favourite nuns there.

Plans had been made that my former nanny whilst I was staying with my grandmother’s former suicidal-murderous lover would be coming over to check on me from time to time. That was the deal my parents had presented to me and my younger brother, Thabo, sometime towards Christmas, 1969. I was truly thrilled about this.

The source of my anger and disappointment with my parents was that they didn’t keep the deal. My Uncle Mosh, who lives in my mother’s hometown, Thaba Nchu, had his wife come to spend Christmas with us in Welkom. Aunt Sacha’s first-born child, baby girl, Rakgi, was ten months old then.

My siblings and I ever happy to jump into Pappa’s car especially on the long drives to and from Thaba Nchu accompanied my parents on the drive to return Aunt Sacha home a day or two after Christmas Day. Thabo and I were told that the trip would give us the opportunity to bid farewell to other relatives before our return to school in Lesotho. Great stuff.

What felt like a lightning strike cracked in my head the following day when, upon preparing to drive back to Welkom, my parents suddenly told Thabo and I that we were going to stay and start schooling in Thaba Nchu after all. They explained that it would be too dangerous for us to return to Lesotho because, as I knew, grandmother’s ex-lover, Mr Vold, was so powerful that he could easily get to kidnap us from the school and cause us unspeakable harm.

Instead, in Thaba Nchu, our uncle Mosh and his wife Aunt Sacha would look after us well. In return, little Rakgi would return to Welkom where she’d grown up alongside our younger sister, Sisi.

What pissed me off bad was my parent’s choice not to inform Thabo and I earlier about their decision. I failed to understand why it appeared as though they didn’t trust me well enough to want to engage with me on a matter that impacted my joy and hopes that negatively. I mean, I still believe that at age 9^1/2_, I already had a good grip of the good and the bad ongoings around me, especially in my immediate circles of existence. We could have had a good conversation on this, I believe.

2. Unruliness. Hate. Violence. Resistance

For the next two years Thabo and I would be in Thaba Nchu, 1970-71, I was an extremely egregious, petulant, and rebellious young boy-to-man at home. Much to Aunt Sacha’s bewilderment and frustration. She was also extremely angry at my domineering mother’s having taken away her baby girl Rakgi; to the extent that she on two occasions subjected me to uncalled-for brutal corporal punishment with freshly cut sticks from a peach tree. An atrociously painful experience. I could never forgive her for that.

She’s been dead over for a decade now. It doesn’t matter now, I guess. Aunt Sacha despised me all her life long. A mutual sentiment. I’ve grown up to be the kind of a fine man she never thought I could ever turn out to be.

By the time she attempted to corporally punish me the third time around, I had already resolved that I’d deny her the pleasure if she ever tried again. A neighbour girlfriend of mine had previously dissuaded me from whining like a baby after the second hiding from Aunt Sacha.

• Grew up Overnight call: YOU ARE A MAN!
  “You are a man. You must show her that!”, implored the unforgettably kind and beautiful Babitjie. That was another one of those remarkable growing up overnight moments in my younger years.
  
  Dark like myself in the milieu of majority light-skinned Barolong people of Thaba Nchu, Babitjie had eyes as beautiful as the full moon in the middle of a clear night sky as engrossingly regal as the tone of her skin. Fifty plus years on, occasional flashes of Babitjie’s image still cross my mind, fresh as if I last saw her only yesterday.  

As in the previous two occasions, Aunt Sacha had gathered sticks with which to lash me when I came home from school. I don’t know how many pieces she had gathered, but I resolutely grabbed and broke each one of them each time she struck at me. After breaking and throwing away the last stick, I stood firm and looked her hard in the eyes.

Had Aunt Sacha reached out to man-handle me, I would have hit back. I could already throw a punch then. I guess she quickly understood that her luck had run out. So, to save face, she instead chose to verbally demean me in front of people for my ugly face of a bull, with expletives expressing the wish that her God showers upon me all the misfortunes he could. Amen.

But then again, nearly two decades later, I’d end up in the Diaspora. God couldn’t catch me. My subsequent success and power rocked Aunt Sacha’s world until her death. God nowhere to be seen. As usual. Works for me. Isolated to the relationship with the late aunt, 1970-71 remain the angriest years of my life so far. The anger and frustration towards my parent’s betrayal dissolved here.  

3. Joy amidst turmoil. Anger management. School fun.

The two years in Thaba Nchu taught me how to isolate my anger and joy from each other in my daily life. Whereas I’m THE HAPPIEST MAN IN THE WORLD by default, I learned how to focus my anger and its manifestations to specific targets.

I don’t know how to be angry with the world in general. The world doesn’t have to detect my anger if the world has not upset me. I’m able to celebrate life when necessary despite disconnected anger burning inside of me.

School continued to be an awesome space for the play out and experience of joy. I quickly became popular amongst the teachers for my smartness and out-going nature. Still standing out for my differentness (very black and short) amongst my fellow school pupils, I recall only love, care, and understanding from all at Namanyane Primary School, Thaba Nchu.

That I shone in the playing of an informal, very rough kind of football in which the goal was to chop-off one another’s ankles did not dim my popularity. Almost everyone but me sustained minor to serious injuries requiring medical attention.  

I even had my first school girlfriend here. Sadly, I treated her badly. I never forget the hurt in her eyes the day I decided to leave her. From that point on, I made a personal vow to never ever again dump a girl in such an overtly heartless manner. That was the beginning of profound personal vows I’d make in the 1970s decade. These vows continue to shape, sustain, and guide my life principles to this day.

4. Diaspora preparation

In many ways, I’ve with time concluded that, because I for the first time had to learn how to solitarily handle hostilities around me here and now, and externally live my life as if nothing negative is happening elsewhere or at home, the Thaba Nchu experience was the prime, unconscious preparatory ground for my later life survival strategies in Zambia, and the Diaspora thereafter.

5. Karate

Also, it was in Thaba Nchu that, in a street fight, I spontaneously performed a never-before-seen self-defence technique against a potentially dangerous stone projectile aimed at my head from behind. I turned around, saw the attacker, and ran three steps perhaps towards the assailant. I then flew to kick him on the face with my right foot. He fell to the ground; the stone falling away to the side.

I left him there dazed. Never saw him again afterwards. His name was Molefi. A locally renowned skilled workhorse rider. Little did I know that that incident would mark the starting point of my subsequent Karate martial arts training and teaching career. This would help me carve an own outwardly safe, mentally challenging, emotionally and spiritually gratifying, legacy creation space for thirteen years in Zambia, and twenty-five years in the Diaspora, Norway.

The Karate Warrior Ethos, Bushido, has elevated my capacity to blossom in, and share joy and peace wherever I am. Although I don’t publicly practice Karate anymore, the Warrior Ethos continues to be my light in dark moments of my life when my demons seek to take me down, if not out altogether.

If I have a survival superpower in the Diaspora and everywhere else, it is Bushido. Beyond physical fighting skills, Bushido as a life philosophy expounds virtues of, amongst others, courage, loyalty, moral-ethical awareness, and trust. That’s all I need for a closed-loop virtuous life, be it in the Diaspora, or back home in Africa.     

6. Welkom return. Vows

With the relationship between Aunt Sacha and I as bad as it could get, and with her understandably wanting her baby girl child, Rakgi, back, Thabo and I had to leave Thaba Nchu at the end of the school year 1972. Christmas 1972 in Welkom was the best. My instinctive state of happiness became whole again.

In the mix of my SHEBEEN QUEEN – MACHONA MOTHER’s thriving business, life was fast-paced but full of generousity and love. ‘Ma had already taught Thabo and I the ethos of working for our own money if we wanted to have more money in our pockets. We sold oranges. Life was good.

The following year, 1973, I started school holidays work as a junior waiter at Welkom’s Caponero Restaurant, a then Whites Only set up. This went on until December 1974, just before my family would leave South Africa for Zambia. My earning potential then shot to the roof.

It gave me a lasting good feeling to have my own money which I could use as I wished. A powerful, liberatory experience impacting my life to this day. By the then underprivileged Black South African standards, I relatively early learned and saw first-hand the life-changing and supportive nature of sustainable family and individual economic might.

7. Vows

There were much poverty and suffering around us in my township, Thabong. It especially struck me how rough life could be for poor, unemployed family fathers. At my shebeen home, I’d hear stories of horrific things economically crushed men did to their wives and children in utter frustration and anger with the unjustness of life. I’d also see the terrible things some of these men did when drunk at the shebeen.

In a big precious stones dealing scam that came close to costing him his life, my father lost all his money. Big money. He never recovered from that loss. He’d live with a cloud of depression hanging over his head until his last days in 1998. From once a powerful, monied man in the 1960s, it was sad to see him endure much dishonour amongst his contemporaries both in South Africa and, later, Zambia.

• That’s how I came to vow to myself that I’d never want to get married and have children until my personal economy is strong and durable enough.
• After a brief period of being bullied for my physical appearance and family opulence, I stood firm one day against an older guy that had unexpectedly violently brutalized me sometime in the latter part of 1973. He chickened out. From that time on, I vowed to never allow anybody to bully me and get away with it.
• In reaction to tribalistic slurs and ethnicity-based segregation towards me given my father’s foreignness, I vowed that I’d be stronger and a better person by far compared to these detractors. My academic performance had already shown that I was more intelligent than them, anyway.
• Karate training fortified the vow to never give up in hard times. If I fall, I shall seek to rise again. Always. Until my last breath.
• Having had to endure much unfair, unjustifiable destructive crap as a foreigner individual and as a foreigner family member in both South Africa and Zambia, I vowed never to forgive for free and forget. I don’t forgive. I don’t forget. However, my High Priestess grandmother taught me very early in life that: ask, and you shall be (for-)given.
• Seeing how my parents struggled to make ends meet in Zambia, I vowed to do all I could within my powers to help them look after my siblings. This entailed that I never could be part of the normal Lusaka teenage groove scene throughout the 1970s. At times it feels like when my family arrived in Lusaka in 1975, I closed my eyes. Upon the eyes opening again, I found that I had turned twenty-one years old. This probably helped me to keep it together, and, thus, saved my life.      

The vows above have heavily impacted the extent of my successes or lack of in the Diaspora. They will weigh heavily still in my absolute final decision as to whether I’ll want to continue being in the Diaspora permanently when my retirement is set in motion in 2027. Essentially, these vows highlight my identity and seminal values, which the 1970s decade honed for me from my pubertal age in the first to third years of the decade.

THE 1980s  

Thanks to Karate and academic excellence, by the beginning of the decade I was on a non-stoppable cruise to sports Rockstardom in Zambia. Family and personal ill-wishers didn’t know what to do with me. I became untouchable, unbeatable when it came to direct personal confrontations. The only thing those that were more powerful by virtue of age, family connections, material endowments, or career status could do was to subtly sabotage my potential access to certain opportunities.

For what social Rockstardom traction I lacked, which isn’t beyond anybody, really, I would attain enduring national acclaim as a top sports performer, teacher, and leader in Karate. This is a path travelled not by many. And it gave me leverage in the two ruthlessly judgemental age groups I found myself caught up in between in Lusaka.

• Olympia Primary School: Grd. 7

Sixteen years old in 1976 I continued with my school career in Grade 7 at Olympia Primary School, Lusaka. I had by then lost at least five of my normal schooling years since start in 1965. Being classmates with eleven to twelve-year olds didn’t bother me too much that year because I had become so numbed to things due to the initial rude shock of settling hardships my family encountered in Zambia. I had lost interest in school, really.

• Bully Teacher

I did have a problem with what I concluded was a disapproving teacher with bully tendencies; a mountain of a man we can call Mr Littlebholz. My class teacher, Mrs Milaso, was a kind lady who helped me pull through that emotionally tough year. I remain eternally grateful for her understanding and support then.

• Kamwala Secondary School: Grd. 8-12

Things took a different turn upon commencement of Form 1/ Grade 8 studies at Kamwala Secondary School in 1977. This was a bigger institution with many more students of diverse backgrounds and social strata. The at least five-years age difference between the youngest students and I would begin to openly and relentlessly be used against me by those that were never fond of me, fellow students and teachers alike.

The youngest and smallest guy in my Form 1A class, Prakash Parmer, had just recently turned eleven years old. Next was my unknowingly soon-to-be lasting best friend in the world, Anele Malumo, who had just turned twelve years old. I was a big seventeen-year-old that had already begun to shave “three times a day”.

• Connecting with Children and Youth

It has always been the least of my challenges to quickly connect with younger people wherever I find myself. That’s because, my hometown being a relatively new mining and industrial town, I grew up amongst and together with many, many children and youth during my formative years in both South Africa and Lesotho. My instinctive goal being to protect those younger and weaker than me against bullies and other grown-ups with bad intentions.

Unfortunately, the detractors that didn’t know much about me would be extremely ugly towards me, them having decided I was perverted. That hurt me much.

• Ridicule

Another factor was that many used to ridicule me for being dumb if I was in Grade 8 at age seventeen years old. My agemates were already done with secondary/ high school, awaiting commencement of university or college studies later on in the year. It was especially people in this category that used to be outright rude towards me for being retarded, according to them. Some even came close to being physically violent but held back at the last moments.

Good for them because, my South African Black township street-fighting instincts having become razor sharp and on high alert, I’d have beaten the “S” out of those fools. That would have caused more trouble for my then already severely crushed parents.

Two Exceptions: Stephen, Abraham  

I never forget two senior guys who were the exception and were respectful and nice to me in the beginning of the 1977 school year at Kamwala. Stephen Mulenga welcomed me to join the school’s drama club, while Abraham took me into the school’s debating society. I didn’t thrive much in the latter. Too much hostility from four big guys the seemed to think that they were sons of God, or something like that.

Drama Club: Stage, administrative performance

In the drama club, Stephen, calm and resolute chairperson, bulldozed me into playing alongside Edith Kuku the leading male role of a guy called Jeff in a play called “Fusani’s Trial”.

Our single staged performance at the school was well-received despite the bad chemistry that prevailed between the younger Edith and I; she was in Grade 10. However, the young lady and I would eventually end up as great friends a few years later.

I’d in no time become Drama Club Secretary in charge of administration matters. I got to facilitate two club external performances, one at Lusaka Girls Primary School; and the other at Lusaka Playhouse in front of some top UK who actors adjudicators whose names I don’t recall.

Kamwala Drama Club qualified for entry to the national secondary schools finals in Kabwe in August 1977. Ours came amongst the top three performances at the nationals, where I led the group. A great moment. It had become clear that I wasn’t that stupid, after all.

Bully Teacher-Club Power Struggle

Meanwhile, there had on the sidelines been an ongoing power struggle between the club teacher-in-charge, Mr Ricky Moonga-or-Something, and the club leadership to unseat me. Not because I was not performing beyond expectations. The man just couldn’t stand my guts.

He was not alone. Several of the younger newly qualified teachers of either sex were either about my age or were not much older than me. To save the situation, and because I had also begun to train Karate seriously, I decided to quit the Kamwala Drama Club. Karate guided me with grace into the 1980s.

• Karate

Karate consolidated my name; it made me somebody in Zambia. In the spirit of the Bushido/ Warrior ethos of Bunbufuki, which espouses the value of academic education and mind-body-power going hand-in-hand, Karate yet again gracefully sailed me through undergraduate studies at the University of Zambia (UNZA), Lusaka, 1992-1996.

• Bank of Zambia

Soon after graduation from UNZA in 1996, I went into fulltime employment at the Central Bank of Zambia (BOZ). I, of course, encountered worse hostilities from middle-to-senior management officers that were about my age or just a little older here.

My Karate fighting ferocity reputation shielded me in an also intensely competitive environment. Despite everything else, and because I had some powerful alliances in spaces that mattered here and there, I knew that I had a bright future in the bank. All I had to do was to be good and do my job well

• Grass is Greener on the Other Side Myth Crushed

When the opportunity to come to Norway for MBA studies in 1988 showed up, therefore, I was not leaving Zambia in search for greener pastures in the Diaspora. At that time, my pastures were already green for me and, I dare say, many others of my university educated generation in employment in the Zambian State, the Para-Statal, or the Private sectors. In those days, it was as clear as daylight under the Zambian sun that education worked for the smart and, yes, the well-connected in the country.

I found it ever so fascinating to see how guys would return home with Ivy League universities Masters and PhD degrees. Some would appear on national TV in white suits reminiscent of John Travolta’s in Saturday Night Fever, make noise talking university Economics tutorials classes crap, and end up landing top-flight jobs in the government, if not some multilateral aid agency or something in those lines.

• Academic/ Professional Miscalculation: No Regrets  

Moreover, as things were, I also walked away from potentially lucrative by far private sector job offers. So, looking back, coming to Norway was an academic and professional career development miscalculation of grotesque proportions. I have no regrets. Given what I knew or didn’t know in 1988, choosing to come Norway was the best option available for me there and then. It is what it is.

• “What if?”, though

I can’t help but wonder, though, how far I’d have come, how high I’d have risen had I stayed on in Zambia. Some of my surviving former colleagues and schoolmates from my time in the country have done rather well for themselves and their own. I’m ever so happy for them. They inspire me.

I write books. I sing poetry. I’m happy. But I had to run full circle through the 1990s first, propelled by the all-round personal high-volt energy I had amassed in the 1980s. Oh, yeah, what could go wrong? When things go wrong, high-volt energy burns.

THE 1990s           

I entered the decade with a bang. Miraculously effortlessly combining school with five par-time jobs, teaching at my two Karate schools in Oslo and the environs, and Rock & Roll. Celebration of my thirtieth birthday in June 1990 was a big banger. Life was really good.

In 1992 I fell in love. That, combined with the ever-growing Karate teaching and leadership commitments of mine, got to affix me solid in the Diaspora to this day.

The ensuing major imperative transformations I had to make in my life entailed me making huge sacrifices on many fronts. To have my student residential status changed to normal residence permit presented numerous practical challenges. Personal high-volt energy short-circuited.

• Pappa Dies

In 1998 my father died. I took up my elevated family responsibilities with stoicism learned from the late. The 1990s became the least productive, least glamourous years of my adult life. Nonetheless, I somehow managed to surge into year 2000 exuding power in an imposing Mercedes Benz power car.

• Power Car

I had bought the car to suit the pressures of a new high paying job that involved much long-distance driving assignments. Contrary to the uninitiated’s critiques, purchased on the spur of the moment, I needed the luxury for comfort and safety, not for prestige.

It’s not an easy task to eliminate the prestige tag on the Mercedes Benz brand, though. The car changed my life in a significant way:

• Logistical efficiency – speed, geography
• More availability
• Effective quantitative and qualitative performance in the delivery of goods and services
• Higher income generation
•  Visibility – status elevation in the eyes of others. Not too important for me personally. But it is what it is.

I’d take the 2000s decade by storm.

THE 2000s

Five days into the new decade, I walked out of the love of my life for whom I got stuck in Norway. It had long been coming. I said my last goodbye. After closing the door to her house behind me, I made another durably impactful personal vow: I’d never ever allow myself to enter into a romantic relationship in which I am an underdog! Neither do I want to have a perceptual or actual underdog to come into my life romantically.

• Black Diamond

I then set out to work hard and exploit maximally the returned and stronger earning potential in the high wealth creation mode I was cruising with my Mercedes Benz power aura. Along the way, a Rolex watch entered the scene.

Moving house into the then Oslo’s most exclusive residential address complex, the invisible Norwegian Black African immigrant middle class tag got plastered squarely onto my forehead. Made many envious people of everywhere uncomfortable.

Not that the middle-class tag was of any particular significance for my ego. I knew that crap from before. I was raised to take it for granted that, for the resourceful in the right space and time, it’s a natural living state to be and to aspire for and more.

But it opened up many doors into rare opportunities for a Black African immigrant in the country. All I wanted to do was to work, make money, and live happily ever after.

Noticing the exponential growth of my numbers, my bankers invited me to a Private Banking meeting at some point. My finance investment profile was restructured. During the high conjecture years preceding the 2008 Global Finance Crisis, the returns on my investments were phenomenal.  

• Sharing Bounty

That’s how I was able to extend the benefits of my bounty to my immediate and extended families, as well as close friends and others in South Africa. That, particularly including the purchase of family Real Estate, consolidated my position of powerful Vice Head of the Family next to my mother after her husband’s death.

To the extent that the wealth held, I did all I did for the family with nothing but love; neither demanding nor expecting anything in return. I lived in the richest country in the world, then. I’d be fine in both good and bad times, anyway. Norway does take of its own.

My intention was to help my siblings and kindred have a better life. I wanted to instil in them a sense of hope and faith that everything would be alright in the long run. We only had to work together towards the same goal, with all performing their respective duties to their best abilities. In my head, I would be returning home from the Diaspora soon.

I didn’t want to find my people still living in poverty. Poverty is poisonous; it’s infectious. I not only abhor poverty with passion; poverty frightens me. The continuing endemic abject poverty of the majority of the majority South African Black people unsettles me to the core of my being.   

Towards the end of the 2000s decade, a series of health issues, big business dreams sabotage encounters at several different levels, and the already mentioned Global Finance Crisis above would spell yet another round of my personal economic crash. Not before I’d celebrate my fiftieth birth in grand style in 2010, however.

• Premier Living

If the 1990s were my golden years, the 2000s were of premier living standard of roses, Champagne, Italian red wines, and multicultural epicurean extravaganzas at home and abroad. Next level Rock & Roll lifestyle. Without guns and drugs, I must hasten to emphasize.

A truly amazing phase of my life I could never replicate. Which is just as well. I live by a new set of values these days, enjoying a self-imposed semi-secluded life of an author.

The work towards fulfilling the dream of writing a thousand books before I’m a hundred years old is in full swing. The authorship urge had distantly been buzzing in my bones since my early teens. Thanks to events of the 2010s decade, at some point in the middle of the decade, feeling low in a dark space considering the self-reinvention options I had for rising again, the buzz in my bones became a surprise rapture.

A volcano erupted in my head. I saw the light. Sometimes when I’m in deep writing trances, I see texts on lava flowing down a volcano. Then I’m on fire. I can sit and write non-stop for hours on end. 

THE 2010-2020 DECADE

The magic of 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa ushered me into the TV studios of the Norwegian State Television and the commercial TV2 station in Oslo. I had been invited to speak about the all-round significance of the event in South Africa and Africa as a whole. It was great fun. I was in my element.

Having already made Norwegian TV appearances on several variable occasions, including a Reality TV feature on TV3, as well as being a known 15 minutes of fame freak in my circles in Oslo, I was the natural choice to represent South Africa on that momentous occasion. It was an honour.

Some people said I was a natural on TV, wondering how I managed to be so cool in front of the cameras in the studios. What they didn’t know was that by the time I came to Norway in 1988, I had already had much experience with TV and radio appearances from Zambia. YouTube content creation is, then, an extension of my previous mass media appearances experience.

The funfair of the football World Cup 2010 and the celebration of my fiftieth birthday on the weekend immediately preceding the former’s commencement, reality soon came home. The drastically continually falling revenue in my business was unabated, as was the rising hip of unsettled bills: big monies reflective of high earning profile I had had in the previous decade.

In South Africa, building projects and other familial expenses, including school fees for a few children were also eating into my past savings. I sold things to no avail. I was getting very exhausted. The eternal optimist warrior in me kept the faith that I’d salvage the situation somehow.

But the post-Global Finance Crisis 2008 market dynamics and customer behaviour had changed just too drastically. All the business strategic adaptive changes I made failed. The financial damage I had incurred was too brutal.

On June 30, 2013, I closed shop; went to South Africa. The original plan was that I’d take a six-months’ leave of absence to rest and regroup. If business, or even job opportunities arose in South Africa, I’d surely give them a short as soon I’d have recovered.

None of that happened. Instead, a back-and-forth hassle with my creditors in Norway took a heavy toll on me.

New negative vibes also emerging in the family owing to my diminished economic might made matters worse. Depression hit me hard. With the judicial insolvency declaration in June 2015, the last nail on the coffin was hammered in. My world came to a standstill.

An oppressive dark cloud hoovered over my head. Until one August morning in 2015 when the volcano mentioned above erupted in my head. I saw the light. Ran into my house. Opened my computer. Pounded the keyboard like computers were going out of fashion. 

Fourteen days later I had written and finished the manuscript of my first book, WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL – Rise Again Mindgames. A fantasy memoir about my life in, and my relationship with Norway from 1988 to 2015. I’ve written and published nine more books since then. The book saved and has changed my life in a way defying even my wildest fantasies.

It has made me fierce enemies I don’t know lurking in the dark tarnished my name without substance but by finding themselves confronting their own demons created by their prerogative to choose to misinterpret my narrative and intentions with my book. My fans outnumber the enemies by far. And the fans aren’t the stupidest people I know.

Whereas book writing rekindled my joy of life at the time of the first book to the commencement of the sixth one in 2018, material conditions were still hard. With a little help from a few really good friend-brothers and friend-sisters, I survived on the barest minimum supply of essentials until October 2018, when I got a chance to return to Norway. Grieved. Broke. Homeless. Businessless. Jobless.

The sixth book, MACHONA MOTHER – Shebeen Queen, is inspired by mother’s life. She died two weeks before I was scheduled to travel back to Norway. I had received her blessings. I chose to not share with her the contents of the book. She was not too curious about the book either; just pleased with and proud of the honour. But she liked and approved the book cover. It charmed her big time to hear that the cover was designed by one of my original Karate Kids Superstars in Norway, Toril.

Getting back to Norway in the last week of October 2018, it soon became clear that re-establishing my Health & Wellness business and other lines was non-viable. Covid-19 happened in 2020 and totally crushed everything.

THE 2020s: The Diaspora Retirement Decade

Ever willing to try out new opportunities when they present themselves and they make sense to me; I accepted an offer to start work in the security industry. And that’s probably the harshest lesson of the Diaspora: when you lose control of the narrative of your academic and/ or professional ambitions, you do what you gotta do to survive until further notice.  

Passing an obligatory certification course would eventually enable me to get a security officer job stationing me at Oslo’s new National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design/ Nasjonalmuseet (Nam), starting June 2021.

Seen with the eyes of a formerly high-flying entrepreneur and vastly experienced grown-up man of the world, and in view of its demands, this was the lowest-paying job I had ever done in Norway. But what the Nam experience gave me by way of creative inspiration for my poetry writing cannot be measured in monetary value. My 10^th book, MACHONA PEN- My Weapon. Defiant Poetry is the outcome of the Nam work experience. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity.

With the impending Diaspora retirement in focus, I had to be very hard on myself regarding financial discipline given the low salary I was getting for working at Nam. It was critically important for me to do everything possible to clear my outstanding debts from the bankruptcy fallout of 2015.

I also sought to make small investments in some Mutual Funds I still had access to from my 1990s golden years. Four years late, I had paid off the biggest debts due to the State. I began to breathe easy. Too easy, perhaps. Fell into the comfort zone. Dropped my defenses. Lost focus. Pensioner economic worries? What’s that? Dude, I got this. Morena is back!  

Hindsight has just reminded me that Diasporant-focused predators, call them scammers too, are ever so observant of the returnee Diasporant already back at home, or one that has definitely committed to returning home at an already locked time.

The predators know exactly when and how to attack with irresistible honey-sweet coated, platinum-anchored, diamond-studded, investment propositions in any one of high value land-based or marine enterprises, such as:

• Real Estate
• Agribusiness
• Mining
• Tourism/ Hospitality
• Fishing
• International Trade at different levels of consumer or industrial products

I’ve recently fallen into and got caught in the trap again. I’ll retire and die in the Diaspora. I’m happy for those African Diasporants who get to successfully return home upon retirement. Very happy. I wish good luck to those that are yet to retire and return home. As for me, unless some miracle happens, I cannot return home to poverty and misery that I know deep in my heart that I made a conscious and sincere effort to alleviate when I could.

As a Diasporant that’s not been so fortunate with these return-back-home-to-Africa things, the worst thing I just cannot stand about predators back home is the lies. That a man can break bread with me, even in the name of God, tell me a scamming lie looking me straight in the eye, take my money with humility and gratitude of Mother Theresa looking me straight in the eye, promise to deliver as committed looking me straight in the eye, and then disappear as if into thin air never to deliver as committed, is just too much for me. You can have your Africa!
©Simon Chilembo 04.02.2026

SIMON CHILEMBO
February 15, 2026