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38 YEARS AN EXILE: XXV
HOME AT LAST! Part 25
COMMUNITY SERVICE – Diasporant’s Payback Time
Coming back home to Mamma, July 01, 2013, I was a broken man. Tired both physically and mentally, emotionally torn, bitter at my vain enemies and ill-wishers, overwhelmed by betrayals, over-burdened by failed business in rough economic times, and looming personal bankruptcy, I found it prudent to let it all go.
I was not ready to die yet. If and when my dying day finally comes, I will be standing on the battle ground like a true Warrior, having accomplished my mission on earth. All I needed was a time-out to realign my thoughts, my feelings, and my visions; I needed to revise my values, and put my faith to test by exposing myself to temptation. Evil has yet to conquer, if ever … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
July 05, 2015
38 YEARS AN EXILE: XXIII
HOME AT LAST! Part 23
WALOBA AWARD 2015
Diaspora Friendship, Brotherly Love Celebration
Anele Malumo, Waloba Award 2015
©Simon Chilembo, 2015
To introduce the recipient of Waloba Award 2015, I take the liberty of reproducing an edited version of my speech to him on his 50th birthday earlier in 2015:
- You don’t know what it’s like
To love somebody
To love a Brother
The way I love you … - Modern, enlightened, liberated men happily declare their love for one another openly even if their love is not of a physically intimate nature. Some call it Bromance. In any case, in South Africa, land of the free, home of the brave, people love who they love, as provided for, and enshrined in the constitution of the land.
- I’ve heard it said somewhere that if you are not grown up yet by age 50, forget it, you’ll never grow up … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
June 26, 2015
38 YEARS AN EXILE: XIII
HOME AT LAST! Part 13
BRAIN DRAIN
By its very nature, life is, and has to be hard. Life is by design brutal and short. The world is an ugly place to be. It is an inherent feature of the world that evil forces will prevail everywhere, relatively more in specific areas of the world than others, in different epochs.
The brain is by default and function, the antithesis of all that is abhorrent by way of human behaviour, as well as state of the world and being. The brain will, by inclination, gravitate towards all that is good and beautiful.
All things remaining equal, a normally functioning and cultured brain will, as a spontaneous process, seek to create and sustain beauty and well-being against all that is anti-life, all that is anti everything that is beautiful, uplifting, and life supporting.
The brain will defy pain and death in pursuit of freedom in the name of beauty and happiness, including the right to enhance the development of these … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
December 20, 2014
38 YEARS AN EXILE: XI
HOME AT LAST! Part 11
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Ama-a-andla nga wethu! We’ve got it all so wrong in Mzansi fo sho. Power To The People! Is not all about the right to toyi-toyi for the next 350 years over even the most banal of people’s dissatisfactions against, or demands from the government. It is not about the false-premised belief in the right to the indiscriminate orgy of vandalism, theft, abuse, and misuse of public infrastructure with impunity due to poverty, daily evident in the most unequal society in the world today. Power To The People! is not a statement of delusional entitlements to excesses of privilege and power to members of the ruling, as well as other elite classes, and their beneficiaries … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
November 30, 2014
eKASSIE THABONG
THABONG, KASSIE YA KA KA 2014
©Simon Chilembo, 2014
On Monday morning, walking the breadth of my old Kassie, Thabong, Welkom, for the first time in 40 years, by way of pungency in the air, nothing has changed. After 2-3 weeks of torrential rains, there is stagnant water in many places.
The superlatively built storm canals are clogged; green sediment/ moss and wild vegetation growth all the way. Burst sewerage pipes here and there; long, open canals of slow-moving, if at all, shit created as a result of slow and/ or erratic maintenance.
As if ordered, there’s a carcass of a cat on the edge of a busy taxi street. Indications are at the cat hasn’t long been run over by a vehicle. No doubt, there is also a dead dog nearby, perhaps somewhere in the messy storm canals. No need to confirm. Dead dog eKassie? I know it when I smell it. Just keep on moving straight ahead. Nose getting blocked. Getting a headache. Feeling queasy.
How did I grow up in these conditions? How do people, how can people still be living in these conditions in Mzansi, the golden land of milk and honey for sho? No wonder old people seem ever so tired, and “ugly” here. Been away too long … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
February 13, 2014
PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS!
SIMON CHILEMBO FOR PRESIDENT! Part 2
“Simon, Simon, I know you all 30 years of Oslo and everything about you is problems, problems, problems, … Simon, please, Bello, can you not just for one day, today, have no problems, please. Problems, give me problems every day. I get a headache. NO PROBLEMS, PLEASE!!! I beg you, Simon, Sensei!” my first Norwegian friend, and Brother, Mimmo (72), Italian, would often cry in frustration. And we’d then go out and eat pasta, pizza, tiramisu; drink red wine and espresso, and live happily ever after, sharing our fantasies about good fortunes, women, as well as our frustrations about Karate politics in Norway and all over the world.
The root cause of all my problems is that I do not have a rich and generous uncle I can cry on to and, voila, I live happily ever after. I have problems. Big problems. Serious problems:
- Across the street in front of the house I live in there is a piece of prime land I want to buy. Here, I can build a modern open-air training and art park for the community. Promoting Health & Wellness principles and attitudes for a healthy, strong, and productive nation. But I’m broke
- I need to pave up the space in front of my house, not only for aesthetic purposes, but that would further stabilise the earth around the house. Broke.
- There is an urgent need to fence off the yard to the street. More for privacy needs than security. Broke.
- Lots of repair and upgrading work to do around the house. No deal. Broke.
- I need some classy interior decoration job for the house. No deal. Broke.
- I need to make the house a green one, with solar energy panels and all, as well as own water borehole. No deal. Broke.
- I must have super high speed ADSL connection here. No deal. Broke.
- A swimming pool is needed too, so is a billiard room, private gym, as well as a private study/ library. No deal. Broke.
- No Maserati. No Mercedes. No Maybach. Not even a Mahindra workhorse van. Broke.
- Future mother of my children taking her time to find me. The house is too big for one man.
- I have produced too much food in my new vegetable garden. Abundance everywhere in suburbia. Problems, problems.
Never ending wars in Africa. African people made destitute in their own lands. African people hungry, dirty, maimed, sick, miserable, broken. African people die without dignity; no honour. 
There is that picture of a vulture waiting for an emaciated body of a child to die. African humanity crushed. African earth carries so much unholy rot. And to think that we eat of the soil of this rotten earth!
“But, no, Simon, the oil give it shine; gold and diamonds give it glitter. African blood, flesh, and bones precious, see? They don’t call it the Blood Diamonds for nothing, yes?” I hear an army General whisper in my ear as someone applies electric shock to my testicles.
And African poets sing, “Oh, how we love you, Mother Africa!” Gawd!
Ever a thin thread of hope left, though. In extreme times, a thread of grass, a drop of water can take one very, very far. Beaten African people cross the Sahara on barefoot. Nature is more sensible than we often realize. When people are as badly crushed as African people on the run from miseries of tyranny and wars, even the sun gets no thrills out of burning them alive in the middle of the deserts. Others will deal with them more efficiently.
If you can’t get your hands on the African oilfields, the blood diamonds and gold (platinum is Marikana, and that’s another story), there is bounty of poor, desperate African people on the run across the Sahara. Here, there is everything for everybody. Unknowingly, these acutely abused and misused African people will even buy passports to die out at sea when then sun spared their lives in the deserts. Makes me wonder what the fish of the waters between African inhumanity and the lands of hope and perceived better life beyond, think of Africa and Africans. What would happen were the Nile to reverse its course?
I have problems. Big problems. Serious problems. Solution? Well:
- Leave my uncle alone.
- Burn the money.
- Screw the house. Screw prime lands.
- Leave future mother of my children alone.
- Drive my dream cars to hell.
- Just give me that job – Pioneer Professional Chief Executive President of Africa. Ma-a-an, will I fire people, to begin with!!!
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Tel: ++4792525032
December 28, 2013
Simon Chilembo 