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AGING AFRICAN DIASPORANTS ABROAD RETIREMENT LIFE OPTIONS
WHO IS RIGHT OR WRONG ABOUT AFRICAN DIASPORANTS’ RETIREMENT MOVES CHOICES?
PREMISE
Every African or any other Diasporant tell and live their own respective stories. The only common thread binding us Diasporants is the reality that we are all human. We are in the daily life-long pursuit of the same fundamental material and conceptual existential values. We all happen to be doing so in faraway lands from our varying original homelands. And this is where the similarities end.
We are not only individually functionally different as to each our individual capacities and capabilities to work to satisfy our variable personal needs and wants for survival. Both in terms of consumption and access to things, we, as individuals and members of collectives share certain common cohesive values. But we relate differently to the bounty of the earth and beyond. That according to particular times and spaces, status, knowledge, tastes and preferences prevailing.
INFINITE BOUNTY OF THE EARTH
All things remaining equal, what bounty the earth has on offer to humanity is unfathomably infinitely diverse. This is the basis for our individual and collective identities. From it spurs and are sustained as innumerable systems of thought. These thought systems endeavour to make sense of our material and non-material worlds. Sustenance and prolongation of life, if not attainment of immortality, being the ultimate goal.
Inclusive of our personally inherent cognitive and neuro-hormonal proclivities, our hopes, fears, and motivations are linkable to our identities, as well as our real or perceived positions and roles in society. This is a critical reality check concept to grasp when analysing why and how people make choices and decisions in life.
POSTULATION
I state, therefore, that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the quagmire facing old retiree African Diasporants regarding where they want to live their last years of life on earth. We can only share our thoughts and experiences, also offer our advice as necessary. It’s condemnable to compel, to judge, to induce guilt, instil fear, manipulate, or even to scam vulnerable Diasporants.
As in everything else in life, there will be those that are very clear as to their choices and plans. Due to various favourable factors such as unhindered access to necessary supportive material and human resources and more, these fortunate ones may be able to execute their choices and plans to desirable outcomes and live happily ever after. For these kinds of people, well, things seem to work out well all the time. Like those privileged classes Diasporants that’ll get to live it up irrespective of whether they choose to live abroad for life or not.
Unfortunately, for many an African Diasporant it’s never so easy. Whereas, say, two separate Diasporant men, each originating from a separate country, might have identical current life situations, e.g.:
- Both married; five children each – youngest children are a sixteen-years-old boy on either side
- Both fifty-five years old
- Both living in the USA for the past thirty years
- Both men and their spouses hold Ivy League universities PhDs in some fields or others
- Both families highly successful. Well-established in the USA. Have invested in property and other ventures back home in Africa. Both with solid philanthropic reputations back home
FORTUNES DIVERGENCES
When it comes to addressing the return-home-or-not retirement question, it’s not a given that the two men and their respective families above will address it similarly despite their mutually relatable obvious successes in the Diaspora. The array of the relational dynamics within each family unit, amongst individual family members regarding their needs and wants, fears, hopes, and expectations is multifaceted. That, to begin with, is more than enough of a challenge to deal with.
The thirty years aspect of living abroad takes a different meaning when viewed with considerations of making major relocating moves. The world and all that live on it change drastically over a thirty-year period. Growing up in specific geographical locations on earth, people are constantly impacted by natural features and processes occurring as characteristic of these places. Needless to say, human relations and resultant sociological formations/ culture will appreciably be reflective of the humans-nature bilateral relationship.
It means that people not only grow up where they do; these places and their unique natural attributes metaphorically grow inside the individuals too. This is expressed, amongst a multitude of others, in how people organize themselves in the gathering and production of food, protection against enemies, reproduction and birthing rituals, raising of children, and land ownership rights determination. Included in this category is the relationship to death, disposal of the dead, as well as mourning and closure rituals. Therefore, it’s not often that people will on the spur of the moment voluntarily just pack and leave places that they have lived in for a long time.
Things can be even more challenging for the less successful Diasporants confronted with the second migration dilemma. Admittedly, life can be extremely hard for especially poor Diasporants in America, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. For these people, talks of investing back home make no sense.
I can’t imagine a poor Diasporant that’s lived abroad for many years having any meaningful family and friends safety nets back home. So, more often than not, people in this category simply succumb to their misfortunes, get stuck and live life to the end in the Diaspora. Miserable as it may be for some observers. But who is anybody to judge anybody whose inner demons battles and angelic joys nobody’ll ever know?
Some poor Diasporants may have come to the Diaspora already down-trodden from their home-countries. They may have used all sorts of unconventional, if not illegal means to enter the various Diaspora lands. They may have traversed the Sahara on foot; defied the Mediterranean Sea on perilous as can be hardly floating ferries and make-shift boats. In extreme cases, others may be survivors of global human trafficking gangs. The survivors may have been subjected to all sorts of abuse grossly contravening the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter.
IDENTITY
Both the attainment of opulent living and a pauper existence in the Diaspora are functions of intricate, diametrically opposed circumstances for people; from health, grit, to social intelligence. Much of that shaped by identity and values we carry with us from our socialization training processes in our respective homes in Africa. It is important to remember that identity does not collapse and lock itself into our unilaterality.
In view of their intentions, given what they know or don’t know about a person, third parties might assign the person observed an identity that is not aligned with what the person believes to know about themselves to be. Some African Diasporants never manage to rise above the negative identities that anti-immigrants elements use. The xenophobes use the negative identities to justify harassment and abuse of African people in America, Europe, and elsewhere.
If an anti-Black racist identifies an African person as sub-human, then, the racist will illtreat the Black African with impunity. Dire legal consequences, or worse, might follow here, though.
In another demeaning, discriminatory context, the same does happen to some not so successful Diasporants that do get to return home after decades abroad, after all. In Zambia, my fatherland, they call them Machona, “the vanishing one”.
MACHONA = DIASPORAN: Emigrant
Machona and Diasporant describe the same phenomenon of people leaving their original homelands. That being for a variety of reasons of own volition, by coercion, or any other factors beyond the people’s control. It’s just that, in our context here, Machona label applies to one that disappears within Africa. Whereas Diasporant is for those that vanish to overseas lands.
Upon his return to Zambia in 1975 after living for an unbroken twenty-eight years’ period in South Africa, my father was not a man of means. Other than his wife and then four kids, he had nothing to show for all those years he had lived and worked supposedly for millions in South Africa. In his mid-forties then, my father was tired. The hardships of life under the then oppressive and exploitative racist Apartheid econo-political system had taken their toll on him.
My father’s immediate and extended family members, like many other people in the Southern African hinterland, were taken by the myth that all benefitted from South Africa’s legendary mega wealth. These people couldn’t understand how, if at all and almost without exception, their relatives returned home from South Africa destitute. Never mind that these now overtly poor people never could send much money home (Black Tax) whilst living and working in South Africa.
My father drew very little sympathy from his people. Some of the people were extremely spiteful, saying and doing obnoxious things towards my father. He took it all with stoicism only half of which would make me a better person if I could muster it. The negative attitudes towards my father spilled over to his wife and children. The consequent mental self-protective wall I built around me meant that I’d never want to have anything to do with these bad people against my father and his wife and kids.
Lacking documentable academic qualifications or professional accreditations, my father blatantly failed to reconnect with modern Zambia. By 1975, Zambia had been a sovereign state since October 24, 1964. The country had made huge sociological transformations unrecognizable from the old Northern Rhodesia my father had left for the neon lights of the golden city of Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1947. Zambians ruled. Zambians were royalty in their land. Zambians were Black and proud. This was a whole new world for my father and his nuclear family.
Ba-MACHONA, Ba-Elias(-i)
Applied to my father particularly in the broader family circles, the Machona tag was used derogatorily. It meant that he was a loser with no future in Zambia. To be identified as “Ah, this one is the child of that Machona, ba-Elias” was meant to belittle us, my father’s children. As did “This one is the wife of ba-Machona Elias” referring to my mother. My loser father had brought to Zambia a loser family from South Africa, people used to say. Now, that hurt.
In 1986, my father would return to South Africa. Despite having a new set of challenges in connection with Zambia, my father lived fairly more dignified in South Africa until his demise in 1998. In 1988, I myself packed my bags and left for higher education studies in Norway. I’ve been a Diasporant since then.
MACHONA POVERTY RAMPANT IN SOUTH AFRICA
My father’s plight in Zambia was a common feature amongst numerous other from-South Africa returnee Machonas. Many had it far worse than Pappa and his family. Despite the challenges, my parents did manage to keep their family together. Their three surviving children, Thabo, Sisi, and I have grown up to be alright human beings. My father would on the side beget another son, Nelson. The latter also has defied the odds and has grown up to be a decent human being.
Caught up in poverty-driven toxic family structures already whilst in South Africa, the other struggling returnee Machona families had it really tough. The Zambian fathers, some illiterate, couldn’t function at all in the Zambian labour market. And, besides, the myth of the mighty rich South African wealth was thought to have been a blessing for the Machonas in the country. So, people couldn’t fathom how it was that anybody could come out poor from South Africa, the land of milk and honey. In the eyes of many a Zambian people, lack of success attainment in South Africa meant that there was something wrong about their unresourceful returnee landsmen. The Diaspora curse at work.
PERSONAL RESOLVE
By the time we got to Lusaka in March 1975, I had already understood that it would be very, very long before we’d return to South Africa. I knew with committed certainty that no matter how long it’d take, though, I would return to South Africa at some point in the future, no matter what.
With time, looking at the hardships and indignities that Pappa and his fellow Machona returnees were subjected to in Lusaka, I knew that I’d never want to return to South Africa as a poor and uneducated man. This resolve informs my stand on the viability or not of my returning home to South Africa, or even Zambia, upon the arrival of my Diaspora retirement time in 2027. Much like my attitude towards marriage and fatherhood, if I know that I’m not durably sufficiently financially strong, I won’t do it; I don’t want it.
YOUTUBE INFLUENCERS
It’s easy to be charmed and convinced by many a YouTube pro-return-home for African Diasporants. Some of these proponents are really good eloquently and in the presentation of their visuals.
- Identity purists are passionate about the African identity. The purists argue that the Diaspora threatens to dilute or even obliterate the identity altogether if African people don’t return home.
- Pan-Afrikanists also want people to come back home to contribute to the efforts of creating a single, united, borderless Africa.
- Business and Economics pragmatists want the Diasporants to not only come back home but to also inject capital in various investments across sectors of their countries’ economies; thereby contributing to national development efforts. As if the Diaspora is an automatic, instant, and continuous capital gifting hand of God, or something. Not even the IMF or the World Bank work like that. Of course. Besides, not everybody is entrepreneurially oriented. Some people are happy just they have salt and water on the table.
I thoroughly enjoy many of these pro-African Diaspora return home shows on YouTube. That only to the extent that they talk about and show what is possible. I lose interest as soon as I detect a sense of superiority complex and a holier than though attitude pushing propaganda for people to return home at like all costs because “home is home”.
TO EVERYONE THEIR MOTIVATIONS, DREAMS, AND STRENGTHS
The Diaspora is not a sin. The African dream is not for everyone. Neither is heaven; not all of us are holy. People are not stupid. People are different. People are driven by a myriad of intrinsic motivations. People dream their own dreams, see their own dreams for the doable and the impossible. People fight their own demons.
Home for one person may be hell for another. Everyone must be allowed to assess their own life situations before taking a stand on the return-home-or-not African Diaspora dilemma. I fully encourage the expansion of YouTube talks as educational and advisory tools on the matter. Condescendence puts me off. Not everyone is born aristocrat.
For those ex-Diasporants that have made successful returns back home, I wholeheartedly rejoice with and for. Much as I do for those Diasporants that thrive and have decided to settle abroad. The Rock Stars in this regard are those that have managed to reach such levels of success that they can afford to live happily ever after with one foot in the Diaspora and the other back home; dying where the die, buried where they’ll be ultimately. Bravo!
I’m a 65-year-old lone survivor Diasporant in Norway. My official retirement is just a little over a year away. In a perfect world I’d be shuttling between Africa and Norway as a well-off Norwegian pensioner living it up. However, as things are today, I’ll only be able to sustain a reasonably okay living standard by being in one or the other, but not Norway and Africa alternately. And that’ll hold to the extent that I remain childless, single and unmarried. I wouldn’t even afford to keep neither a dog nor a cat. Not that I’d want to keep a pet, though.
To be clear, I don’t hate pets. I love women. I’m too poor to want to get married. Simple. I decide my ability to keep a pet and that of sustaining a happily-ever-after marriage here and now. Investing in this and that back home is out of the question now. I did try during my super economic might years in the early 2000s.
The whole thing broke my financial back lastingly. Almost killed me. Exposed dark sides that I never knew of in my family. I’ve just recently made a last investment attempt that was supposed to turn out as the mother of them all. Alas, it was a scam. Lost much money. Never again big business ventures in Africa for me. I’m tired. I’ve reached and crossed the rat-race finishing line. I’ve got a thousand books to write. Talk about aging with grace.
A whisper tells that there’s a critical minerals rich stretch of land from Eastern Congo to my ancestral land in Eastern Province, Zambia. If I invest US$10K today, another tomorrow, and then, monthly throughout 2026, I’ll be a Billionaire by the time I become a pensioner in Norway in 2027. I tell the whisper, “Go eff yourself; you can have it all!”
I’ve lived in Norway more than half my life. I became a man here. In my time, I’ve done and attained great things that big men do. I’ve experienced profuse joyous manhood exploits here. In the deepest recesses of my heart rest profound pains of loss of, longing for, and denial of seeing my manhood seed sprout to see the light of day in Norway. I’ve cried rivers in here. The rivers have dried. I’ve risen. I’m alive again. Despite the pains. My heart is strong.
Africa is born in me. I’ll be African all my living days. My roots pride will never die. I’ll stay in the Diaspora until I die. It’s my right to choose what feels right for me, for my life. To those the African Diasporants to whom it feels right and has shown to be feasible, go back home and thrive. We all deserve the good we create for ourselves anywhere we thrive in the world, including Guangzhou, even Ouagadougou too. Who is anybody to judge what is right or not for us about our respective solutions to the aging African Diasporants’ dilemma overseas?
This is my story today. The wealth of my future shining ever so bright ahead. The world is my oyster. Only getting started. The Diaspora is my springboard to any corner of the world I want to reach, be it today or tomorrow. From high up in the springboard leap trajectory, I’m free, I’m happy. I look back into the past, the database for all I need for the new opportunities and challenges of the future in the Diaspora and back home. I have no fear. This world is mine. Prove me wrong, if you can; back home or in the Diaspora.
©Simon Chilembo 02.03.2026
SIMON CHILEMBO
March 19, 2026
𝗪𝗔𝗥 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗖𝗘?
𝗔 𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴
WAR FOR PEACE?
When humanity makes
War for peace
Devoid of love
Hate
The human nuclear fusion powerhouse
Holds humanity survival
Hostage
In wait for one
Hot-nutted man’s
Testicular explosion
To start
The 3rd World War
Blowing humanity
Into annihilation
No historian will write about
There’ll be
No victors
To tell no story of
Humanity burnt to ashes
Blowing in
Nuclear fall-out clouds
Blanketing emaciated
Planet Earth
Across the universe lost meaning
Humanity done trampling the soil
To barrenness
For life
Climate change could never do
A better job
No more ambition
No more brains
No more curiosity
No more dreams
No more exploration
No more fantasy
No more games
No more idols
No more jubilations
Independence a thing
Of once upon a time
No audience
No storytelling
No more memories
No more sex
No more God
No more hallelujah
Jesus just a small boy
Crucified by his own
On track to
Humanity’s self-annihilation pursuits
No more scriptures
Unholy
In shadows of fear
No more cathedrals
Acoustics for
Angelic song voices
Blown up
Into mushroom clouds
Nuclear bombs wars
For you
Baby
No more lies
No more fortunes
No more gold
No more diamonds and pearls
No more black gold
Or is it liquid gold
From beneath arid lands
From ocean floors
Beneath heavy waters
Running wild
Caught up in the money trap
Call it
The greenback
The Euro
The Kroner
The Rand and
The Ruble
Archaic
Imperial Russia revivalists
Untenable Marxism alliance
Workers’ Revolution
Corruption-soiled pipedream
Might as well keep smoking opium
Afghan poppy, needless to say
Vodka-drunk
Drown in
Castle Lager pools
For the Indian Ocean
Mahatma Gandhi
Could have taught them
A lesson or two about
The way of peace
In social transformation
The Yen or
The Yuan
Oriental mystic
Incense stick’
Smoke
Dazes Africa to
Sleep
In sweet-sour
Bloodless neo-imperialism yokes
Subtle
In Shaolin Kung Fu
Masters’ dances
No murderous visions
In Tai Chi meditation trances
Peaceful conquest
In the landmass of the wretched
Yoga’s bhujangasana
Broke Africa’s back
Chant: OM
Namaste
Land of the Rising Sun
Got a rude awakening
In World War 2
Yet, fools of the world
Don’t wanna learn
America-induced blood baths
Flow in rivers of the world
In charred after-World War 3 world
Planet Earth shan’t recall
What a river once was
Blood not even a concept
Yet, America wants to make
A mad man rule the world
Four more years
May be the last
The longest
The permanent
As in
Stillness state
The other side of
I can’t breathe
Last breath
Nothingness lasts
When there’s
Nothing to breathe
See you
On the mythical other side
We meet as atomic particles
In nuclear fallout
Feeding on itself
Mankind finally equal
In a state of nothingness
Humanity obliterated
From planet earth
For nothing
When air to breathe
Is free for
All
Living creatures
Freedom is
All
About that
In wars for peace
It doesn’t work
Like that
America
Ought to know better
Today
In the Middle East
We could still be
Living in Biblical times
Quick sanded in
The Old Testament
Fighting vicious battles
As old as
A thousand Methuselahs
In
Who wants to live forever mayhems
For life
To the last man
The Tigris didn’t save
Saddam
Weapons of mass destruction
Are here for real
Today
World War 3 knocking
On heavens’ doors
For the chosen ones
And they say
Heavenly God
Loves us all
Discrimination from
The source
When all are born sinners
According to
The Scriptures
Satanic hell is a place
Packed in nuclear warheads
Once they all strike
We’re all gonna roast
Right here on earth
No escape
NASA crumbled
Space-X grounded
Space travel
Gone with the inferno
Branson last said
Would star with virgins
In Battle Star Galactica
Bezos last seen in the Amazons
Blue in the face
Heaven can wait
Humanity come to an end
Closed chapter of
Creation’s darkest story
No one to read
Creation’s wasted expression
Of itself through man
No more power
Elon Musk: spaXced out
Gangsters: garroted
Trumpsters: magnetized
Fascists: suicidal
All burnt-up excrement
Like everyone else
Reduced to
Carbon dust particles
Polluting the universe
Lonesome planet earth
Rotating on its axis
Ever since creation
Indifferent to
Love or hate
Humanity’s creation
They could have chosen
Love
We’d live happily
Forever and ever
In peace
Writing human history
Infinite
In all forms
Through the epochs
Let’s
Make love
Not war
Futile cry of
Language impotentized
Falling on imploded eardrums
We write it down
In love letters
Immortalize it in books
Catalogue them in libraries
Of the world
Anyway
Might survive
The apocalypse
Make history
Be not
Beast of war
Grotesque
Be apex-dog of letters
Read history now
You just might
Save Humanity
𝗘𝗡𝗗
©Simon Chilembo 2024
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
September 15, 2024
ＮＡＴＵＲＥ ＯＦ ＷＡＲ
DOES NOT CHANGE
It doesn’t change
Since time immemorial
Women abused
In war
Women distraught
Primordial
Survival instincts driven
Open their womanhood depths
Embrace their men
Cold
Eyes blank
Passion dead
Women seeking comfort
When war sirens wail
Since World War II
Jet fighters roar
Zig-zag the sky
Modern-day drones
Wizz above people’s heads
Missiles crater Mother Earth
In all directions
Extraterrestrials will never land
On earth again
We are the last remnants
Of anything similar
To human civilization on earth
Safety a thing
Only
For explosives encased
In weapons of war
Awaiting discharge
To murder women
With children
In their bellies
Children
On their backs
Children massacred
In wide-open playing fields
No godly shields
To see any place
School buildings
Hospitals
Walls pulverized
Under missiles attacks
Children die
Under their mothers’ bodies
Women wish
Mothers’ backs were
Turtle shell strong
In the least
Woman and child die
Warlords say
Peace is coming
Just another
One more lethal missile rain
This way
And that-a-way
Shredded human body parts
Crumbled with
Concrete jungle
Rubble
Unidentifiable
That’s the idea
These are animals
Warlords say
Weaken the enemy
Just a little more
Pre-emptive attack
Turtle shells strength
Only a metaphor
Terrorism is a chronic disease
Warlords say
Eliminate terrorists
With no mercy
They kill
So they can live
Warlords say
Peace is coming
Paid for at
The ultimate price
Either way
One more woman to demean
One more infanticide cycle
To execute
Ever so easy when
Woman and child can’t run
They can’t hide
Their cries drowned in
Storms of war
Who has forgotten
But one
Enduring calamity
Bush push
Operation Desert Storm
Amongst multiple others
In the timeline of
Human history
To this day
Ceasefire
Talks, talks, talks
Yuppy, yuppy, yuppy
Bla, bla, bla, blas
Give woman a break
More children to bake
Canons ever so hungry
For human fodder
Military-Industrial Complex
Got the Moola to harvest
On the spoils of war
Warlords kill
Every which way
The smart run
To the bank
Smiles on their faces
Wall Street is happy
Who wants to be a billionaire
Peace awaits man’s fall
Into the belly of
The earth’s crevices
Ignite World War 3
Burn motherfucker, burn
If that’s what it’ll take
For peace to find itself
Live for itself
Without man
On the face of the earth
Warlords kill
Women and children in vain
Peace looks with dismay
At war hawks’
Stupidity’s absurdity
War hawks think that
Peace romances carnage
When carnage breeds hate
Germinates vengeance seeds
In blood
That never dries in the earth
Even stones bleed human blood
Here
Dry tears in the rain
Peace waits for us all to die
When we are all gone
Tomorrow will be a better day
For peace
If it is there beyond
Bloodied planet earth
I’ll go to heaven
Bring back the women
Bring back the children
Heal their bodies and souls
There’ll be a few good men
In heaven too
I figure
I’ll bring them along
We give peace a chance anew
We gonna make a change
This time around
No more wars
In the future
Let women live
Let children grow
War hawks
Stand
In the forefront
Go fight in hell
By yourselves
Show us
Then
Who the real men are
The strongest men
In the world
Skew-nutted
Short-circuited
In the head
Afraid to die
I for one
Stand for peace
If I could
I’d be a global
Missile defense system
In all inter-human hostilities
Of the world
Killing wars
Dead on their tracks
Unlike the
United Nations Security Council
Toothless
Permanent members’
Vetoes locked its jaws
Forked its tongues
Might as well build
New Tower of Babel
New York City-style
In Trumpland nightmares’
Post-insurrection killing fields
Vetoes have tied
The hands though
Tragic
Just as well
Better forget the idea
The Twin Towers fell
Misery won’t end
War hawks think
I’m mad
I’m naïve
They have blood
On their hands
Milk and honey drip
Off my hands
Life is sweet
In my land of peace
21st Century Canaan
North Pole side
But then again
These ain’t godly times
Prayer has no meaning
When
Women die
Children die
Nations collapse
In wars
Instigated
In the name of God
Fortified
In the ways of God
Sustained
By the grace of God
The future is bleak
For God’ sake
Hope is no freak
I won’t shut my beak
For peace, shall I speak
Words hard as teak
Never shall I peak
Ever in the mood for peace
I have a woman to please
Children’s fears to appease
Wars must cease
Mother and child beseech
END
©Simon Chilembo 2024
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
September 15, 2024
𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗜 𝗗𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪
𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦 𝗜𝗡 𝗠𝗬 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗟𝗗, 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮
I dedicate this presentation here to my late beloved mother, who died five years ago on October 7th, 2018. May her soul continue resting in eternal power. On Monday, October 2nd, 2023, my mother would have turned 83 years old. Happy posthumous birthday, Machona Mother – Shebeen Queen dearest!
When as a child growing up in South Africa up to the age of 14½ years I was in various spaces hassled for my Blackness and other envied personal attributes, my mother instilled in me a fierce sense of pride and personal integrity. She constantly told me how beautiful I was, and that, as my academic performance demonstrated time after time at that time, I was the most intelligent kid around. I believed her, and, with humility and gratitude, I’ve aimed to live her words since then: beautiful, intelligent man that thrives amongst other beautiful, intelligent people.
August month, 2023, marked the 35th anniversary of my stay in Norway. The tangible plan I had upon leaving Zambia, my fatherland, in June, 1988, was that I’d complete the 3½ years’ post-graduate business studies programme I had privately secured for myself, with a little help from my friends. Afterwards I’d then move on out to the bigger, wide, wide world.
Twelve years was the timespan that I had given myself that when subsequently big and strong with an Economics PhD degree and international big business and global technocracy experience clutched under my armpits, I’d then return to South Africa, land of my birth, and become the country’s Reserve Bank Governor. I had the earth moving under my feet; what could stop me, then? What could go wrong?
The accompanying supportive Norwegian State Education Loan Fund scholarship offer was the first to come my way. I accepted it without second thoughts because I just had to get out of Zambia at the earliest opportunity. This was a matter of both ambition and the nearly untenable personal living conditions in extremely hard family and national survival environments at that time.
That I’d somehow ultimately stay in Norway for a longer period, not in the least permanently, was never even an iota of an idea in my head. Dream of America calling, Baby. In January, 1991, towards the end of the business studies programme, a bureaucratic glitch led to my ceasing to receive financial support from the scholarship fund. I was left with a huge debt in tuition fees and other costs to the school. Indefinite termination of my studies at the school became unavoidable. This was the beginning of my economic dire straits that would last at least five years in this first cycle. As fate would have it, I’d fall in love with a sweet Norwegian woman during this time.
In the meantime, I had opened and had been running two Karate schools in Oslo since my arrival in 1988. That’s how I got to stay in Norway to this day. Both love and Karate no longer rule my life in Norway. But I’m still here; largely because of the joys, trials, and tribulations that the love and Karate exposed me to in the country. I experienced the joys, I wanted more and more. Norway delivered; I got addicted to the land.
I having been overwhelmed by difficult circumstances beyond my control, once unleashed, the trials and tribulations were ruthless. Under the hardships of life in Norway, I’ve seen many a lesser man from the African Diaspora spiritually buckle, fall, rise, and walk dead. All faith gone, no hope, neither mental nor physical strength left, they die. Literally. I decided that if I fall, I shall fall. But I would never die. I didn’t travel more than half the world to let problems of life kill me so far away from home. One way or another I’d find a way to rise again; just I can breathe. I could never return neither to Zambia nor South Africa poor and without a business PhD degree. Never.
Indeed, I fell once; I fell a second time. On the third fall I lost everything, including face. My people networks collapsed. For once left alone, Rockstar popularity dissipated, I got the opportunity to be better acquainted with myself as a grown-up man. I saw clearly my dreams, my potential in life. I became my bestiest bestie. Now I know myself well. Better than ever. My self-knowledge trip gets better and better and more rewarding each and every new day that comes and goes.
I got to understand that my social survival navigator skills by way of my sellable talents may be many, but the relevant shall come forth and carry me through only specific situational needs in order to respond accordingly to given conditions in different epochs and spaces. The constant steering ethos being my personal motto of change, win, adapt, or die.
I’ve learned to change perspectives, acquire new skills sets, and adopt varying modus operandi to ensure victory in the face of adversity, no matter how long it takes. This knowledge also helps me to take to the next level what I already know and works in my favour presently. Concurrent with applicable talents, the ability to adapt to, and flow with the currents of changing or changed circumstances is a powerful tool for success for me. I have yet to die. I might talk about death on the other side, should I die.
Whilst recovering from the major fall following the devastating personal economy knock that I got from the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, I had fully embraced the idea that all I had to do was to chill and wait for my next big break. I had suffered enough. I had learned more about myself and the ways of the world to know that I had to stay alert, fresh, and strong for the impending big break; whatever it would be, wherever it would take me, and whatever it would do with me.
It was a painful wait. Much reading, thinking, and writing rechannelled the emotional and mental torment to the enhancement of my creative potential as a writer. If I can read about it, I can write about it; tell a story about it in my own words.
If I can write about it, I can deconstruct it; I will better comprehend the challenges, I will see solutions. If I can write about it, I can dream. If I can dream, I can hope. My faith is shaped in the messages of my dreams. My writings tell the story that everything’s gonna be alright ahead. Keep moving.
I have been through so many personal falls and rises that I know when an opportunity for my self-reinvention is nigh. The feeling of anticipation I get in times like these is like no other. I become larger than life in my thoughts so that when the opportunity for me to rise again arrives I won’t lose control of my sensibilities.
Whilst I had visions of yet another multi-million-dollar international trade business venture, as the book writing inspiration suddenly revealed itself one fine morning in August, 2015, I knew that my real calling had finally come home. I got into a frenzy. Feeling like one possessed by the spirits of our greatest ever historical and contemporary world authors, I went on to write the first of my dream-of-one-thousand-plus books before I turn 100 years old.
The debut novel, When the Mighty Fall – rise again mindgames, I wrote in fourteen days. It became about the story of my first twenty-five years in Norway presented in a semi-autobiographical, or fantasy memoir format. Intense emotions and scenes arise in the book: boundaries are pushed and crossed; limitations are overcome, people reset themselves and their lives, stereotypes are crushed. All played out by at least equally intense and exceptional characters. The book has changed my life; it has made me a better person. It started the process by which I continue to learn and understand humanity and our universe better the more I write and think, and think and write.
Working with the book from the start, and living with the variable impacts it continues to have on its readers are a constant, in real-time steep learning curve. I guess it’s a mark of a significant book when the author gets a mixed bag of strong reactions from the readers. Acquire and read the book for yourself so that you can make your own conclusions. Love or hate me as you wish; it is your prerogative in a free world. If you wish to destroy me for your hate, I won’t take you lying on my back.
My embracing this book writing calling of mine was with a clear awareness that my works would never be appreciated by all. I’ve in my life read more than enough books to appreciate that fact well. I’ve over the years come across numerous literary critiques on various media also. What has shocked me, though, is the gross misinterpretation of my thoughts and intentions in and with the aforementioned book. This has been especially so given that it is the least expected section of my readership that has been thoroughly brutal in their condemnation of me and the book. Perhaps this makes the point for writers knowing about their actual and potential target readers. However, as for me, to the extent that I so far write personally inspired factual and fictional narratives as opposed to formal academic, or professional literature, I in principle write for myself. I could never write if I went around thinking about who my readers are, or shall be, and how they will judge my works eventually.
Working clandestinely, my aforementioned brutal critics, on utterly wrongful, naïve conjectures, have gone around tarnishing my reputation in Norway. People read my books. In their readings they come face-to-face with demons they conjure for themselves. They panic; lose it. They judge and punish me without a trial. Pathetic.
Because my conscience is clear, and because of my resolute dedication to growing and developing my creative writing talent and occupation to the 1000th book and beyond, the hurt and emotional turmoil I initially felt are gone. I’m healed. I’m strong. I’m on the rise again, destined for higher and higher heights of success than ever. I’ve written eight more books since the When the Mighty Fall publication. I’m on the roll; right on track. No one, nothing can stop me.
Travelling from Lusaka back to Oslo with Qatar Airways two weeks ago, it was on the first leg of the trip, Lusaka-Doha, that I took time to take a deep dive into reflections of my highs and lows in Norway over the years. I couldn’t help but dwell upon encounters with some really bad people that have always been there to hinder my climb to success in the things that I do by way of making a living in the country. The bad people were in total contrast to the loving and caring ones that I met during my short family matters visit in Lusaka, from August 20-29, 2023.
These bad people have striven to ever hamper my genuine efforts to work to be a decent human being with a well-intended commitment to my personal aspiration of adding value to society to the extent that I’m resourceful and productive. Some have been outright about their dislike of, and disdain for me. I can live with that.
Others have turned out to be Judases in the end. A sickening lot that once ranked high as confidants in my world. These provoke my primordial survival instincts when I consider that they are ever gathering somewhere conniving to micro-assassinate me slowly. A mission I could never allow them the pleasure of achieving. Unless I am overtly potentially or actually caused bodily harm, I am not likely to resort to violence as an immediate self-preservation recourse. However, my warrior creative spirit observes, or experiences and analyses everything.
I apply different writing styles as dictated upon by the moments when I celebrate or decry events around me, both near and distant. I do the same with uplifting or destructive actions specifically directed towards me. That way I get to vent out my frustrations and anger without spilling a drop of blood. Then I can sustain my sense of personal safety and integrity in the face of adversity; irrespective of whether the adversity is overt or discreet. My words are my armour.
The poem I’m going to read came forth during the process of thinking about the latest Judases, wolves in sheep’s clothing that have emerged with their true colours in the dark in recent years. It is a self-preservation, protest poetry piece. This poem also sets my eyes on October 24th, 2023, which will mark the fifth year of my return to Norway after a five-year creative exile in South Africa.
Aware that my enemies had already drawn their swords to slay me, I felt like I had brought myself into the mythical lions’ den at my arrival in Oslo. But I knew I was blameless contra the enemies’ smear campaign against me. I’m grandson of a Daniel, father of my mother. The Biblical Daniel was “… saved from lions by the God of Israel “because I was found blameless before him” (Daniel 6:22). So, I’m still intact; standing tall, breathing happy and free, crafting words into literary expressions in my efforts to make sense of my world.
Similar to other writings of mine addressing my personal life conditions and states of being owing to simply being who I am and the personal choices that I make all the time, I’ve written the poem not out of a need to defend, explain, or justify myself. I do not seek any validation nor accolades from some Jacks and Jills anywhere either. I listen only to my teachers, to men and women of authentic benevolence: proven mediums of global human excellence, love and peace.
I primarily write to purify my soul, ease my pains, and fortify my spirit. I write as a good-intentions, free, have-no-fear spirit with nothing to hide in a free world. I feel good about what I do; I know I’m good at it. And that’s all that matters to me. It is what it is. I am that I am. Take me, or leave me as it is your prerogative in your free world.
I publicise my works in response to what I feel to be a higher call to share my thoughts with those that want to hear my words. This call inspires me to aspire to teach and to speak for the young, the weak and vulnerable: the afraid, the oppressed, the voiceless. That from my life experiences as lived-in moments in time. Also as learned from hearing the voices of others that are much wiser than me.
The wiser than me being my teachers across the board, including some of the most impactful historical and contemporary philosophical and spiritual wells of wisdom of the world. All from one-on-one teachings and discussions with the living, or through consumption of the wise’ thoughts through the variety of multimedia platforms available in our times: from the written word in books, to sight, sound, and motion presentations in live theatres; on cinema, television, and computer screens.
Thanks to the power of the internet, we today have the said multimedia platforms compressed and collapsed into the palms of our hands via mobile telephone technology. Knowledge acquisition and dissemination of the same, verification of facts and propagation of truths, debunking of falsities and crushing of conspiracy theories, are all at the tips of our fingers these days. Therefore, those that manage and live their lives on unchecked assumptions; uninformed, factually fallacious decision-making tendencies do so at their own peril.
©Simon Chilembo 11.09.2023
𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗜 𝗗𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪 – 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗲𝗺
Self-made
New enemies of me
People I don’t know
Lurk in dark corners
I don’t know
Wish me dead
They don’t know
I’m a free soul of the light
I don’t know how to hide
I don’t know how to die
Darkness cannot contain me
Invincible to eyes that see
I worry but little
Of fools groping in the dark
Hoping for a lucky strike
To annihilate me
I’m not
In a state of war
I fear no drones
No stealth missiles threats to
My soul of the light
Defence system
My shield is
My words
I push back with
My voice
I sing one moment
I preach the next
I wail this moment
The moment I growl
Earth trembles under my feet
Self-made
New enemies of me
Faceless people I don’t know
Fools with reasons for
Enmity I don’t know
Duped in fake storytelling tales
Of witches in fright
Of demons of them
Confronting them
In the glow of light
Permeating
The darkest recesses of the universe
In fright
Fight
Shadows of themselves in the dark
Tumbling in muddy faeces
Of their own
Gathered in trenches
Of massless conspiracy constructs
Meant to implode
A free soul of the light
They cannot see
I could never collapse
Into myself
Squash me
Sprout me
As particles of
My flesh and bones
In deep waters
Delusionals don’t know
That’s the closest they’ll ever
Come to harming me
Envious fools don’t know me
Inconsequential fools’ll never see me
Repugnant fools embraced by
Darkness I don’t know
Darkness I don’t care about *
I cannot run away from the light
I have nothing to hide
I don’t know how to hide
I have nowhere to hide
Not even a tomb can contain me
I had to break the law
Drank and drove
For prison walls to hold me
If only for a while
You’ll never find
Remains of me
In pyramids of Egypt
In a thousand years
When I say catch me if you can
I play with words
No longer do I play with
Bloodsuckers
Stabbed me in the back
I could have bled to death
Had it not been for
The light stronger than
Enemies’ self-consuming malice
In the dark
Resilience is the name of
Dark-hearts-impervious
Light games I play
Here I am to see
For all eyes with love
I’m a soul of invictus
I breathe love
As a matter of course
I’m here to stay
Longevity is the name of
My dance for life
Immortality is the name
Of my end-game
Beat that
If you can
𝗘𝗡𝗗
©Simon Chilembo 11.08.2023
On the 24th of October, 2019, I wrote the following article on my private blog, chilembowarriormoves.com:
𝐔𝐍𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐄𝐍 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐄?
𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐍?
Sometime last year, 2022, whilst I was in the middle of working with my latest and nineth book, MACHONA GRIT – Onslaught On Hate, I came across an Instagram reel that caught my interest fleetingly. In this reel, the speaker made fiery, disparaging, and violence instigating remarks against single men. The speaker is a prominent American religious leader whose thoughts influence hundreds of millions of people across the world. However, not all will be direct adherents of his unique religious flock within the broader global faith movement of the umbrella religion, which could be Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other. They all serve the same purpose: harnessing of our primitive instincts, limiting the extent to which we can think we are free-thinking, independent individuals. Religion, a tool of oppression as destructive as can be.
I choose not to name the religious leader because I’ve failed to find the said Instagram reel for a concrete reference source. Nevertheless, I have throughout all my adult life so far, come across innumerable sentiments like those uttered by the man of God vis-à-vis men living alone without women as their marital partners.
Basically, the unmarried men haters’ contention is that solitary living unmarried men are not real men; because they are not real men, they are anti-God, and thus they deserve to die. The unmarried men haters say that God must kill single men, and it is the duty of all married men serving God to ensure that God’s will is fulfilled: death to the unmarried. Amen!
It’s strange that Catholic priests don’t get married, though. Celibacy doesn’t mean abstinence. Catholic priests do get caught doing the hanky panky too. When the priests sexually abuse small boys, I wonder about where God is when all this happens. Does he turn blind eyes? In that case, God is an accessory to a heinous crime.
Personally, such emotional abuse and death threats I’ve outlined above are beneath me; they don’t scathe me even a single bit. I’m sixty-three years old. I’m single, and I’ve never been married by choice. Over the years, I’ve on various fora already mentioned that I’m under no obligation to explain, to justify, or to defend my unmarried, solitary living to anybody. All men-of-God wanting to kill me for my choice to stay young, free, and single must just bring it on anytime. God himself is such an illusion so full of contradictions I have not time for.
For God so thrives in tyranny he made man in his, undefinable, multifaceted, illusory image. He accordingly polarized man; made man into a treacherous, murderous creature of fellow man for transgressions of frivolous, ill-defined, prejudicial so-called sins. A God of love who rules by threats and application of murder does not make sense to me.
To solve a dominance problem, brothers believing in the same God go to war against one another; as in, say, the current case of Russia against Ukraine. They simultaneously pray the same God for protection of themselves on the one hand, and power to annihilate the other on the other hand. For the time it shall take as to location of the war and the relative strengths of the warring parties, absolute mayhem, pillage, and murder could go on until the last man. Somebody might set off atomic bombs, and then we’ll all be gone tomorrow. Adios, God!
Killers praising God for strength. The dying praying God for mercy. Priests praying God to receive the spirits of the dead in heaven; whilst the shredded body parts, if not ground flesh of the dead rest in eternal peace on earth fertilizing Ukrainian killing fields, if not the Congolese killing jungles. God nowhere to be seen. Not a sound from God.
No, the whole idea of the existence of an omnipresent God does not make any sense to me at all. God as an idea and a possible entity amongst us defies all logic. But, of course, his believers can have him. We are all already burning here on the hell that is planet earth, anyway. Heaven is in the minds of the free-spirited seekers and propagators of humane truths in pursuance of fairness and justice for mankind on earth.
In my countering the idea of death to men-without-women, I take the liberty to speak for the voiceless, the weak and vulnerable, the oppressed; the afraid. I do so simply because I can. I am no Messiah. I am a free spirit that scientifically knows that apart from the fundamental genetic coding that separates humans from other animals, each human being has an own unique subordinate genetic makeup that characteristically distinguishes them from other human beings. That distinction manifests itself in all aspects of being human, from state of health and its vulnerabilities to behavioural proclivities that may or may not reflect or condition our values in adulthood.
To the extent that human beings share a common physiological essence of being, it means that, although individually unique, our personal human attributes expressive traits are not finitely closed to the individual. Therefore, each our respective individual behavioural patterns, as reflected and influenced by our cognitive powers and processes, will cross, and interact with others. This is how relationships are formed, both voluntarily or through coercion. Human social organizations of all sizes and all sorts of interests, agendas, philosophies, and aspirations stem from here.
However, some people’s human proclivities constructs will be so incongruent from others that they cannot easily fit into any structured social organization cage reflecting certain strictly defined control and manipulative values, such as religion, political movements or orientations, marriage, and many more. These are the eccentrics, the think-outside-the-box types, the innovators, the critics who, for the good or bad, question everything.
Through the epochs, there arise, amongst others, unconventional analysts, critical thinkers, philosophers, artists of all talents, social change makers, rebels, radicals, and freedom fighters whose thoughts and actions have lasting impacts on society. So, much as not everyone can be a rocket scientist; and not everyone can be an Usain Bolt, or be a religious fanatic, not every man can want to marry, or will be married by force or hook or crook. Marriage is not for every Jack and Jill.
Marriage does not define a man. Marriage is a concept a man gets into. With or without marriage, a man is a man. A brilliant man will be brilliant irrespective of whether they are married or not. In my private and professional lives, I have come across many idiotic married men. I can write volumes about idiotic married men. But for now, I’ll reduce all that to the total lack of respect these men subject their wives to.
Married men who beat up their wives disgust me. Married men who spend minimum time with their wives but unashamedly ‘f’ around with other lovers and mistresses do not score high in my books. Many of these abused and neglected wives are some of the most melancholic women I’ve ever seen. In my travels around Europe many years ago, I met a grown-up lady who once said to me something like, “Simon, it’s taken me thirty years to realize that I got married to an a-hole of a man!”
Thirty-three years later, the couple now older and even more weary of each other, their marriage is still going strong. That’s because, “We are Catholics. We don’t divorce!”
Oh, help me God!
Which reminded me of what a dear brother of mine once said to me about women who hang on all their lives to marriages with a-hole men, “According to our African cultures, divorce is unthinkable for many a woman. Divorce is ‘haram’, you see!”
Jeeezzuzzz!!!
I’m not anti-marriage. Reality is that I’m a great fan of marriage. Serious. If ever the poet’s one fine day finds me at the right time and place, I could get married at the snap of a finger. Marriage is good. That to the extent that it mutually fulfils both the conceptual and functional expectations of the marriage partners.
By the conceptual I refer mainly to the subjective sentiment of love, the feelings it induces, and the expectations and obligations it imposes on those in love. Simply because we can never read people’s minds, we can never know the feelings of other people, just as we can never know their expectations and self-defined obligations when in love. But fidelity and devotion are principles I’ve learned that they play an even more critical role in marriage. If these hold, marriage has chances of a long life.
Functional expectations in marriage are about the objective practicalities of day-to-day life that the married will and do encounter in their living together as a couple and, subsequently, as parents if children do come into the picture in time. Here are included aspects of family economic strength; an important consideration in the determination of how and where the family shall live. Other crucial questions to address will include division of duties in the home, management of extended families and other social relations, faith, culture and traditions, political affiliations, career development and ambitions, family wealth creation and sustenance, as well as many other practical considerations.
In my world, a marriage that fails to deliver on the mutual conceptual and functional expectations for the married couple cannot hold. It need not hold at all cost, ‘haram’ or no ‘haram’. Marriage is not supposed to be an institution reminiscent of slavery. Neither is marriage supposed to be an institution of permanent dependency of women to physical-emotional abusive men.
Marriage is not an institution carved in stone. In any case, marriage is not an inherent feature of being human. Marriage is but one of many institutions man-created for purposes of social order maintenance, or social engineering. I fail to see how a non-functional, degrading marriage can contribute to social order. This brings forth the element of divorce, of which I’m as great a fan too. Whereas, indeed, marriage is good, divorce liberates. If ever I do get married at some point in the future, I’ll be the first to file for divorce as soon as I detect irreconcilable dysfunctionalities in my marriage.
People that are deeply in love, and wish to be together for life often look forward with glee to getting married. The same enthusiasm could be shown for impending, or desired divorce from a bad marriage. Women must not be afraid of divorce. There’ll always be a better, stronger, and more caring man for a lover or new husband according to what civil status the divorced woman wishes to have. It’s ok to be single also. Again, in both my private and professional lives, I’m familiar with divorcee women that live happily ever after; divorce having given them a chance to pursue new paths towards fulfilling and sustainable self-reinvention efforts.
Some of the happiest men I know are married. Equally, there’s a hell lot of infectiously happy single, unmarried, never-been-married men I know. Of course, contents of the happiness baskets vary from the one man to the other man, regardless of civil status. Nevertheless, happiness is happiness. Happiness makes for a balanced, productive citizenry.
Conversely, the unhappiest, loser types of men I know, and have known are, or have been married. I have in my time come across extremely lonely married men. Weakened of spirit, and hoping to find happiness and comfort away from their wives, many of these sad married men are prone to extremes of costly promiscuous tendencies. Some end up falling prey to alcohol and substance abuse, with potentially dire consequences. Suicidal tendencies are not uncommon here. So much for marriage as an instrument of social cohesion. There absolutely are other ways to prove that a man is a man and worthy of societal recognition as such than apparently ‘f’-ing around and holding women in the bondage of dehumanizing marriages.
I pity men that get into and remain in unhappy marriages for ‘reasons beyond my control’: family and/ peer pressure, ‘that is what people do’, children, potential impoverishment through loss of accumulated wealth to the ex-wife in the event of a divorce, and other reasons.
It ought to be a given that nation states will strive as much as it is humanely possible to create all necessary conditions for a happy state of existence for the people. The various social interests organizations prevailing in society are there to ensure that the state lives up to its obligations for the people. This is what social justice work is about.
It’s not up to social interests organizations leaders to arbitrarily judge and condemn to death certain categories of their fellow citizens for being non-confirmatory to fluid social conventions such as marriage. Single, unmarried, and/ or never-been-married men deserve to live life to its fullest potential just like everyone else. Jesus was killed for other reasons than for that he was unmarried.
And talking about God, biographyonline.net says, “Swami Vivekananda, [a] spiritual teacher and important figure in Indian renaissance of the late nineteenth century. A great believer in the virtues of celibacy [says] “If one wastes the most potent forces of one’s being, one cannot become spiritual. All history teaches us that the great seers of all ages were either monks and ascetics or those who had given up married life; only the pure in life can see God.”
Furthermore, biographyonline.net says that “Nikola Tesla was a unique inventor who threw himself into discovering new advances in electronics and science. He had no interest in marriage and saw sex as a distraction from his life’s purpose. A famous actress of the time, Sarah Bernhardt, tried to attract him, but, he merely saw her as a distraction. When asked about marriage, he replied: “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL ON MARRIAGE
From my debut novel, WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL – rise again mindgames I’ll read a passage on marriage. That is from p. 63 to p. 66:
“People get married for a myriad of reasons. There are some who seem to have gotten married not knowing why and how it began at all, though. They just found themselves in it. Trying to make sense of it all with time, they simplistically and conveniently conclude that, well, everyone else does it, why not them?
“Culture and social norms dictate it, they shall reason. Inevitably they make a mess of it, making life extremely miserable for themselves, their marriage partners, as well as everyone else who has anything to do with them in about all aspects of life. Many a person in this category marries themselves into murder and suicide, the ultimate tragedy of marriage.
“Marriage is another unnatural institution the functionality of which is a non-ending attempt at structuring, engineering, and regulating instinctive, natural human behaviour in certain predictable directions. If it is instinctive, it happens freely according to its own predetermined, internal logic, irrespective of whether external factors are conducive, congruent or not.
“From society to society, culture to culture, marriage rules determine how many marriage partners one can have in either direction, how often, when. The rules will also specify rituals to be followed in order to sanctify the coming together of people in marriage.
“Sanctification of marriage is enforced through the morals and ethics around it, particularly with respect to aspects of fidelity, respect, trust, duty, and obligation. Meaning that, in a perfect world, once bound in and by marriage, people ought to be together for life; thereby ensuring order, stability, and harmony in society.
“Marriage defines boundaries and territorial integrities of the married, and their subsequent family units. These have to be acknowledged and respected in order to provide for peaceful co-existence, as well as orderly and systematic growth, progress, and development in society.
“Perhaps an often-overlooked function of marriage contra instinctive, natural human behavioural tendencies is the population growth control aspect of it.
“Without the perceived and learned value of marriage as a behavioural moderation institution in societal functioning, society would be thrown into total chaos as humans respond unrestrained to instinctive, natural urges of sex, and sexual reproduction.
“Jealousy, power, domination, and control inspired violence in the competition for partners towards letting out, and responding to the said instinctive natural urges would be the order rather than the exception for collective human existence.
“Without the rigidities of formalized marriage rules with respect to family expansion by way of conception, birth, and raising of children, human population pressure on planet earth and its limited resources would most probably be of magnitudes much higher relative to what the situation is today. A recipe for the eventual extinction of the human race on earth due to, among other things, territorial wars making what the world currently experiences of regional wars look like a children’s Sunday picnic in the park.
“Marriage is, therefore, some very serious business. It is not for the non-thinking, and faint-hearted.
“For marriage to work for the married, or yet to be married, and therefore be beneficial to society, people have to fully understand its implications and ramifications. Irrespective of the reasons, or circumstances leading to marriage, it is of vital importance to understand and acknowledge that marriage is ultimately a personal journey.
“Its life-changing implications are huge, they can never be overestimated. Life is never, it will never be the same once married. Chances of marriage being a lasting success are higher in cases where the process and the institution are congruent not only with the feelings of the concerned, but also their beliefs, faiths, values, hopes, dreams, and aspirations, among others.
“Pitfalls of marriage are many, deep, and wide in cases where people unwillingly, or uncritically, fall into the trap by marrying to fulfill expected conventional behaviour. The latter may be in relation to culture, religion, life circumstances, and peer pressure.
“Marriage stands chances of going the distance to the extent that it is both a mutually voluntary, as well as a well-thought-out space of the most intimate of human interactions to choose to venture into.
“There are those who shall base their marriages on love. They deeply love one another above anything or anyone else on earth. Marriage will, therefore, be a natural consummation of that love. But love alone is never adequate to sustain a marriage.
“Love facilitates, and spices up marriage; it does not make a marriage. Love is the key to a potential marriage partner’s heart. Love is a ringing bell into another person’s, a potential marriage partner’s, life. To be sustained and sustainable, love itself needs tender loving care. But it cannot on its own guarantee a happily-ever-after life of marriage.
“To the extent that in many a perfunctorily functional marriage, love may not be the driving force, love and marriage can be mutually exclusive in the same space. Trouble in paradise.
“There is, there will always be much love to get outside marriage. As a natural instinct, people will always know when they are in love or not. Love instinctively gravitates towards love. If there is love in marriage, chances are that the marriage can be kept together.
“Love is a natural force of emotion that knows no colour, race, religion, or creed. Because it is a vital part of, but larger than marriage, any marriage the importance of which is attached more to man-made concepts of culture, religion, and other social conventions than love is doomed to failure.
“The natural urge to want to feed love with, and on love, is ever so strong that people in miserable marriages will as a matter of course and natural predictability go out to look for love elsewhere. That done with either open defiance, or total discretion to the extent it will last. In many cases, this will turn out to be a direct order for the ultimate tragedy of marriage.
“Reality is that when a supposedly unfaithful marriage, or romantic, partner is dead, they are dead, and they are so with all the things the murderer demanded; they will never come back. Much as when the supposedly betrayed marriage, or romantic, partner has committed suicide, there is no knowing that they will find what they demanded of their partners on the other side.”
That’ll be it for today. If you want to get married, do so and be happy; only if the matrimony meets your conceptual and functional expectations; not forgetting obligations to yourself as a person and as a matrimonial partner. If the marriage doesn’t work, get out of it. Fast. The paradox is that you’ll never know if your marriage will work or not until you’ve gotten into it first. If it works, it works. Well and good. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Leave.
Divorce might cost you a lot of things in the beginning. It is what it is. Freedom doesn’t come cheap. Hang in there. Have hope. Keep the faith. The future is bright. Time heals. Make it your goal to live long enough to see the good that the future has in store for you.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
July 03, 2023
𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐃𝐀𝐘𝐒
Living in the Now
I don’t live
On past glory
Past glory is what it is
Done
Dusted
Trashed
Buried
Closed chapters
Unforgettable
Crystalized
In my songs
History
For posterity
Education
And they
Detractors
Don’t understand
How it is
That I can rule today
Despite their throwing stones
At me everyday
They thought
They knew me
During my glory days
They can’t figure out
What’s become of me
When they expected
I’d vaporize
In lustreless
Post-glory days life today
Them
Pathetic dimwits
Thinking they are
My redeemers
When even
Jesus ain’t my cuppa tea
I sing Hallelujah
Only ‘cause
It is a beautiful song
Written by a human
Out of human experience
It kindles
My glory
Which comes from within
I’m smooth
I shine
I’m glass
Reinforced
Animosity might rattle me
I won’t crack
I won’t break
I’m black
I’m bold
I glitter
I’m diamond
I’m gold fortressed
Amalgamated
I’m steel
Stainless
Dirt don’t sit on me
Animosities bullet-proofed
Stones might hit me
They won’t punch holes
Through my skin
They won’t cause me harm
Hate war machines might strike me
I won’t crack
I won’t bend
I won’t fall
Glory days might come and go
True to form
Constant
My presence shall beam
Irrespective of time and space
Indomitable
When it is
My time
To grace
My space
Which is all times
All places I stand
Glory is my gift of life
For life
And they
Haters
Will never understand
How it is that
I fear not the future
Faithful to my fate
I have nothing to hide
Never had
I’m an open book
I walk my written words
That’s my nature
True to my name
Writing’s on the wall
Expository
Glory days
Spill the beans
In more ways than one
It’s only a matter of time
Bring it on
Alert
When they appear tomorrow
Them the haters
I’ll see them from afar
Fazed
They don’t know
They don’t know me
They’ve never known me
They’ll never know me
No love lost
Resilient
I live my life today
For future glory today
That’s life worth living today
Elixir of life
Any given day
Glory
Hallelujah
Praise be to
Immortality
Living hard
Living tough
Living strong
Today
Crush me if you dare
𝐄𝐍𝐃
©Simon Chilembo 30/11-2022
𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃
𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞
Look to Ukraine War 2022
To see
Ukraine people tearing
Replacement Theory apart
In practice
The last of
European fascistic scum falling apart
Replacement assumes plunder
Predicates
Displacement carnage
Genocide
The last of
European American fascistic scum
Daily murder Black descendants
Ancestors of whom
Got displaced from Africa
Got placed into slavery in the Americas
Thirteen million of them
Two million of whom
Became meals for
Sharks of the Atlantic
African prosperity halted
With the gap of the loss of
Bodies and brains
Replaced forever by
Poverty and misery
Disease scaling the cake
Dysfunctional states
A legacy
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
But one case in point
Gory Leopold of Belgium
Exterminated ten million people
As if they were flies here
Numerous others left with
Amputated limbs
Setting standard for
Sierra Leone’s Charles Taylor
Decades later
Rwanda genocide
Shocked the world
Historically objectively viewed
Replacement Theory
In practice
Gave us colonialism
Gave me Apartheid
As welcome to earth present
In South Africa
Displaced
My mother’s people
From their land
Subjected us to
Poverty-driven subservience
Decimated us
Denied us the living
Opportunities for
Human potential maximization attainment
Replacing our human worth
With
Systemic racism oppression untold
Supremacist repressive methodologies
Blue prints perfected here
Apartheid a fascist catchphrase
These days
If you ask me
Five-hundred years later
I’m in Europe
Begging bowl
In my hands
“𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘨 𝘔𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘗𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦!” noose
Around my neck
Waiting for me
To take just one misstep
To lynch me
Survived
Have I already
Several a
Direct killer attempts
Me simply doing
What I gotta do
To be a decent human being
Everyday
Tailing after bounty
Stolen from my ancestors
Meanwhile
Hangmen-in-waiting
Scandalize my name
Already stabbed me in the back
That notwithstanding
Still standing
Stepping forth up-and-up
I can breathe
In America
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Defy the highest odds
Living from day to day
Ever in search in the heavens
For reasons why
The colour of our skin
Is such an abomination
If there is a God
It is not for
People of colours
Children of the indigenous
Inhabitants of the
Americas land masses
Daily decry
Genocide of
Tens upon tens of millions of their ancestors
Fifty-six million perished
In the first one hundred years
At the hands of European scum settlers
Next time you see
The pre-match Haka
Do discern All Blacks
Souls of the Māori bemoaning
Replacement from their ancestral lands
In New Zealand
The Wallabies are no consolation
For the Aborigines
Replaced from their
Ancestral procreative spaces
To make room for replenishment of
Australian white supremacist
Grooming endeavours
Christchurch slaughters didn’t just happen
Beyond Pele’s legendary fecundity
On the soccer pitch
Millions more of
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Languish
Displaced in
Brazilian favelas
And the hinterland
In Argentina
History just as dreadful for
Survivor posterity of my ancestral roots
Displace
Debase
Excruciate
Exclude
Incapacitate
Isolate
Replace
Discard
Eliminate
That’s the way of
Replacement Theory peddlers
In practice for real
Playing itself out
With impunity
With the right hand of God
Unbeknown to compassion
Jesus’ civility defiled
Today
Fleeing ravages of wars
Inseparable from
Ways of original global masters of
Replacement by murder: Imperialists
People of the world
Run to modern Europe unchanged
Steam to
United States of America the cursed un-united
Resurface in
The land down under
Traumatized
World emigrants
𝘓𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘳é𝘴 𝘥𝘶 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦
𝘝𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘴 𝘶𝘵𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘦
𝘉𝘢𝘵𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘪 𝘣𝘢 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘴𝘩𝘦
𝘈𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘬𝘢
𝘖𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘢
Want not to kill anybody
Want not to rape anybody
Want not to plunder anybody’s land
They only ask for
Shelter, food, and love
Hopefully
Packaged in something called
Human dignity
Ukraine War 2022 style
In our times
White Supremacists
Scared shitless of
Self-created myths
Of non-white people of the world
Wanting to eat
White people
Off the face of America
My foot
We are better than that by far
Oh, come on
If racist whites
Have failed to eliminate
People of colours
From black to magenta
For more than half a millennium
What makes
Hot-nutted
Small White American men
With guns in hands
As in
Buffalo shooting
Think that they can
Eradicate us now
We define resilience, dudes
Black don’t crack
Goes the rap
Let’s all live together in harmony
Now
Oh, by the way
In the 21st Century
And years pushing on ahead
Monoethnics are dying breeds
Multiculturalism is
The future of humanity
United in diversity today
Grow up
And
Get used to it, y’all bigots
Wash your damn bloody hands
Stay clean
For human solidarity
For love
Abound in the world
Despite the mess
You ever
So relentlessly strive
To sustain
How dum
Can a human being be
𝘑𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘻𝘶𝘻𝘻𝘻
END
©Simon Chilembo 22/05-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
June 02, 2022
PS
The pandemic is still in our midst. Fears and factual untruths haven’t abated. In my 7th book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories, I highlight fallacies red lights and how to identify them. Order the book, read, and be inspired by my philosophical exposition on the matter. It might save yours and your loved ones’ lives.
DISCLAIMER: I neither offer nor suggest any cures or remedies. I promote fearless, independent thought and inclination towards pursuing science-based knowledge in times of, indeed, frightening, life-threatening phenomena in the world.
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
𝗨𝗦𝗦𝗥 𝗢𝗥 𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘? – 𝗨𝗞𝗥𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗘 𝗪𝗔𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮
𝗘𝘅𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗘𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝘆
During my stay in Lusaka, Zambia, 1975-88, some of my most memorable social interactions involved meeting older and veteran, mostly male South African freedom fighters. These were ANC members. Then in their mid-thirties and above, some of them had travelled the world. They would have been in pursuit of various goals, which included:
- Mobilization of international support for the South African liberation struggle efforts
- Military training
- Education
About all the veterans exhibited the abhorrent traits of arrogance, tribalism, bullying, cantankerousness, outright stupidity, and violence endemic of South African kassie/ township life. Hard partying involving huge consumptions of alcohol and drugs and all that it entails were an integral part of the deal. Needless to say. Shebeen culture carried with into exile. Not that Zambians were any less of party animals.
These veterans were people of all sorts, with all sorts of familial backgrounds. They, or we, as individuals or as special-interests sub-groups were motivated and threaded together by the collective higher dream of the attainment of the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid oppression.
Much as they loved to party by default, the majority of these people took their liberation struggle work very, very seriously. They were highly knowledgeable in the various fields of Social and Natural Sciences, including Mathematics. Some had had guerrilla operations experiences within South Africa in the 1960s; also, Mozambique and Zimbabwe in conjunction with fellow freedom fighters in those countries. Others had participated in major international wars, such as the Vietnam war, and in Latin America. These were hard people.
There were three distinct individuals with whom I shared intense mutual dislike for one another. Each in their own ways reminded me of some older guys and grown-up men that were generally not nice people back in my kassie, Thabong, Welkom. These horrible guys hated especially the ever vocal and visible little boys like myself then. It didn’t help my situation being son of an envied foreign man from Zambia. I had already been in Zambia for several years when I heard that, on separate occasions, five of the horrible guys got stabbed to death by younger boys on the streets. Good riddance. For the obnoxious people these men were, their souls deserve neither rest nor peace wherever they may be in after-deathland.
Regarding the three older exiles that didn’t like me very much in Lusaka, I imagine that a mortal confrontation would have ensued at some point had we been in South Africa then. The likely murdered wouldn’t have been me.
Zambia’s relatively laid-back culture had a way of dampening our wild South African township streaks. Otherwise, I got along fine with everyone; particularly those that found me “interesting to talk big struggle issues to”; their words, not mine.
My favourite was Comrade Mjaykes. He was Commander for a unit of younger, recently arrived immediate post-1976 Soweto student uprising exiles. Overriding objective here was to debrief the traumatized youth with various available and relevant medical and therapeutic methods. Intense and continuous conscientization political education was an unavoidable part of the package. And this was the fun part for me. Much of my fundamental geopolitics principles understanding was founded here.
Contrary to many a senior veteran, on the outset, Comrade Mjaykes was an unassuming personality. But he was one the most highly trained and educated around, both militarily and academically. He trained a lot, often alone late at night. He was very fit. And he read a lot too. Of his few personal possessions other than his books, he treasured a satellite radio that he had bought on one of his travels abroad. Commanding English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Swahili languages, the super veteran used the radio to listen to current affairs programs from all corners of the world. He was a well-informed man.
Being an exemplary leader with superior oratory skills, Comrade Mjaykes was a complete warrior in my eyes. An enduring source of inspiration that I last saw in 1981. Sadly, he was one of the earliest victims of the scourge of HIV/AIDS pandemic that began to ravage southern Africa and the rest of the world from the 1980s onwards. Comrade Mjaykes died in the newly liberated Rainbow Nation, South Africa, in December, 1994. No doubt, his soul is resting in eternal power. I can’t help but often wonder as to what he would have thought of the South Africa of today.
Acknowledging my Karate prowess already in 1977/ 78, Comrade Mjaykes said to me one day, “Much as I know you’d make a much better soldier than all these young comrades here, I’d rather you went to school first. You have the kind of brains there is a shortage of in our political leadership structures, see? We should be able to organize for you a scholarship for studies abroad. I’ll talk to your parents about this.”
“That would be nice, thank you! You know, my father’s biggest wish for my two siblings and I is that we could go and study overseas. But that’ll remain a pipedream because he could never afford the costs of an overseas education for us. Life is really hard for our family in Lusaka, as you know well.”
“Yes, I know! Your father is a good man. He deserves all the help we can afford him in that regard.”
“Thank you, Comrade! My parents would be extremely happy and grateful if mzabalazo/ the liberation movement can help.”
“It should work out for sure. But, unfortunately, currently available scholarships for full education up to university level are from Yuseserese/ the USSR (The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). However, no, I don’t want you to go there even if you could leave tomorrow. My analysis of you and how you think tell me that you obviously are not Yuseserese material.”
“Why? How’s that? All I want is to be a doctor. A doctor is a doctor, no? There are Russian doctors at the UTH/ University Teaching Hospital, right?”
“Correct, a doctor is a doctor to the extent that he or she thinks only within the context of being a doctor and nothing else beyond.”
“I don’t understand!”
“Let me explain, Sae: you see, being a doctor, or any other modern, academically attained profession for that matter, is but just one of the multitudes of tools available for us to apply in the overall growth and development of society. You’ll, of course, recall that growth refers to the actual physical expansionary attributes of society; infrastructure, for example. Whereas development refers to the total conceptual and practical work that goes towards visualizing and realizing measurable qualitative and quantitative transformation of society.”
“Yes, growth or lack thereof is a function of ideas and tools constituting a society’s developmental visions as espoused by the incumbent national leadership.”
“Absolutely, Sae. Do remember that the developmental visions are promulgated in national development plans over specific time periods. Your brilliant explanation is further proof that sending you to Yuseserese will be a waste of what I see as one of the most promising of future leadership brains in our soon to be liberated South Africa. You must go to the West. Most of our smart ANC leaders in exile send their children to the West, anyway. There’s a good reason for that.”
In arguing his case, Comrade Mjaykes repeated a summary of standard rhetorical statements I had heard numerous times before:
- The Soviet Union is a Socialist state.
- Socialism is a transition state. Socialism puts together all the building blocks leading to Communism attainment.
- Socialism shall build a strong state designed to enhance optimal economic growth and protection of society and all that guarantees perpetuity of the imminent march to Communism.
- Communism is the highest state of existential wellbeing attainable for society. Under Communism, classes are non-existent; all are equal with equal access to all resources necessary and available for a life of non-ending abundance for all.
- The state machinery, i.e. bureaucracy, has the function of managing efficacy of Communism towards the full satisfaction of societal needs. Under Communism, given certain specific skills according to different levels of societal engineering and resources production and distribution administration, all are at the service of society first and foremost and last.
- Communism has no room for individualism, the basis for societal stratification, or classes creation. When Christianity and other religions talk about heaven, that’s another language for the perfect Communist state, actually. Only that Communism has no overbearing figures of God as portrayed in religious belief systems.
“That is the rosy picture of Communism, Sae. The reality is different. Just like the concept of heaven for the religious, Communism is utopian. The march to Communism starts and ends in the already dysfunctional Socialism, really.”
“But I thought that attainment of the Communist state was more realistic because it was based on the dialectical material world for material human beings without mythical angels and gods in even more farfetched heavens above somewhere in the distant sky.”
“Communism attainment would be more realistic had it not been for Socialism’s killing of the human spirit, Sae.”
“You are losing me now, Comrade Mjaykes!”
“I know that no one here has ever mentioned that last statement to you. I deliberately chose to prematurely take your political education to the next level now. That’s only because I really want the best for you and the future liberated, non-Communist South Africa.”
“If I may say so, you are beginning to sound like a sellout, Comrade Mjaykes. Aren’t you risking condemnation by others should they hear you talking like this to me now”
“No, my views in this regard are already known to even the highest levels of our command structures. My devotion to the struggle is known; I having been tested on many, many occasions over the years. But because we, the ANC, aren’t hard-core Socialists yet, there’ still much room allowed to hold principled divergent opinions in the on-going discourse of how to establish a unique, workable developmental model for the future South Africa.”
“I see!”
“And that is the point, Sae; behind the apparent success of Socialism in the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, and China, to name the most prominent, there are millions of robotized people whose senses of individuality have been broken to the core. Indeed, people may be provided with the best education in the natural and social sciences, producing top doctors, engineers, economists, and many more vocations. But that’s often as far as it goes.
That’s because, through various political indoctrination methods, backed by extremely brutal national security forces trained to think and act as robotically themselves, the ruling elite ensure that the people cease to think independently and critically over existential questions.”
“But I’ve thus far been made to believe that people in Russia and all these socialist places live happily ever after. Moreover, Russia’s support of ours and others’ anti-imperialist struggles were for that the world must unite against capitalism’s exploitative socio-economic relations subjecting us to lasting poverty and subjugation.”
“That’s a myth, Sae. The truth is that us South Africans we are just too free-spirited, too wild to tame for Socialism. It goes without saying that Communism isn’t even worth talking about. Our allied South African Communist Party is a good platform for training in polemics and rhetoric more than anything else. We’ll discuss higher level Capitalism issues another time.”
“I must say that this new side of Socialism has shocked me, Comrade Mjaykes.”
“You see, Socialism works for, and constructs linear thinkers; people who cannot think outside the box. People who think only in straight lines and right-angles in fixed operational spaces. Perhaps that may be one of the reasons Russians are superior chess players! I don’t know.”
It’s at about this time that my interest in chess waned. I dreaded the idea of my brains turning square! Indeed, many a South African liberation struggle veteran is a formidable chess player. If they ruled today’ South Africa as exceptionally as they mastered chess, the country would probably be in a better place. But political leadership is an infinitely open field presupposing capacity for paradigm specific, or beyond as necessary, multifaceted thinking in problem solving and application of solutions derived thereby.
“You have on many occasions demonstrated that you are a more independent and well-rounded thinker than your contemporaries here, Sae. I know that that’s why some of the older comrades here don’t favour you much. They simply hate your guts. Highly educated as they are also, these guys don’t take it kindly when they are pushed out of their intellectual comfort zones, especially by a young comrade like you. They are Soviet educated.
“I’d hate to see you stagnate or degenerate intellectually as you get older. That’s why you can’t go to Yuseserese for studies, Sae, you see? One or two young comrades of your calibre have died out there before. Some have had mental breakdowns. It would break my heart to see that happen to you. Although the truth is suppressed in our organization, racism is also rife in the USSR. Encountering racism out there is tantamount to jumping out of the South African Apartheid pan into the Soviet racism fire, if you ask me.”
At own private initiative elsewhere, the first scholarship chance I got for an overseas higher education was to Social Democratic capitalist Norway in 1988. I got stuck here. Primarily out of idealism and for love. No regrets. Norway is the richest country in the world. All things considered, life is as good as can be in Norway. Of course, never perfect, never fully satisfactory for everyone, but Norway does deliver for its people.
And the country is a leading Foreign Aid nation. Norwegian Finance Ministers have for years been megastars amongst their global colleagues. No Communism here. The few ardent Norwegian communists around are but fringe individuals or insignificant groupings with inconsequential social change impact, if any at all.
I write books now. I am what they call norsk forfatter. ‘Forfatter Simon Chilembo’ sounds ever so cool! I write without fear or favour, freely following my creative fantasies to wherever they take me. I live happily ever after in an effectively non-Communist state. If Comrade Mjaykes could see me now! All gratitude due.
USSR-Socialist trained South African national leaders across the board fail to get the Rainbow Nation out of the mess they’ve plunged it in after the fall of Apartheid in 1994. In big geopolitics questions, the USSR yoke is sitting comfortably on South Africa’s neck. Mzansi drowning with a sinking ship that is post-USSR Russia fo sho.
The USSR fall with the Berlin Wall in 1989 give rise to Russia. In essence, Russia is the ghost of the former USSR. Ghosts are no touch of reality. It’s therefore not surprising that, identical to South Africa contra Apartheid’s subsequent collapse five years later, Russia never could rise from the post Berlin Wall shambles. Oligarchs ruthlessly plundered the Russian state coffers, taking corruption to the next level.
Post-1994 South Africa created its own egregious oligarchic class through the State Capture phenomenon. This has shown many a Comrade from humble beginnings becoming millionaires to billionaires overnight. They have acutely incapacitated the South African state’s ability to optimally deliver the promise of a better life for all in a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic republic. The post-1994 South African oligarchic class has given the formally Apartheid state’s corruption colour. The former is living in the past. They have lost sight of the reality that Russia is not the USSR. Dismembering of the USSR is permanent.
In 2022, Russia invades Ukraine with chess moves mentality. Some things never change. It has turned out that Ukraine is not a chess board for Russia to play on as it wishes. Things have changed here. Parochial USSR legacy oblivious to this fact. Just for starters, young men of my age in the late 1970s are dying, falling like sacrificial chess pawns. The rest is a tragic war on a straight line trajectory ending potentially with a nuclear war catastrophe.
World in panic makes noise. USSR legacy ears are plugged. USSR marble eyes see imperial rebirth victory where the odds for survival are impossible to turn around. Meanwhile, Norway gives shelter and protection to Ukraine children and women running away from the ravages of Russia’s war on their country. No better place to be. Communism allergic. Progressive society as close to heavenly terrestrial opulence as can be.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
April 23, 2022
PS
The pandemic is still in our midst. Fears and factual untruths haven’t abated. In my 7th book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories, I highlight fallacies red lights and how to identify them. Order the book, read, and be inspired by my philosophical exposition on the matter. It might save yours and your loved ones’ lives.
DISCLAIMER: I neither offer nor suggest any cures or remedies. I promote fearless, independent thought and inclination towards pursuing science-based knowledge in times of, indeed, frightening, life-threatening phenomena in the world.
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𝗙𝗔𝗦𝗖𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗦 𝗕𝗨𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞𝗦: 𝗔𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗔 𝗧𝗢𝗗𝗔𝗬
𝗙𝗮𝘀𝗰𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗕𝗼𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀: 𝗨𝗸𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮
American fascists
Burn books away
From birth right
Knowledge deservant
Inquisitive by default children
Planting but ignorance
In the children’s brains
Drawing wet blankets
Over the children’s heads
Stifling curiosity
Grooming children into
Manipulable dum-witted goons
Never uttering a word
About their existence
Vis-à-vis planetary realities
Of human relations imperatives
Of harmonious co-existence
Founded on empathy
Pathetic
Dum
Literary shied
Social intelligence deprived children
Wooed to strut
Self-destruction paths
They could be sheep
Submitting to abattoir
Life termination
Without a sound
Conditioned
To accept that
It’s better
On the other side
Contrary to the line
I learned as a school child
Though
𝘌𝘭𝘰𝘪, 𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘪, 𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘪
For the uninitiated
That was Jesus
Nailed on the cross crying
𝘔𝘺 𝘎𝘰𝘥, 𝘮𝘺 𝘎𝘰𝘥, 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘦
See
Life matters but
Primarily here on earth today
Even if it’s a Black life
Even if it’s an indigenous life
Glowing red earth colours
Even if it’s the rest of multi-colours life
In the face of White life
Clamouring for supremacist ideals
Grounded in dark pits of ignorance
Hopeless situation
As of a slaughtered sheep
Grilled over black coal red fire flames
Cremation of books
Chronicling bloody
Murderous paths
In the construction of
American greatness
At the expense of
People of colour
Stolen from Africa
Turned into unwilling sacrificial lambs
Is a move to sow seeds of
Anti-truths about the
Dark history of
Great America facing
A bleak future
As real truth is told
In
Critical Race Theory
To repair America
For America to be great
Forever
For all
Equal in the law of the land
Equal in sharing in the bounty of the land
In the spirit of equanimity
In times of penance
Times of reparations
Times of mutuality of respect
Acknowledgement of humanity’s oneness
In abundance of
Love and peace
But
No
American fascists
Gnash teeth
Clench fists
Shoot guns
Spew expletives
Obliterate books
Lead children
Into adulthood
Devoid of question marks
Exclamation marks characterizing
American fascists’ words
Noted down
By the literate
Non-readers can’t write
Illiterates duped
Into dark sub-worlds of ignorance
Violence
Conspiracy theories’ sitting ducks
Gobbling fake news
Day in and day out
Ever clouding their brains
In a bright world of wisdom
Striving to keep it together
For humanity’s immortality
On planet earth
Seeking answers to the
Hows
Whats
Whens
Whos
Whys
From the roots of question marks
Whilst ignorant buffoons
Seek to decapitate
The question mark
Eternalized in the written word
Storytelling
Asking questions about
Our triumphs
Our trials
Our tribulations
Giving substance
To the cry
We shall overcome someday
Instilling in us
Resilience
Against calamitous deeds of
Illiterate buffoons
Ignorant
On the backs of educated fools
On orgies of destruction
Murder
Running around as chickens
Headless
As exclamation marks dropping
Constipation stool lumps
Emanating gas
Foul enough
To set a buffoon’s bottom alight
No wonder they can lie
Speak detrimental language
Until their mouths resemble
Their soiled bottom orifices
Elimination deserves better exit holes
Just when you thought
You had seen enough
Another fascist
East of Brexshit
Reduces Ukraine children to dust
Even still in mothers’ wombs
When you thought
It couldn’t get any worse
Estranged strong man of Russia
Against the world
Pulverizes Ukraine children in schools
Burying the seat of knowledge alive
When you thought
Bombing schools
Was a Taliban thing
Children’s toys
Remained unscathed
Silent witnesses that
Could never say a word
Have a story or two
To tell
Writers shall decipher
The stories
Truths about fascist atrocities
Crimes against humanity
Shall be documented in new books
Fascist ghosts captured
In the written word
For future generations
To know that
Right is might
Fire burns books
Truth is impervious
Biblical eternal satanic fires
Beckon fascists home
A place called hell
Everybody’s gotta burn sometime
Books remake the world
Preserve the world
Justice shall prevail
One book at a time
If that’s what it takes
Burning books
Bombing schools
Killing children
Are losing games
Wisdom rules
Ultimately
Let us read
𝗘𝗡𝗗
©Simon Chilembo 14/03-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
March 20, 2022
𝐇𝐎𝐓-𝐍𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐄𝐍 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃
𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐎𝐧 𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲
Where is God
When we need him most
One last time
By the look of things
Out-numbered one-to-five
When people work nine-to-five
For salt ’n water on the table
One man against the world
Gives no damn about numbers
People are just meat
Fire power pulling his nuts
Below his desk
Is all he cares about
Reminiscent of a man
With brains between the legs
Fucking AIDS of the world
Indiscriminate
Unabashed
He comes
He dies
AIDS lives on
Grows in numbers non-stop
Until humanity is all gone
From this space in the universe
The one man’s nuts throbbing
Between the legs
He fires his power
His missiles come and come
If numbers count
It’s not about
Nine-to-five work people
Meat
Perishing
But the one man’s need for survivors
To come lick his nuts
For black gold droplets here
Gold dust there
Bling hither and thither
Over enlarged territorial acreages
That God long shunned
Two thousand years
Of between-the-legs-hot-nutted men
Have worn God out
He’s away on holiday
In a place beyond heaven and hell
Countless light years away
These mad men
Having long made planet earth
A place called hell anyway
God doesn’t want
To be here
When between-the-legs-hot-nutted men
Bury themselves
In the illusion that
They’ll screw the world
Fire missiles
Come and come
And nine-to-five humanity
Meat
Shall die alone
When
Just as between-the-legs-hot-nutted other men
Fire back
Come and come straight on
With five-to-one leverage
Retaliatory aggression
No stalemate
No second chances this time
When we’re all gonna go
Dead
Done with hell
Done with heaven
Brains
Splattered
On crumbling walls
On tumbling mountains
Fantasy obliterated
Imagination dissipated
End of the world
Done and dusted
This here defies
All that is God
By any standard
One-point-two megatons
Nuclear bomb
Is universally equal
In the world of man
Men hot-nutted or not
Just saying
This here
Men power mongering on steroids
Playing death games
Can’t be God’s idea of
Being one’s brother’s keeper
Nor love thy neighbour gestures
When we’re all
Dead and gone
Disease doesn’t matter anymore
Mine is bigger than yours is no longer a matter
When our bodies are all
Dead and gone
God won’t have temples any more
When we’re all
Dead and gone
God’s greatest creation’ll be
History to no one
God’s eyes
See in the dark
Where numbers can be anything for man
Foresight long showed God that
The carnage of
One man against the world’s war
Shall smash his eyes
Blind him for life
Pray and pray and pray
And pray again
And pray, pray, pray
Useless
God is deaf
Beyond man’s reach
We are on our own
Now
𝐄𝐍𝐃
©Simon Chilembo 22/02-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
February 23, 2022
Simon Chilembo 