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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
𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐓?
𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐒𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐅𝐔𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒
DISCLAIMER
I do not have any academic nor professional training in art. My articulation of what art is a function of my layman’s instinctual appreciation of things beautiful against the ugly; both in the figurative and abstract manifestations as my senses perceive it in any given situation and space, at any given time. All I know is how to think and write, and write and think. Art is what I feel. If I feel it, I can think it. If I think it, I can write it. Writing is my art, my artistic expression. Writing is what I do; all attributable to my academic training.
WORKPLACE OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS
People do from time to time visit museums of all kinds for all kinds of recreational, educational, and research reasons. I work at Norway’s Nasjonalmuseet. The institution has proved to be an awesome literary creative’s wet dream for me as an author and poet. I get at least one goosebumps moment each day I am at work. Tens of thousands of works of art are on display throughout the eighty-nine exhibition spaces at the museum. In all their widely variable expressive forms, these artworks move me in a way that ever fills me with love and joy like I have never experienced before. Working here is a privilege I am much grateful for.
At different points in about all the exhibition spaces in the museum, there are rest stations comprising benches upon extensions of which are placed, amongst other items, wooden playing cards. The cards have various quizzes and games for the guests to have a go at as they sit and rest. I, together with Ole, a fine but ever condescending colleague young enough to be my grandson, happened to have been engaged in a discussion about various aspects of the museum when we approached one such station. Ole then unexpectedly reached out and randomly pulled out a card from the bench extension. It turned out to be a quiz card with the question: ‘What is Art?’; creating a gotcha moment that I saw Ole revelling in.
Talking about Ole’s gotcha moment, this was yet another one of those moments in which a person of European extraction comes to me with the pre-conditioned notion that Black people are not cultivated enough to appreciate the finer aspects of European culture. Anyhow, my immediate response, in this case, was, “Art is the capturing of an experiential moment in time and space in order to, perhaps, tell a story about that experience in the future. This capture can be in any form or medium according to the proclivities and talents of the artist.”
Ole, “I hear you. But you will have to elaborate more on all that you have just said!”
Seeing as we had to attend to each of our respective duties at work then, I replied, “I shall write an essay for you, then. Deal?”
“Deal!”
My definition of art shall be both conceptual and functional. Conceptually, I know art when I perceive it. I do not have to be told. I do not have to be instructed. I know art when my senses register it. Regardless of the representational form, the sentimental response that I get from experiencing any manifestation of art that I consider as beautiful is a constant. Conversely, an unattractive, unpleasant artistic form as I experience it emotionally affects me in the same way relevant to it irrespective of the form or the representational style.
Whenever I read a storybook (or even write one) that I enjoy, my breathing rate slows down, and the total bodily relaxation I get gives me a wonderful warm feeling all over; I get goosebumps, and my palms get warmer and moist. This kind of feeling brings me immense joy. The dreamy state it gets me into sends me into a fantasy world of all things possible. If I had been, for one reason or another, going through hard times, this state brings hope home; it fills me with a sweet sense of freedom. In this state, I am invincible. This is my subjective domain for defining what beautiful art is for me as my perceptive senses – eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose, intuition – register it, feed my hormonal system (feel-good hormones), and the latter instructing my nervous system to induce my being to act accordingly. Pure joy.
Whilst recognizing it for what it is, art that is repugnant to me is exactly that. If it makes me cringe, if it casts a shadow of pessimism over me, if it fills me with negative thoughts and associations, if it gives me a cold sweat, then it is bad art for me. There are times when I can see beauty in bad, ugly art, though. I think about the hands, or some other body parts, that created the work. Every hand shall tell its story according to its owner’s neuro-hormonal wiring and physical capabilities. One man’s apparent gory art may be another’s depiction of heaven. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Functionally, art is a conveyor of messages, a storyteller; a courier of generational narratives in humanity’s dances with nature and itself over time. Art can be an instrument of change. Art can repair the once broken. Art can inspire hope, faith, trust, and love. To the extent that art is a personal expression, art may speak for its creator. Art creators have the potential to make or break society. Ask God, man’s most divisive, master-of-carnage creation. God may have created man instead, her most complex work of art. The outcome is not any better.
Art is identity. Identity may be deception obscured in art. From the outset, art may be true by intent and purpose. But when human perception and interpretation of reality are as polychotomous as there are so many people on earth, art shall be true or fallacious as to the perceptive state and cognitive capacity of the observer. Therein lies the mystique, the intrigue of art. Who am I? I am a man in love with art.
Art is some powerful stuff. Art is a human creative potential deserving to be handled with tender, loving care. At its best, art is an instrument of peace; art has the potential to stimulate reflection on the human condition. We rise, we fall; art captures all that. Art is beauty. Without beauty, life is not worth living.
Beauty moves humanity forward and higher on the scale of qualitative and quantitative improvements in life. It is not for nothing that nations of the world, interest organizations of all sorts and sizes, wealthy individuals, and many others invest heavily in the promotion, conservation, preservation, and storage of some of our most impactful artworks over the epochs into the future. Art immortalizes human experience.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +92525032
April 07, 2023
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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.
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
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
SEBOPUA
CREATURE – The Thing
In my mother tongue, Sesotho, the verb ‘to mould’ (with clay) is ho bopa (ka letsopa). By extension, ho bopa describes ‘to form’, or ‘to create’ a tangible, inanimate object out of clay or any other similar malleable material. The objects made may be of functional, ornamental, or both values. They may also be aesthetically attractive or repulsive. And they may either be destructive or life-supporting, either by design or accident, or by intentional application. For purposes of this presentation, we shall work with the concept of ho bopa in terms of creation. In this case, creation producing a dysfunctional output, a thing, with a potential for destruction of the self and/ or its environment.
Etymologically expanding ho bopa leads us to, amongst others, the adjective sebopua. The latter approximately translates as ‘a product of creation’ – a thing, an object the existence of which is acknowledged simply because it exists as a result of creation’s infinite creative potential. Creation gets it right most times; it screws up badly sometimes.
Sebopua is thus used to describe people of various degrees of physical handicaps and intellectual disabilities; often from birth. It may be due to birthing complications, illness, inherent neurological or genetic aberrations, and many more. The expression sebopua is often applied derogatively. It may also be used in exasperation as a manifestation of grief against a condition of hopelessness, extreme suffering for the afflicted, and the next of kin as well; including national social welfare authorities, where applicable.
On the one extreme there’ll be a wholly physically disabled person of any age; drawing much sympathy from others: harmless, poor, unfortunate product of God’s creation.
On the other extreme, there’ll be a borderline, apparently normal person. But they will have all kinds of eccentricities. These render the sebopua incapable of functioning within socially conventional boundaries of human interactions. Much so in adulthood, people in this category tend to live in parallel universes contra mainstream social wisdom concerning how society is organized; from the smallest family units to the larger national entities.
Sebopua people break all the rules, either purposely or because ‘it is what it is’. They don’t know anything else but their unique ways of looking at the world. They cannot understand that others can think or act differently from them in given situations. They simply don’t know how to empathize: it’s their way or no way at all. Civility is a concept unknown here.
Some of human history’s greatest thinkers in all human endeavour the works of whom society benefits from even today can easily be drawn from the eccentrics above. These often tend not to be too much of a burden to society. It is those that are inclined to destruction that are a curse to humanity. Some of the most perilous leaders in human history have emerged from the latter category of sebopua, a freak of creation.
The thing about sebopua is that they are just a thing. They are devoid of coherent feelings and thoughts expression. Sebopua tend to be one-way-traffic communication machines. Their language skills can often leave much to be desired. Talking to one could as well be as good as talking to a clay molded human figure.
Sebopua are indifferent to the elements; they know no pain. The only form of pleasure that matters for sebopua is their staying alive at the expense of their perceived and real enemies, not understanding how anybody can be so stupid compared to their, sebopua’s superior intelligence. Sebopua brutality can be horrendous. Woe to the spineless that fall for sebopua’s deceptive charisma. Woe to non-stayer enemies of sebopua.
Another thing about sebopua is that an eccentric sebopua is a sebopua. The condition knows no colour. It knows no race. The only difference is the relative extent of power exercised and access to weapons of destruction according to their location on planet earth. This here debunks racism as an ideology that claims and pushes ideas that some races are inferior to others. In a perfect world of the free, people group in cliques not always out of racial identities solidarity. Both for the good and the bad, people are drawn to and bond with one another out of shared mental constructs; shared world views.
There’s sebopua in a cul-de-sac in America today. The walls are closing in. I wonder what they’re going to do when they can’t breathe anymore. In England, another one bites the dust. The world must now learn to stop political experiments with dibopua (sebopua plural form) if we have learned anything from the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
In the old days, dibopua used to be hidden away. Or worse. Democracy is a wonderful thing in our times: everyone has the right to live. Whatever the cost. However, there’s a tipping point to everything in life. May the fair and just prevail in all holes and surfaces of the planet. May light reign supreme. Ultimately.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
January 13, 2022
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VREDE
HVA VET JEG
Hva vet jeg
Jeg, som du sier
Er en primitiv mann
Preget av afrikanske jungle kultur
Der mennesker spiser hverandre
Er jeg da her
For å kannibalisere deg
Glemm det, mann, sier du
Her i riket ditt
Er det sivilisasjon som herjer
Her finnes det lys
Noe som er gunstig
For hjerneutvikling, sier du
Som om hudfargen min
Oppsluker lys hvor jeg kommer fra
Tvert i mot, egentlig
Det er ikke tilfeldig at
Dere skriver og leser bøker
Dere som er verdens
Kulturelle elite som nasjon
Noe som jeg ikke er
I stand til å forstå
Med min mindre utviklede jungelhjerne, mener du
Hva vet jeg
Om likestilling
Jeg, som du sier
Som forakter kvinnfolk
Jeg som er ute etter
Å overta ditt liv
For å utnytte deg
Som kjæledyret mitt
Glemm det, mann, sier du
I kvinnerettighetenes navn
Forlanger du at
Jeg skal respektere deg
Egentlig, insisterer du videre at
Jeg må beundre deg
Du er min gudinne
Jeg skal være slaven din
Slaveri tendens ligger jo i afrikaneres gener
Det burde jeg vite, påpeker du
I helvete, svarte fæn
Våken opp
La deg integrere i sivilisasjonens land
Kvitt deg med
Dine primitive vaner
Hør på meg
Gjør som jeg sier
Uten meg er du ferdig
Du er ingenting
Skal du leve lenge
Og nyte det gode livet
I dette verdens beste
Hviteste hvite land
Må du oppføre deg pent
Sitt i ro og fred
Under mine vinger
Din sjel er i mine hender
Vær ydmyk og snill, slaven min
Mamma skal ta godt vare på deg
Snille lille gutten min
Kjære slaven min
Jeg bjeffer
Du hopper
Avtale
Sier du
Si noe, da
Brøler du
Ikke bare stå der og glane
Gjør noe
Vil du slå meg
Vil du pule meg
Gjør ett eller annet
Eller dra til helvete
Hva gjør du nå
Stans
Du drar intet sted
Før jeg er ferdig med deg
Mann, du er stygg og dum
Skam til den kvinnen
Som måtte føde deg
Stakkers dame
Hvor uheldig kan en kvinne være
Ved å føde deg
Så stygg og dum som du er
Og du kaller henne for mor
Fy søren, er det mulig
Ikke kom nær meg
Bare ta et steg frem
Og da skal du oppleve
Hvordan vikingenes vrede flytter fjell
Og skaper tsunamier i verdenshavene …
(Continues in the book MACHONA POETRY: Rage and Slam in Tigersburg)
©Simon Chilembo 07/05-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Telephone: +4792525032
September 20, 2021
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PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
SHOULD I DIE
In 1998, my father died solitary in a bachelor quarters in Tshwane, South Africa. My mother followed twenty years later. Pneumonia related complications in both cases.
©Simon Chilembo, 2020 Author, President, ChilemboStoryTelling™
There were about eleven other fellow patients in my mother’s ward at the hospital in Thabong, Welkom. She had kept everyone awake all night with her moaning in pain, crying out an unknown name all along. Nevertheless, she managed to eat her 0700RS breakfast that fateful Sunday morning; much to everyone’s delight since she hadn’t had much appetite the two previous days. After eating she fell asleep.
When my nephew, Kgosi, and I went to check on her during the morning visit hour between 1000-1100HRS, we found her sleeping peacefully. Apparently. After hearing the report by fellow patients about my mother’s restless night, we thought it wise not to immediately awaken her. She could have her full sleep during the course of the morning, and we’d come back to see her again in the afternoon as per routine.
Fifteen minutes into our arrival in the ward, an impatient family friend found that my mother was cold and lifeless. A few minutes later, a doctor declared her officially dead. She had probably died two hours earlier. No one had taken notice. It was one of those cases of “She died peacefully in her sleep”, I guess. Perhaps the same may be said about my father. He had been dead for about two days by the time his corpse was found in his residence.
I opt to convince myself that, indeed, both my parents died peacefully in their sleep when their respective times to go arrived. Neither was surrounded by their loved ones upon breathing their respective lasts.
The thought of whether or not my own death will pounce on me in solitude has been on my mind since February, 1991. I had for the first time ever gotten ill with what I later understood to have been an acute attack of the flu. Bedridden with high fever and profuse sweating for three days in my single student room, I was so weak that I was unable to lift a telephone sitting beside me on my bed to call my school or doctor in Oslo.
One week later I had recovered without having had received any medical attention. An older, more knowledgeable friend told me that I had actually had a close brush with death. Perhaps I should consider getting myself a wife, he suggested. He argued that many people who live alone tend to die unnecessarily because there is often nobody there to render immediate assistance in times of emergencies.
In the northern hemisphere spring of 1995, I had a first-time mean attack of hay fever. I didn’t know what it was at first. For many days I kept sneezing like what I thought was like a mad man. Then I began to cough as inexplicably madly. What I thought sounded like a small cat soon started mewing in my chest. This made breathing painfully difficult even at the mildest physical exertion. Then I knew I was in trouble.
At great financial cost to me that I could afford regardless, a former lover at that time then finally hastily made it possible for me to acquire an emergency cocktail of various tablets, capsules, and an assortment of asthma medicines. Had I been alone at that critical time, I could have died from pneumonia, the former lover said later.
Today, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, moving at a frighteningly fast pace is threatening human life across the globe. The United Nations and national governments are taking drastic and, in some cases, Human Rights defying draconian measures in individual and concerted efforts to isolate, treat, control, and eventually effectively manage the disease. The ideal situation would be to eliminate the disease, of course. But it’ll take time to develop necessary relevant curative and preventive medicine. Researchers the world over are currently working at break-neck speeds to achieve the latter.
Millions of people are under various levels of quarantine throughout the world, depending on suspected or actual infections and severity. Much of the industrialized world is under lockdowns. People whose immune systems are compromised from before are dying rapidly. Some people are quarantined in their private homes with their near family units. I am alone in my abode.
I am feeling well and strong. I can’t help, though, but think about my mortality in the event that my health should take a sudden, COVID-19 related downturn. Some other shit could happen too. One never knows when shit will hit the fan. I can’t help but think that were I to die now, I sure would do so peacefully. I’d die with no beloveds of mine surrounding me. If it happened to my parents it might as well be the same with me. Family solidarity. Family tradition. I’m their eldest child after all.
Like my parents, I leave no great fortunes behind. It’s just as well for me that, unlike my parents, I leave no children behind. As to whether or not it’s a good thing to die as my corpse shall be in a cremation oven, I shall find out upon arrival on the other side.
In the meantime, I can’t help thinking about one of my all-time favourite songs: If I Should Die Tonight, by Marvin Gaye … (Continued in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
March 15-16, 2020
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
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Simon Chilembo 