I Like Your Life

By Bonnie S Wright

This memoir demonstrates the possibilities open to overcome the enormous odds against a girl child growing up to escape the ills of child marriage or teenage pregnancy and going on to complete school, go to university, become a scientist, get married and raise a family. The author relates the phases of growing up, identifying the sadness of challenges, and the joys of achievements. She documents the wisdom of her mother’s tales and how she applied them in her life. She also highlights the transformation that comes only from the grace of God, as she tried to live a fulfilled life.

This is a story written with humour and carefully selected events covering history, culture, tradition, family, politics, national and international affairs, and more. These real-life stories and experiences are useful examples and lessons for many girls, parents, spouses and leaders who want to overcome the challenges holding back the girl child from achieving her potential and to mitigate the hard choices women face trying to balance careers with marriage and family life.

About The Author

Bonnie Shimwawa Wright was born in Ndola, Zambia, where she spent her childhood and schooling days. She studied agriculture at the University of Zambia, M.Sc. in Plant Protection at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, and MA in Environmental Policy and Planning at the University of Zimbabwe. She worked as a Plant Pathologist and a college lecturer. She has been married to Alaphia for over 40 years. They have three grown up sons and three grandchildren.

Bonnie has lived in six foreign countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Zimbabwe, France, Namibia and Ethiopia and has visited over a dozen others. Through her experiences in many lands and meeting many people she has learned to be organised and hospitable. Bonnie says, “Organisation and hospitality are my gifts from God.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bonnie S Wright
• Release date: Jul 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370533275

Book preview

FOREWORD

The stages of life are clearly a learning laboratory, and every once in a while a human being takes stock of the processes that have gone past and draws lessons going forward. As I read through this memoir, it suddenly dawned on me I was indeed reading about the grace of God, as demonstrated in the life of a very remarkable woman – Bonnie Namwawa Namuchimba Mukuka Chola Shimwawa Wright, my wife.

Bonnie skilfully recalls her life’s journey in this book, I Like Your Life. She covers her childhood days, her family life and how that revolved around my late mother-in-law, highlighting a multitude of mother’s ‘tales’, with lessons that have had such a great influence on her. She goes on to chronicle episodes as a teenager; dating and completing school, life at university, including falling in love, getting married, and balancing a career with looking after a husband and raising three amazing boys. All the aforementioned was done while coping with living in over half a dozen different countries, Zambia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Zimbabwe, France, Namibia and Ethiopia, over a period of some three decades.

The accounts of her early life reflect both the opportunities and challenges confronting a young girl growing up in the then newly-independent Zambia. Things could have gone dreadfully wrong every step of the way; dropping out of school and struggling through life in misery, but for the grace of God.

Bonnie has succeeded in relating her growth and transformation as a truly Proverbs 31 woman, who really likes her life. Her story shows what comes with spiritual Christian transformation. It shows success does not have to come from politics or political patronage, a lesson which many young people can learn from. She set out to relate her experiences and has ended up producing a book which will be informative, and hopefully transformative, to many far beyond family and friends.

I feel really privileged to have been asked to write this foreword and I recommend the book as a practical account of living a Christian life in the ever-increasing complexity of the world we live in.

Alaphia Wright,

Bonnie’s husband,

June 2016,

Addis Ababa  

Chapter 1

Introduction: I Like Your Life

Whoever pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honour.

Proverbs 21:21 NIV

I was sitting in my apartment in Paris having tea with a young African friend. My friend was going through a painful divorce and I was trying to comfort her. During the discussion she said to me, Bonnie, I like your life. I want what you have.

I wasn’t expecting to hear this so I asked her, What exactly is it you like about my life?

Then she said, You have a husband who cares about you and children to care about. I like the way you carry yourself and relate to people. Although this took me by surprise, I knew she meant no harm so we continued with our discussion and ended with a prayer.

After she had left what she said got me thinking. That young woman doesn’t know how I feel. I have lost my professional dignity. I have three degrees to my name and here I am sitting in Paris, cleaning my own apartment, walking down the street, pulling a shopping cart and occasionally someone stops me in the street to find out if I would like a cleaning job. I couldn’t believe she said she ‘likes my life’. What a cheek. I would rather be going to the office like she did, making use of my three qualifications. Yes, she was getting divorced but she had a job with an international organisation; I would like to have that and, of course, my marriage and children too. That has not been possible because for nearly 20 years my husband got jobs in countries different from my own, and those countries all had laws prohibiting spouses from working. So it was either my marriage or my career and I chose being with him rather than alone and working. The decision was not difficult. I would like to believe the Lord God was so gracious He closed tight the wrong doors and opened only the correct ones, even though it was painful and disappointing for a little while.

A couple of years later we left Paris and went to Namibia. My husband had just received this very big promotion as United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) director and representative to Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Angola, based in Windhoek, Namibia. I lived in a big house and did not have to clean it either. I had help for that, with plenty of time to just be a lady of leisure and enjoy being a diplomatic spouse. I could rightly say, ‘I like my life,’ but still I felt I had no professional dignity. I missed going to work.

One day I was talking to a woman who worked at the University of Namibia when she asked me what I did. I said, Nothing, I am just a lady of leisure.

Then she said to me, I would like the same; that must be a good life. Then I thought to myself, what is it about my life other women like when I would rather be going to work? This kind of response continued even when I returned to my home country of Zambia; woman after woman kind of wished they were in my shoes. Some called me blessed, and this came even from women who held top jobs I only dreamt of or who held doctorate degrees, qualifications which I did not have. How can this be? I have held a Bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences, a Master of Science degree in plant protection, and a Master of Arts degree in environmental policy and planning for nearly 20 years now. After my first degree I worked for just over 10 years as a plant pathologist in Zambia and a seed specialist in Zimbabwe. Since then I have not been able to use these qualifications. The doors have been kept shut, I put in countless applications and the only door that remained open was to serve in God’s Kingdom, and strangely enough I am happiest when I am serving in His Kingdom and when I am among God’s people.

Then it began to dawn on me what a blessing it was to have God close the wrong doors and open only the correct doors. I began to like my life and appreciate my situation and marriage even more. This realisation came to me during the study of the Book of Revelation and by that time I was living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In Revelation 3:7 it is written: "To the Church of Philadelphia write: These are the words of Him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What He opens no one can shut and what He shuts no one can open." Now I thank God for the closed doors.

I know I should be happy with the doors that have been opened for me. The professional doors which were shut were shut for a purpose and it was for my good. I like my life now. I spend time studying God’s Word and the rewards are eternal. What more can a woman ask for? So now I am quite happy to write about my life and see what it is that made the young woman in Paris say to me, ‘I like your life.’

The fact is, a life doesn’t just happen, like those who drop out of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), or the fiction character Superman who fell from Krypton. Even Superman, who came as a baby was raised in a family of Mr and Mrs Kent. Under normal circumstances, a child is born and grows up into adulthood. The things that happen to the child, or the environment in which he or she develops, the culture and the belief system, have a great impact on how that child turns out as they have a bearing on the person’s hopes, aspirations, character, behavioural patterns and his or her faith. I am no exception; my parents, my relatives, my education and the community and others all have a bearing on how I have turned out to be. The interesting thing is God’s grace directs ultimately who we turn out to be in the end. Not everything we experience or learn from our community and surroundings is good for us and for our development as we grow up. Whether we choose the good or the bad to guide our steps is entirely up to us. But we should remember our actions have consequences. What we choose to do today will affect what we can choose to do tomorrow. It is wise to learn this lesson early in life. As you read this book you may see how my view of life was affected by my mother, whom I spent a lot of time with in childhood, my brother and sisters and the community I was raised in, and by my personal struggles to discern what to take and not take in my life and the outcome of my choices. Then you can determine what there is to like about my life and why.

Chapter 2:

The Beginning: A Bonny Baby by God’s Grace

Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from Him.

Psalm 127:3 NIV

In 2010 I had the privilege of visiting my brother-in-law and his wife in the United States. Before my return I went to a Christian bookstore to choose some little gifts for fellow members of the Bible study group I was leading at church. The name cards easily caught my eye. I could buy as many name cards as I could find and that wouldn’t add much to the luggage weight. I picked up several and then one other name caught my eye, ‘Bonnie’, so I thought, I will also buy one for me. What a delight when I saw what was written on it: ‘The Good and the Blessed’. And there was a Bible verse too from Psalm 119:2: "Blessed are they who keep His statutes and seek Him with all their heart." Then I said to myself, according to this I am really blessed, that is real nice, but there is a condition for this blessing. I must keep God’s laws and seek Him with all my heart to enjoy these blessings. I looked back on my life and thought I had not been doing that so well. Yes, I love God and I love studying His Word, but do I keep all His statutes or seek Him with all my heart? I don’t think so. So then why am I called ‘good and blessed’ by my name? It is by the grace of God and for that I am truly thankful to Him. Ephesians 2:8 says, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Even the way I received my name was by God’s grace.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, ‘The name Bonnie is a Scottish baby name commonly used for girls. In Scotland the meaning of the name Bonnie is pretty, charming and beautiful. Derived from the Scottish dialect word, bonny, meaning beautiful; which in turn is based on the Latin bonus meaning good.’ Now when I was born my parents lived in Kansenshi; at the time it was an unplanned settlement in the Ndola urban district in Zambia. They did not live in a village in Chief Chiwala’s chiefdom where Mother came from. This settlement of Ndola was more like what you call today an informal settlement and most houses were mud huts. Father worked as a lorry driver and his boss happened to be a Scottish man. Since I was my father’s first child and my mother’s second-from-last-born child, Father was really delighted to be a father and went and told his boss about my birth. So his boss came to see me. I was born in June 1953 at the time when white people were called ‘Abasungu’, meaning Europeans, and black people were called ‘Abantu’, meaning ‘people’ or Africans according to the European administrators. In the 1950s European bosses did not go to visit the humble abodes of their African workers and ours was a really humble one. But Father’s boss did come nevertheless, and when he saw me he held me in his arms as it is customary to give newly-born babies to visitors to hold, then he said, What a bonny baby. Upon hearing this, my father concluded that should be my name, so I was called, ‘Boni’. And so I called, spelt and wrote my name until I reached secondary school, when I changed it to ‘Bonnie’ after my brother Ba Garnet checked the correct spelling in a book of English names.

Although Father gave me other African names, Namuchimba, and Mukuka after his mother, and Mother gave me the name Chola, because I followed twins (although only one survived), I never used these African names on my official documents and certificates; instead of Bonnie Namuchimba Mukuka Chola Namwawa, it was only ‘Bonnie’.

Chapter 3:

A Marriage Ended through Interference and Superstition

Marriage should be honoured by all…

Hebrews 13:4a

I said in the previous chapter I was my father’s first child and my mother’s second-from-last-born child, actually her 11th born. Father was about 40 years old when he came to live and work on the Copperbelt, also known as Lambaland at the time. He came from Isoka district in the Northern Province. Before coming to the Copperbelt he served as a driver in the army in the Second World War, fighting on the side of the British allies. During his tour of duty, he served in North Africa, driving soldiers and their weapons.

According to the article on these men like Father who fought for the British in the Second World War, written in The Lowdown of 29 June, 2013, they were specially chosen to fight in the British forces in the Second World War, as quoted below:

‘They are war veterans, yes, but not as we normally hear of them in this region. They are freedom fighters too, but not the freedom fighters [who] fought for Zambia’s independence. These are the men who fought for the freedom that allowed the freedom fighters to fight for Zambia’s independence. These are the Zambians who fought in the British forces in World War II in North Africa, in Burma, in India. Even our Zambian barracks around the country have got their names. For example, Tug Argan Barracks [is] named after a place in Somalia where the 1st Northern Rhodesia Regiment went into battle with the Italian forces, where it was estimated the Italian army outnumbered the British forces 10 to one. It is here the King’s African Rifles earned its first Victoria Cross for bravery. The Victoria Cross is Britain’s highest medal awarded for valour and bravery beyond the call of duty. Kohima Barracks is named after a town in India; Chindwin Barracks [is] named after the Chindwin River, Arakan Barracks after a hard-fought campaign area in Burma, and Mawlaik and Kalewa barracks [are] named after towns in Burma. Over half a million African troops, among them 14,580 from Northern Rhodesia, served with the British Army as combatants and non-combatants in campaigns in the Horn of Africa, the middle East as far as Iraq, Italy, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, and Japan. Some of the Zambian soldiers even found themselves amongst the British.’

The British recruited the tallest and healthiest looking Zambian men for the army. Chiefs were told to give 10 of their best men.

This should explain why Father was recruited; he was tall, dark and handsome.

Quote continues: ‘The Zambian soldiers really made a name for themselves as part of Montgomery’s 8th Army. A mixture of soldiers from different regiments of the British and African forces in North Africa, the 8th Army went up against one of the best fighting forces of the 2nd World War.’ End of quote. And I believe this is where Father served in the army.

While serving in the army away from home, Father organised that his remunerations were sent back to Isoka to his mother to keep for him. He intended to get into business when he returned, so he wouldn’t have to drive lorries for a living.

Sadly, Grandmother did not get this money. The money ended up with his aunt, Grandmother’s younger sister, who was more literate. His aunt kept the money on behalf of her sister, but when it was time for her own son to get married and he needed money to buy cattle for a bride price, she gave it all to her son. He got his bride and Dad did not get his dream of a business. So when Father returned from the war he found not a penny of the money he had sent home for saving. Naturally he was angry and left his people and home, vowing never to return. He returned once, however, for his mother’s funeral and that was it. I am not sure if he was married before he met my mother but he had no children until I came along and so I was named after his mother, Mbuya Mukuka Namuchimba.

Mother, on the other hand, was in her late 20s. Believe it or not, by the time she was 30, about when I was born, I was the 11th-born child. She was married at a tender age of 13 or 14 to a European man who went against his parent’s wishes, which were to marry a white girl. Mother’s father, Grandpa Sadaka Kazembe, was not in agreement either; the marriage only took place because he was threatened with jail if he continued to object. Mother and Mr Lawrence had five children, three of whom survived to adulthood. My brothers, Cornelius Buster, Anthony Richard, and Lesley Peter Lawrence had African names as well which Mother gave to them. Buster she named Lunda, Richard, commonly known as Dick, she named Chimbala, and Lesley, fondly called Lassie, she named Kabunda, but they didn’t use these names. Interestingly, even Mr Lawrence had an African name given to him by his workers and the community, the name of ‘Chilupula’, meaning whipper, because he went round his farm with a whip.

Mr Lawrence went to war as well and he may have died in service but I am not sure, because Mother was married again to Mr Chata from Lambaland before the end of the war and had three children. The eldest was born before the war ended. My brother, Ba Garnet Chata, and my sisters, Ba Daifa Chata and Ba Anifa Chata, were born in 1943, 1945 and 1947 respectively. Mother’s second marriage ended soon after Ba Anifa’s birth owing to domestic violence perpetrated by Mr Chata towards her. Then she married for the third time and she had twins in 1949. One of them, a boy, died soon after birth, while my sister Ba Dailina Mwika, survived to adulthood. The marriage ended quickly; Mother said he was irresponsible. Even though Mother was married and divorced several times, like the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:7-18, I believe Jesus knew her innermost need and loved her deeply.

In those days marrying, divorce and remarriage were very common practice, particularly in matrilineal societies like Mother’s. This included even church people. Mother stayed single for three years, concentrating on her business of brewing local opaque beer and holding sundowners parties to sell it in Kansenshi where she lived. During this time, she took care of four children, Buster, Dick, Lesley and Ba Mwika, all alone. Ba Garnet, Ba Daifa and Ba Anifa were taken by their grandmother, called London Chimbalanga, the mother of Mr Chata, at least for this period of time.

Then, according to Mother, something terrible happened; the officials came and took her three coloured sons away from her by force. Apparently somebody had perused through the records and found out Mr Lawrence, the father of Buster, Dick and Lesley, had left some inheritance for the education of his children. This person traced the children to Kalimbanondo village in Chief Chiwala’s area and then to Kanshenshi in Ndola urban district, where they lived with their mother. Because of the colour segregation policy which prevailed at the time, the authorities came with a paper authorising them to take my three brothers away to Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, to complete schooling at Martindale School in Selou among other mixed-race children.

By the way, mixed-race children in Southern Africa are called Coloureds, which is different from the United Kingdom where all people not white are called Coloureds. The youngest, Lesley, cried his eyes out saying, I don’t want to go, I want my mummy, in Lamba of course, because they were not speaking English at the time. My mother was not to see them until the 1960s when they returned home after finishing school and had some professional training; two of them, Buster and Dick, as teachers, and Lesley as a dental technician. Dick had always wanted to be a lawyer but he was not able to do that then. Such professions were only open to white people. Coloureds and Africans were encouraged to take up careers in education and do clerical jobs, with nursing for girls.

Therefore as soon as Zambia got its independence in 1964 Dick pursued his dream to be a lawyer. He qualified and, after being called to the Bar, he served in many positions in different parts of Zambia up to the position of Supreme Court judge before he left the country to go to the United Kingdom. Buster continued teaching for a while and was transferred from Ndola on promotion as headmaster to Chila Primary School in Mbala in Northern Province. Once he fell seriously ill and Mother went to see him and convinced him to return to Ndola on the Copperbelt. He stayed in Northern Province for a little while, then resigned and returned to the Copperbelt to work for IBM. After IBM he successfully ventured into business as the only one of Mother’s children who had business acumen, and later expanded into farming until he died in 2009. Lassie, on the other hand, changed careers quickly, from dental technician to shipping, when he came to Zambia, a job he was doing until he passed away in 1998.

Soon after the brothers were taken from Mother, she met my father and married him. Father was tall, dark, handsome and healthy looking. My parents had two children together; there was me and Enacho, my baby brother, who died before he was a year old. The name Enacho is a Namwanga name and its spelling can be different, therefore it is possible Mother pronounced it the Lamba way, Enacho. For example, according to the Namwanga custom, my surname should be Namwawa but Mother did not know this so she told me ‘Shimwawa’, not ‘Simwawa’. Enacho’s death sparked a whole lot of misunderstandings and confusion and superstition which led to my parents’ divorce. Before that, Mother continued with her beer business and Father continued as a lorry driver. It was a prestigious position to be the wife of a driver. There were not many drivers since there weren’t many lorries in town either. A lot of men worked on lorries to load and unload and they were called ‘lorry boys’. The driver didn’t do that and his pay was three times as much. Mother told me Father used to get a salary of £3 sterling. That was good money while lorry boys got a pound or less.

Father was also not like the other men around. He did not drink beer himself but allowed his wife to brew it and sell it on their premises over the weekend. He did not enter the house until selling was finished, the house cleaned and aired. One day she was selling her brewed beer in the house and Father was outside with me and my sister, Ba Mwika, cooking food for us. Some men came out and started mocking him, saying, Look at you sitting with your children outside cooking while your wife is inside selling beer. What kind of a man are you?

Father looked up at them and said, These are my children and they are hungry and their mother is busy. If I bring them to your house will you give them food? Those men who mocked him went dumb and left.

When Mother told me this story, I said, What a kind man! I would like a man like Father for a husband.

They were well matched and planned to get into business with the profit from beer sales. Even when thieves struck and stole everything, which was recovered later, they remained united. No one could imagine this marriage would break. But my father’s relatives interfered so much in the marriage they brought it to the point of suffocation.

When Father had left his home in Isoka district he vowed never to return. His relatives were convinced they could get him to return if he wasn’t married to Mother, since Mother was Lamba and so local to the Copperbelt province. So they came every so often to tell him to go back and marry a woman from the same area or tribe. They did this so often Mother got fed up with his relatives and gave Father a hard time. And to crown it all, when my little brother died Mother was superstitiously convinced Father’s relatives had something to do with the death of her baby and they would stop at nothing until they got him to go back, so Father had to go to save Bonnie from demise as well. Despite the fact Father had vowed never to return to Isoka district, and no matter how many times he tried to explain that his relatives had hurt him badly and he would never return to his village, Mother wouldn’t listen. She just refused because her mind was focused on protecting me from the venom of his relatives. Finally, she filed for divorce.

The first summons was sent and taken to Father by a local court messenger but he ignored it. He loved his wife and he did not want to go back to his people, who had been a source of much pain, and when he was there it would remind him of what his aunt had done. The second summons was sent the same way and he ignored it. The third time the messenger of court came with policemen to arrest him and take him to court. The court case was very quick as Father only told the court to do what the wife wanted and the divorce was granted. From the court he came home, took his hair comb and jacket, leaving everything else for Mum, and went.

When I was grown and studying the Scriptures, I remembered this episode of my life and I understand now why God said in Hebrews 13:4: Marriage should be honoured by all… And