Like Our Noble Eagle

By Emmanuel Siwingwa

Like Our Noble Eagle is a rough-and-tumble ride into the coming-of-age stories of three odd friends as they wrestle with their personal and country’s challenges. Together this quarrelsome trio will take you from triumphant youths to sceptical adults and bolder still as they grow with their country. It is a journey that will make you laugh and cry as you ride with them, but hopefully, it will ultimately lead you to shade off your old skin, flare up your wings and fly.

ABOUT AUTHOR
Emmanuel Siwingwa is an engineer and project management practitioner with many years of experience both in the Zambian public and private sectors. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronic and Control Engineering from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom and a Master of Science degree in Information Technology from the Zambia Centre for Accountancy Studies (ZCAS) University, Lusaka. Emmanuel is a certified project management professional by the Project Management Institute and has various other certifications in Information Technology infrastructure and security. He is currently employed with the Bank of Zambia as an information technology infrastructure operations and support specialist.
As a Christian, Emmanuel is a leader at his local congregation Tower of Hope Christian Church. He enjoys watching science and history documentaries as well as exploring the Zambian countryside. Emmanuel lives in Lusaka with his wife Evelyn and their three children Chinvya, Wivwa and Vizungo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emmanuel Siwingwa
• Release date: Oct 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005382216

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Copyright © 2022 Emmanuel Siwingwa

First edition 2022

Published by Emmanuel Siwingwa at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Emmanuel Siwingwa using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Susan Hall for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

E-mail: [e-mail]

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Emmanuel Siwingwa

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Dedicated to my wife, Evelyn; to our children, Chinvya, Wivwa and Vizungo; and by extension to all the youths of Zambia and Africa – that they may fly.

All the events in this book are true, but in some cases circumstances and places have been changed to protect the identity of the people involved.

- Chapter 1 -

Calamitous Kango

The first thing you did when you met Kango was to kick him; you could be sure he would earn it down the road. But you did it out of despair, not anger. That is because, aside from being calamitous, Kango was also the most disarmingly gentle person you’d ever met. It was just impossible to hate this guy. He was this big teddy bear and would even make a point of bowing his head a bit, as he stood in front of you, as if to apologise for his size. Even his face was heart-shaped. His head started the heart theme by being wide at the temple before narrowing down to a pointed jaw. His hairline finished it all by protruding at the middle forehead and then receding into his head and back, making a lower-case ‘m’ shape. He was always smiling at you. Kango wouldn’t harm a black ant, akanyelele as we call it in Zambia, if it was up to him. A chubby angel you could say – except he also had this gift for wrecking even the most courteous moments. Kango could raze a block of flats just by jerking his knee at the perfectly wrong time. And he never seemed to appreciate the ensuing mayhem. While others would be staring at the rubble he had caused in horror, he would typically be unfazed, mumbling things like, Oh that? Is that serious? I can put it back the way it was. He would cause a thunderstorm and be completely oblivious of it.

Take that kissing incident at church. We had just joined this church in Handsworth, West Bromwich – just outside the English Second City of Birmingham. Our church mates were so loving and protective of us, the ‘lads from Africa’, that it embarrassed us at times. We could do no wrong with these guys. Black and white, they loved us unconditionally. But Kango nearly wrecked even that. We had been barely three months in England and were settling down to the norms of the land. Our church mates had this kiss greeting ritual that bewildered us a little bit. You touched cheeks with the person bidding you goodbye or welcoming you and performed some kissing procedure. It was done so frighteningly fast that we had no way of mastering it. We had not done it beforehand because, back home in Africa, such intimacy was strictly between lovers. Granted, we had seen some rich kids do this cheek kissing even at home, but we had considered them spoilt kids not worthy of our proud African heritage. We considered ourselves a bit more ‘root’ African. But now here in England, we were a little bit stuck as everyone at church was doing it. After much deliberation, we agreed that since we didn’t know how to go about it, we would play safe by being the passive partner in the act. We would let our English friends do whatever had to be done and just go along with it. It was awkward but it worked – until Kango awoke his demons one morning.

On a day meant to be uneventful, Kango and a female worshipper, sister Lucy, were bidding each other goodbye in the usual way. Kango somehow decided that he had figured out the whole kissing thing. He threw caution to the wind and went tongue wagging. His tongue logic didn’t come out very well, though, as he ended up licking sister Lucy’s cheeks wet. She wouldn’t have known of the cultural gulf between them – nor how unusually gifted the person she was dealing with was. She was livid. Sister Lucy was easily ten years our senior and highly respected at church. What followed was akin to the un-wedging of the tectonic plates holding the continents of Africa and Europe. There was going to be an inter-continental collision. Europe was furious with Africa. By the time we had caught up with them, she had dragged him to a corner of the church and was dressing him down.

You are much younger than me, okay! I heard her say. Even my little sister over there is much older than you. Evidently, she had taken Kango’s tongue derailment to mean some kind of amorous overture. And it didn’t help that she was rather good looking.

Temperatures were rising fast on that cold winter morning. Some elders stepped in to calm things down. And there in the midst of all this was Kango – very sure that this was a small misunderstanding. He could easily explain it if someone could fetch him a clean piece of paper, a pencil and some crayons.

I didn’t do this, I just did this, he kept saying, wagging his tongue this way and that as he tried to re-enact what, to his mind, had happened. A perilous and comical scene if one ever existed.

Kango, shut up, Njekwa stepped in.

Njekwa was the third of ‘the lads from Africa’. We had all come from the same school in Kitwe, Zambia. Njekwa was Kango’s best enemy. The two were almost inseparable. You were always going to find Njekwa near a Kango-made disaster. He would be there to record the whole thing for posterity. Except he only ever used it as a weapon of future mockery. And sure enough, after the instruction from Njekwa, Kango went mute without further ado. That saved the day. It gave sister Lucy time to blow out her hot lava before the ash could settle. She counselled us on keeping our minds pure and concentrating on school. The Church was very proud of us, she said. We shouldn’t take shortcuts in life; a beautiful young bride was waiting for us down the road as soon as we finished school and got a job. The elders kept nodding politely in agreement while the three of us hung our heads so low they could have been below sea level. In a little while, Kango apologised, and all was forgiven. We left church that morning trembling more from the dread of what could have happened than from the cold.

But in the evening, Kango regained his bravado and became defiant about the morning’s event. He insisted he would have solved the whole thing had we left him alone.

I could have settled that little matter much earlier if you had not come to disturb the confusion, he rebuffed Njekwa. I never got to ask him how one can disturb a confusion, but that was vintage Kango; ridiculing someone who had saved him from a possible church suspension. Njekwa and I just shrugged our shoulders in despair. Njekwa would later that evening remind me of how, curiously, Kango had become famous for another kissing incident way back at school. But more of that later.

Njekwa was a comedian whose main subject was Kango. He was Kango’s opposite in almost every way. Whereas Kango was fair skinned, Njekwa was dark and very proud of it. And whereas Kango was plump, Njekwa had a lanky, strong-looking skeletal body. It was almost as if the Lord had meant for him to be all skeleton but decided to add flesh to his frame at the last minute. They were both tallish, standing at about 1.8 metres. They easily beat me in height, a fact they never missed the chance to remind me of.

Njekwa held the record of annoying Kango the most in this world. That happened the very first time they met at Mpelembe Secondary School some four years before. Kango had joined the school deep into the first term of Grade Eleven. He came from Mwela, a small rural town in northeast Zambia. I was the first person to befriend him. One evening we were engaged in small talk as we lay on our dormitory beds after lights out. Kango was my roommate. He was going on and on about how he was missing his fantastically clever dog back home in Mwela. Apparently, this dog was something else. It was so clever that it would bark to alert them if they forgot to close the main house door at night. It could smell a thief from five kilometres away. It knew when Kango was unwell and many other clever things. He may even have said it could fetch firewood and harvest maize from the fields for all I remember; apparently, there was no end to the talents of this little canine.

I really miss my dog, Kandindime, he concluded.

What was that again? Njekwa asked. He was in the next room and had overheard our talk.

I said, I miss my dog, Kandindime, Kango answered hesitantly. He was not sure who was asking. Njekwa rushed to our room to declare a crisis.

Lord Jesus, please come back soon. There is too much foolishness in this world, he said.

Hey, what’s your problem, and who is talking to you anyway? Kango asked the intruder.

No, man, no! You don’t give a dog such a long name. We all call dogs short names like ‘Leo’, ‘Spot’, ‘Tiger’ and so on. How do you give a dog a name with so many twists and turns? When does it know you are calling it anyway, at the second ‘ndi’? This is cruelty to animals we are talking about here. In Europe you could be sued for such things. I would suggest you rename the poor thing immediately you go back to your village.

You could hear outbreaks of laughter from the other rooms.

Hey, big mouth, suppose I shut you up, Kango said, advancing towards Njekwa. At this moment they had to be separated. They did not fight that day. Instead, this was the unusual beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Later I did privately admit to Kango that while Njekwa had been rather uncivil in expressing his opinion on the small matter of the dog’s name, I too found Kandindime rather deep for a dog’s name. Kandindime means ‘I wish it was me’ in some Zambian languages. He explained that his uncle, who had been staying with them at the time they got the dog, had named it. Apparently, he had proposed marriage to a girl in the village and had been turned down. The same girl instead went ahead and accepted a marriage proposal from another admirer a short while later. There was a wedding of this girl and her other lover on the day Kango’s family bought the dog. So, in the name, Kango’s uncle was saying: I wish it was me marrying the girl.

In my heart I had to agree with Njekwa. They could have left the poor dog out of all these human affairs.

Kango, Njekwa and I would spend four years of secondary and tertiary education together before going to university abroad. We did two years at Ordinary Level (O-level) and another two at Advanced Level (A-level). You could remember each year by Kango’s calamities. Each year he would come up with a new stunt from his world. A notable one was the time he changed the fortunes of a game of football within minutes of being introduced. That was truly special. But it was his conquest of the heart of Chuma, the most beautiful girl at school, that would define the decade. But I have gone ahead of myself.

On this day Kango and I were lost in the City of Birmingham, Central England, or the Midlands, as the locals called it. Njekwa had stayed behind at our hostels in Griffin Close, south of the city. We had arrived in Birmingham a month before. We were on New Street at the heart of its multi-level Central Business District and didn’t know where to board the bus to take us to church in Handsworth, West Bromwich. But even more urgently, we needed to empty our bladders. Kango pointed at a number of buildings labelled To Let.

It must be toilet, he speculated. The ‘i’ must have fallen off. Let’s go and check it. Back home then, our country was in a sorry state with a lot of dilapidated buildings. It was not uncommon to see a street sign with some letters faded out. So, Kango had applied a bit of imagination to his experience back home. I asked him why the ‘L’ would be in capitals in that case.

Maybe that’s just how they write it. You know how strange these people are, he said. I suggested that he could be wrong. A little while later we found a much larger building with the same mysterious words To Let.

Surely that big building cannot be a toilet now, can it? I asked him.

It’s possible, he mused. These people are very rich you know.

I somehow convinced Kango that he was stretching his imagination a bit. So, we never got to look for urinals in the building. A little while later we asked a stranger for help.

"Down the stairs two levels, you will find your bathrooms," he said. Apparently, we had been standing right above one such