The Journey of Duty: From Africa to Europe

By Olgett Kazimoto

Early life experiences of the author in the northern province of Zambia in Africa, and training in healthcare with subsequent employment in the mining industry healthcare owned jointly by the Anglo-American Corporation and the Government of the Republic of Zambia, mark the beginning of the journey of duty. After working for eight years from 1990 to 1998, this initial part of the journey of duty becomes full of challenging encounters and adventure stories associated with copper mining operations. Moving to Britain as a migrant worker marks the second part of the long journey of duty. Over the next 22 years, the author is immersed in the busy National Health Service (NHS), an umbrella organisation for thousands of hospitals and allied institutions. Experiencing the British way of life becomes fascinating but then part of this way of life is about how politics influence the way healthcare is delivered by the NHS which takes the centre stage throughout the rest of this book. The NHS tales about itsorigins, evolution, inspiring radical transformation in the 21st century, traffic light targets, and the dark times of scandals with red tape are quite revealing especially for people intending to work, train or are working as healthcare professionals. In the thick of it are some of the shining stars with rare qualities of fixing the broken parts of the healthcare systems that end this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398477841

Olgett Kazimoto

The author, Olgett Kazimoto, has worked in the British National Health Service for over 22 years. He is qualified as a healthcare professional and has worked in Africa for hospitals jointly owned by the Anglo-American Corporation and the Government of the Republic of Zambia, under the company called Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd from 1990 to 1998 with brief assignments to the hospitals in the Republic of South Africa. The author left Zambia in Africa to join the British National Health Service (NHS) in January 1999, where he worked in clinical and managerial roles and completed a number of postgraduate studies in healthcare and health service management.

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About the Author

The author, Olgett Kazimoto, has worked in the British National Health Service for over 22 years. He is qualified as a healthcare professional and has worked in Africa for hospitals jointly owned by the Anglo-American Corporation and the Government of the Republic of Zambia, under the company called Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd from 1990 to 1998 with brief assignments to the hospitals in the Republic of South Africa.

The author left Zambia in Africa to join the British National Health Service (NHS) in January 1999, where he worked in clinical and managerial roles and completed a number of postgraduate studies in healthcare and health service management.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my parents, Eniver and late Samuel, and their grandchildren, Jonathan, Thando and Zoe, as well as my best friend, Mr Said Mohamed, for inspiration and support for many years.

Copyright Information ©

Olgett Kazimoto 2024

The right of Olgett Kazimoto to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398477834 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398477841 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

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Acknowledgement

It has been a great pleasure and gratitude to have worked with so many wonderful people from diverse backgrounds and nationalities, both colleagues and service users in healthcare organisations, in Africa and Europe.

Special gratitude goes to colleagues and friends in Africa and Europe for the stories we have shared together over many years of public service, some of which are part of this book. It was a great honour to be afforded an opportunity to serve in different roles within the British National Health Service for over two decades, and to be part of a dedicated workforce of more than one million staff. Working and meeting colleagues from all over the world was an exciting moment. What brought all of us together from diverse backgrounds was the common goal of caring for others in need of healthcare.

Finally, special thanks to my parents and late grandparents for personal upbringing, education and stories that are part of this book.

Preface

Every journey we make in life, whether short or long, has a beginning and an end, ups and downs. This book covers true stories about the beginning of the long journey of duty in healthcare in Africa and Europe, spanning three decades. The journey begins with early life in Africa in the socio-cultural context of northern rural Zambia. The illuminating tales about child grooming to adulthood, through enduring strict parental discipline, learning of survival life skills, some childhood adventures and the African education system, mark the beginning of the long journey of duty. Certainly, the development milestones traditionally expected of a growing male child would be of interest for people in the fields of psychology and sociology.

Stories shared with one of the grandparents feature interesting historical experiences of the World Wars. The experience of attending to the problems of students at Mbala boarding secondary school becomes the prelude to a career in the direction of travel. However, real duty begins after being armed with university-level education in healthcare under the sponsorship of the mine conglomerate called Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Limited, which also became my first employer. Understanding the mining industry and health issues of the mining communities in this part of Africa is the focus of the second chapter.

Some stories are on people working in the mining industry and those planning to undertake projects in any African mines, whether copper or other types of minerals. It is important for people working or planning to work in the African mines to be aware of the commonest serious occupational disease from mineral dust exposure known as pneumoconiosis. The hazardous nature of mining operations also leads to noise-induced hearing loss and serious or fatal underground mine accidents. There are varying degrees of safety and accident prevention strategies in copper mining and turning copper ore into a metal.

At times, mine rescue efforts as narrated in the African mines stories do not always produce the intended outcome and the story of losing one of the rescuers is a sad tale of misadventure, which regrettably should never happen in such missions. Sometimes, we sit in front of television sets viewing pictures of severely malnourished children flagged up by charities in parts of Africa, Asia and now in war-torn Yemen. One of the stories in the African mines chapter gives a real-life experience in a children’s ward under one of the copper mines hospitals. This part of the story is for people looking after malnourished children with either marasmus or kwashiorkor, commonly known as protein energy malnutrition.

The reality is that nutritional rehabilitation of any malnourished child should not end in the healthcare facility but must continue in the community where the root causes such as socio-economic factors should be addressed by involving other agencies too. For people who intend to work with very sick children in the tropics, whether southern Africa or Asia, the story about handling a child at the brink of death with malaria that has literally crushed all the red blood cells are some of the challenges to expect and be ready to deal with, beyond any textbook knowledge. The same goes with the story of caring for a severely premature baby who suddenly lands on the doorstep of the hospital.

Chapter three is about coming to Britain which starts shaping the next part of the journey of duty as a migrant worker. The story about the hospitality accorded to a nervous migrant worker who has followed the legal migration process to the letter before and after arrival, by the local National Health Service trust hospital management gives an exemplary show of British welcoming culture and social etiquette. This part of the story is intended to motivate people with an interest in legal migration to other countries, including Britain.

From the flight to work story espouses the desperate situation of the local National Health Service trust hospital on arrival as the new migrant worker is whizzed through the busy frontline services in need of staff, notwithstanding the long tiring flight. It’s induction on the heels but as a stranger, it proves to be interesting, setting aside temporary feelings of exhaustion from the long flight. The strange environment, weather and unappealing housing estates in the shrubs shared with squirrels and foxes catalogues the intriguing moments of the new arrival. The formal induction that follows captures the zeal of attendees of mainly newly recruited migrant workers. What follows from here is the starting of work in a divided frontline service with toxic tribal working culture, and certainly not a welcoming one. Knowing and understanding the context of work does not end only in the local National Health Service trust hospital but extends to the community at large.

So, chapter five begins with the spectacular entry into the third millennium with the threat of the millennium bug on computers and other electronic devices, making politicians of the day panic. The stories expand on the migrant worker’s induction beyond the boundaries of the hospitals to know and understand more about what else is out there in the British communities that influences the lives of many people and sometimes, explains the kind of behaviour that they exhibit in hospitals or in public places.

Being a migrant worker, at times it could also be confusing when the same country is called by different names. Britain and its isles dotted around is usually called United Kingdom by many people overseas but understanding the difference between the two requires a lot of research and reading of background history. Even some indigenous British people have their own varied understanding, and talking to colleagues in leisure time becomes a revealing true story. It’s no surprise to know that there are three countries that make up Britain but adding Northern Ireland makes United Kingdom with a unique flag symbolically created from the patron saints of each nation, except Wales.

The stories delve into what constitutes Britishness, cultural identities, public transport with various expressions of socio-cultural etiquettes, faith with Christianity being dominant, weather, politics and many others. There is more than what the eye can reasonably see but interaction with many British people becomes more insightful. The story of political power and who is really in charge focuses on the monarchy and ends the chapter on the British way of life. However, it’s the same political power that controls the giant and complex organisation called the National Health Service (NHS), an umbrella organisation of all public hospitals and community health services in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

So, chapter six gives a brief historical background story of the British National Health Service and how healthcare has been managed since its inception in 1948 until 1999, at the end of the 20th century. The stories of its evolution and struggles for efficient management are illuminated through the multiple reorganisations undertaken by the main political power players—the Labour and Conservative parties. This chapter is ideal for people planning to work or are already working in the National Health Service, people training as healthcare professionals in various disciplines and those training or engaged in healthcare management.

In this chapter, the struggle to manage the National Health Service efficiently is seen to reach the climax in the eighties and nineties. First, a top businessman from the Sainsbury supermarket chain is recruited to examine the management of the National Health Service. His idea of general management replaces consensus management as he attempts to make the National Health Service operate in a more business-like manner by adopting management ethos from the industry to contain rising costs.

Managing hospitals proves not as simple as managing the food supermarket chain with products that do not talk. Here, patients begin to be called customers. Although some responsible managers with authority for planning and implementation of decisions and accountability start to take root, changing the old culture of doing healthcare business as usual doesn’t seem to change that much. A few years down the line, the Sainsbury businessman’s report and its recommendations probably gets shelved somewhere to gather dust.

Then, the Conservative government in the driving seat decides to change course from the general management idea. This time around, inefficiency and rising costs begin to bite, the Conservative government starts getting agitated and a radical decision is taken to introduce the white paper, ‘Working for patients.’ It’s this policy of Working for patients that introduces the idea of internal market and money following the patient by undertaking major reorganisation of the National Health Service hospitals into providers and establishment of service purchasers such as general practitioners and district health authorities. Here, hospitals get amalgamated into mergers called ‘Trusts’ and therefore, one or two hospitals together are called the National Health Service trust hospital with a board of directors.

This process of reorganisation takes over six years to complete. By the end of it, the Labour government wins a landslide victory in the general election of May 1997 and fine-tunes the bits it does not like. Instead of internal market competition, the Labour government opts for cooperation. By the end of the twentieth century, the focus is seen to shift towards quality healthcare, and a reformer politician takes office as the secretary of state for health.

Chapter seven picks up on the stories of what begins shaping the National Health Service in the 21st century featuring the reformer health secretary of state’s radical investment and reform plans of the National Health Service and cancer services. It’s also a reflection of the radical health policies adopted by the reformer health secretary of state when he comes as a leader prepared to use every tool and expertise at his disposal for far-reaching transformation of the healthcare system he sees as still reminiscent of the 1940 era of modus operandi.

As a migrant worker, participating in the implementation of the radical investment and reform plans becomes the most wonderful, enduring and memorable experience worth sharing with everyone in both developed and developing countries. This chapter is ideal for people working in healthcare and have a passion to develop their own health services, especially in developing countries, and those training to be healthcare professionals or managers in universities and colleges. The reformer health secretary of state starts the ball rolling by forming a specialist team of frontline staff, professional groups and unions, patient representatives and senior healthcare professionals to help him put up the National Health Service plan in about four months. He then rallies the support of about twenty-five representatives from identified groups of stakeholders to endorse his ten-year plan.

The transformation that follows sees a change from how the hospital floors are cleaned to end-of-life care. The radical changes cover a wide range of healthcare systems to major disease burdens such as heart diseases, mental illnesses, stroke and cancer. Healthcare professional training, development and recruitment are all aligned with major disease burdens that are seen to be responsible for high mortality rate. Targets are set to measure progress. The health secretary of state’s plan does not only address the chronic problem of workforce shortages, but massive investment is directed at equipping the staff with the right tools, skills, knowledge and infrastructure to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

Patient pathways get redesigned, booking and appointments systems get jacked up and the problem of waiting times for appointments, diagnoses and treatments starts to decline. Besides the National Health Service plan, the health secretary of state congregates his cancer czars and comes up with a far-reaching cancer plan which transforms cancer services from prevention to treatment. What becomes more superb about the cancer plan implementation is the way multidisciplinary teams for different cancers get established and start working together to support people with cancer.

The health secretary of state does not only formulate his investment and reform plans and set the implementation in motion, but he must now know whether his plans are working and delivering the intended goals and aspirations, especially his encapsulated vision.

So, chapter eight is about the stories of the traffic light targets setting the health secretary of state’s tone and pace of monitoring the implementation of his radical reform plans. His critics start seeing him as a man of target and terror, but he does not get embroiled in petty politics or side-tracked in any way. He must do everything possible to please the British people who have put him and his party in power, and he therefore presses ahead with his ambitious traffic light targets to shake up the lethargic and bureaucratic healthcare systems to make them respond to the needs of the people.

This chapter also gives a short background story of how the reformer health secretary of state comes up with the National Health Service performance framework that he must use to manage the performance of all the National Health Service hospitals and organisations under his leadership. It is from the National Health Service performance framework that he draws complex performance targets to achieve. He uses the traffic light system to grade the performance of all trust hospitals and organisations. His critics use the word ‘terror’ because the reformer health secretary of state gets tough on the so-called red traffic light performing National Health Service organisations whose top executives start getting dismissed, boards dissolved, and their organisations merged with green traffic light performing organisations.

In the end, it’s the hard-working staff and not the incompetent executives being booted out who begin to feel the pinch of demoralisation by the red traffic light label that eventually forces the reformer health secretary of state and his ministerial team to change the traffic light system of performance rating to star rating. In the pursuit of traffic light targets, frontline pressure ensues compounded by other factors.

The stories about pressure on the frontline of healthcare in chapter nine illuminate some of the African contexts in comparison with the British National Health Service and different ways people access healthcare. But what clearly stands out between the two contexts of healthcare systems, which are two continents apart, are issues of underfunding and understaffing. However, apart from this, the National Health Service hospitals have their own unique frontline pressure exacerbated by natural weather phenomena, including adverse winters and winter bugs. The stories in this chapter would be of interest to people planning careers in healthcare, those in training and people who want to know issues affecting healthcare workers on the frontline.

In healthcare, saving lives is the top priority of any hospitals and healthcare workers in them. But the stories of serious distressing scandals with inquiries shows that sometimes, the top priority of saving lives can easily be entangled in complex professional practice issues, inappropriate financial priorities, obsession with performance targets and other factors. The stories provide an easy to read and understand sequence of events as they unfold, but of course, huge volumes of inquiry reports mentioned provide further details. So, this chapter is about finding out what went wrong in all the scandals and is intended to be a source of concise learning and reflection by all of us working as healthcare professionals, and people who are training in different disciplines of healthcare in colleges and universities, not only in Britain but overseas too, especially developing countries. It is also particularly useful for people in healthcare management as most of the scandals show the roles managers played.

As for the ordinary people, it is important to know that there is no perfect healthcare system free from serious blunders, and the onus for everyone seeking healthcare is to always be on the lookout to help identify any deviation from normality so that appropriate remedial action is taken. But the learning from the stories of these scandals is that the complex British healthcare systems often take years to respond to staff or public outcry about what could be going wrong, and that is what needs to change now rather than later. Although scandals look like the origin is the frontline, it is not the case in most of them.

The responsibility for all these scandals seemed to rest with bureaucrats at the top of these National Health Service trust hospitals involved. Besides bureaucrats, there are regulatory, supervisory and monitoring arms-length quangos that are seen to have failed people they were supposed to protect but are embroiled in serving their own interests. It’s this kind of high-level bureaucracy which largely fails to deliver patient safety but allows scandals to take foothold in some of the hospitals.

Chapter eleven expands further on the never-ending story of widespread red tape or bureaucracy in the healthcare systems. This kind of bureaucracy is not only confined to management structures and the way of managing healthcare, but there is the clinical aspect to it especially on the frontline. The main political parties have taken turns to try and minimise or root out bureaucracy since the 1970s through multiple reorganisations but with little or no success. Bureaucracy in the National Health Service is like a chronic disease that does not seem to go away and squeezes out a lot of energy in talented individuals who want to improve the healthcare of people on the frontline. In meeting the challenges of bureaucracy and its effects on the delivery of quality and safe healthcare to the people, talented individuals with leadership skills are needed.

Finally, chapter twelve expands on stories of people who have shown exemplary skills and talent in their call of duty as shining stars in different contexts of healthcare. As healthcare professionals, we have been involved in an endless world war on disease, infirmity and poverty, where real leaders with a helicopter factor to rise above every situation are needed.

Chapter 1

Early Life in Africa

Born in a small family, I grew up not knowing where I would end up living and working. At least as I grew up, my father made correct predictions of what I would be doing career-wise. On the other hand, my mother was a disciplinarian preoccupied with the behavioural upbringing of all her children. She was a typical African parent who believed in domestic rules about what children couldn’t do. In other words, as her children, we learnt dos and don’ts. To many people who use health services at their disposal, especially in the western world, it would sound like I’m exaggerating to say that my mother safely gave birth to all of us in the comfort of her own home without any maternal and infant problems.

That generation of mothers believed in nature taking its course and therefore, all births happened naturally without any obstetric interventions, but with the support of trained traditional birth attendants. The medical jargons of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality were unknown. These potential problems if they did occur were attributed to some family misfortunes, and perhaps witchcraft. All births happened in my grandfather’s village called Nchinga in Mbala district in the northern province of Zambia.

The country of Zambia was known as northern Rhodesia during the British colonial rule by the representatives of the monarch known as governors-general. It wasn’t from the classroom history lessons that I learnt about British colonial rule, but it was from my father’s round the table evening tales whenever his popular radio Cologne, the voice of Germany was off the air. He told me the brief history of northern Rhodesia when I grew up. Some of his evening tales included the British governor-general who was the last to rule from 1959 to 1964 when independence was granted by the British government.

In remembrance of the last British governor-general, a large technical and commercial college was constructed in Lusaka, the capital city and named after him. Over the years, it has produced thousands of graduates in various technical and commercial disciplines. The name ‘Rhodesia’ was derived from one of the British imperialist who dreamed of building a railway line from Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt. But northern Rhodesia was changed to Zambia after independence from Britain in 1964. The name ‘Zambia’ was derived from Africa’s fourth longest river, the mighty Zambezi river with its source in the north-western province of Zambia from where it traverses Angola, the borders of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, and finally through Mozambique as it flows into the Indian Ocean.

Along the course of the mighty Zambezi river is one of the world’s largest waterfalls known as ‘Victoria Falls’, named after the British monarch by the first British explorer and missionary to see the falls in November 1855. Downstream, just after the Victoria falls, along the mighty Zambezi river is Lake Kariba, the world’s largest man-made lake, which was a dam made and filled with water between 1958 and 1963 for hydropower generation.

After Zambia’s independence, most of the births that happened in villages were not registered with the local authorities, but many parents kept affidavits of birth. When I was a teenager and about to acquire a national registration card, I came across my handwritten birth record indicating that I was born at ten o’clock in the morning in March. Celebrating one’s birthday in those days was a luxury culture of the western world. My father had preserved all the handwritten birth records for his children without formal birth registration with the local authorities.

I grew up with my father, mother, brothers and sisters on Nchinga’s family farmland but two of my brothers were brought up by maternal relatives. My father’s name was Sam while his wife, my mother was known as Eva. Both parents had their own enduring history and influence on my early life in that part of Africa.

Sam was born in a family of four. There were two boys and two girls. But he also had half brothers and sisters as polygamous marriages were rife and consensual among married couples in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. His tribe was Mambwe in Mbala district, then known as Abercon under the British colonial rule. The Mambwe tribe was popular for cattle rearing, beans and maize farming, and civil engineering skills as none of the tribesmen lived in substandard houses. His father was known by the name of his village located in Mfwambo chiefdom. He was a rich man by the standards of the time as he had a large herd of cattle, modern houses and groceries.

In those days, villages were traditionally made up of clans which did not allow inter-tribal integration and marriage. It was also customary to name the village and chiefdom after the names of traditional leaders and that practice continued in that lineage of succession to date. Before Sam got married to my mother in the early fifties, he worked on the sisal plantations in the republic of Tanzania owned by the German East Africa company. His German boss was his closest friend. He named me after his German boss years later when I was born, as a remembrance.

When Sam returned from Tanzania, he married Eva, my mother. Both left their ancestral villages and went to live in the Copperbelt province of Zambia in the mining town of Chingola. Sam got another job in the mine and rose to the position of a foreman. One day, while working with his team, the copper conveyor belt underground accidentally caught up the left-hand sleeve of his overalls. Sam was, unfortunately, too late to pull his hand out of the long sleeve as the conveyor belt was moving very fast. Therefore, his left thumb was traumatically amputated halfway before he could free himself up.

He narrated to me years later after I was born and grown up enough to understand what happened. He told me that he lost a lot of blood but did not feel the pain. He recalled just waking up in the mine hospital with a bandaged left thumb, not knowing that it was traumatically amputated by the conveyor belt. Sam underwent emergency surgery to stop the bleeding and refashion the stump. After treatment, he was medically discharged from his job and compensated.

Sam decided to return with his wife to Nchinga’s village in Mbala district where he opened a grocery with the money he was paid as compensation for his injury. Besides operating a grocery, Sam spent some time looking after his centenarian grandfather who subsequently died under inexplicable circumstances. When I was born years later, Sam gave me the name of his grandfather as a remembrance. This was my second name. Sam then continued to live with his father in the same village. Sadly, Sam’s father died too in the late sixties from poisoning by the local tribesmen while they were drinking beer together. Apparently, they had plotted to poison him by inviting him to a beer drinking party that ended tragically.

So, I grew up without knowing my paternal grandfather, but my paternal grandmother was still alive as I remember lighting up her smoking pipe. I resented the habit of smoking even if I helped her to do it. The tragic demise of my grandfather left Sam a bitter man, very superstitious and overprotective of his children against what he perceived as evil people within the local community. Sam being the oldest son of my late paternal grandfather inherited the headmanship of Nchinga village. When I was born, the name of the village was used as the family name, even though all tribal surnames started with the letter ‘S’. After I grew up, I swapped the names around in the order of seniority and that made my name appear different from other siblings. I suppose that completed the meaning of my names.

On assuming the role of village headman for Nchinga village, Sam became the most feared person among his subjects because he stood up for injustice and bad behaviour. He never drank alcohol or smoked tobacco. He was recruited into the northern Rhodesia police service reserve which was a British colonial name for Zambia police service. He made sure that none of the locals or strangers touched any of his children. If anyone touched his children without his permission or knowledge, that person certainly paid the price for doing that. He warned me and other siblings not to eat any food or drink offered by locals other than close relatives within the extended family relationship.

While serving as a police reservist, he used to arrest illegal migrants from neighbouring Tanzania as Mbala district on the Zambia-Tanzania border in the northern province was a transit town for illegal migration. Although Sam was perceived as an aggressive person with heavy handed leadership among some of his subjects, including the chief in his chiefdom, others felt that he maintained law and order which was more important than mere rhetorical bickering about who he was. I remember during my primary school days the mention of my surname reminded locals who my father was, and that alone scared them away from me. Despite the feared reputation he had among his subjects, there was also a good side of him that showed compassion and care for those who were sick.

On many occasions, he went to the extreme call of duty in which he bought antibiotics such as penicillin injections and administered to people who had coughs and fever. Fortunately, these people got better and never suffered any serious side effects such as anaphylaxis. Even though I was a child, I knew this was wrong because he was not trained to administer injections to people. I thought that giving injections to sick people was the duty of the men and women in white uniforms I used to meet in the clinic and the local hospital when my mother took me for routine vaccinations. As a child, I feared the men and women in white uniforms because they inflicted pain with their injections. This fear worsened as Sam too got involved in the role of giving injections. This was an addition to his curriculum vitae.

As a family man, Sam operated his grocery successfully and was always well stocked just like any Indian street corner shops. I always liked biscuits, Fanta and cola drinks during hot seasons of each year. Sam raised much of the family income from his grocery and bought the staple food maize, beans and associated dishes lasting the whole dry and wet seasons. He also spared money for school uniforms and annual fees but there was free education as all school facilities were provided and funded by the government.

Every evening after dinner, we sat together around the dining table to share stories of the past and predictions about my future and that of other siblings. Whatever he said about the future of each one of his children, proved to be true in later life. He had a prophetic gift which he was unaware of, but he did not live to see materialisation of his predictions. On several evening meetings, he repeatedly told me about my primary and secondary education pathway and that I would eventually qualify in healthcare disciplines and be in a career of caring for sick people in the hospitals. It was something that eventually happened just as he had said it.

One bright warm dry day, when I was in the boarding secondary school in form four, my headmaster asked me to get a national registration card so that I could be enrolled for a political science programme in German. Although I was still underage for a national registration card, I attended the national registration card centre straight away without any of my parents. I was dressed in the usual school uniform—white top and navy-blue pair of trousers and black polished shoes. Being smart for the occasional mattered to avoid any disappointment.

I presented myself to a friendly female registration officer who smiled at me all the way. She gazed at my school badge and said to me, ‘Honey, how old are you?’ With my heart beating fast, I thought she would turn me away as I replied sixteen years with reluctance and little confidence. She then said to me that despite being sixteen, I looked like I was eighteen years old because I was tall and slim. So, she asked me the date of birth and other details including my village and chiefdom which I provided as I was competent to do so without the presence of my parents.

She then said, ‘Okay honey, come and stand right here!’ I did as I was told, and she took photographs of my face and disappeared into her office while I waited. A few minutes later, she came out with a national registration card and gave it to me. That same day, I rushed back to school and showed the headmaster that I had gotten the national registration card and that I was ready to be enrolled for the political science programme to be done after leaving secondary school education under the government sponsorship.

When I narrated this to Sam and his wife later that month what had transpired, I was rebuked firstly, because I did not go with any of them to the registration centre and secondly, because Sam did not like politics. As far as he was concerned, a hospital career to care for sick people was what he expected. This was the end of the discussion. Later on, I returned to school so disappointed. I informed the headmaster that his proposal to enrol me for the political science programme in German under a government grant was rejected by Sam. That was it, and we never had any further discussions as Sam had considered the matter closed.

Later, as the family grew bigger with more demands for support, Sam decided to expand his grocery from one to two groceries in different locations. He also diversified into farming to reduce food expenditure. This was reasonable to do under the prevailing circumstances then. So, one grocery was in his village and another one was in a different village known as Musipazi which was about thirty kilometres away. It was just at the Zambia-Tanzania border. Because of the distance, he invested in transport and bought a second-hand Ford truck which he could not learn to drive but relied on one of his nephews who enjoyed driving it.

At the border post grocery, he identified a fertile piece of virgin land and started cultivating maize and other crops. I only visited this new farmland and a grocery once on a bicycle. It was a tiring journey but somehow, Sam managed to do the cycling without any difficulties. It was a quite fertile piece of land which did not need fertiliser to produce a good crop. After a few years, as was expected, Sam began to have disputes with the locals whom he was treating like his own subjects because of his domineering instincts. I knew that Sam had distasteful language too which was at times irritating to people.

When I was growing, I firmly believed in respect of other people. At one time when I was a teenager, I confronted him over the use of abusive language. But he did not take it very well being a son as this was a taboo to do so. However, as neighbourhood feuding went on, Sam was advised to abandon his border post farming, including a grocery and return to his village but he chose not to do so. He always reassured his advisors that everything was alright when that was not the case.

One unfortunate day in September 1989, Sam returned to that border post farmland where he had engaged illegal migrant casuals who usually crossed into Zambia from Tanzania. Because these casuals had entered illegally, they demanded to be paid for each day’s work and then cross back into Tanzania. This did not please their employer Sam, who argued with them. In the process of the arguments, tempers apparently flared up with the casuals. A fight that ensued left him subdued and unconscious on his farm. At that point, the illegal migrant casuals probably thought that he was dead and fled the scene before the locals could descend on them.

Although Sam had persistent feuds with the locals, they were sympathetic on that occasion because of the poor state he was found in. So, they decided to organise transport to take him to Mbala district general hospital which was about 25 kilometres away. He was admitted to the hospital on arrival. He was diagnosed and treated for head injuries. Sam did not even know or remember how he ended up in the hospital when he recovered consciousness. As soon as he remembered his maize field at the border, he asked the medical officer for discharge as he felt better enough to look after himself. But, according to the information that was given to the family later, he was rather concerned with losing his maize harvest to the thieves than his wellbeing.

When the medical officer told him that he was still unfit to go home since he was on head injury observations and needed bed rest, he decided to go against medical advice by discharging himself. From the hospital, he hired a cab to take him to his maize farm along the border. On arrival at his farm, he went into his farmhouse for rest. All these events happened without the knowledge of the family in his home village. When he rested on his bed, nobody knew it was a rest forever. Sam died from what appeared to have been brain haemorrhage as the recovery from unconsciousness and then a relapse into coma was what I came to know in my training as lucid interval which was an indication of on-going subdural brain haemorrhage. The villagers found him dead in his farmhouse. They sent out the message to the family, but I was the last to know because I was far away studying in one of the cities.

After discussions, his close relatives did not consent for post-mortem despite being a murder inquiry by the Zambia police service. The police also did not press further for the post-mortem because the suspects were from Tanzania and could not be traced. When the incident happened at his farm, there were no witnesses. Sam was sixty-two years old when he met his fateful death. He never lived to see me complete training and work in the hospitals as he had wished. After Sam’s death, the village headmanship was passed on to my immediate elder brother who had already settled in Nchinga village from the Copperbelt province.

Sam’s wife Eva was born in a family of five as well. She had some siblings who died during the Second World War under unknown circumstances. She had two biological brothers and two sisters. Besides her biological siblings, she had two half-brothers and a sister from the same father because Saul her father never married a wife of his own as he only inherited wives of the deceased young and elder brothers as a way of looking after widows for maintenance of family continuity. The wife of Saul’s deceased elder brother had no child but Saul managed to have two sons and a daughter with her before she died too.

Later, Saul’s young brother got married but died shortly after their wedding, widowing the young beautiful Emily. It was another opportunity for Saul to inherit his young brother and marry the beautiful widowed Emily as a way of looking after her. Saul and Emily had five children which included my mother Eva, her two young sisters and two brothers. So, when I grew up, I had an opportunity to meet the handsome maternal grandfather Saul who was short in stature but also sulky and his beautiful wife, my grandmother Emily who had a fair stature, very light in complexion and a smoker.

There was a traditional belief among the Mambwe tribal folks that if a woman was married to a man, that woman belonged to the family of the man for the rest of her life. Therefore, it was the responsibility of the deceased man’s family to take care of the widow through marriage to another blood relative of the deceased husband who was usually a brother. However, when Eva’s husband died, the married young half-brother succeeded him but Eva declined being taken as a wife and suggested she would be looked after by her own grown-up children including me. I later came to learn in my Christian faith that this marriage practice was a known biblical teaching by the white fathers’ Christian missionaries who first settled in Mbala district from the London missionary society in the nineteenth century and spread Christianity. But whether that kind of traditional practice encouraged marriage rather than just looking after the widow was something that Saul could not explain.

Eva’s tribe was also Mambwe in Mbala district. Her father Saul was also a village headman and his village was known as Ntondokoso village. He was also rich by the standards of the time as he had a large herd of cattle, a modern four bed roomed house and a village farmland. Each time I visited Saul, he always permitted me to share his bed with him as it was a tradition for elderly couples not to sleep in the same bed together once they had gone past the child bearing age—they lived more like a brother and sister. Instead, they spent their remaining years of their lives looking after grandchildren. So, female grandchildren usually shared the bedroom with their grandmother and vice versa with the male grand children and their grandfather.

Saul loved my elder brother who spent his first years of life as a child and teenager with him. But I was not his favourite grandson because he was downright rude as I resented any form of rudeness. I just visited both Saul and Emily at weekends and during school holidays, but I would return to my parents each time I differed with Saul. Whenever Saul screamed at me rudely, I always answered back because I was not as reserved as my elder brother and that was why I spent just a few days with him. But I remembered one day at bedtime, when he was in a good mood, he told me a moving story about the two World Wars.

He began by telling me the story about the First World War which broke out in 1914 when he was just fourteen years old having been born in 1900. He said the war started in Europe after the assassination of the Archduke of Austria on 28 June 1914. I asked Saul if there were any political reasons that could have contributed other than just the death of one very important person. He said the Germans were probably jealous of the large British Empire and just wanted to take some of the countries under British rule. Later, in my secondary school history studies, my favourite historian Pat taught me more about countries that were involved in the First World War. The war was fought between the triple alliance made of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire and the triple entente that comprised Britain, France and Russia. The triple alliance was also joined by Bulgaria.

On the other hand, the triple entente was joined by other countries that included Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Italy, Romania and the United States of America. Saul continued with his war narrative as I listened attentively. He said the war quickly spread to Africa and no longer became a European conflict. I asked Saul how Zambia, then northern Rhodesia got involved in the war that was entirely a European affair. Saul explained that during the late part of the nineteenth century when his father was growing, there was what I came to know as the scramble for Africa in which there was a rise in German imperialism and colonialism. The German had colonised the neighbouring Tanzania which borders Zambia. The border town that separates Zambia from Tanzania is Mbala district, then known as Abercorn. It was the focus of British military operations to defeat the German army and stop its advance from Tanzania under the command of a German general Von. I listened as Saul narrated how the

German soldiers quickly advanced into northern Rhodesia through Abercon. The British and Belgian forces fought the Germans in Abercon at the battle of river Saise which formed the northern Rhodesia border frontier with Tanzania. British forces were not fighting alone but the Mambwe tribal warriors also fought at the northern Rhodesia border frontier and frequently repelled German forces with their Askari natives when they made several attempts to cross into northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.

The Mambwe tribal warriors’ main objective of fighting was to protect their own territory of Abercorn, now Mbala district from being taken over by the Germans. This remained their objective until the war ended. The Germans viciously fought their way to advance from their colony, Tanzania into northern Rhodesia, now Zambia with the objective of dislodging British occupation to link up with the territory of Namibia in the south-west of Africa which was already under German occupation.

From Saul’s narration, it seemed to me that the German forces equipped with superior weapons had underestimated the Mambwe tribal warriors’ capability to stop their advance. Throughout the war, Saul told me that there were very few casualties among the Mambwe warriors because they used guerrilla warfare tactics in which their enemies were lured into thick forests and then shot with poisonous arrows without using noisy guns. The Mambwe warriors had their own spies on the northern frontier who watched for intrusions. So, Saul continued to explain that if victory was allowed, the Germans who were known to be ruthless would have taken over Zambia’s rich copper mines, including my ancestral land of Abercorn, now Mbala district.

Saul explained how the war raged on in Europe for four years from July 1914 to November 1918. He recalled how the German triple alliance surrendered to their opponents, the triple entente in Europe on 11 November 1918 after signing an armistice. Saul then paused and said despite the cease fire, the war in Abercorn continued due to poor communication at the time. It was until 25 November 1918, when the telegraph reached the warring British and Germans forces that the war had ended. At that point, said Saul, general Von formally surrendered in Abercorn and his troops were ordered to throw their weapons into a small district lake known as Chila in the town centre.

A memorial cenotaph was erected in Abercorn town centre to mark the spot where the Germans surrendered and to remember the fallen heroes of that war. But, there were no cemeteries like in Britain with marked graves of any indigenous northern Rhodesian soldiers who fought in that war alongside their British counterparts. As Saul narrated, I thought to myself that it would have been nice to have a cemetery with marked names of the northern Rhodesia heroes for memorial. I just wondered how this important history went amiss. It was also clear from Saul that the Mambwe tribal warriors were not fighting for the British but for themselves as they endeavoured to protect their own land. Saul said when the Germans surrendered, he was eighteen years old and the cenotaph in town was only about 20 kilometres from his village.

During my secondary education days at Mbala secondary school, I visited all the war historical sites in the town and corroborated the war tales of my grandfather. It was after Zambia’s independence from Britain in 1964 that the name of the town Abercon was changed to Mbala. It was because of this antiquity that Zambia gained a special place in the world history and joined the rest of the world in the centenary celebrations marking the end of World War 1 on 25 November 2018. The centenary war memorial event was celebrated coincidentally with the northern province tourism and investment exposition hosted in Mbala district.

When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Saul recalled being 39 years old. By the time the war reached Africa, he was in his early forties. Fortunately for the Mambwe tribe of Mbala in northern Rhodesia that war ended in North Africa and only went as far as Egypt. However, Saul narrated how the British conscripted local people into the British force, then known as the northern Rhodesia regiment as part of the Kings African Rifles under the command of a British field marshal. Saul said that the field marshal was the commander of the British eighth army in Africa.

He said the British conscripts were sent to fight the fierce Afrika corps under the command of the German desert fox field marshal. I asked Saul if he joined the British army to fight the Germans. He laughed and replied, ‘Very well, I was too short’, because the British recruited the tallest and healthiest looking men for the infantry army. He said local chiefs and village headmen were asked to select at least ten of their best men each. There was also ongoing recruitment from other towns, markets and schools to boost manpower in the British army. I found his story fun, when he said that the British army recruitment officers entered schools in the morning with a height ruler and students above a certain height were instantly recruited against their will. He said most of those recruited never got a chance to bid farewell to their parents before being sent for training in Lusaka and Livingstone, which became Zambian cities.

British forces war planes attacked from the air using the airport in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. The airport was subsequently named Lusaka international airport. It was believed to be older than Heathrow international airport. Saul recalled how he hid her daughter Eva and other children as the British army made searches from village to village looking for African soldiers to recruit. Saul also told me of how they hid in the nearby hills and watched the movements of British forces on a recruitment drive. To conclude his war story, he sang me a short version of his war hero’s speech. This was the speech made by the war time British prime minister.

I asked him if the song composed from the war time British prime minister’s speech motivated many comrades to fight with vigour. He paused and replied, ‘Yes, it did.’ Some years later, in my last two years of secondary education, I learnt more about the history of the Second World War in detail and the British prime minister’s speech from where the war song was composed. This was also frequently sang during my school cadet drills and parades. Later, as I grew up, I reminded my mother Eva about Saul’s World War stories. I wanted Eva to tell me her own version of that terrible war and what happened to her but of course, I was alive to the fact that she was still a small child who could not remember everything correctly. So, all what Eva could remember was that she was instructed by Saul to hide during the British recruitment campaign. At least I learnt some live history from Saul who experienced both wars.

After the Second World War, Eva was enrolled in the missionary primary school about five kilometres from her village where she attained primary education up to grade seven. Her education was suddenly cut short by her father Saul because he wanted her to get married while she was still a teenager despite being intelligent and a good performer at school. So, Eva was married off to Sam in the early fifties in what appeared to be a traditional elite marriage between two families of two well-known traditional leaders as both my father and mother were born from parents who were village headmen. Sadly, Eva’s mother Emily underwent a uterine surgical operation at Mbala district general hospital in 1977 and died shortly afterwards from complications. After seven years, Eva’s father Saul also underwent