A Bullet Repaid Kindness

In the mid-2000s, I had a friend named John.

I remember exactly how we met.

On my very first day of school in Lusaka, I showed up in rags, nothing “representable,” as the teachers called it. My guardians couldn’t afford a uniform either due to unpreparedness or lack of means. John’s parents gave me some of his clothes that I wore at least for that particular month. At school, he never mentioned nor made fun of some happenings. He also never said a word to other school kids.

Just like that, I stepped into that classroom looking like I belonged.

We were both village boys, new to the city, trying to outrun the dust and squalor we'd been born into. For a while, things looked up. School. Shoes. Friendship. But John's life hadn't started softly.

Him being a friend, I would learn and understand his life like my own.

He was born in Bimbe Village, a small, forgotten speck in south-eastern Chongwe District, tucked kilometers from Chalimbana. The village drew life from the Chalimbana River, a persistent vein in Soli land, though Lenjes like John's family had settled there from Mungule in Chibombo. Ba Lenje, bantashi. Bene chishi!!

His birth came on the cusp of January 2000, as the world braced for the Y2K bug, a chilling spectre threatening to crumble digital infrastructure, from power grids to banks. Programmers scrambled globally, but a primal panic swelled too: religious leaders and survivalists proclaimed it the End of Days, blending tech glitches with apocalyptic prophecies. Economic collapse, nuclear meltdowns, a plunge into pre-industrial darkness, millenarian zeal fuelled stockpiles for the final reset. 

In Bimbe, nobody knew computers. The nearest clinic was over ten kilometers away in Chongwe's central business district, so John entered the world at home, his umbilical cord buried in the village soil. While half the world fretted over a computer bug, the other half birthed babies in huts, cut off from proper healthcare. A stark contradiction of realities.

His mother, young and restless, left him at three months old with her own mother, Subeta, to seek work in town.

Subeta was... different.

Not Sabetha, her Christian name. In Bimbe, names bent to the land's tongue: Subeta. She walked like a soldier, talked like a Pentecostal preacher, fought like both combined.

“If someone touches my blood,” she'd say, tying her chitenge tight at the back like a boxer, “I won’t ask for the story. I’ll write it myself.”

Like the people of Umuofia in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, she believed the fox must be chased first; only then can the hen be warned against wandering in the bush. Villagers whispered she once trailed a drunk who insulted her niece to the market and slapped him into next week. Unconfirmed, but it felt true.

She had one child, Rabecca, from a man named Chanda who vanished before the girl could walk. Life plodded on as it always does, hard, dusty, sun-baked.

Subeta hustled, her ventures dramatic. A trip to Itezhi-Tezhi for fish resale brought back more than stock: a fisherman husband, trading free kapenta for her capricious affection.

Subeta’s fisherman husband looked like a question mark somebody had forgotten to straighten out: shoulders drooping so low they practically waved at his knees, back bent in a permanent apology to gravity. The village kids swore that on windy days his silhouette looked exactly like a fishhook, and even the chickens stopped pecking to watch him pass, probably wondering if he was coming or going.

As expected, their love was tumultuous.

Their grass-thatched mud rondavel reeked of dried fish and resentment. One scorching afternoon, Mr Fisherman asserted authority, targeting young John, must have been out of clumsiness, defiance or both. The boy stumbled into the kitchen, tears streaming.

Subeta, who was cooking something at the fireplace, didn't turn immediately.

When she heard, her breathing drowned out the chickens.

“Tell me,” she commanded, “how did you get so comfortable putting hands on my grandson?”

“This boy needs discipline! I’m the man here!” He scoffed.

Subeta’s eyes narrowed. “No. You were a discount. A bag of free fish. You are nothing.”

She slapped him; his palm-leaf cap spun like a coin. A brutal fight erupted. Minutes later, he was out, hessian sack full of his belongings, tossed into the dust. He vanished to Itezhi-Tezhi or wherever Subeta’s exes went. Bimbe never saw or heard of him again. 

John grew under Subeta's wings, but the streets whispered when adults weren't listening. He found fast boys who laughed at rules, slept through lessons. He craved their boldness, the fear they inspired. 

At ten, a cousin from Lusaka visited, finding him shoeless, eating cold nshima, wandering like a retired old man.

“This child will die here,” the cousin said. “He should be in class, not a water boy for an old woman.” 

And so, John was taken to Lusaka. For a while, things looked up. School. Shoes. Even meeting me.

Years rolled by.

John was constantly pressured to work hard, to be better, but the echoes of Bimbe’s neglect were too loud. School felt like a prison. The streets and the easy acceptance of the wrong crowd beckoned.

Teenage John now ran with a small-time crew that stole whatever they could carry. Not big crimes. Bags. Scrap metal. Chibuku crates. Sampo silema, was their mantra.

"Just be the eyes, John. That’s all you gotta do. A quick twenty minutes, and you got cash for weeks," whispered Linos, the gang leader, his face hidden in the shadows.

The target that night was the local Chibuku brewery factory, adjacent to the cemetery. John was the lookout, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

"I don't like this, Linos," John hissed, peering over the wall.

"The guard looks twitchy tonight."

"Relax! He's dead-asleep," Linos sneered. "If he wakes up, you whistle. Simple."

John waited. The silence was broken only by the distant clink of metal. Then, a sharp, frantic shout from inside the factory compound: "Stop! I've called the police!"

John spun around to whistle, but before the sound left his lips, a blinding flash and a deafening report split the night. A bullet tore into his chest.

He collapsed instantly, the cold cemetery dust filling his final sight. The gang scattered. The responding police officer, answering the guard's distress call, lowered his firearm, his face pale in the light of the security guard’s torchlight.

John’s body hit the ground like a sack of maize. His world instantly went dark.

He was dead.

And.

I was the cop on duty who pulled that trigger. His day one kindness has just been repaid, ungratefully so.

Mourning the Undead

The phone rang again this morning at 05:21hrs. By now, I know what these early morning (sometimes, late evening) calls mean. You my brother (or sister) has been caught stealing. Again. The mob found you first, and by the time the police arrived, you were barely clinging on to dear life. And me? I don’t complain. I may not even share my struggles with anyone. I don’t even flinch. I simply reached for my phone and started checking how much of what little I had left with in my mobile money account, figuring out how much it would take this time around to bail you out of this latest escapade.  

That’s what my life has become now: not a savior, not a comforter, but the Chief Executive Officer of the cleanup crew. I sweep up the mess you leave behind, mop up the aftermath, patch over the scars. While all this is happening, I am also breaking inside. I need a version of Simon of Cyrene to help me carry this cross to the familial crucifixion. Or else, I remain stuck due to this anchor on my life. 

This is the silent side of addiction to alcohol and the associated crime that no one prepared me for. We usually talk about the people who fall, but rarely about the families who fall with them. Families who live on edge, never knowing if the next call will be another arrest, hospital or the final call no one wants to answer.

I remember us before all this. When we were children, full of hope and reckless laughter. Queens and kings in our own rights. Though poverty was our prison, we swore we would not die in it. We dreamed of living in houses on the hill surrounded by forests, of better lives carved out of ambition and outworking everyone. We had the world by its tail and opportunities felt abound. It was bonded to the belief that we the hoi polloi would take charge of our own story.

I still see traces of that dreamer in your eyes sometimes, before the demons take over, before the addictions dictate your every move. I beg you, in my heart, to fight brother. Fight on sister. Claw your way out of that sunken place. Remember who you were, and who we promised each other we would become.

But how long can you hold on to someone who refuses to hold on to themselves? How do you love someone who is drowning, when every time you reach out, they drag you down with them? Our mother, God bless her soul, confessed to me just last week that she can’t do it anymore. She cried and told me she had changed the locks on her heart. Imagine what it takes for a mother to say that about her own child. That’s what addiction does. Not just to the person using, but to everyone who loves them.

And here’s the brutal truth: I am tired. Tired of rehearsing goodbyes that never come. Tired of being the strong one, the last line of defense, the one left to absorb every new wound. I am exhausted from being a pallbearer while my siblings are still breathing.

They say love is supposed to be tough. But how tough? How many second chances? How many bailouts? How many prayers whispered into the void? At what point does love stop being strength and start being self-destruction? Though they say that for the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction. It easier said than done.

This problem bigger than just my family. Walk through neighborhoods, police stations, even hospitals, and you’ll find the same stories repeated: sons and daughters consumed by alcohol addictions, siblings stretched to breaking, parents burying children who never found their way back. It is a slow, quiet epidemic. The one that doesn’t always make the headlines but is tearing families apart, piece by piece. Though Zambia's per capita alcohol consumption is generally placed lower than other countries, its rates are still a significant public health concern especially due to high rates of illicit and unrecorded alcohol consumption within the country. There is a huge alcoholism problem in this country, it is never recognized as a problem because alcohol is such a huge part of our recreational culture.

My siblings and I were supposed to make it together. To live the Zambian dream. Instead, I’m left carrying their stories of wasted potential. Of what could have been. Of a life consumed by choices that seemed small at first but ended in ruin. Of liquor slaves. 

And yet despite everything I still hope. Hope that one day, they will rise. That they will remember the child who once dreamed of hills and light, not chains and darkness. Because until the very end, hope is all I have been left to give.

Moba ndi msampha woipa (alcohol is a very dangerous snare) – Chewa Proverb

 

The Golden Disarray

The name Kasempa originates from the title of a powerful 19th-century Kaonde warrior chief, Jipumpu. Known for his swift and unexpected attacks, he would cause his enemies to flee in such a panicked rush that their animal-skin clothing would be left in disarray. This earned him the nickname Kasempakanya bantu biseba (the one who causes a disarray of skins) which was eventually shortened to Kasempa and adopted for his chiefdom. By 1902, the British colonial administration, seeking to secure mineral deposits, established Kasempa as a district. Three years later, when Chief Jipumpu died in 1905, he was succeeded by his nephew Kalusha, who was officially inaugurated as chief in 1907. 18 years later, the Evangelical Church in Zambia would establish Mukinge mission, famed for providing quality faith, health and education.

A century later, Kasempa has become the latest epicentre of Zambia’s new gold rush. Much like its neighbour Mufumbwe, thousands of people from across the country and even the wider SADC region are converging on the area in search of the hypothetical and literal pot of gold. But what looks like opportunity on the surface is quickly revealing deep cracks in public health, social protection and the local economy. The signs are stark. Sanitary facilities are almost non-existent in mining camps, which are unmistakable due to the blue-light tents used for shelters. The Ministry of Health has recorded increases in disease outbreaks linked to overcrowding and poor hygiene. Violence, including murder among miners, has become disturbingly common. For instance, one healthcare facility reported receiving 4 deaths on arrival in the past 3 months, a stark increase for a community that had never experienced such incidents.

For the people of Kasempa, the social cost is visible in classrooms that are losing young girls to early motherhood and households forced into deeper poverty as the cost of basic goods skyrockets under inflated demand. Many of the mothers seeking care at under-5 clinics appeared to be minors, a testament to the rising issue of early motherhood in the area.

Kasempa’s story is not an isolated one. It mirrors a broader problem in Zambia’s artisanal and small-scale mining sector. While the large-scale mining industry operates under relatively clear licensing and environmental rules, the small-scale mining sector remains fragmented and under-regulated. Zambia is estimated to have more than 100,000 artisanal and small-scale miners, yet only a fraction operate under formal licences. The cost of licensing and the complexity of the process push many into informal operations, where oversight is weak and risks are high.

The government has begun to expand support for this subsector. In the past year, budget allocations to ASM have more than doubled and hundreds of new artisanal licences have been granted. Gold-marketing centres are being established to reduce exploitation by middlemen. These are positive steps, but Kasempa shows how much more urgently needs to be done.

Three priorities stand out.

First, regularisation. Mining cannot be left to chaos. Registration of miners, simplified licensing and clear oversight are critical not only for revenue, but for safety, law enforcement and community stability.

Second, health and social protection. Every mining rush should trigger deployment of mobile clinics, clean water, sanitation and disease surveillance. Equally, social programmes must protect children, especially girls, from dropping out of school under the weight of mining-related pressures.

Third, cushioning the local economy. When demand spikes, locals should not be priced out of their own markets. Measures to stabilise food and basic goods, combined with efforts to add value locally, can prevent the economic distortion that is pushing communities further into poverty.

Kasempa is a warning. Gold can enrich lives, but without deliberate governance, it can just as easily strip them bare. If Zambia is to benefit from its mineral wealth, the state must ensure that artisanal mining does not become a story of lost childhoods, collapsing health and broken communities.

The time to act is now, before Kasempa becomes the rule rather than the exception.