The Eagle Flies Alone

Chapter 1

A Baby Dive in The Water

The basis of your life is absolute freedom, the goal is joy, and the result of that perfect combination is motion forward, or growth. Your goal is to find objects of attention that let your cork rise. - Esther (Abraham and Jerry)

I

t takes so much courage to share your thoughts on your life. It is this fear, this fusing adrenaline of living someone’s life that puts lots of us in the standing-still majority of the masses who have so much potential, but with so much inaction. It has taken me years; years to think whether to share what I knew about life or not. Years to think what others would think of me, once they know what I carried and still carry all days of my life. It hasn’t been hard though, but the mere fact that one would be able to judge me more than understanding me, was the reason I often told myself that time wasn’t ripe yet. I thought stories; great stories lay in those who accomplished so much wealth in terms of money and property; and until I was there, I would continue keeping mute. But who were heroes? Aren’t were the simple township dwellers we all knew about, yet we never understood why they seemed so different from us? Those easy-going joyful, playful, yet, amazing souls we meet and wondered why they always seemed above everything else?

            I know less. At least about how one would define heroism and or heroic deeds. Throughout my life; from childhood; early childhood for that matter, I have lived a life I consider now as different from the others. I didn’t know then, till later in years when I discovered that, my actions, my statements, my attitudes and my outlook on things were looked at as weird by others. At my adult age today, it feels sometimes abnormal to remember thoughts and things that happened to me as a toddler. Things you saw and heard when you were barely a little boy learning how to run. These, are so vivid like one looking at an old photo stack on the wall. This story; the thoughts you will find in this epic, are not about an autobiography: like when I was born and what I did or didn’t do and how I later became who I am today. It’s a simple explanation about the discoveries I came across during the wave length of my growth. I don’t expect one, neither do I want anyone to agree with me on anything they will find underneath these words, because there is no one way that leads to one place; just as they say, ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’.

            Lessons that we learn in life, don’t come from inside walls of our classrooms. That’s my personal belief. But rather from what we hear and have heard; saw and have seen from others. We learn less from ourselves, until we become the story ourselves. Right now as I write these strange words, a workmate has his job contract not renewed after working for a year in this organization. As if that isn’t out-of-hand enough, this morning as we were coming for work, his wife called saying the previous night, thieves broke into their salon and took everything. If this isn’t terrible news for him, on top of what he already was going through, then I needn’t talk about this situation. And the word I could find next to my mouth was, ‘focus on the message, and not on the situation. Once you find it, everything else becomes clear’. He was now the story. But for me, his dilemma brought so many outlandish memories. One of them were lessons I learnt that, we rarely see sun rise till we go through the valley of death. It’s of course a figure of speech. But we can only add a meaning to it that suits our needs; that we can understand exactly what it means. I am not here, I am sorry, to dictate to anyone how to do things, or how to understand things, because this world, I believe is not a one-way-street.

            The laws that govern this life are definite. Yet they have meanings according to how we interpret them ourselves, as individuals. And every other way or definition, we apply to each of the laws, will give us the result according to the application we have employed. And the result is neither wrong nor right. Wrong or right will only be seen according to whether or not that was our wish or expectation. If it wasn’t, then we immediately must understand that we employed an interpretation that did not conform to that particular law. Not that we used the wrong law to get the needed result. No; for there is no wrong law of life. Nature abounds only with truth; which in actual human sense, is righteousness. Anything unfamiliar with these laws, in our interpretations, gives us that which we didn’t look forward to.

            I won’t give anyone, any prizes for guessing my understanding of what I am trying to share. All there is to it, is for anyone who longs for discovery to hear someone’s voice in the struggle for reality. Don’t worry about how many we are in my family; or whether my parents are still alive. What you may be interested to know is that, my memory is only good as far back as to the time I was barely learning to walk. From there, it jumps to the time I was almost getting into grade one. The next stage of my life it brings back, is when I was in grade four. Then it dims till grade six onwards. Don’t trouble yourself laboring to know at what schools, because if I can’t remember some stages of my growth, then even telling you the schools, which of course I know and remember, would be meaningless. But surely you will have the honor to know some, like my high school Muskasa. But we will leave this for later.

            I don’t understand, more so, confused as to how I still remember an event that happened at a time when I was just learning how to walk on my two feet as a baby. Was it because of an event that happened on the full flowing waters of the Zambezi River?

            That day, a male care taker; that’s the guy who was given the duty to be looking after me at a fee at the end of the month, took me to the banks of the Zambezi River. I remember so well. It was during the rainy season. For your information, both of my parents were rural teachers in Western Province then. And your guess is as good as the truth. That’s where I left my umbilical cord after I was born. So this guy takes me to the river. My memory shows me a huge body mass of water, with canoes all over filled with people floating on water. I am so mesmerized, as I see some little boys jump out of the canoes into the water and float just like the canoes. I am fascinated and wish to do the same.

            As if my prayer is answered, a canoe docks at the river bank near where I am seated under the strict watch of my caretaker. Next, I am seated in a canoe, my caretaker behind me, and the man who brought the canoe, paddles it into the deep-set side of the water. I feel thrilled and excited. Our canoe joins other canoes in the middle of the water, and I am seeing at close range, small boys jumping into the water and float as they move back and forth the canoes. And splash..!! I dive into the water too, head first. I float, at least for a mili-second before my caretaker pulls me up with both hands from the water as he quickly moves towards our canoe. I can’t understand how he manages to walk on water without sinking and wandering what wrong I have done.  

That memory stayed awake somewhere in my skull ever since, everyday radiating its lamp to the library of my memories. And it’s only in later adult years, that I realized what exactly happened that day. Boldness, joy, freedom, innocence.  But that was one of the drops in an ocean of my babyhood memories. What sends shock waves down my spine however, is the realization now, how I could recall such a one, and have blanks on everything else that occurred till I was attending the last but one grade of lower primary school. Though so too, only small dots of remembrance paints a clear picture this time around. I was said to be a short and slim boy, but I never defined myself as such, just as I still do even now. Height for me was and still is relative. We cannot label someone’s height unless we compare them with someone else. Words like short and tall are qualified comparatively. When I am standing alone, none of these words exist. I am just who I am. If I am one meter sixty centi-meters, that’s who I am. The moment you bring someone overlooking me with a two meter height, you end up labelling me as short. But even then, I am still not ‘short’, but rather ‘shorter’ than the other guy.

Where was I? Alright, from primary school, I was labelled short and slim. My juvenile charm however was sanctimonious, at least as far as I can recall. I was the son of a headmaster married to a class teacher, who happened to be my teacher in grade four and mother while at home. This was so significant. That day, I wore a pair of costly black school shoes that had thick soles bought from Bata Shoe Company. My face always glittered with the skin smoothing grease called Vasciline. My uniform was always neat and clean, and I sat at the back of the class despite having taller boys and girls occupying front positions on desks in front of me, which occasionally came with so much inconveniences of obstruction. But I never complained, for the choice of being at the back was mine, because real boys sat at the back of a class. What still boggles my mind however is that, even when I went to high school, the same circle of being in a class labeled as the most notorious, that year, seemed to have been born here.

Truth be told, to be a boy child at lower primary school then, can be compared to be in junior secondary school now. Then, human rights never existed, and beatings were never questioned nor authorized. Quite confusing, because there was no rule, for not beat erring pupils, neither was there a rule that allowed beating erring pupils. But everyone who crossed the school rules, received not a spank, but a whack. But from my mother who happened to be my grade four class teacher, the disciplining was special. They were biblical orders of the time. “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell”. But alas, the spanking rather didn’t just drive me into hell, but created the small devil himself in my soul. If there was noise at school while classes were getting on, the brewers were from grade four. And if grade four was making noise, then I was on top of the list of noise makers. And if I topped the list, then it meant that there was a fight in class. And if there was a fight in class, then it involved me with a taller bare-footed boy, who couldn’t stand the kicks from my Bata shoes. And he would be weeping like a baby, as I sat on my desk with a smuttiness silence, waiting for anyone to provoke it again.

I remember a day, names being called out of noise makers. And we were told to sweep the entire school yard; as wide as a football pitch. The sun was heating us on top of our heads. Girls from our class were busy peeping on the windows as they laughed and mocked with their wagging tongues. It was embarrassing, hurting and tormenting but as brutes as we were, we had to do it. As the lunch time iron metal sounded, bringing wailings of joy from classes, we were barely half way the punishment task. And instructions were straight; finish and then go for lunch. Seconds later, the school was swallowed in silence, as every pupil left for home for lunch. Those who trekked from far away homes and came with packed food, found cool shades in the outskirts of the school where they sat for their meals. I was hungry and thirsty. We dropped our brooms made out of thin sticks and went to the water mono pump and quenched our thirsty. Whilst there, stories broke out amongst the four of us, bringing titillating naughty laughter. We forgot the task, picked a ball made out of plastic papers and started playing till the school bit by bit started being filled up by returning pupils for the afternoon sessions. And we sneaked out of school to the bushes hunting birds with catapults.

I arrived home late in the evening just in time for the evening meal, still dressed in my school uniform that looked like it had never been washed in a long time. My shoes had changed colour to cream white and my grease face was something else. I tactically got in the house and went straight to the bedroom I shared with my brothers and quickly changed into home use clothes. Realizing that no one spotted me, I got in blanks and feigned a sleep. The time the meal was ready, and everyone realized I wasn’t around, I heard my brother saying he saw me entering the house a few minutes ago. I hated him for his nosy character. How dare could he blow out my cover of wanting them to think that I was in the house all the while sleeping? My mother called me out from the kitchen. You know these houses were so simple. There was a sitting room in the middle, and four rooms on either side of the sitting room. One for guests next to the one we used with my brothers, and on the other side, a kitchen to next to our parents’ bedroom. I could hear my mother talking and giving instructions to the girls she used to keep, and heard her telling my brother to come and wake me up. But my brother’s call yielded nothing positive. And the moment he mentioned that they had prepared chicken, I slowly turned facing him, and heard him laugh and went away leaving the door open.

My mother came to our bedroom when it was time for bed to check on me. I realized that she got a bit worried about me. I missed lunch that day, and refused to join them for dinner. She thought I might have gotten ill. Her questions about my health, fell on deaf ears. She left just before my brothers came in and got in the one double bed we shared the three of us.

Dad wasn’t home yet. And I didn’t sleep. Every after a few minutes I would turn. My stomach begun drumming and my throat chocking. I was surely hungry. Towards midnight, dad arrived, and in his usual custom, he woke us up and invited us to join him on the table. His words were barely in his mouth and I was by the table side washing my hands. He noticed the peculiarity of my mood, but decided not to ask me. He was the headmaster, and surely knew what could have been the matter. He instructed me not to crack the bones of the chicken so that I could give them to our dog Mbocibede, and he left to his bedroom without eating. Seconds later I heard murmurs from his bedroom, and then loudly dad mentioned my name. I knew I was the center of the discussion. I quickly ate my meal, threw the bones outside, over the window and drank a lot of water and went to bed.

In class the following day, I was the quietest. I didn’t want to talk to anyone let alone the girl who sat on a desk in front of ours, who continuously turned to grab my pencil without permission and use. Our teacher got in class and as per tradition, we all stood up and chorused our greetings to her. She gave us a mathematics exercise and left to teach in another class. The exercise was very difficult. I remember wondering, why she gave us the mathematical problems we had never been taught how it before. We were just grade four pupils who needed guidance at every turn of lessons. I looked around to see whether everyone was in my dilemma. But to my shock, I could see all the girls in class were busy solving the exercise with bright faces. When I tried cleverly to ask how they were going about it, they would just giggle and cover their exercise books so that I could not see their answers to the questions. This back and forth tagging and chatting ended up creating chattering. Eventually the low pratting sound scaled up into a disturbing noise. We were at the level of what we seemed to have known doing better.

Suddenly, our teacher appeared in class as silently as a thief in the middle of the night. And we all went dead silent. Without asking whether or not we had finished doing the exercise, she commanded us to hand over the books to her. I quickly put answers that I was so sure were wrong and followed my friends in a queue handing in our exercise books to her. We all thereafter sat on our desks waiting for her to finish marking. We talked in whispers, calling each other names and laughed by just showing teeth. If one had spasms of intoxicating laughter, he or she would cover his or her mouth, and seen only by their heaving body, as they laughed out their amusement. Childhood then was a controlled phenomenon. Expressive thought wasn’t entertained, because no child’s brain was clever enough as to require permission to be heard. Everything a child like me wanted to do, that was not allowed to be done, was henceforth done in secrecy. And those who broke rules, like eating in class, only got exposed from classmates if the teacher discovered the left overs or crumbs of the food. Without such a discovery, not even the class monitor, would report you to the teacher. That’s the best thing I came love about rural primary schooling. Such a thing as I came to learn later in high school was totally different. Young adults seemed to have this kind of blood that always wished seeing suffering in someone else’ life. Someone would secretly report you to the authority once they saw you breaking the law, even when at times, there was no evidence against you. And that created a savory poignant me, as you may get to know later on.

The teacher finished marking the exercise. And she started calling out names with the marks each one of us got. For every wrong answer one got, equaled to a stick slash in the open palm. The beating lesson-teaching begun with those who got one wrong answers, then two, three, four and finally us who got all five questions wrong. We were all boys; about six of us back-benchers. I followed behind my fellow four. They endured, some wept, as the whole class jubilantly laughed. And it was finally my turn. Face to face with my mother-teacher. She commanded me to stretch my hand, and open my right palm. The moment she was about to hit the palm with her severe stroke, I swiftly removed the palm, letting the stick hit into the table in front of me. My classmates booed. She looked at me, blazing with anger, commanding me to stretch my hand again. And the moment she aimed at my palm, I swerved it off the second time and it hit the table again. Then I saw her making an attempt to move round the table to where I was, and my scallywag instincts just said, “danger!” And I unconsciously bolted out of class, leaving the whole class up in feats of amused shouts. For me it was all for survival.