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| FRESH BURIAL PLACE OF KALINDEKA'S ELDER BROTHER BRIGHT PHIRI: IN PIC MANYANYA AND NEPHEW YETHU PHIRI-MANGONDE, RSA |
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| THOKOZILE BELINDA PHIRI-MAVIMBELA (MRS) &KALINDEKA'S SISTER-IN-LAW BURIED HERE, MAYFLOWER |
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| MANYANYA INDICATING MORE BURIAL PLACES FOR RELATIVES UNEARTHED FROM CEMETERY ARCHIVES, MAYFLOWER, RSA |
It is 1.30 a.m. South African time on Monday 04 July 2011, my third day running as I try to insulate my neurons from the entire world except for Mac Bride’s “Get Started in Shorthand Pitman 2000”. Yet, speaking electrically, even the best of insulations are not that entire as the brain is after all chock-full of electricity: there will always be currency flowing from one end of the insulated wire, to the other. So, recluse me ends up succumbing to the temptation of checking my text messages from my number (+27833087713) and here is what I read in the greatest of African languages (Kiswahili) and in the saddest of my moments today:
(“I’M-GOING-TO MALAWI. OLD-MAN KALENDEKA PASSED-ON YESTERDAY TIME-WAS 4.IN-THE-AFTERNOON THANK-YOU kwa-heri [inatoka-kwa Thomas Phiri aliekuwepo Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania] <+2557********> at 09:45 PM 2011/07/03”)
Now, Mr Thomas Phiri (birthday 06 December), a Tanzanian national, is my paternal first cousin, resident somewhere around Vingunguti, Dar es-Salaam; and only a stone’s throw from the international airport. It is in 1987 that I first met him (7 months my junior, I like to remind him, as a whopping 216 days is nothing to sniff at particularly if your senior’s father is two children older than yours).
Tom is married to very beautiful Mrs Faith Phiri (birthday 16 December) and they have a number of children interesting and some so oh not-interesting that I wish I could borrow them just to wring a necks!
Here is the lot.
Miss Lillian Phiri, one of them and per my records the youngest. She is a teenager with a birthday of 02 November. I am still to find her true colours and the ultimate size of her neck should I need to pull not a neck-lace aroudnd her neck, but a Saddam Hussein, instead on her! (Sorry for the shock).
Then there is Mr Jimmy Phiri (aged 26, 04 November birthday). I last saw him as an infant back in 1994 or thereabout. Swarthy character with a huge brain in at least the physicial terms, I hear he has been all over the world already if for the wrong and audacious reasons, though. I do hope what I hear is not true. Maybe these that I hear about are true but merely teething problems to full manhood; but I’m worried sick my little children (Tamara and Maziri) may easily have no one in the near future to call “Second Cousin” with the hope of, and a grope for, a guiding hand!
Between Lillian and Jimmy, there is a shy fellow shunned by my records here. The shyster was out playing late when my first wife (born Leonilde Makafu in Iringa) and I paid the family a memorable visit two years ago. I am not so sure whether the shyness belies mental depth or simple bitterness with the humdrum childhood in the presence of adults presents.
Anyway, that is the long and short of my first cousin, Mr Thomas Phiri and the sender of the message above.
I first got to know about the existence of Thomas and the larger extended paternal family from dearly-framed and superbly-famed pictures my father (Mr Bright Phiri 04 May 1919-07 March 2009) had kept around 1965 at our lounge while we lived on the Amsterdam Lion’s Glen farm belonging to one Mr Jim Jacob (don’t ask me where “Jim” came from since his official name was “N.N. Jacob” and this is the white man---his black labourers simply called him ethnically “The Greek” which he was...who first taught me I was living in an oppressive country when one day he’d come home and pointed a firearm at my mother for fuelling her wintry stove with firewood that looked like his own yet to cry out loud my father, and a rich man by local black and white standards, had his own power chain with which the family cut its own firewood but that is another story for another day when my Pitman comes of age).
About those faded yet worshiped pictures, my father was saying the moustached man was his educated younger brother (Mr Kingwell Moses Phiri) and the other picture was issue from his own first marriage in Malawi at a time when we’d hardly understood half-siblings were “siblings-from-de-udder-mudder”, a dimpled pre-teen called Miss Tiezghe Mary-Ann Phiri. Now Kingwell Moses Phiri turns out to be Mr Thomas Phiri’s father, since deceased as of 1994!
There was a child, my father used to say, between him and Kingwell Moses Phiri. His name was Watson Kalindeka or ‘Kalendeka’, as my cousin has spelt hereinabove. My father didn’t have his picture “because Mr Watson Kalindeka Phiri had never been to school” promising my father a good fist fight every time he’d tried to force any book into his head and in retrospect I Manyanya side with you, Uncle Kalindeka as books, particularly Pitman Shorthand, are not easy things for osmosis into the brain!
Still, Kalindeka had a lot going for him in spite of no education. He was a dedicated small farmer till the last day of his life, a ninety-year long life! He was there to hold the fort and to play the pillar of strength to my grannies Mr Jacob Phiri and Mrs Esther NyaKumwenda (Mrs Phiri) as the eldest son (Bright) left for South Africa for good in the forties; and the youngest son (Kingwell) left for then Tanganyika where in Tanga, he met his lovely wife, Esther Harawa not only a tender thirteen years old (birth month 09 November), but some thirty years his junior too! Nonetheless a befitting future mother to Mr Thomas, the girls Happy (Mrs Seif), Rachel (Mrs Mbando), Jane (Mrs ?Kyela?), Agnes (Mrs January), Lucy and Dorothy (and before them the sailor, Mr George Phiri and a younger boy whose name escapes me now just like his breath sadly escaped him some 12 years ago now). Needless to say (as he had promised to do so), my uncle had to wait for for Kalindeka’s sister-in-law (Esther Harawa) to grow before getting into serious family business with the nymph, otherwise colonial or non-colonial, the law would have taken its course, wouldn’t it!
If for nothing else, Mr Kalindeka Phiri will be remembered for his prodigious hardihood and strength. The ordinary man was no match for him at the martial arts; and my father would frequently sing his praises every time he mentioned “Kalindeka”:
Kalindeka, Mkana-kuwa!
Wawa pasi,
Watama!
Wa NyaKumwenda!
To my best of translation, this is Chitumbuka Language (spoken in Northern and Central Malawi) for:
"Kalindeka Slasher and Grater to any crack-force
"He that receiveth the flooring and the felling all right!
He hath beforehand the fever contracted
The Kumwenda Maiden beget never a sissy!”
Aye, Kalindeka had indeed to be ill to succumb to The Greatest Dueler Of All and the Grim Reaper Himself on Saturday 02 July 2011 at 4pm East African time as reflected in the message in Kiswahili conveyed by Thomas to me.
Yes, Uncle Kalindeka!
Even under the most grinding state of poverty
Which you did not deserve even for a second in the richest Continent
You’ve been teaching Manyanya a lot in Humility and Acceptance
At ninety you could still travel far and wide
On your two feet ...at least Dodoma and Dar es-salaam have seen you in the past year...
While many of the more affluent among us humans
Will demand wheelchairs from the old-age homes at that stage.
Rest in peace, Uncle!
Rest in Peace Son to Jacob Phiri
An African Prince of no Equal!
Rest in Peace grandson to Mazirankhunda Phiri,
A Zulu-speaker with a spark in Malawi!
Rest in Peace great grandson of Pikamalaza
A general of no equal in Zambia!
Father of the Matanje People Still lost in the cavernous Subcontinent!
One day Africa will be one
Your great grandchildren will walk back without a passport
To Azania's KwaZulu-Natal
The Royal Phiri Palace stood so many millennia ago, E! Matanje!
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