Pageviews last month

Henry Nasilele

Henry Nasilele
This is Me !

Saturday, September 11, 2010

I Have a Rank of Paraffin !

When I was doing my ninth grade at Sefula secondary school, I was given the responsibility of a school chief librarian.

My task was to account for library books which have been borrowed by fellow pupils.

I was then to ensure that my assistants put them back in the shelves according to the filling system of the library.

I was also responsible for assisting other pupils to select particular books.

This responsibility exposed me to some good reference books which really helped me in my class work.

Other pupils were given responsibilities such as school headboy, class monitors, school prefects and so on.

At the time, we had no electricity at the school. We depended on paraffin-operated hurricane lamps to provide lighting in the class rooms and dormitories during evenings.

One pupil was given the task of issuing paraffin to class monitors who were responsible for distribution of the lamps to various places.

That year, the President of the Republic of Zambia was attending the traditional ceremony of the Lozi people of the western province called Kuomboka.

This is the time when the Paramount Chief (Litunga) migrates from his Barotse flood plain palace to the dry land palace at Limulunga.

The President was attending as a guest of honour of the ceremony .

He flew in from the Capital City of Zambia, Lusaka, which is some 600 kilometres, to the east of Mongu town, the provincial capital of Western Province.

From Mongu he traveled to meet the Litunga at his flood season palace at Lealui by a speed boat.

It has been a traditional for the Head of State to attend this ceremony, which is an annual event.

It is one of the most celebrated traditional ceremonies in Zambia, which attracts thousands of people from all over the country and worldwide.

The Litunga travels by a huge boat, called the Nalikwanda, paddled by dozens of men across the flood plain for a distance of over fifteen kilometres.

As part of the ceremony, the schools around the Mongu area were to send some of their pupils to welcome the Republican President.

The pupils and local people would line up the route from the air strip up to the harbour where he was to board the boat and join the Litunga at Lealui.

Sefula Secondary School is some sixteen kilometres south of Mongu.

We had to board a bus from the school to Mongu as early as 4:00 hrs. in order to be in Mongu by 6:00hrs. We were then to wait for the President who was expected to land at the air strip at about 7:30hrs.

We were to have our breakfast before 4:00hrs.

It was quite hectic for us as we had to rush to finish the rice we were given for breakfast.

The rice was dispensed in deep bore plates. We were given about five minutes to finish the food. Since it was still steaming hot, it was no easy task!

I remember leaving almost a three-quarter plate of rice in my locker, and thought of having it later in the day, after returning from Mongu.

Since the space in the school hired Bus was limited, priority to board it was given to final year, grade12, pupils. This was followed by those who had some rank such as class monitors, prefects and librarian of the school.

We had a very hillarious moment when our "paraffin" pupil came to board the Bus. He was initially refused entry because he had no known "rank" at the school.

He was finally allowed to board the Bus after proudly telling the school master on duty, who was seeing us off, “I have a rank of paraffin” !

Whatever responsibility one holds in society should not be made trivial by others. We all have important roles to play to support the lives of others.

The Bible says :-

"For just as in one body we have many members, and not all the members serve the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members who belong to one another.

And we have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If the gift is prophecy, that individual must use it in proportion to his faith. If it is service, he must serve; if it is teaching, he must teach; if it is exhortation, he must exhort; if it is contributing, he must do so with sincerity; if it is leadership, he must do so with diligence; if it is showing mercy, he must do so with cheerfulness." (Romans 12: 4-8).

Amen !

Friday, September 10, 2010

Nuture that Passion !

A few months ago I was listening to a local Radio Station's discussion programme.

The topic of discussion was :

"Should parents dictate to their children what type of careers they should pursue?"

Listeners were asked to send their opinions by SMS. I sent the following SMS "Parents should not dictate to their children what careers they should follow. This is because we are all born with passions which we should nurture."

The radio announcer was very fascinated by this reply and this has prompted me to write this article.

Some people have found themselves doing what they are doing now because of circumstances beyond their control.

Their parents may have not have been able to get them to the training institutions of their choice because of financial constraints, peer pressure, or distance.

The other reason is that it had been a tradition in the family to follow particular careers.

I come from a family where many of my relatives had either been teachers, police or army personnel. This had been a general trend until about some thirty years ago.

My grandfather was a school teacher. My father was a school teacher and so were two out of five of his siblings.

I am a first born child of my family. When I was growing up, my parents assumed that I would be a teacher, just as my grandfather and father had been.

This was not to be the case.

My parents used to buy me mechanical toys such as wind-up aeroplanes and cars.

Within a short time of being given any new toy, I would open and dismantle it to pieces to study how it worked.

I would then re-assemble and make it work again. This gave me a sense of pride and satisfaction.

In some cases, I failed to re-assemble the toy. This earned me a few spanks from my mother who was always incensed by my "destructive" behaviour.

I was not deterred by mother's punishment.

My father, on the other hand, was fascinated by my curiosity.

By the time I was fifteen, I was a full fledged "mechanic" who was able to replace broken main springs in table clocks and tuning cords of transistor radios ,etc.

I remember one time when I was traveling on foot with my parents. The distance was about a ten kilometer stretch.

We stopped at one village, where we had some relatives, to rest and drink some water.

One of the villager's transistor radio had a broken tuning cord. My father suggested to him that I be given the radio and take it to our village and fix it. I was very glad to be given the chance to do so.

My mother tried to find an excuse for me not to take the radio, but I would not burge.

On our way to our village, my mother was not happy with my father. She was of the opinion that by telling strangers about my capabilities, he was exposing me to witches and wizards.
These could take me out of this world prematurely.

This did not deter me in any way.

Later, I had a several "customers" who would bring in their broken down radios, clocks, watches and bicycles which I willingly repaired free of charge!

A number of them bought me sweets and biscuits in appreciation.

This earned me the nickname "the engineer" in the locality.

My father realised that I was born with a passion of repairing things. He encouraged me to take up a career of engineering when I grew up and forget about being a teacher.

That is how I became an electrical engineer.

A lot of high flyers in society have identified their passions and made full use of them.

When you do something which you are passionate about, it does not look like work to you, but a pleasure.

My advice to our young generation is : Identify your passion and nurture it into a profession you will enjoy.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

" Say Something !"

In 2008 I travelled to the Tanzanian port of Dar-es-Salaam to pick a car which was purchased for the family from a Japanese company .

Since it was my first time to go there, I requested a friend who had been to the Tanzania before to accompany me.

In order to cut down on travelling time for the 4,000Km round trip to Tanzania, we flew from Lusaka to Dar. This takes just over two hours.

When we arrived in Tanzania, I was amazed by the heavy traffic and the crowding in the city of Dar-es-Salaam.

We spent two nights in Dar before the car could be cleared at the port.

Due to the heavy traffic within the city, we hired a local man to drive the car, up to some ten kilometres away from the port.

All vehicles that are imported via the Dar-es-Salaam port are given a specific route to follow up to the Zambian border, which is some 998 kilometres away.

There are four check points on the route at which the car's importation documents are checked.

After the local driver left us, my friend took over the steering wheel. He told me that he was now comfortable as to which roads were to be followed to be on the authorised route.

We travelled some ten kilometres when we crossed some traffic lights.

Soon after the traffic lights, we saw a Tanzanian traffic police patrol car behind us flashing its beacon instructing us to stop.

My friend thought that we were being stopped for going through the traffic lights when they had indicated "Stop". I told him that was not the case. They were showing "green" at the time we crossed the road junction.

When the two policemen came out of their patrol car, one of them, who could speak English ( Swahili is the official language in Tanzania) asked us where we were heading to ?

We told him that we were going to Zambia. He told us that we had gone off-course the authorised route by one kilometre.

We thanked him for pointing out this mistake to us and requested him to direct us to the right road.

To our surprise,he told us that we were under arrest!

He told us that we had to pay twenty thousand Tanzanian shillings (about US $12) for the "offence" or the vehicle would be impounded.

We were to appear before a Magistrates Court the following day. The charge was to be: "Attempted theft of a vehicle destined to go to Zambia and illegally diverted into Tanzania."

We were told that there was a gang of thieves who were involved in this racket.

After a protracted discussion with the English speaking policeman, the other officer who was of a higher rank, spoke to his junior in Swahili, which we could not understand. It looked like he was telling him that we could be let off after showing them our Zambian passports and the relevant documentation.

The junior officer then came into the back seat of the vehicle and closed the door behind him. He said, "Now my friends, say something!".

At first, we could not understand what he meant by "say something". After he repeated the sentence several times, we realised that he meant.

He was given a ten thousand Tanzanian note, which he quickly put in his breast pocket. He was all smiles and said, "Thank you my friends, greet people in Zambia and make sure you do not get lost again!"

Have you thanked someone who has corrected your mistake which could land you in deeper trouble if you went "off course" any further?

Remember next time someone corrects your mistake to "say something " or thank you !