Skip to main content

Mwinilunga: A beautiful Zambian town and a special town for me


Mwinilunga! Mwinilunga is 856 km from Lusaka and 256 km from Solwezi the North-Western provincial capital. It is famous for pineapples and  honey. But most interestingly it is 67 km away from Ikelenge where the source of the Zambezi river is. Zambia is named after the Zambezi river. Mwinilunga has the Lunga river running through it. 


It is here that my dad Josiah met my mum Betty. An unlikely place for a couple like them to meet considering that they both hailed from very far away. Dad hailed from Choma which is 1,035 km away and mum from Mutoko which is 1,485 km away. Mum told me that dad was persistent in his marriage proposal. Her close friend encouraged her to accept the marriage proposal. She added "Wamene uyu kapokola ndiye azakusunga" which means "This same police man will look after you".



Mum at the time was working as a nurse at the Mwinilunga General Hospital while Dad was working as a policeman. So this was a meeting of two public service workers who met and started a love relationship far away from their families. They later got married in Kitwe in November 1967. I was their first child born in February 1968 followed by late Linda was born in March 1971 followed by Catherine and Kenneth in June 1972 and late Tendai in July 1983.

Whenever, I visit Mwinilunga, I am reminded that is where my dad's and mum's love story began. An unlikely place and yet a lovely place. It is amazing to see how God brings two people together from different backgrounds from distant places.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Joyous Celebration

One of the "to do things" I have always wanted to do since I started going to South Africa in 2004 was to watch Joyous Celebration perform live. Who is Joyous Celebration? Joyous Celebration is a gospel music outfit of local South African and international artists that have produced gospel CDs and DVDs since 1994. Joyous Celebration is a dream that was born when Jabu Hlongwane, Lindelani Mkhize and Mthunzi Namba who had met in concerts and conventions in and around Durban toyed around the idea of collaborating. In 1994 a show dubbed Joyous Celebration was held to  celebrate the peaceful transition of South Africa when it became independent.  Each year since 1994 Joyous Celebration has been releasing an album as a CD and DVD around March/April. The release is followed by tours in various South African cities. Since 2004 I have made sure I have collected all the CDs that have been released to-date, the last being Joyous 17 (a triple CD offering) and double DVD offering. T...

Micahel Eaton: Biographical Sketch

Michael Eaton was the fourth pastor of Lusaka Baptist Church from 1976 to 1977. He was a good expository preacher/teacher and prolific writer of many Christian books including commentaries on a number of books of the Bible. Michael Eaton was born in 1941. He came from a very ordinary family in London. He became a Christian (late 1950s) when he was a teenager through a youth group in an Evangelical Anglican Church. The Billy Graham campaigns in London may also have played some part in his salvation. He did his Bachelor of Divinity at Tyndale House Cambridge. He then entered the ministry as a curate (assistant minister) at an Anglican church in Surrey, England. In 1967, he resigned from the Anglican ministry on theological grounds and joined an Evangelical Free Church in south-west London. In March 1969 he moved to Zambia where he and his wife Jenny joined Lusaka Baptist Church and later became a deacon and an elder. From early days in the church he taught an adu...

Revisiting My School

Travelling to Kafue On 23 October 2008, I travelled to Kafue Secondary School in Kafue. Kafue is in Lusaka Province of Zambia. It has Kafue river (one of Zambia's four major river's). The town has been known for the now defunct Kafue Textiles and Nitrogen Chemicals. Other places of interest are Kafue River Cliff (a boating club), Kafue Gorge (where electricity is generated) and Kafue Secondary School. The town has not underone much change over the years. Most of the infrastructure is very old and in astate of disrepair. And yet the town is very close to the Capital city (45 km)! Memories of Kafue Secondary School The school is owned by the United Church of Zambia which works in partnership with the government. The school is 42 years old, though it existed as Kafue Trades Institute before Independence. My trip to Kafue Secondary School was in order to attend a funeral of Maureen, wife to my cousin Paulson. The first memento of my school (where I did my form 1 - 5 from 1981 to 8...