a voice, piped in like a loudspeaker from heaven. It said: “These things will destroy you. Turn to me.”
When my father awoke in the morning, his entire body was trembling like a baby bird’s. The dream, plus all the advice and warnings of the past week, seemed too great a message to ignore. He woke up my mother, who lay sleeping beside him, and said, “My wife, today I’m turning to God. I’ve seen the signs, and now it’s time to change.”
That same morning, instead of going straight to work, my father stopped by the church to see Reverend JJ. The preacher was in his office.
“I’m here,” my father said. “I’m ready.”
My mother didn’t recognize this new man who began coming home each night after work, this man who suddenly had lots of money for food and medicine for his kids. She was so happy, but still couldn’t believe her good fortune. Each night for weeks, she’d still say, “Come here!” when he walked in the door, just to sniff his breath.
WHILE MY FATHER HAD been traveling, trading, and boozing, his older brother John had built up a booming business. Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s when President Banda was building all the big estates near Wimbe and Kasungu, there was lots of work for the local men. Building contracts were like gold, and Uncle John happened to know some of the managers who were hiring these subcontractors. Working as a kind of headhunter, John became the middleman, finding the right skilled, trustworthy crews to do the jobs. Because his judgment was always good, the estates paid him handsomly.
After several years of working for the estates, Uncle John saved enough money to start a farm imports business, buying and selling maize seed and fertilizer to the local farmers. He even had a small storefront in the trading center. This business became successful, and after a few years, he sold it and bought fifty-nine acres of land from Chief Wimbe, which he used to grow maize and burley tobacco—a kind of mild tobacco that’s cured in the open air under handmade shelters.
Since Uncle John had money for good fertilizer, the tobacco from his farm was top quality. His fields never had any weeds and the leaves were deep green while growing, drying like the color of milk chocolate with fine traces of red. His tobacco fetched a high price each year at the Auction Holdings Limited in Lilongwe, where the farmers sold their hundred-kilogram bales on the auction floor. One good bale of tobacco would pay for seventeen more bags of fertilizer, enabling his farm to stay strong, given the good weather.
In 1989, when I was one year old, Uncle John came to Dowa for a friend’s engagement party and stopped by for a visit. That night he and my father went for a walk.
“Why don’t you come back to the village and farm with me,” John said. “Things are going well.”
“I can see,” said my father. “But farming takes too long. I’ve gotten so used to the trading. How can I start something new?”
“It takes a long time, true. But if you invest that time and just a little money, the payoff is huge. Look what I’m making from tobacco. That kind of profit is impossible with trading. How much are you clearing each month with your rice and secondhand clothing? Five percent?”
“Four percent,” my father said. “Soon I won’t even be able to feed these kids. If I eat, my business suffers.”
“Well, come back home, young brother. There’s a big place waiting for you.”
My father then told John he’d stopped drinking and turned his life to God.
“Then, think of this as a chance to start over,” he said. “Consider this a sign.”
“Okay,” my father said. “You’ve convinced me.”
BY NOW WE HAD three kids (my sister Aisha had been born not long before) and my father saw this as an opportunity he couldn’t resist. A few weeks later, after selling his stall in the market, he strapped all our belongings—our clothes, pots, pans, and the family radio—to the top of a UTM (United Transport Malawi) bus. We traveled four hours north to the Wimbe trading center, where my relatives were waiting to greet us. They helped us move down the road to Masitala village and into a one-room house near Uncle John.
This is where my father became a farmer and my childhood began.
NOT LONG AFTER WE arrived, Uncle John acquired some additional land from Chief Wimbe, so he gave my father a one-acre plot about two kilometers from the house. There we could grow our own burley tobacco to sell, along with maize and other vegetables to eat. Maize is just another word for white corn, and by the end of this story, you won’t believe how much you know about corn.
When we first arrived, Uncle John was busy planting his tobacco, which was the first item that needed my father’s help. My father would wake up early before the first cock and go down to the grassy marshes in the valley, which we called dambos. Because tobacco seeds require loads of water for them to break ground, many farmers plant nursery beds by the dambos where they can easily water them daily. Each farmer has his own plot by the marsh—nothing official with papers or signatures, just a piece of ground you always know is yours. Not only is there water, but the soil in the dambo is deep black and full of nutrients that a little tobacco seedling requires to grow strong.
Making nursery beds is done just before the rainy season when the sun is the hottest. The work is hard and dirty, and my father quickly felt exhausted. During those first weeks, he’d dream of his stall at the trading center, how he used to just sit and chat with friends and customers, how he’d knock off at lunch for an hour to see his family, even take a quick nap before returning to work. It would have been easier to just tell his brother he’d made a mistake and return to Dowa, but my father buckled down and pressed on. He’d seen how much money Uncle John was earning, and he wanted the same for himself. Often he’d work so hard and late in the day that his brother would come looking for him, thinking he’d tripped and drowned in the dambo.
“Take a break, brother,” he’d say. “Leave some for tomorrow. Reserve your strength, you’ll need it.”
“Just a bit longer,” my father would say, his body covered in mud from head to toe.
WHEN UNCLE JOHN HAD visited Dowa and mentioned having a big place for my father, he wasn’t talking about the living arrangements. With five people, our little house quickly became crowded.
After ten long hours of working in the sun, my father would come home and then start working on building our new house. Weekends were also spent this way. The bricks were fashioned out of grass and clay, which was pressed into a wooden mold about seventy-five centimeters long.
To get the clay, my father dug deep pits near the fields that swallowed his entire body. He’d scoop buckets of clay that weighed a hundred pounds, hoist them onto his shoulders, and climb out using steps he’d carved into the wall with a hoe. He’d then cart the pails two kilometers back to the house, dump them, then do it all over again.
After molding the bricks, my father spent days in the valley hacking the long-stemmed grasses to be used for roofing, then tied them into round bales. Sometimes John sent a few seasonal workers from his fields to help with the building, but my father did it mostly alone. After two months, we had a two-room house. Later, he’d say it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
“Well done, brother,” Uncle John said as he passed, joking with my father, who was about to collapse from exhaustion. “This is a good house. You know, every man needs a good house.”
We lived in this house for three years until our growing clan became too big. Before long, there were five kids in our family, with me the only boy. By this time my father had earned enough on the farm to hire some men to construct two new buildings. The first one had a family room and master bedroom, plus a grain storage area. The other building, just across a narrow open corridor, had a kitchen, plus a separate bedroom for me and my sisters.
My bedroom became my fortress against the squabbling girls, a hideaway where I could be alone with my thoughts. I became a terrible daydreamer, partly because as I got older, the folktales of my childhood began to pale in comparison to