Dear country men and women, although the famous Titanic ship sunk 100 years ago and almost 30 years before I was born, mine is a similar true love story with Mshalala, a South African beauty.
Dear country men and women, although the famous Titanic ship sunk 100 years ago and almost 30 years before I was born, mine is a similar true love story with Mshalala, a South African beauty.
Growing up during World War Two and my father being a soldier fighting the white man to recover his ancestral continent exposed me to many travels along with him whenever he was posted to the next trenches.
I started travelling with him in my mid teens after my beloved mother became one of the first African women to volunteer with the Red Cross in the Far East.
One bright morning in the 1950s, his battalion that was stationed on Malindi Island (East Africa) was supposed to sail to Mozambique for reasons I don’t know but definitely to smell some gun powder. I was looking forward to the voyage, the first of only three I have had at sea.
It was the largest "house” floating on water I had ever seen. And as a teenager, I was mesmerized by everything that I saw but the mean looking soldiers with their green metallic helmets were scarier. However, seeing my father as part of the team calmed my nerves.
The voyage from Malindi to the docking harbour would take two weeks and off we started a journey that would later earn me a rebuke from my father for flirting with this young girl from Shaka Zulu’s land.
Molangha Mshalala was in her early twenties just a few years my senior since I was 19 years but being the only young people on the ship, we struck a bond immediately and I will say it was one of the most memorable bonds I ever struck in my over 50 years shooting career.
Mshalala was an apartheid refugee in Nairobi living with her mother. Her dad had failed on several attempts to join them from Cape Town.
As luck would have it, I was on the same seat with this holy dove of a human being. After a few hours of nervousness in each other’s presence, as the principle is (although it is not scribbled on a stone) I broke the silence with "Hi, I am Shooter….Sharp Shooter!”
I want to blame my parents for this name which many people take for a joke and thus never take me serious. Upon hearing the name, she laughed it off and hammered a nail into my ego.
"Look, if you want us to have a conversation you don’t have to be ridiculous,” she said. I was confused by the two words in her statement "us” and "ridiculous”.
Well, I pulled out my school identity card and that is when she believed and offered an immediate apology and off we rolled.
She told me about their misery in exile and how her father failed to come over and now he had joined other Africans at the infamous Reuben Island. As told me of her sad tale, I subconsciously began to offer more physical affection and consolation.
Two days went by with much progress but the body language between us was enough to assure me that our ship would be another titanic of sorts though I was praying it did not capsize and indeed it never.
One night the sea was so rough that she felt nauseated. A neighbour (a good neighbour) on our left asked me to help my "sister” outside for some fresh air and everyone including my dad saw me "helping” and when they saw her condition, they commended me for being a good young man. Actually my dad’s friend even suggested that I am brave enough to be a fighter.
"Shooter, I didn’t want to throw up, I just wanted to be out here with you!” Holy son of Mary, it was too good to be true. That night we gave each other comfort beyond my nineteen years.
This would go on for one and a half weeks before my dad caught me pants down (no pun intended).
That is the day I received the harshest punishment from my father. A decision was taken that Mshalala and I be separated, never to see each other until the end of the voyage. I never saw my Mshalala again to this day.