J. G. Jesman

mr kaminga is no more

His passing was unexpected. I still think he was a fine teacher. That white patch just over his hairline — almost like a crop-circle at the edge of a black field. It was so perfectly round it could have been stencilled on. I asked him about it once. He said — deadpan, ‘I woke up one morning and there it was, wisdom!’ The man could joke but he was far too serious for laughter.

My first awareness of his ‘vulnerable side’: he drifted into my office, teary-eyed.

‘What is it?’ I said.

 ‘I need to sit down.’

I gave him a bottle of water. He sipped. Grunted (the gamut of his emotional expression). Muttered to himself. And then he left without saying a word.

The syllabus can be overwhelming; a lot of topics had yet to be covered at the time. I labelled it a mild panic attack and asked him to go home and rest.

As the Academic Standards Advisor of our school, Central Private, it is my job to manage teachers. There was a vacancy in the English department after a member of staff was romantically involved with a male student. National exams were looming, students were panic-stricken. When Mr Kaminga’s CV landed on my desk, it was a great relief. His references checked out — though, a few people described him as ‘eccentric.’

On the phone, he said he was forty-three years old, unmarried, from Dedza. A graduate of Chancellor College on bursary. The reason for wanting to leave his current job: ‘The directors have no vision, and those without vision shall perish.’ I called him in.  

I’m a science teacher. Language is far from a forte but I understand the value of communication; many of our students fail due to poor vocabulary. Mr Njoka, a bold old man with suspicious eyes, and the head of the languages department, asked most of the interview questions. Describe your preferred teaching style. Learner-centred. Explain why English is such an important language. — I found Mr Kaminga’s political twist on this a little off-putting: ‘English — as wonderful as it may sound — is still the last, infrangible link on the colonial chain. Like wa Thiongo has articulated, let’s use it but we mustn’t allow it to take precedent over millions of years of Africa’s own linguistic heritage.’ Ironic, I thought, because when asked his favourite novel he said Animal Farm. Nothing from the Chichewa canon. Mr Kaminga was clever and well-spoken to the point of dryness. While explaining the similarities of the protagonists’ wives in The Pearl and Macbeth, I’m not ashamed to say I switched off. The directors thought he was a ‘real visionary.’ So, of course, we hired him.

The kids gave him the name Chiminga, meaning large thorn. His quirkily disruptive nature was an endless source of amusement: from the tight little jackets that exposed too much forearm; the chromatic bowties and socks; two biros and a pencil in his chest pocket at all times; and his manner of addressing even the students as ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam.’ His voice was gentle but when walking along the hallways one could hear the passion in it, ringing.

Mr Njoka — who was never convinced of hiring the man in the first place — soon came to complain. ‘Mpuzitsi ameneyo ndi obooka mmutu,’ is what he actually said. That teacher has a hole in his head. ‘For three weeks he’s ordered the form-twos to copy out the Steinbeck text, word-for-word, into their notebooks. Those kids can barely comprehend a sentence let alone a paragraph. His lesson plans are basically copy-copy-copy. What type of teaching is that?!’ At first, I ignored the issue (I thought it was jealousy) but after more colleagues expressed their concern, I called a meeting with the languages department.

Cocks in a cage; the two men were at each other’s throats. ‘What do you know about literature?’ Mr Kaminga yelled at the HoD. The barrel-chested Njoka was unfazed, telling him whatever he was up to was insane, to which Kaminga replied: ‘Teaching as though an Anglo-Saxon were in your skull, telling you how to interpret, how to feel, is insane. These texts have to be understood from our context, an African context. It’s not an issue of answering Paper I and Paper II. I know what the hell I’m doing!’

The HoD was resolute. ‘This is a business. If you want to waste anybody’s time I suggest you find a government school. Our directors want results!’ It was the senior section’s teacher, Mr Chule (a man who was named after and resembled a frog), who winnowed his views into their ears. He suggested taking over the junior classes himself while moving Mr Kaminga to the senior section where there wasn’t much to do on Macbeth but run tests.

Since that incident, I monitored his actions and made notes of all his quirks. His germaphobia, for example. How he wiped his hands on his trouser pockets whenever he touched something. Out of fear of Covid, he used his own chalk and dusters, never the school’s. His hands were washed so frequently that their texture was either pigskin, or a wet fish.

One afternoon he barged into my office, spooked. ‘Don’t think I’m strange,’ he said, as though a conversation were already running.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I feel… like…’ He hugged himself. ‘Someone’s after me.’

‘You can’t blame management for keeping a close eye on you.’

‘No-no-no,’ he exploded. ‘Not that!’

I made supplicating gesture with my hands, ‘No offence.’

He took a deep breath.

I got him a bottle of water and asked him to explain.

‘There is someone following me,’ he whispered. ‘And now… they’re — it — he — she — whatever, is in my home!’

A few days before this encounter a woman had died at Blantyre market. The public story was that she was ‘nfiti,’ a witch, who convulsed at the sight of a vendor selling bibles. In fact, she was epileptic. The point is: neurosis, or psychosis, walks a very fine line with witchcraft in Malawi. Discussing ‘seeing things,’ on campus could easily start rumours of Satanism at our school. I shut him down, but made room for the chirping birds outside the office to relax his mind.

The next day, the principal got a call from the local hospital saying one of our teachers had checked himself in due to exhaustion.

Mr Kaminga stopped attending classes altogether. He didn’t leave a note, and there was a dead tone for several days that I rang him. I prepared a termination letter to post. Then abruptly, I received a call at 2 a.m. on a private number.

 ‘Hello? Mr Kaminga?’ I said, groggily.

‘No.’ The voice was hot coal.

‘Who is it?’ my wife whispered.

 ‘Mr Kaminga is dead. You hear me? He is no more.’ They dropped the call.

My wife crossed herself in shock, and I was… just…dumbstruck.

In the morning I walked to the mortuary at Malowena Central Hospital to confirm. They said nobody of that name had been registered. I called Dedza Hospital who said the same thing. I called his next of kin. They too were looking for him; they didn’t believe it. Allegedly, he had impregnated a young girl in his village, and his wife had been abandoned with no money for their child. Entering the school gates, I bumped into a teacher who was close to him.

‘Mr Nyau, I’m sorry for the news,’ I said. He looked puzzled. ‘Actually, boss, I wanted to inform you that I called by Chiminga’s house last night. There was candlelight but no answer.’ He made a drilling gesture with his index to his temple. ‘He needs help. People say thugs are after him. Money.’

The house was an adobe-coloured cube with a silver crown shimmering in the daylight. From the veranda, I called for him. Silence. When my rapping on his door grew to a consistent banging, his eyes peered out of the window. ‘Mr Kaminga, I can see you. Please, let me come in.’ Finally, the locks whispered and the door grumbled open. 

It was dim in the house, and foul-smelling, like a boy’s dormitory. There were household items scantily arranged: a little plastic bin here, a chair there, a lichelo, but not a sofa in sight. No television. And no radio. Just gloom and silence flourishing. He pointed at a blue plastic chair, and I sat down.

He had dyed his hair black, hadn’t combed, and his wisdom patch was missing. A red chitenje, with the face of Inkosi Gomani IV wrapped over his thin frame like a toga. A skinny Socrates.

‘Mr Kaminga, sir, how are you?’ I asked.

His eyes were glazed over. ‘What I told you the other day — about being followed…’ his face scrunched-up in fear of judgement, or perhaps out of regret for bringing it up again.

‘Let’s just forget it,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s the thing you see, I can’t. There is someone here with us.’

I looked around. ‘Is someone after you?’

‘Not after me, with me. Here. In these walls’

I didn’t know what to say. ‘I suppose, that… God… is… with each of us.’

He laughed so hard his head bobbled back and forth like a doll’s. ‘The most heinous crime of colonialism — you know what it is? Religion. Specifically, Christianity. I tell you that I’m seeing things and you tell me it’s God!’ He shook his head.  ‘No, I’m afraid it isn’t god. Nor is it the devil. This is something a lot more real and maleficent.’

From the kitchen he collected a plastic bucket to use as a stool. ‘We never talked about the type of books you like, sir,’ he said, sitting across from me.

I wanted to confide in him; tell him I’m not a religious practitioner per se; that I’m a scientist and I go by reason. What I said was: ‘Not much time to read these days.’ 

After another bout of laughter — the second time I had ever seen him genuinely laugh — he sneered, ‘Academic Standards Advisor, eh? A.S.A. What do you know…Okay, about Nietzsche — you’ve heard of him?’

I nodded.

‘He went mad,’ he said in a sombre tone. ‘After seeing a horse brutally whipped. Do you believe that — that, I’m mad?’

‘Was it you who called me last night?’

 ‘I can’t remember, sir.  But I’m under duress. The people. They have wrung me dry. I’m as insipid as that horse of Nietzsche’s.  If I ever told the ‘professionals’ of these things that I see, I’m sure to be as inhumanely handled as our four-legged friend.’ His head sank into his arms. ‘No more.’

‘Things have changed, sir. We don’t chain people up for being — having poor mental health. We no longer drug them. Or remove their dignity. Don’t be afraid.  They’ll treat you well. You’ll be back in no time. What about your students?’

He shrugged. ‘Tell them the thugs have finally caught up with Kino; they’ll know what I mean.’

After I left, I called his family. His older brother forced him out of the rented house and dropped him off at Zomba Psychiatric where he starved in protest of his detainment.

When I heard the news I couldn’t help but feel guilty and responsible for my part. The students, directors and faculty raised some money for his burial. Upon clearing his house, the landlord found a blue folder of his writings and sketches; his academic prowess summed up in thirty sheets of paper. I keep it on my desk. There was a poem in honour of George Orwell.   

I can no more explain what happened than a scientist could tell us how invisible stuff bumped into each other and created the universe. There are forces at hand. Agents acting between the surface that we can’t quite control, a kind of magic or witchcraft you could say. Or perhaps not. 

J.G. Jesman is a Malawian-British author and animator. His debut novel, Chisoni, Conversations with a Stranger on a Plane about Life and Death, was published by Penguin Random House, South Africa in May 2022. His short stories have appeared on Fairlight Books’ featured short stories, Water~Stone Review and elsewhere. J.G. holds a Master’s Degree in Film and Media, and has worked mainly in the videogames industry. He founded a blog in 2014 centered on the human condition, exploring aspects of religion and spirituality. He is particularly interested in the pathos of things and most of his stories deal with that theme.