OFFSHORE: Until the horizon

Introduction

Lord knew that on November 10, 1992, a baby would be born into the Bigo family.
Seventeen years later, our family was trimmed. There was me, my dark-brown mother, and my light-skinned sister.

I had olive skin, a dark dot under my left eyelash, and a diamond-shaped body. I didn't have to go to the gym to get hard, bulging biceps. I worked on piecework. My biceps were naturally huge and most big men considered me the true embodiment of a fighter, but I had never fought them to get that definition.

We were a poor family and could not even afford a grain of sugar. We had to rely on maize cultivation on our traditional land.
I was a good example of survival and was the breadwinner in place of my father.
Neither my mother nor my young sister ever spent a coin on bread, but I would bring home cassava, sweet potatoes and sometimes red groundnuts.

I would say I brought food to the table, but in reality, I brought food on bamboo mat because we didn't have a concrete table.

My beautiful sister picked fruits very easily. I encouraged her to climb the mango and peach trees when there were no boys around (who could peek up her skirt).

When spring came, I would pick these fruits for her and fetch water from the borehole so that she could groom herself, wash the dishes, wash her few clothes and have water to drink. My life was like a stone; it was hard and I couldn't deny it.

In his final days, my father was so weak that he was smaller than me. He had legs like toothpicks, and I knew I had to work twice as hard as him every time we tilled our small plot with borrowed tools. He was a poor Portuguese man with a bit of fishing experience and I was kind of proud of it, and even though nothing seemed to be going well, I told him I was proud of him.

I missed him, but my sister missed him so much. She would usually ease the emptiness when I distracted her with her favourite game, bawo.

My sister and I stayed at my father's lakeside house, miles from my mother's parents, because my father paid Lobola so that he could marry my mother (which meant he bought us children too). But no one explained to me why our family seemed isolated as if we had no relatives. And looking at the poor conditions I grew up in; I thought that Lobola must have made my father go broke, or it was just my opinion.

Mattress was my best friend from age two to ten. I often suffered from malaria. Another horrible incident occurred at night when I fell into a well. Luckily my screams were heard and my neighbour and geography teacher Mr. Zinyemba, who I thought was an angel, pulled me out with a rope.

I loved to have fun. I enjoyed playing childish games with my sister. Traditional games: Chipako, Filabo, and Phada. We played with a bunch of teens at St. Augustine Catholic School. This school helped me get distinction for Physics, Math, Geography, History and Biology. I cried because I got a credit for English. Then I cried because I didn't get the chance to go to college due to financial difficulties in my family. But overall, I was grateful to Father Thomas for funding my high school. I couldn't blame him for not helping me go to college.

Speaking of fish, there were lots of them in this green area, and I loved that, but even more than that, I loved the fact that it was almost surrounded by a lake that appeared crystal clear and blue when the moon was shining, or the midday sun was shining.

We were lakeside people. We ate Chambo (the luxury fish in landlocked places) for breakfast.