MWAPE MWENYA, Lusaka
LOSING his limbs in adulthood was a bitter pill to swallow. Today he is a small-holder farmer fending for his family, struggling, but getting by.
Hudson Matabula, 76, is a conservation peasant farmer who grows maize at Matabula Farm in Chief Nkole’s area in Kapiri Mposhi. The grain he produces is mainly for consumption, though not enough to meet the family’s consumption needs.
After his wheelchair broke down a few years ago, Mr Matubula walks on his bare knees. That is how he navigates through his farm on scarred knees.
His life took a drastic turn one Tuesday afternoon in 1992 when he was returning from town to his Matabula Farm, which is 14km from Kapiri’s central business district.
He had boarded a light truck along with four other passengers.
However, he had an altercation with the truck driver which almost cost him his life.
He says while on board the truck, he got engaged in a conversation with the other four passengers, giving the driver an impression that the five were travelling together.
“All the four passengers disembarked from the vehicle before me. Apparently they had not paid. I didn’t know at the time (that they didn’t pay) until it was my turn to alight, that’s when things turned sour between the driver and I,” he recalls.
As far as the driver was concerned, Mr Matabula was supposed to pay the fares for the four other passengers because, from their conversation, they looked like they were travelling together.
Mr Matabula, however, tried to explain to the driver that he only met the other four aboard the truck. That did not sit well with the driver, who in a moment of madness, almost killed him.
“When I attempted to get my bag from the front (seat) through an open window, when I reached down to pick it, the driver rolled up the window CLICK TO READ MORE