Born 1945 but doctored my years adding 4 years to say that I was born in 1949 so that I would appear younger and be able to get identity documents.

I came into Zimbabwe 1954 alone after my brother who was working as a maize miller in Banket where he had sent me a telegram to come and join him in Zimbabwe. He had found him a job as a cook at a newAly established hotel in Karoi.

I went to Karoi and in 1957 went to work in Kariba at another hotel there. I worked there for 5 years and went back to Malawi in time for the country’s independence in 1964.

Came back into Zimbabwe in 1966 coinciding with the start of the liberation war. I was staying in Chinhoyi by then doing various jobs.

As the war intensified, I was caught up and called up by ZIPRA forces in the Karoi area and fought for them for 7 years until independence.

In 1980 that when I was able to take an ID for myself and my wife with the symbol Alien. There was a general call up for everyone to sort their identity documents.

On asking why I had not obtained an ID before, I told them it was difficult to do so under the Smith regime, which needed us to first go back to Malawi and get birth certificates which ironically were not produced/given in Malawi.

We only came here with the Passes or chitikinyani, the small blue form that we were given in Malawi by the Boma before migrating to Zimbabwe.

I also deliberately avoided getting an ID because of fear of conscription into the Rhodesian Army to the extent that I distorted my real age to avoid conscription. I added 4 years to my actual year of birth from 1946 to 1949.

It was given when one turned 18. It had your name, age and district of origin.

Went back to Malawi in 1981 and came back same year and have never returned since then.

I had a first wife from Malawi but we parted because of the unceremonious way in which our first child died at her rural home in Malawi. I just heard that the child had an eye infection and died and got pissed off and did not ever return to Malawi.

Now all my relatives, parents and friends (makoro) in Malawi have died and have never gone back.

My brother in Banket also died and buried him here alone.

Then his children from Malawi came in their luxurious cars and took away his money and properties.

They also took away my passport promising to get it formalised or renewed and return it but never came or posted it back.

I had to go to the Malawian embassy in Harare but they were saying they needed $150 and the process would take very long. So I just gave up and decided to live without Malawian passport.

I came by train which I boarded in Blantyre. My home area is Kalembo and we travelled by bus to Blantyre got into a train – Limbi, Tyoro.

Came through Mozambique and faced serious problems at their border. The officials took away our clothes, goods and other things during searching.

In the aftermath of the land reform life was totally transformed because our white employer left for South Africa in 2004

We have been staying here since then doing piecemeal jobs and practising subsistence agriculture. When the new settlers came in they occupied most of the fields in the process allocating a small portion of the farm to the remaining farm workers.

However, some of us who had been of long service managed to get better land deals. I was allocated 10 acres of land whilst my eldest son Sidi got 4 acres.

Basically, farm workers brokered land deals with the new black settlers.

It is from these pieces of land that they have been growing tobacco as a cash crop on a small scale supplementing their meagre salaries that they occasionally get from the new farmers.

Over the years, these farm workers, because of a lack of a rural home and failure to return to Malawi due to family commitments, the former commercial farms have become their retirement homes where they practise A2 farming.

The land reform opened up numerous opportunities for some of these migrants.

We are now independent small-scale tobacco producers in our own right. We share the old farm equipment and resources during the tobacco season and produce a few bales of tobacco for sale at the end of the season.

In situations where a new black entrepreneur occupied the farm, farm workers remained as employees but under poor working conditions.