KACHEMA JOE
The Boy Who Belonged to the Cattle
By Rodgers Mangwela
A BOOK OF ENDLESS CHAPTERS
If my life were a book, it would be a book of endless chapters and verses, a story that would never be fully understood by anyone who read only its opening pages. Every person I have encountered, every place I have visited, and every experience that has left a mark on my heart has added something to its pages. Some encounters have been brief, like the passing shadows of birds across an afternoon sky, while others have remained with me long after the people themselves disappeared from my everyday life.
This chapter belongs to a boy whose story has never quite left me.
His name was Kachema Joe.
He was a cowboy, an African cowboy who walked the riverbanks of the Mulungushi River long before I understood that the most remarkable stories were not always found in books. Some were unfolding quietly in the lives of people whose names would never appear in newspapers, whose photographs would never hang in public buildings, and whose struggles would remain unknown to the wider world.
Yes, you heard me right. Kachema Joe was a cowboy.
But he was no cowboy from Texas.
He had no horse to carry him across the plains, no broad-brimmed hat to shield his face from the sun, and no gun hanging from his waist. He had none of the things I had come to associate with cowboys from the books I read and the television programmes I watched.
His horse was the dusty ground beneath his feet. His weapon, if one could call it that, was a long stick. His territory was the grazing land that stretched towards the Mulungushi River, and his companions were forty cattle whose movements demanded his attention for much of the day.
I first encountered this world in September 1999.
Until then, my understanding of rural life had been limited by the little I had seen and the stories I had heard. Mulungushi Agro introduced me to a different rhythm of existence, one in which the day was shaped by the land, family responsibilities, animals, and traditions passed from one generation to the next.
For a young person encountering this environment for the first time, the experience was overwhelming. It felt almost as though I had travelled backwards through time, into a part of Zambia where life moved according to rules I had not yet learned to understand.
The landscape fascinated me, but it was the people who made the strongest impression.
And among them was a boy who seemed to belong to another world.
His clothes were worn and stained by the demands of his daily work. His hair grew into a thick, tightly curled Afro, and his yellowed teeth showed whenever he smiled. On his feet were old black plastic gumboots, the kind that had seen better days but continued to serve their purpose.
He carried a long stick in his hands, ready to direct the cattle when they wandered too far from the herd.
There was nothing glamorous about his appearance. Yet there was something striking about the boy himself, something that could not be explained by his clothes or the rough conditions in which he lived.
He was young, handsome in his own way, and full of the life that belongs to children before the world has completely convinced them of their limitations.
But childhood was a luxury he could not easily afford.
While other boys of his age played games, attended lessons, and imagined what they might become, Kachema Joe had cattle to look after. The sun could rise over the grazing lands and set beyond the distant trees without releasing him from the responsibility placed upon his shoulders.
At thirteen, he was already living a life that demanded the discipline of a grown man.
The adults around him saw a responsible boy who knew his duties. The cattle depended on him, and he rarely disappointed those who entrusted them to his care.
What they may not have seen was the child hidden beneath that responsibility.
They may not have noticed the dreams that accompanied him along the riverbanks, or the questions that occupied his mind while the cattle grazed. They may not have understood what it meant for a boy to watch his friends walk to school while he turned in the opposite direction.
I did not know all these things when I first encountered him. I was still young, still learning how to look beyond appearances and recognise the stories people carried within themselves.
It would take time for me to understand that Kachema Joe was more than a cowboy.
He was a boy whose future had been placed in the hands of tradition before he was old enough to understand what that future might cost him.
And somewhere beneath the name everyone knew was another name, one that belonged to the child before the cattle, before the nickname, and before the expectations of his community.
His name was Joseph Habimba.
This is an African Story of Childhood, Culture, and Stolen Dreams. A fictional book by Rodgers Mangwela, draws inspiration from true-life events to bring readers a compelling African story told across 16 chapters, divided into four parts.
Dropping on Amazon kindle on 1st November 2026.
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