Written piece
The Unbreakable Stitch
Yvonne Musukuma
Zambia
About this piece
Growing up in Twapia, Ndola, I lived Katongo’s reality,carrying schoolbooks in sugar bags and dreaming of Hillcrest. But my father, a welder, taught me the true thread: resilience isn't just surviving; it’s the joy of family around a brazier. Unity is our greatest wealth.
In Twapia, the morning does not break; it is stitched together by the sound of sweeping.
Katongo wakes to the rhythmic sh-sh-sh of her mother’s broom against the red Ndola dust.
She is the second of eight, a silver link in a long family chain. Her schoolbag is a discarded ten-kilogram sugar sack.
She threads her notebooks into the plastic, the crinkle sounding like a morning secret as she knots the handles tight.
“Help me with the basin, Katongo,” her mother calls.
Together, they begin the walk, threading their way out of the compound.
They leave behind the chaotic tapestry of Twapia, the sharp scent of charcoal smoke and the vibrant, fraying edges of roadside life.
As they cross the invisible border into Hillcrest, the world changes. The air grows quiet, filtered by the high, green hedges of the rich.
Katongo feels like a loose thread on a fine suit. As her mother moves from gate to gate, offering bundles of green rape and tomatoes, Katongo watches the Hillcrest girls and admires them deeply. The girls step into gleaming SUVs with leather bags, heading to schools with paved playgrounds.
Katongo tucks her plastic sack behind her back, dreaming of a life where the fabric of the day never tears.
But the real thread of their story begins when the sun dips.
Her father returns from the workshop, his overalls smelling of burnt iron. He spends his days threading arcs of blue electricity through broken steel, welding the world back together for a friend’s small business.
He earns very little, his hands are scarred, and his back is a map of weariness. But as he reaches the dusty edge of Twapia, his stride lightens.
From his pockets, he pulls the magic threads; a small twist of newspaper filled with warm fritters and a handful of sweets.
“Father is home!” the younger ones shout.
In that moment, Katongo sees the resilience in her father’s tired eyes, the quiet strength of a man who refuses to let the world break his spirit.
To him, the satisfaction of those sticky smiles is his true wage. He doesn't just weld metal; he welds a family.
As the charcoal in the mbaula (brazier) begins to glow, the rich houses in Hillcrest grow dark, lit only by the cold, blue flicker of televisions.
Behind those high walls and electric fences, parents are often away, flying for careers, leaving behind a silence that feels like a lonely tear in a garment.
“They have the fine cloth in Hillcrest,” her father says, his voice a warm thread in the dark, “but they have no one to sew it with. Here, we are the thread.”
Katongo looks at her family, the messy, loud, beautiful quilt of them. In the laughter that erupts over a shared sweet, she realizes that family is the only currency that never loses its value.
They are connected not by what they lack, but by a shared hope that tomorrow will be stitched as tightly as today.
She realizes that from Twapia to the furthest corners of the world, people are the same.
We are all just trying to keep our threads from fraying. We may be poor in pocket, but we are a masterpiece of connection.
Tonight, by the fire, Katongo’s life feels like a masterpiece, held together by the strongest thread of all: the fact that they are together, and they are one.