Scars that may never heal

Keegan Njovu will never forget that horrible day in 1997.

“I was seven years old and we were extracting honey from the ground. I was with my friends, Joe and Mwansa. Suddenly there was a huge explosion and that is what I remember last.”

Joe died on the scene and Mwansa died on the way to University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka. Keegan was the lucky one, walking out of hospital 18 months later.

Today he still carries the physical and psychological scars of that grenade explosion. His stomach was ripped apart and how he survived is a mystery.

Around that same time, two other young children picked up a grenade and decided to open it to discover what secrets it held. They took a hacksaw and went to work on the grenade.

It exploded in their faces. That grenade was a remnant of the October 19, 1978 bombing of Freedom Camp. When Rhodesian soldiers bombed the camp, some grenades did not blow up. And they remained liked that for years.

Nineteen years after the bombing, Keegan and his friends were to be victims of an atrocity committed during the liberation struggle. Now minding a poultry project and married with two children, Keegan says the psychological scars may never heal.

“Joe was born in 1987, Mwansa in 1986 and myself in 1990 and we were close buddies. It was not our first time to look for honey, actually it is a pastime for most boys our then age.

“Maybe the fire that we placed in the hole to scare the bees blew the grenade, maybe it was the digging we were doing. We will never have the answers but what I know is that I will never see my friends again.”