Fathers' day advice to a son.... Life has seasons

My son, there is something I need you to understand while I still have the strength to tell you. Life does not owe you comfort. It never has, and it never will.

Life has a way of reminding us that comfort is never guaranteed. It does not owe us ease, nor does it promise fairness. What it does offer, however, are seasons - each with its own lessons, challenges, and opportunities.

As children, we often believe the world is waiting to nurture us. But reality soon teaches otherwise. Some will cheer our victories, yet few will shoulder our burdens. Attention, encouragement, and opportunity are not evenly distributed. The choice then becomes clear: grow bitter, or grow stronger.

 

Preparation is not the world’s responsibility. It is ours.

As a boy, you may discover that not everyone is looking out for you. Some will celebrate your successes, but few will carry your burdens. You may sometimes feel overlooked while others receive attention, encouragement, or opportunities. Don't allow that to make you bitter. Let it make you stronger.

Do not wait for the world to prepare you. Prepare yourself.

Education is important, but remember that your greatest education will come from discipline, curiosity, resilience, and your willingness to keep learning long after you leave the classroom. Read books. Learn a trade. Build skills. Learn how money works. Learn how people work. Learn how life works.

You will grow into a man, and with manhood comes responsibility. Society will expect you to solve problems, provide solutions, protect others, and remain steady even during storms. Whether fair or unfair, those expectations are real. Meet them with courage rather than complaint.

There is no substitute for hard work.

Hard work may not guarantee instant success, but it gives you the best chance of building a life that can withstand disappointment, economic hardship, and uncertainty. Talent may open doors, but character keeps them open.

 

Save when others spend.

Invest when others consume.

Learn when others are distracted.

Build when others are waiting.

One day your strength will begin to fade. Retirement will come. Your body will no longer do what it once could. The income that sustained you may disappear. Many men discover too late that pensions alone are often insufficient to provide the lifestyle they imagined.

 

Start preparing for old age while you are still young.

Invest consistently. Own productive assets if you can. Build multiple sources of income. Avoid unnecessary debt. Protect your health. Your greatest investment is not your car, your phone, or your clothes - it is your future self.

And remember something equally important: invest in relationships.

Money can buy comfort, but it cannot buy genuine love, respect, or family. Be present for your children. Honour your parents. Love your wife. Build friendships. Serve your community. A wealthy old man who is lonely is still poor in many ways.

Sadly, we have all heard stories of elderly fathers living alone, forgotten after spending decades sacrificing for their families. We have heard of retirees struggling to survive on pensions that no longer meet the cost of living. These stories remind us that financial preparation matters, but so do the relationships we nurture throughout life.

 

Do not become bitter because life is difficult. Difficulty is not your enemy; it is your teacher.

Every challenge will either shape you or break you. Decide now that it will shape you.

My son, I cannot remove every obstacle from your path. I cannot fight every battle for you. But I can leave you with this truth:

Prepare more than you complain.

Work harder than you boast.

Save more than you spend.

Learn more than you assume.

Love more than you expect to be loved.

Serve more than you are served.

If you do these things faithfully over many years, you may not have an easy life - but you will have a meaningful one.

And when your own son sits beside you one day, you will pass on the same wisdom that carried you through every season of life.

Because there has never been, and there never will be, a substitute for hard work, preparation, integrity, and faith.

 

The Cost of the Arena: A Father’s Sunday Reflection on the Perceived Rise of the Exceptional

To be a father in the modern arena is to be an accidental mapmaker. You do not ask for the wilderness; you are simply dropped into it, holding a tiny, fragile hand, told that if you run fast enough, you might outrun the shadows. Sunday was Fathers’ Day. Across the radio waves in Lusaka, there were smooth voices praising patriarchs, singing of strength and structural integrity, offering neat, commercially packaged gratitude. But in our house, the morning did not begin with breakfast in bed or an embroidered tie. It began with the beautiful, rhythmic, unbending symphony of my daughter’s morning routine - a sequence that must not be broken, lest the universe collapse into itself. 

She likes to start her day looking for a phone, so she can access YouTube. It can be a bad day if this doesn’t happen. That’s her routine.

In Fredrik Backman’s world, a neighbourhood is an ecosystem of broken people keeping each other safe through stubbornness. We laugh at the man who aggressively sorts his recycling, because if he doesn't control the plastics, who will control the chaos? We laugh to keep from weeping. Lately, I have been thinking about the Ministry of Health’s recent dispatch - a beautifully written, heavily curated piece signed by Georgia Mutale Chimombo. It was an elegant piece of prose. It explained, with a tone of gentle administrative comfort, that autism isn’t spiking; rather, the veil of historical stigma is lifting. It suggested that because we are now enlightened, families are stepping out of the dark, weeping corners of isolation into the warm, embracing sunlight of public health acceptance. It concluded with a handshake emoji. A digital covenant of solidarity. Well, fair enough, Georgia may have had a point. She certainly did. However, I write up did not contain the most important things on the topic she was addressing – Autism itself. Certainly, didn’t resonate with those who are close to it or living it. 

When I read it, I felt a familiar, heavy ache - a mixture of deep gratitude for the public acknowledgment and a cold, survivalist dread. Because while the text spoke of fading stigmas and open doors, my mind immediately drifted to the ledger of our daily reality. It read like a broadcast from the Capitol in a Suzanne Collins novel, where the high-ranking officials paint beautiful murals of peace and unity on the concrete walls of the districts, while the citizens on the ground are forced to fight each other in the dirt for the scraps of basic survival. 

Georgia was just doing a job. Doing it very well and should be commended for a very good job, certainly goes above and beyond in highlighting and autism and creating further awareness. But there is a system behind that refuses to move and do the basics. A system that recognises what needs to be done but doesn’t execute. The result – a health care and community welfare system that isn’t serving the people that it intends to serve. The very Facebook post of 8 October 2025 came with an image of a Neo Natal Intensive Care unit (NICU) replete with a baby on Oxygen in it. 

 *** 

Let us talk about the math of love and scarcity. Awareness is a beautiful, luxury import. It looks stunning on a Facebook feed or an official memorandum. But awareness without infrastructure is a cruel psychological game; it is inviting a starving family to a banquet, handshaking them at the entrance, and then revealing that the tables are completely empty. It is a hollow, academic promise whispered to people who are drowning. 

If you suspect your child is neurodivergent in Zambia today, the public screening apparatus is largely a phantom limb. Most government hospitals simply look back at you with blank, uncomprehending eyes; they do not have the diagnostics, the specialized clinicians, or the clinical hours. So, you are thrust into the private sector, where a formal assessment costs upwards of ZMW 4,000. Think about that number. In a country where bread and fuel dictate the survival of households, four thousand kwacha is not a fee - it is an iron gate. It is a political choice that decides which children are allowed to have a documented identity and which ones are left categorized as merely 'difficult' or 'cursed' in the shadows of our compounds. 

And if you scrape the money together, if you sell what you must to pass through that first gate, you enter a lawless, unregulated wilderness of care. Speech and behavioural therapies are not luxuries; they are the oxygen lines to an autistic child's development. Yet, there is no national registry. There is no official verification system. The market is full of unregulated, self-proclaimed experts, and a vulnerable parent will hand over their last notes to anyone offering a shred of hope. Our special needs schools operate on the thin margins of absolute exhaustion— heroic teachers and overstretched caregivers fighting an underfunded war against crumbling infrastructure, forgotten by the central budget. 

Then comes the ultimate bureaucratic gauntlet: the Zambia Agency for Persons with Disabilities (ZAPID). ZAPID is meant to be our sanctuary, the administrative armour that tracks and shields a neurodivergent individual into adulthood. Instead, it operates like a slow-moving, dark mechanism of institutional friction. Registration takes over a year. And in the quiet, desperate hallways, whispered solicitations for bribes to 'expedite the papers' are common. It is a dark irony: paying a premium to a state agency just to have your child's vulnerability formally acknowledged by the nation. 

*** 

I believe that when the world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful. I told a friend who is a parent of an autistic child, that it is about time we started activism for our children. They may not have a voice, but we shall create that voice. But my activism does not come from a place of pristine political theory; it comes from the quiet of the night, watching my daughter sleep, wondering what happens to her when my arms are no longer strong enough to shield her. It comes from the realization that her identity is not a medical tragedy to be solved, but a human reality that our country is failing to accommodate. Her neurodivergence is a part of who she is, and her country owes her an equal seat at the table. On this year's Father’s Day, I do not want accolades. I want an accountable system. I want the Ministry of Health, alongside the Ministries of Education and Community Development, to look past the beautiful prose of their public relations and fix the broken machinery on the ground. We need an immediate shift from performative awareness to structural execution: 

• Decentralize Autism Services: Establish free, reliable screening and baseline behavioural therapy modules within district hospitals, bringing care to the doorstep of every Zambian household.
• Enforce Clinical Accountability: Create a transparent, public national registry of certified speech therapists, behavioural analysts, and special needs educators to eliminate exploitation. 
• Fund the Frontlines: Direct substantial state funding and strict oversight to special needs schools, modernizing infrastructure and properly compensating caregivers. 
• Digitize and Purge ZAPID: Overhaul the ZAPID registration framework into a streamlined, digital portal to eliminate administrative delays and eradicate extortion. 
• Track to Adulthood: Formulate a comprehensive national autism database to guarantee structural support, vocational training, and housing security into their adult lives. 

To the fathers navigating this specific, quiet arena: I see you. I see you tracking the sensory triggers, fighting the schools for accommodation, and staring at the family budget wondering how to stretch love into capital. We are not tragic figures, and our children are not broken puzzles. We are simply citizens fighting an uncoordinated system, waiting for our country’s institutions to display a fraction of the courage, honesty, and resilience that our children show every single day.

Raising a Child in a World That Cannot Yet See Them

There are two versions of fatherhood.

 

The one people celebrate on Father's Day.

 

And the one many fathers quietly live.

The first version is easier to photograph. It lives in family portraits, church services, matching outfits, and social media posts. It is the father teaching his son to ride a bicycle, walking his daughter down a school corridor, or standing proudly beside children who seem to be following the script society has written for them. 

The second version is less visible. 

It lives in hospital waiting rooms.

 

In endless assessments. 

In conversations that begin with, "Have you considered that your child may be different?" 

It lives in the silence after a diagnosis. 

It lives in the questions that keep fathers awake long after everyone else has gone to sleep. 

This Father's Day, I found myself thinking about that second version. 

Not because it is sad. 

But because it is real. 

And because there are thousands of fathers living it quietly across Zambia.

I remember the first time I began to realize that my child experienced the world differently. 

At first, it was easy to dismiss. 

Every child develops differently, people said. 

She will grow out of it. She will catch up. 

Perhaps they meant well. 

Perhaps they needed those words as much as we did. 

But there comes a point when a parent begins to understand that what they are witnessing is not delay. 

It is difference. 

And difference changes everything. 

Not because your child becomes less valuable. 

But because society suddenly becomes less prepared. 

***

When people speak about autism, they often speak about awareness. 

Awareness is important. 

Awareness is necessary. 

But awareness alone is like teaching people where the fire exits are while the building is still burning. 

Families need more than awareness. 

They need support. 

They need services. 

They need systems that work. 

In Zambia, many parents begin a journey that feels less like healthcare and more like survival. 

You move from clinic to clinic searching for answers. 

You spend money you do not have. 

You sit across professionals hoping they understand your child. 

You discover that assessments can cost thousands of kwacha. 

You learn that therapy is scarce. 

You discover waiting lists. 

You discover bureaucracy. 

You discover exhaustion. 

Most painfully, you discover how alone many families feel. 

***

Sometimes I think autism has not increased. 

Visibility has. 

For generations, families carried these stories behind closed doors. 

Children were hidden. 

Parents suffered in silence. 

Communities misunderstood. 

The difference today is that more people are stepping into the light. 

More parents are refusing to hide. 

More children are being seen. 

And being seen is powerful. 

But visibility without support creates a different kind of pain. 

It is like finally being counted while still being forgotten. 

***

There are moments when the system feels almost dystopian. 

Not because anyone intends harm. 

But because neglect has a way of becoming normal. 

Imagine being told early intervention is critical. 

Then discovering the services barely exist. 

Imagine being told your child matters. 

Then waiting a year for disability registration. 

Imagine being told inclusion is important. 

Then finding schools unequipped to include. 

Imagine being told to have hope. 

Then being handed a bill larger than your monthly salary. 

This is not fiction. 

This is daily life for many families. 

And yet fathers wake up every morning and continue. 

Mothers continue. 

Caregivers continue. 

Children continue. 

Because love has always been humanity's most stubborn form of resistance.

I have met remarkable parents on this journey. 

The kind who would sell their last possession to pay for therapy. 

The kind who travel hundreds of kilometres for an appointment. 

The kind who learn speech therapy techniques from YouTube because professional services are unavailable. 

The kind who cry in private and smile in public. 

The kind who refuse to give up. 

Every community has them. 

You may not notice them. 

But they are there. 

Quietly carrying worlds on their shoulders. 

They are the unsung heroes of our generation. 

***

Fatherhood has changed me. 

I used to think success was measured by titles, qualifications, and achievements. 

Perhaps that is how many of us were taught. 

Now I measure success differently. 

Success is a new word spoken. 

A new skill learned. 

A difficult day survived. 

A smile earned. 

A breakthrough that others may never notice. 

My child has taught me patience when I wanted speed. 

Humility when I wanted certainty. 

Compassion when I wanted control. 

Special needs fatherhood forces you to become a better man. 

Not because the journey is easy. 

But because love rarely asks for easy. 

***

As a nation, we must do better. 

We need district hospitals equipped for developmental screening. 

We need more therapists. 

We need stronger support for special needs education. 

We need disability registration systems that are efficient, transparent, and accessible. 

We need policies that do more than exist on paper. 

Most importantly, we need to stop treating neurodiversity as someone else's issue. 

Because every child belongs to all of us. 

The measure of a society is not how it treats its strongest citizens. 

It is how it treats those who depend on its compassion. 

***

Today, on Father's Day, I celebrate every father raising a neurodiverse child. 

The fathers who worry. 

The fathers who advocate. 

The fathers who learn. 

The fathers who stay. 

The fathers who are tired. 

The fathers who are hopeful. 

The fathers who feel unseen. 

I see you. 

Your journey may not look like the one you imagined. 

Neither does mine. 

But our children are not tragedies waiting to be fixed. 

They are human beings waiting to be understood. 

And perhaps that understanding begins with us. 

One father. 

One family. 

One community. 

One child at a time. 

Happy Father's Day. 

May we continue fighting for a world where every child is seen, valued, supported, and loved. 

Not someday. 

Today.