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.
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