WHEN Lawrence Yombwe, 62 enrolled at Evelyn Hone
College, as a 30-year-old young man, back in 1988, he had but one thing on the
back of his mind – to find a life companion.
His mission there was very simple.
“I told my friends that I am going to Evelyn Hone to
find a woman to marry. I always used to tell myself that if ever I get married,
it must be to an artist, or somebody that does something art related. Apart
from furthering my studies, I went there to find myself a wife,” he says.
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| The couple on their wedding |
But rewinding a few years, Mr Yombwe never saw himself
marrying.
In fact, for all he cared, he was already married - to
art. “I never thought that I would get married because I love to do my work.”
He adds: “You know, in my reading and my understanding
of things, an artist is already married because the things he produces are regarded
as children and so I used to say you can’t fall in love twice because I was in
love with my art already.”
That wasn’t the only thing he was scared of.
“I also used to read about how women are disappointing
men and a lot of those stories from the Bible about how men had fallen as a
result of a woman,” he says. He adds: “So me, I thought I was smart. I used to
think men who got married don’t think properly. That’s what I had in my mind.”
He wasn’t going to feel like that forever.
He says, a time
just came when he felt there was something missing in his life. Then it dawned
on him, that it was a woman.
“…and at that point, I told myself, ‘she must be an
artist too’ or something close,” he says.
God then granted him his wish when he found Agness
Buya Ng’ambi who was a year ahead of him at college – Evelyn Hone College
studying an Art Teachers diploma course.
Approaching her wasn’t easy.
“When I arrived at Evelyn Hone College, I met some of
my friends there and some of them were in their year. They were surprised to
see me there because they wondered what me, an accomplished artist was doing in
college studying something that I am already good at.
“I told them that I was there to look for a wife and
they were all shocked and told me that I was searching at the wrong place,” he
says.
It only took him about six months to spot Agness and
fell in love instantly.
“It was not love at first sight. I saw her, she was
already ahead of me in second year. In my class, nobody met the specifications
I was looking for because I had always envisioned someone from my tribe
[Bemba], with long hair and so on,” he says. Agness on the other hand was the
exact opposite. She is Tumbuka and at the time had long hair [weave].
“But still, there was something about her that just
took my breath away,” he says.
After having done his own investigations and a
background check on Agness who was the only female student in a class of 16, Mr
Yombwe was then sure that she was the one.
“I remember a time when we had a combined class, I
took a picture of her drawing without her knowledge of it and it was only later
when I went to my room to examine it even further that I realised the potential
she had,” he says.
Then he started plotting his move.
“I sat down thinking to myself that if I am going to
make her mine, I will need to devise a totally unusual way. In my mind, I was
convinced I had a lot of competition. In fact, I thought to myself that she
probably has a boyfriend already,” he says.
Agness remembers the words her husband used on her to
propose.
Remembering the words he used on her while they sat on
a hinge somewhere at Mozambique Hostel, she says, “he told me that he doesn’t
mind if he was number 10, all he wanted was to marry me.”
Since he really wanted to marry her and he didn’t want
to take any chances, Mr Yombwe used that one date he secured with her to hit
the nail on the head and make his intentions known.
“…And I thought you were very crazy,” Agness says
while looking at her husband.
Mr Yombwe admits and adds: “I didn’t mind because mine
was for marriage. That’s the relationship I wanted from her. I told her to
think about it because I was not in a hurry.”
After two to three months of no response to the
proposal, Mr Yombwe went back to Agness and told her, “You shouldn’t take so
long because you might lose me.”
From there on, one thing led to the other until they
started dating.
“It wasn’t easy because in the process they were some
other girls who were interested in me and when they learnt that my interest was
going to go to her they started coming to me and talking to my friends saying a
lot of hateful things about her,” says Mr Yombwe.
He remembers how one person told him that she was
barren and would not bare him children.
“Another one told me she already had a boyfriend and
he was old. But all those never got to me,” he adds.
The two eventually got married on 5th January,
1991, soon after Mr Yombwe graduated from Evelyn Hone College in 1990.
The two tied the knot at Regiment Catholic Church and
the reception was held at the American Dome in Lusaka Showgrounds.
Their early married life wasn’t easy equally. It too,
just like their relationship had its own challenges.
Like how everybody thought Agness, a teacher then at
Matero Boys Secondary School would not conceive.
“People would make fun of us and others would even
suggest very awful things,” remembers the Yombwe’s.
But they kept their trust in God, and in the third
year, Agness conceived but the child died while in the womb.
The two have been married for 28 years now and they
have biological two children together.
Yande was born in 1994 and Kondwani was born in
1998.The couple in Livingstone where they own and run Wayi Wayi Art Studio and
Gallery.
“It feels like yesterday. We thank God and all the
counselling [Mbusa] we went through prior to our marriage,” says Mr Yombwe.
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