In Memory of Wachen

He lived a life of drastic contrasts. A life of love and war, of poverty and wealth, of fear and self-determination.

My husband, Wachen Kimbundu Vieira, was born in Luanda, Angola in 1977, two years after the start of a civil war that stemmed from a revolution, a war that continued until four months before his death. When Wachen was six years old his mother told him: "Sweet son, this country is only made for you to die. You must find a way out and I cannot help you at all." From that moment Wachen forged a strong relationship with God, despite not being able to find the God he knew existed in any of the churches that dominated his ghetto. He just felt.

Wachen used to tell me that in Luanda, landmines are like breakfast, they happen every day. Once, he was sent to the market to buy bread and was caught in the crossfire of his embattled city's streets. He stood stock-still behind a tree as bullets blew off the branches over his head.

At age twelve, he witnessed the murder of his best friend by an army general on the street in front of his building. He quit going to school when someone finally explained colonization to him, and he realized that the Portuguese he was speaking was the language of his oppressors. After that, he and his friends devised their own language: a mixture of Kimbundu (his father's native tongue), Portuguese, and words they simply made up. That is when he changed his name from Antonio to Wachen. In his language his name means "Last Born."

When Wachen was fifteen, his family scraped together enough money to buy him a plane ticket to Portugal. When he arrived in Lisbon, immigration officials turned him away. "You're too young", they said, "you have no money". Wachen was deported back to an Angola that was at a forty-year height of war.

Wachen spent his days hiding from soldiers who would kidnap him and force him to fight, always looking for a way out. Wachen's father owned a bungalow in Luanda that was empty. Wachen asked him to sell it so he could have money to go to South Africa, but his dad was busy saving his large family from the horrors of war in the countryside and said no. Regardless, Wachen had a plan.

With his mother's blessing, Wachen arranged for a businessman to type up a deed to the bungalow. Wachen took the document to his father and told him it was a consent form for Wachen to get a motorbike license. His father could not read Portuguese and signed the form. The next day, Wachen sold the bungalow for $4,000 and left Luanda with two friends.

Travelling south through Angola was extremely difficult, soldiers controlled the roads. Eventually the boys made it to Namibia, and nine months after leaving Luanda the three attempted to cross the South African border, accompanied by another Angolan boy they had met in Namibia. South Africa would not grant them entry. Left with no other option, the four boys decided to risk it all and brave the Orange River, the raging, crocodile-infested boundary between Namibia and South Africa.

In the early morning hours of Christmas Day 1994, first one, then another, plunged into the furious water. Wachen waited in Namibia while his friends swam before him. For Nello, the boy that joined the group in Namibia, another day was not meant to be. Wachen watched Nello drown in front of him, and his body get washed away by the current before diving in himself. The river tore away Wachen's clothes that were tied around his chest. He emerged on the South African side completely naked, save for a pair of shorts. Without speaking a single South African language, he and his friends hitch-hiked to Cape Town. I met him there six years later. He was a refugee and homeless.

After one week of knowing Wachen I asked him to marry me and move to the United States. He finally agreed to leave his beloved Africa and come with me to America because he wanted to pursue a career as a poet and hip-hop MC. I knew Wachen for two years and I watched him make music every day. He was a universal person, as at ease with a homeless guy on the street as with rich, white, CEO-types.

Wachen taught me about God and about humanity. He showed me what it takes to greet the world every day with joy, no matter what.

I am grieving the loss of Wachen with every cell in my body, but I find comfort in the beauty of his life. My husband was killed by an evil man out of hate, but what his killer doesn't know is that he could never end our love. Today Wachen is in heaven with his mother, and his message reverberates in the hearts of the people he touched all over the world.

- Jennie Hastings Vieira

Home | One Love | Give Thanks | In Memory | Contacts