He Fed Eight of Us From the Dust

By Mpundu Valerie

Educational illustration only: This story is based on lived experience in an asbestos-mining community. Names are used with consent. Characters and images are intended for educational purposes.

We grew up where dust was normal.

The white dust settled on our sadza. Sometimes, you could taste it before you saw it.

We played near the dumps, our clothes covered in dust. Nobody wore masks back then. Nobody explained the asbestos risk to us in a way we could understand.

We thought if dust was going to kill you, it would kill you that same year. We did not know that asbestos-related diseases could remain hidden for decades before showing themselves.

My brother Sfiso had worked at the mine for more than 30 years. The mine fed us, clothed us, and gave us a home. His sweat paid our school fees and kept food on our table.

Sfiso told me I couldn't lecture him on health hazards as long as I didn't have children to look after. He said that Advanced Level education wasn't enough for me to lecture him. It was then I knew my place.

Despite our differences, Sfiso and I were close. He took me in when our parents died. By then, he had only four children his third was my age. I fit in, and traditionally I was their father.

You know, having grown up together, they would tease me, "Kababa kadiki so, ahh ngaatange akura" even now, as adults, they still refuse to call me "ubaba omncane". We are literally the same age. To them, I am still Sbusiso.

My brother remained at the mine. The whole family was well provided for.

In 2022, he started complaining of persistent chest pains and shortness of breath. A lot of assumptions and opinions were thrown to the table -tuberculosis. Other schools of thought had asthma. Nobody anticipated the great danger beyond their own diagnosis.

He treated every cough with traditional remedies and cough syrups. Sfiso never liked visiting the men in white coats and stethoscopes around their necks. In the mine, if you go to the clinic, they mark you as weak and cut your shift. Sfiso couldn't afford to be weak.

I advised medical attention, and he bit my head off, "For over 30 years I've looked after you, how can you say the mine is making me sick? I took all 8 of you to school through searching the crust of the earth, today you want to tell me otherwise." I knew not to ever bring it up.

We watched as this dry cough would not go away. He started deteriorating in weight and had this inexplicable general body weakness. His belts had to make new holes. He extended his hours in bed. He stopped going to the growth point in the evenings. He stopped eating meat, saying it was getting stuck.

Whenever I asked, he would say, "Maybe I'm trying for another child." My brother was one man who would give you a befitting response you wouldn't dare question any further.

In the last two months, he couldn't lie flat. He slept sitting up on three pillows, holding his chest. He would wake at 2 am struggling for air, we would hear him outside coughing so we wouldn't worry. His voice became small.

He taught me to be a father to his children, yet I failed to be a son to him when he was sick. I let him say he was fine because I was scared of his answer.

He nursed his own path to the grave.

The day we finally sat down, he openly said, "A lot of stigma surrounds us men, I have to suffer in silence rather than open up. With the way my health is deteriorating, I doubt I will live past this Christmas. I feel the boogeyman is coming to collect. Whatever it is, I can't fight no more. I gave you guys a life, and I am proud of each and every one of you." It felt like he was writing our own epitaphs.

Realising the imminent danger, I drove him to hospital. The doctor turned the screen to me his lungs were squeezed by water, he couldn't expand. The lining was thick, white, with fluid around it. He called it pleural effusion.

That is when we finally heard the word that explained everything.

They diagnosed him with mesothelioma, a cancer of the thin lining that covers the lungs and chest wall (pleura).

The doctors explained that tiny mineral fibers from the earth's crust, breathed in many years ago as dust, can stay in that lining for 20-40 years before causing thickening, fluid build-up and tumor growth. It is not contagious. Only imaging and biopsy can diagnose it.

After diagnosis he was in and out of hospital to drain the water from his chest. Each drain gave him a few days where he could breathe and talk properly, then the water came back.

He lost more weight, his eyes sank, he couldn't walk to the toilet alone. The last weeks he lived in a chair, not a bed. He stopped speaking about the mine and started speaking about us who would look after his children. He died struggling to breathe, but at peace that he had fed eight of us from the dust.

His death left us with grief, questions and memories we could never erase. It also left us with a responsibility to speak about the risks that had been part of our lives for so long.

We cannot say that every cough in a mining community is caused by asbestos. We cannot diagnose a disease from symptoms alone. But we can insist that persistent symptoms and a history of asbestos exposure are taken seriously.

A persistent cough, chest pain, unexplained weight loss, or shortness of breath deserves medical assessment, particularly for anyone who has worked in or lived near an asbestos-mining environment. Such symptoms can have different causes, and only qualified health professionals can investigate them properly.

I wish I had understood that sooner.

I wish I had found a way to make my brother listen without making him feel that I was questioning the years he had sacrificed for us.

Most of all, I wish he had known that asking for help would not have made him weak.

He had already proved his strength by raising us, educating us and giving us a future.

He did not need to destroy himself to prove it.

Even now, his children refuse to call me ubaba omncane.

To them, I am still Sbusiso.

But I carry the memory of their father differently now. I remember the man who stood between eight people and hunger, the man who worked through the dust, the man who kept giving even when his body was asking him to stop.

Sfiso fed eight of us from the dust. Our duty now is to make sure that the next generation understands the danger hidden in it.

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Disclaimer: This story is for educational and awareness purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Anyone experiencing persistent chest pain, breathing difficulties, an ongoing cough or unexplained weight loss should seek medical attention.

Asbestos exposure and mesothelioma