Her book is ready to be edited, but her hand isn’t strong enough to type yet. Her left side still feels heavy. It’s been seven months since Chulu Chansa, founder of the Africana Woman platform, award winning podcaster and transformational speaker, had to press pause as she, at the age of 41 suffered an ischemic stroke. “I’ve had to change my goals, I’ve had to put things on hold, and I’ve had to learn to rest.”
We sit down by a table in a shady spot in the lush “Kumushi Gardens”, and despite being early June the lawns are emerald green, the birds are chirping in the trees surrounding us, hiding the fact that we are not far from the bustling Kabwe town center. Last time I visited Chulu she was lying on her side on a mattress in her bedroom, she needed a caretaker to help her with basic everyday needs and a wheelchair to get around, so it is very encouraging to see her walk and talk with some level of ease.
Born in Lusaka, her mother’s work as an educator took them to Ndola and eventually Kabwe. But she says; “Kabwe was never home for me, it was a place to go and rest on my school breaks”. Chulu later spent time in both the UK and US and during an architecture course she had a project where she had to design her dream house. When she came home on a visit, she found her mother building the very house she had designed. “It was a very special feeling” Chulu tells me with excitement, and she goes on to explain what makes the house different from most houses in Zambia. “It was built with interlocking bricks made from an anthill right on this property and it has skylight windows bringing in so much light to the center of the house”.
After six years in administration at a Lusaka based institution, Chulu felt it was time to move on, there was simply no place for growth. Says Chulu; “I believe if you’re not growing, you’re dying”. This was during the pandemic, and she needed to find something that could work under the circumstances. She returned to Kabwe with her son and moved into her mother’s house that was now empty, as her mother had moved to live with Chulu’s sister in Canada. She decided to open their beautiful garden to the public and she has since hosted a variety of events including “paint and sip”, private dates, team building workshops and even weddings.
Then one day in November last year, while journaling on the sofa in her home office, Chulu suddenly dropped her notebook. “I felt a tingle in my left foot that quickly started moving upwards and my worry was it would get to my heart.” Chulu tried to get up but her body wasn’t responding. “I thought, let me get to my phone because I want to call somebody, let me get off the chair. But nothing is happening. In my mind, I know the instruction to the body is get off the chair. But nothing is happening.”, she recalls. “I managed to fall onto the ground, like I toppled onto the floor. And then I started shouting so that my son could come and get me because he’s on the other side of the house. How he heard me was really by God’s grace. Because I mean, he can sleep. He’s a teenager, isn’t it?” She laughs as she continues; “Eventually he managed to drag me. I don’t know if it was by the legs or the arms, but he dragged me to the bedroom. It was a mess.” Through a relative they spoke to a nurse who told them to immediately get Chulu to a hospital. Buth there was one problem; who was going to drive them? Her trusted taxi driver “uncle Noah” was called and came through with urgency. Chulu tells me how he showed up without hesitation and how she suddenly wasn’t able to talk to him. “He walked into the room and found me on the floor. And he said; ‘madam, what’s going on?’ I said, I need to go to the hospital, let’s go. But at some point, in this interaction, my speech went funny. I knew what I wanted to say in my head, but then what’s coming out of my mouth is completely different. It’s not matching. And I started laughing and my son was looking at me like, is this woman going mad?”
“Uncle Noah” got Chulu to Kabwe General Hospital where doctors and nurses sprung into action. “I remember I was lying there and the doctor had this needle. It was a really long needle, you know, and he was holding it. I looked to the side and then I looked back and the needle was stuck here!” Chulu gestures to her hip. “And I cannot feel a thing, I absolutely cannot feel a thing. But it was in my body. I thought, wow!” It was clear then that she had suffered a stroke, later diagnosed as an ischemic stroke.
Chulu went on to have several tests and scans done before she was finally admitted. At this point all she wanted was to see her son. But the nurses kept telling her that she needed to stay calm for the tests and that seeing her son or other family members would upset her too much. Chulu remembers; “I kept asking her, oh, I want to see my son. I want to see somebody, anybody. But she kept refusing because I was crying, but I wasn’t just crying, I was wailing. And they kept saying, ‘no, you have to stop crying. Because if you cry, your BP is going to go up, and it will get worse.’” When one of her friends was finally allowed to see her, she reassured Chulu that everyone was there for her, her son was being cared for, she assured her that she was not alone in this. “Then I started wailing even more” Chulu says with a chuckle.
On her first night in the hospital Chulu did not have anyone to assist her; “I think that’s when I started to grasp what life with half your body is like.” Chulu recalls the struggle to only have one functioning hand; “My right hand is my dominant hand but now let me try and wash my hands. How am I going to do that? I can’t open the bottle to pour water. Nothing. Then my ward neighbour’s bedside helper saw me struggling, so they came and helped me wash my hands and put the food on the plate, then I ate. They were very lovely, they really looked after me.” Another of Chulu’s friend, a friend of thirty years, drove from Lusaka immediately she heard about the stroke. She stayed with her for days, and helped her find a caretaker for when it was time to go back home.
Her experience in the hospital and with her follow up tests was anything but desirable. “We got the CT test results and then nobody in the hospital could read the results, so we had to get the results to Lusaka for somebody to analyse it.” But at first, they couldn’t even find the results; “The hospital is just madness, there’s a book where they’re supposed to record the results, the book went missing. I’m just watching them thinking; are you guys serious?”. She has also had to have several MRI scans and still needs to have at least one more to monitor her recovery.
Chulu has had help from her large community of women, many that she knows thru her Africana Woman network. A network that once began as a humble blog and podcast, and was a project born out of a season of depression. It was her way of mentally getting back on her feet through mentorship, and by constantly pushing herself to do new things. Her podcast went on to win multiple awards, and it grew to be something bigger as she hosted live events and online talks. Throughout her recovery many of the women have shown up for her, supporting her spiritually, emotionally as well as financially. “It’s just been from people’s generosity that I’ve been surviving. I don’t even know how we’ve got this far to be honest.”
Once back at home, Chulu immediately began physiotherapy; “Physio is very hard, but I think, because I’ve worked with a coach and used to go to the gym, I was mentally prepared to go through with it.” But she says; “It was painful. I would stand for a minute, and I’d have to sit down because it was just too painful. You know when you go to the gym for the first time and you feel the muscles that you’ve never felt before and you’re like, whoa, I have those muscles. That’s what it felt like.”
I ask Chulu if she ever felt despair and she tells me of how her neighbour who has had two strokes inspired her; “She came to visit me in the hospital and she was telling me about her experience. And I think when I saw her, I just felt encouraged. If she can do it, then I can do it. Seeing her was very encouraging in the hospital.” At first Chulu used a wheelchair to get around, but at one point the doctor told her to stop using it, which would force her to walk. “Everyone around me was just pushing. We really pushed. We pushed physically and mentally.” By March she let her caregiver go, not because she was completely independent yet, but because she was worried she was getting too comfortable. “I’m very adaptable to princess lifestyle. It’s too comfortable now. And I said, no, no, this laziness is not helping yourself in the end.”
One of the things Chulu had to put on hold was her book; ”I wrote a novel and at the time we were in the editing phase. But up to now I can’t type, I used to be fast at typing, but I can’t do that. So, I’m just thinking, Oh God, I have to do it with one hand!” she says holding up her stronger hand. “But the interesting part about it”, she continues, “the book itself is about a blind man. Someone who’s differently abled. I’ve had a true-life experience about what that’s like. I now empathize more with that experience.”
At the beginning of June Chulu started a 30-challenge with the Africana Woman, after a friend encouraged her, and she is enjoying being back in her online community. But she also understands that she has a long way to go before she can feel like her old self. “It’s like half of the body is very heavy. I can’t run and I can’t dance. The one thing I’m very upset about is not dancing because I used to do Latin dance, but I can’t even dream of doing it right now. I try every now and then, and I’m like, nope, not yet. Not yet. Still got a way to go.”
When the doctors told her that the recovery period after a stroke is a year, she didn’t want to hear it, but she says, “somehow the time is just flying by so much, I don’t even understand how I’m here.” And she has come to accept it. “At the end of the day, it’s happened. I have to trust the process every day. I was talking to a friend of mine and she told me; ‘I hope you’re learning to rest.’ And that made me stop and think because I was such a busybody, and I said, okay, let me lean into this resting thing.
Tea is poured as I admire the vintage teapot, birds chirping in the treetops above us. Chulu’s son baked the biscuits; they are so delicious that I help myself to another one.
“I have to be patient with the small steps” Chulu says and takes a sip of her tea. “Eventually it will come back. I’m waiting for the day I’ll wake up and just feel like there’s no heaviness and I can just walk with ease. It will come. Yeah, that’s the day I’m waiting for.”