Photo credit, JEFF OVERS / BBC
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Cesar Kimbirima
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A bullet had passed through his mouth and neck. Cesar Kimbirima lay in the long grass, thinking of his family while awaiting death.
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He had been shot before, of course. Three times in fact – on the leg and the arm. But this time it was much worse.
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And so, as the sky began to turn and he lost consciousness, he thought it was over. His life would end in the tall grass, while his blood would spill into the dry Angolan land.
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Over 20 years later, the dying soldier pours pints into the pub he runs in south London. As he chats with punters and gestures to babies in their strollers, there is no trace of Cesar Kimbirima’s former life.
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No clue, unless you take a close look at his neck. Because there, just above his neck, is the scar: a reminder of the bullet, the coma and the leak.
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Cesar Kimbirima was born in Angola, in southwestern Africa, and grew up among 11 siblings. Her mother was a schoolteacher; her father was a nurse and electrician.
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His family lived in Huambo, the third largest city, and others spread across the country. And, despite the long civil war, he loved school and was a happy child. But in 1990, when Caesar was 17, his childhood ended.
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“The army put me on the streets,” he said. “It was like that before. If you were tall, you would get caught by force. Without your father’s consent, without anything.”
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He was not allowed to collect his things. He was not allowed to say goodbye to his family – whom he then did not see for three years. But none of this was a surprise.
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“As a kid back then, we always used to say, ‘If they catch me, it’s over.’ Because we knew how it was. So when you get caught, You do not have the choice.”
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Could he have run away? “If you tried you could get killed. So you better just stay there, sit on the ground and wait for the truck.”
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The Angolan army did not care – or could not care – for its soldiers. During six months of training, the conscripts received one meal a day. After training, when they were sent on a mission, they could receive two packets of cookies, a can of condensed milk, and a tank of water.
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These rations were to last 30 days.
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“We have learned to survive,” recalls Caesar. “If you have a plastic bag, wrap it around the leaves and seal the end, the tree will sweat. And when it starts to sink, it’s water.”
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He was first affected at the age of 18. “In the leg,” he said. “We used to camp [pour protéger les villages pendant la guerre civile]. The left forces came down and attacked us. We were children, we had no experience. “
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Cesar was shot twice more, in separate incidents, before the attack which nearly killed him.
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Photo credit, JEFF OVERS / BBC
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“Normally they [les forces de l’opposition] were coming in the middle of the night, ”he says.
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“This time they got there around 8 pm. We heard a noise. One of my coworkers started running, so they started shooting. And we fired back. And then I got really cold.”
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Although he didn’t realize it at first, he had been shot in the mouth.
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He gave up his weapon – knowing he would be killed if the enemy found him with it – and continued to run. After 15 or 20 meters, he lies down on the grass and feels the blood running down his back.
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“I thought of my family – to whom I couldn’t say goodbye,” he says. “I thought, this is it – my life is over. Like that – another young man left. That was what I was thinking. This is the last thing I remember.”
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Caesar woke up in a hospital – “I didn’t believe I was alive” – and was treated for two or three days. But then he fell into a coma, where he stayed for five months. When he woke up, the doctor told him he would not walk anymore.
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There was good news. After nine years in the military, he was demobilized – they didn’t want a soldier who couldn’t walk.
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But there was also bad news. He was 26, had no money and didn’t know how to find his family – which now included the mother of his child and their three-year-old daughter. He left the hospital with nothing but a pair of wooden crutches.
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“It was a survival situation,” he says. “I begged for food and money, and a place to sleep.”
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Eventually, he met soldiers from the United Nations peacekeeping mission. “I think they were American – they spoke English,” he says.
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“They knew all the young children in this situation. They knew I was hurt. They questioned me, found out what had happened.”
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The Americans found him accommodation in a center for wounded soldiers: “A hundred people, seriously injured, people without legs.”
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After reuniting with his family, he told them he was planning to leave Angola.
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“Mentally, I couldn’t stay,” he said. “Whatever you say against them [le gouvernement], they will get you.
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And that’s when the Americans saved him again.
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“They said, you know what, we’re going to help you get out of the country,” he said. “They organized it all – I didn’t spend any money.”
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He doesn’t know the details – or if this was an official plan. He didn’t even know where he was going – Africa, Europe or elsewhere. But it didn’t matter. Six months after his release from hospital, he left Angola and its civil war. Even now, Caesar remembers the words of the American who helped him.
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“Now I understand what he was saying,” Cesar says.
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“He said ‘Young lives can’t be wasted like this.'”
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It turns out that Cesar, his partner and his young daughter received plane tickets to the UK, via Lubango to Angola and Kenya.
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They were safe.
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But as they began their journey to England, three major problems remained.
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They had no money. They didn’t speak English. And they didn’t know anyone there.
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After arriving in the UK, the young family – now refugees – were taken to the Croydon asylum processing center, south London.
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They were sent to hotels and inns, before Croydon Council found them a place to live.
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Cesar still didn’t speak English – “I had a little dictionary in my pocket,” he says – and so he started a Basic English course at Ambassador House in Thornton Heath.
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From there he took another English course at Croydon College, before starting restaurant training.
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He wanted a job – “I can’t depend on the government, I don’t work that way” – and, through the employment center, learned that there was
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vacancies at the Richmal Crompton pub, part of the Wetherspoons chain, in nearby Bromley. But it’s fair to say that he was unfamiliar with the chain’s cheap and cheerful dining style.
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“I had taken my chef’s set in a briefcase – knives and so on,” Cesar says.
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“The woman who interviewed me said, ‘What is this?’ I told her it was my boss’s service and she laughed, I didn’t understand why.
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“She took me into the kitchen and said – ‘Look, this is our kitchen. It was a microwave, a deep fryer. At first I was shocked! But then I thought. – I’m fine, I’ll do it. “
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He was not a permanent resident of the UK and therefore needed a Home Office waiver. But in January 2004 he started working in the kitchen at Wetherspoons – his set of knives stayed at home. “I felt really welcome,” he says. “Good pub, great atmosphere, great company.”
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Three years later he moved, rose through the ranks and, in January 2014, became manager of the Brockley Barge Wetherspoons.
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Her 17-year-old son Joe also works in the pub (when he’s not in college), as does her 23-year-old daughter, Duanie. She has just graduated in politics from Aberystwyth University.
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At the end of 2020, Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin visited the pub and was so impressed with Cesar’s story that he asked the company’s magazine to tell his story.
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For the first time, Barge customers have seen the life course of the man behind the bar. Some people even came from other pubs to pay tribute to him.
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“I had people who had never been here before,” he says. “They saw the magazine, they just wanted to say congratulations, knowing my story.”
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Photo credit, Wetherspoons News
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Cesar’s story featured in Wetherspoons News, the company’s magazine, earlier this year
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Since arriving in the UK, Cesar has returned once to Angola in 2014 to obtain documents. “It was one of the scariest things I have experienced,” he says. “The flight went well, but the airport was scary – soldiers everywhere, guns everywhere. When I got on the plane to come back, I was so relieved.”
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So his future is in the UK – and he intends to continue working hard at Wetherspoons for his family and four children, the youngest of whom is four.
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“When you are a kid, if you have a really good life, you probably don’t feel it,” he says. “But if you don’t have a good life – or if something happens, like when I was forced to join the military – you know that. I don’t want to see my children face the same problems. . I want to offer them much better. “
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And with that, the manager of the Brockley Barge leaves his office, walks down the stairs and returns to the pub: chatting with the punters; greeting babies; the scar on his neck barely visible.
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