 |
| Hellen |
Most people believe Hellen D.B. Zang, the widow of the late
Wazirin Jos, Dalo Da D.B. Zang is one foreigner the man met somewhere abroad
during one of his business or leisure trips. The News Tower Magazine had the
privilege of hearing from the beautiful mother of five exactly who she is. She
was born in Foron of Barkin Ladi Local Government Area. Her father was a mining
engineer from England and worked with the Foron Extended arm of the Bisichi
Mines. Her mum was a Shua Arab from Borno State. Beromland has never been
strange to her. She is hence, a Nigerian to the marrow.
The fellowship of mining workers was the link that sparked
off friendship between her father and the most prominent Berom man. At the time
she met D.B. Zang for the first time, she was about five. They never met until
after a long period of about fifteen years when she was already a woman. Her
memory of that meeting is still fresh in her mind. It was on a Good Friday at
the Standard Bank now First Bank. Her family had just returned from England and
Da D.B. Zang was aware of that. The family companionship continued and two
years later he proposed marriage to her. That was it.
Mama Hellen was partly a pupil of St. Lukes Primary School
Jos and St. Lois Primary School Shendam where they were transferred to and
which was known as the Lowlands at the time. From there she went to St. Lois
College Bompai, Kano. A few days after the completion her West African School
Certificate Examination in 1967, she became Mrs. D.B. Zang.
She comes from an enviable family background and birds of
the same kind must inevitably belong to the same colony. The conversation that
lasted for about twenty five minutes painted a photo of a woman who considers
herself to have married a man who was, in the actual sense, a true salt of the
earth. When her husband eventually lost the battle against cancer his body was
placed at the morgue and it was time to go home and break the sad news to
relatives and friends, her son James Kim who came to pick her thanked her for
her patience for staying by his bedside throughout the almost two years period
of the man’s battle against the ailment. For a moment she understood that Kim
was still ignorant of the fact that it is a duty every loving wife owes her
husband and which she is supposed to carry out with pride. In her own case she
also considers herself lucky to have been by the sick bed of one of the most
dignified, honoured and revered human beings. She never complained or showed
any sign of weariness throughout the period.
Madam says that so much have been written about the virtuous
qualities of her spouse since he passed on but that such commentaries have not
been over flagged and will never be. She believes that such human beings are
rare and that certain people may replicate aspects of his nobility but that it
will be difficult to find one person who combines all these qualities. People
come to her and stress the need for at least one of his children to live his
kind of extra-ordinary life but she knows it will not be possible as she
believes her husband was some sort of angel sent to help the needy. It is the
reason why, she believes he lived to be an octogenarian so as to enable him to fully
accomplish his primary mission on earth.
People still find if difficult to come to terms with the
reality of his transition. Whenever they have problems they still come to the
house and walk to the base of the stairs. Then suddenly they will stop as if
struck by something. After sometime they will walk up the stairs and into the
sitting room and burst into tears. Such expression of profound love according
to mama goes to show that the pain of his absence transcends the borders of his
family but the immediate community and the nation he worked to serve in his
capacity as an individual. Her husband helped the indigent even on his sick bed
in England through phone calls and as such they had every reason to reason to
feel so sad about his sudden departure.
Mrs. Zang also talked about one of the most exclusive
qualities of her late husband, the fact that he was a man with amazing
meekness. Throughout more than forty years of her marriage she had never seen a
furious Dalo. Rather he will be the one to apologize to his offender. This was
a mark of his humility despite his towering status. He was a man of un-parallel
level-headedness who was able to handle his wealth refusing to let the wealth
to handle him. “We were blessed and could have built one of the most glamorous
castles in the heart of the city and move in but he chose to remain in his
ancestral home in Gyel Jos South throughout his life”, she says.
Madam also corroborated the image of a detribalized Nigerian
with which he was held among the Muslims despite his Christian religious
background. For many years her husband bought traditional Hausa attires, which
he shared to his Moslem friends during the Sallah festivals. He often bought as
much as thirty to forty with matching Zanna Bukar caps ordered from Borno
State. He was a man who walked passed religious barriers with unsurpassed as
though they never existed.
Thus Dalo D.B. Zang was an epitome of the awesomeness of God
Almighty and madam counts herself lucky to have spent her life with him as a
husband. Hence she played her role of a wife without compromise. Ever since she
married him she never let him step into the market for the sake of buying
something for himself even once. It was her responsibility to go to the market,
buy the fabrics and sent for the tailors and she lived up to it.
His epitaph should have read, “D.B .Zang (1927-2008): the
man who came to this world and lived for others”. Extra-ordinary men like her
husband are rarely born into this world. Women who spend their life times with
such men are among the luckiest. The possession of a rare gem inevitably makes
you unique. This is apparently the message of Mama Hellen D.B. Zang.
