By Dr Aaron Mujajati
The egg that became you is older than you are, and that’s not just science. Long before you were born, before your mother even finished her Grade Seven exams or learned how to cook nshima properly, the egg that would one day become you was already waiting inside her.
Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, millions of them tucked away like bags of maize in a granary, waiting for the right season.
By the time your mother was a teenager, that number had dropped, but your egg was still there, patient, like a farmer waiting for the rains.
Now, your father’s contribution to the story was a very different affair. Sperm is made fresh, like fritters sizzling in hot oil at the market, quick to appear, quick to vanish. It doesn’t wait around for years; it’s produced in weeks, maybe a couple of months at most.
So when the great meeting finally happened, your mother’s egg was a seasoned veteran, aged like a calabash of mabisi left to ferment just right, while your father’s sperm was more like a bottle of Fanta, bubbly, energetic, and gone in a flash.
This means that when you think about your beginnings, you’re not just the product of one moment. You’re the result of decades of waiting on one side and a sprint on the other.
Your egg was already present when your mother was playing waida or skipping rope with her friends, when she was fetching water, when she was dreaming about her future. And then, one day, it was chosen, released, and met its match.
So yes, the egg that formed you is older than you, and in a way, older than your father’s entire contribution.
It’s a reminder that life is both patient and impulsive, ancient and immediate. The egg waited for decades, the sperm rushed in, and together they pulled off the greatest collaboration of all time: you.
You have heard.
Kalemba November 4, 2025
