LEWISTON – When Godfrey Banda moved to Lewiston from Zimbabwe in 2001, he wasn’t sure he’d stay.

He wasn’t used to the cold.

He missed his big family.

The culture was different; no one got his jokes.

Today, he’s glad he stayed. He’s able to help keep his sister and four brothers in the southern African country of Zimbabwe alive.

Banda, 36, works in the Freeport warehouse of L.L. Bean and sends most of each paycheck to his family. He couldn’t do that, he said, without his wife, Lewiston native Donna LeBrun. He met her in 1999 when he was a college student and she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Zimbabwe.

“My spouse deserves most of the credit,” Banda said. “If I was on my own, I don’t think I could manage the help I’m providing.”

For his brothers and sister, the help is “huge. It’s life or death.”

The money helps them buy food, without which they’d be malnourished. Zimbabwe has suffered from an AIDs epidemic, malnutrition, a corrupt government and a major cholera outbreak. Electricity and safe water are scarce. Hospitals don’t have medicine.

“Right now, things are the worst they’ve ever been,” Banda said. “Every time I went back, things were getting worse. I’ve never been scared of home. But the last time I went back, I got scared.”

Banda grew up among a big, extended family. Many cousins, aunts and uncles lived within walking distance. On Christmas and New Year’s, they’d get together at his grandfather’s place.

The last time he went home he visited a line of graves. “People are not there anymore.”

The oldest of six children, Banda’s father died in 1999, his mother in 2005. “I call myself the father, the mother and the aunt,” he said. In his country aunts act as counselors. He is that counselor. With a $5 phone card, he talks to his family for an hour once a week.

He tells John, James, Handson, Isaac and Mirriam how proud he is of them for being strong, for holding the family together. He tells them things will get better.

Banda graduated from the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College in 2005 and has many friends here, some of whom went with him on one of his trips home. They encouraged him to hug his dying mother and tell her he loved her, something men don’t do in his culture, he said.

He asked his mother if he could hug her. She said yes. “It was the first and last time I hugged her as an adult. It was huge,” he said.

He and his mother were close; they could talk about anything. She’d be pleased to know he’s now helping his siblings, he said.

Do you know someone who deserves to be recognized for the many good things they do for others in our communities? Contact Mark Mogensen at 689-2805 or at [email protected].