Saidi Francis Chishimba—The Photographer Par Excellence

Two weeks ago, on Wednesday morning 16 July 2025, I got a crushing message from Metternick, Saidi Chishimba’s brother. It simply said, “My brother is gone, pastor.” I did not believe what I was reading. I called him and heard cries and sobs. I knew that my dear brother Saidi had gone to heaven. Before long, social media was filled with messages of disbelief and gratitude for his ministry. This went on for the next one week up to the time of his burial. His burial service was attended by thousands of people from all walks of life from right across Zambia, while many others watched the event via livestream. It showed that he touched many lives in his short life of Christian ministry. 

I do not remember when I first met Saidi. On one of his Facebook posts in 2017, he wrote concerning me, “It has been a great blessing to have known this man from the time I was about 15 years old. Today I am 44 years and continue to feed from his giftedness. I have always told him that like Joseph [of Arimathea] was to the Lord, I also have been his disciple from a distance. I was first introduced to Pastor Mbewe by a brother Victor Nyasulu who took me to his place and found it needful for me to know this man. And from that time our friendship has been written in the blood of Christ—Brotherhood!”

 

As I have read and listened to the social media posts and tributes, I have noticed that they have been largely related to Saidi’s love for his wife and daughters, his faithful pastoral ministry in the two churches where he served as pastor, his consistent counselling ministry to married couples, his preaching ministry to youths and children across Zambia and southern Africa, and his passion for long distance running. I want to add a perspective that has not been spoken about. It is that of his photographic skills.

 

Saidi Chishimba was highly gifted in many areas. I knew him as an excellent chess player. While in Kitwe, he also tried his hand at raising chickens and making sausages. When he came to Lusaka and acquired some land in Chilanga where he finally built a family house, he tried his hand at growing chili and preparing it for selling. These were just a few areas where he tried out something new to stretch the hard-earned Kwacha.

One area in which his unequalled giftedness shone brightly was in photography. I wonder why so few have mentioned this. As you visit his Facebook page you will notice that he was already using point-and-shoot photography as far back as 2007–2009. What I recall is that it was around 2013 that he got his first Nikon DSLR camera from a visit to the USA and the quality of his photos drastically changed. Our mutual love for and excitement with DSLR photography soon became part of our fellowship with each other. Due to his adventurous spirit, it was not long before he was well ahead of me in terms of what he could do with the camera and the quality of the photos attested to this. He discovered RAW photography and never looked back. I remained taking JPEG photos. When I would visit Kitwe, he would pull out his camera and show me what changes to make with the dial and the menu to produce all kinds of effects on photographs.

 

It was when Saidi mastered Photoshop that he left me miles away. I once visited him when he was still in Kitwe, and he opened his laptop and showed me what he was able to do with that computer application. He showed me the advantage of taking RAW photos on the camera and then importing them into Photoshop. He was like a Formula One driver with that thing. I knew that there was no way I could catch up with him. I resigned myself to simply being his disciple. He became a photographer par excellence.

At some point, Saidi also fell in love with cellphone photography. I noticed that he was not carrying his DSLR camera around as often as he used to, but he was still producing stunning photos and putting them on Facebook. He told me that he had chosen his cellphone brand primarily because of the camera it had and showed me what he had already begun to produce because of that. Again, it was partly because he had given himself to master the “studio” work after the shots were taken that he was producing such magnificent photos. I recall some of the amazing cellphone photos he produced of city skylines during a trip he had to the USA and to South Africa. They were exquisite!

 

Saidi made use of social media to display some of the finest photos that came from his DSLR and cellphone cameras. Whenever he attended a conference, he would take photos of those who were in attendance and share them on social media while the conference was still taking place. While I contented myself with one or two photos showing the speakers and the overall attendance, Saidi was like a sniper. He went after individuals and married couples one-by-one. When posting the photos he would say something from his heart about the occasion or the people on the photo. Many people really appreciated this. He would speak about seeing individuals that he could not get past without taking a photo and so he would take out his camera, “pull my trigger and bang!” (to borrow his favourite phrase). That was how the moment was captured. A few people tried to correct him so that instead of saying “bang” he would say “click”, but they never managed. To the very end of his days, he was still banging with his camera.

At one time Saidi also started taking photos of landscapes. He put some on canvas, added some scripture verses, and sold them. However, this landscape photography did not seem to last long. I trembled at the thought of what would have happened if he entered the world of bird watching and photography. He would have easily surpassed me. The closest he ever got to taking photos of birds was eleven years ago (2014) when he was visiting a chimpanzee sanctuary and an African Grey Parrot came in front of him. He took a photo of it and shared it on Facebook. A year later, he saw two chickens fighting and caught them on camera. He posted on Facebook, saying, “I found these two chickens fighting. Just failed to establish the reason why as they were both too upset to talk.” That was as far as Saidi went in bird photography. So, I remained ahead of him in this one area.

 

As I mourn the loss of my dear friend, I am deeply grateful for Saidi’s photographic output. Although he has gone to glory, he has left us with many precious memories. He rightly watermarked some of his photos with the words, “Great Moments Photography”. All you need to do is go to his Facebook page and you will see those great moments frozen in time and space. A lot of them comprise him with his “sweet brown chocolate” and his daughters. Yet there are many more from conferences, the African Christian University, church services, graduation ceremonies, weddings, sporting events, and so on. The picture that I use as my display photo on my personal Facebook account where I am with our late son Mwansa was taken by him. It remains very precious to me. Thank you, Saidi, for your love of photography. You have truly left us with many great moments to remember!