I eventually learned the object was a knobkerrie, a traditional wooden club used across Southern and Eastern Africa. More than just a weapon, it often marked status and authority, carried by leaders and warriors alike. The British, encountering it during colonial campaigns, adapted their own version and called it a trench baton, a tool of close combat and control in brutal, confined warfare.
Knowing this transformed the way I saw the worn wood and smooth handle. It was no longer a mysterious stick from an attic, but a bridge between worlds: African villages, colonial trenches, and my grandmother’s quiet home. I began to wonder how it had traveled so far, whose hands had gripped it before mine, and what unrecorded stories it had witnessed. In that moment, history stopped feeling distant and became something I could literally hold.
