A Dose of Nostalgia
The past week has seen me visit some of the places that remain indelibly lodged in my mind. And despite my having planned for the trip weeks earlier the little tinge in the pit of my stomach and the dejavu would not let me alone. The moment I left Ndola, I knew that the week ahead would be pivotal. Lets just say a mending of old relationships, receiving the much needed blessings and most importantly family, would see to that.
My first stop was Kabanana to see Aunty Judith. This particular stop was notable for the poor roads than anything. The sight of cars wading deep in the filthy water that had gathered in the gullies, little children forlornly playing in the muddy water and people going about there businesses as if nothing out of place was happening, touched a certain cord in my heart. Like a neglected wife, the Chazanga-Kabanana road has year in and year out been deteriorating. Successive governments and their Members of Parliament have come and gone without anything being done about this road. As we entered Lusaka from the Northern direction I was forced to think that if this was the face of the capital then we could safely conclude that Lusaka had a hideous face.
And if the face was hideous, then the inside was definitely rotten. Getting on the bus to Monze turned out to be one of those experiences you simply want to forget but cannot. The putrid smell of the Inter-city bus terminus had me choking as soon as the cab left me there. All around me uncollected packets of Shake-Shake were strewn. It did not take me long to realise that part of the pungent smell was from urine as the call-boys and traders in the terminus could simply not be bothered about finding a toilet but rather performed their ablutions in the empty bottles and packets that were then indiscriminately flung all over the place. The result was a smell so offensive and everlasting that you would think the whole station was one huge toilet.
It would be five hours later before our driver upon numerous promptings from the passengers decided not to torture us anymore and drove off to Monze. My family's farm is located 10 kilometres before Monze as you head to Monze from Lusaka. The rainy day served little to dampen my mood as I got off the bus, slung my bag on my shoulder and sauntered towards farm number 29. My childhood came rushing back at me like an electric train forcing me to stop every few steps and take in the view. This is where I herded cattle and goats, where I walked barefoot, hunted birds and played football along the sandy roads.
However apart from the memories the area had changed remarkably since my childhood. Gone were the lush lands bristling with healthy cattle, gone were the tractors, the pick-up trucks. Instead a deathly silence hung over the area like curse. I walked on to the farm and despite my best efforts to peer into the neighboring farms I couldn't come up with a sighting of any cattle. Post Columnist Edem Djokotoe had featured my views on Kayuni a few weeks ago. As he rightly pointed out, my contribution was both nostalgic and reflective. But it it is not merely a case of romanticised nostalgia, or a yearning of the "good old days" but one that should lead us to facing up to some serious questions. For example how did Kayuni in a space of ten years turn from a place brimming with livestock and farm produce to one needing relief food every other year? What have the area representatives done about the problems besetting farmers in this area? Is it not a waste of commercial farming land if these farmers continue occupying it yet remain unproductive?
My mind goes to the opening lines of the documentary "Zambia, Good Copper, Bad Copper". The narrator says Zambia has had no wars, is a democracy and is endowed with many resources. It is therefore mystifying that it remains poor. Kayuni is only ten kilometres from Monze, has passable roads (at least better than the Chazanga-Kabanana road), receives good rainfall and has fertile soils. Yet this remains at variance with the derelict structures, the dilapidated deep-tanks that now house bats and the people who go about their affairs with an air of resignation.
Many shorn of any viable alternatives have resorted to leasing out vast swathes of their land while others have began to outrightly sell-off the land, opting to pocket the millions now rather than obstinately die of hunger. Robert Haangala does not fall in this class. You see he is the first born in my fathers family and his eyes light up when he recounts the good old days. He recalls how at one point he had more than 500 heads of cattle and how everyone was bathing in milk. I too recall such a time, though this time with a lump up my throat. The early 90s brought with them the twin evils of drought and government tightening spending as it implemented the famed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The free livestock medicines were no longer given leaving the area prone to corridor disease. The livestock economy crumbled as round after round of the disease wiped the stocks of animals to the extent that now only eight animals remain at the farm.
For Robert it was particularly dis-heartening because he had just bought his first tractor, financed by selling over fifty cattle. The tractor now forms part of the run-down infrastructure, decrepit and only useful for nesting chickens. His maize fields are not inspiring either. The sickly yellowish maize stalks glaringly lacking nutrients. With a shrug of the shoulders he tells me that the government have delayed to supply his cooperative with top-dressing fertiliser.
My view is that Kayuni has degenerated to such dire levels owing to chronic neglect from successive governments and systematic indifference on the part of the people affected. The good people of Kayuni have accepted their suffering without so much as a whimper. Believing themselves to be too poor to be given much thought. Robert tells me that, they keep voting UPND in the hope that a fellow Tonga can be president and look after their affairs.
I watched the kids play with dogs and cats and thought how once that was me. Although my world was much better then. These little ones will have to survive on relief food once again. Not because there was a drought, not because they are based in an unreachably remote area but simply because they didn't receive farming inputs in time.
Note the sickly maize crop and Robert's sad eyes.
Kids play with a cat
************************************************************************
The horrific road carnage that happened on Thursday last week cannot go without comment. Being a Ndola resident, it is inevitable that I know a few people that were on the fated bus. I think regardless of one's religious persuasion, death unites us in our feeling of utter helplessness. We hope for measures that will render such occurrences a thing of the past. As the president said, it baffles me that major cities remain linked by a thread of one laned roads. Dual carriage ways maybe expensive, but remember life is more expensive.
In a way "wading" was the theme of my excursion last week. From wading in the smelly gullies of Lusaka, to the annoying taxi drivers waving keys in my face to my own conflicting emotions as I spent a night in the land of my birth and childhood. The wading culminating in sharing the grief of a city as we mourned the victims of the Chibombo accident. I mourn the lost potential and dreams on that bus as I share my own fears through John Keats poem, "When I have fears". John Keats died when he was only twenty five of Tuberclosis, a then incurable disease. He forms part of what are called the "romantic" poets which include William Wordsworth, Percy Shelly, Lord Byron and the others. Their poetry was distinct for advocating a certain pristine utopia away from the cacophony of the city. Perhaps that is the only way to survive in a world as cruel as ours.
My first stop was Kabanana to see Aunty Judith. This particular stop was notable for the poor roads than anything. The sight of cars wading deep in the filthy water that had gathered in the gullies, little children forlornly playing in the muddy water and people going about there businesses as if nothing out of place was happening, touched a certain cord in my heart. Like a neglected wife, the Chazanga-Kabanana road has year in and year out been deteriorating. Successive governments and their Members of Parliament have come and gone without anything being done about this road. As we entered Lusaka from the Northern direction I was forced to think that if this was the face of the capital then we could safely conclude that Lusaka had a hideous face.
And if the face was hideous, then the inside was definitely rotten. Getting on the bus to Monze turned out to be one of those experiences you simply want to forget but cannot. The putrid smell of the Inter-city bus terminus had me choking as soon as the cab left me there. All around me uncollected packets of Shake-Shake were strewn. It did not take me long to realise that part of the pungent smell was from urine as the call-boys and traders in the terminus could simply not be bothered about finding a toilet but rather performed their ablutions in the empty bottles and packets that were then indiscriminately flung all over the place. The result was a smell so offensive and everlasting that you would think the whole station was one huge toilet.
It would be five hours later before our driver upon numerous promptings from the passengers decided not to torture us anymore and drove off to Monze. My family's farm is located 10 kilometres before Monze as you head to Monze from Lusaka. The rainy day served little to dampen my mood as I got off the bus, slung my bag on my shoulder and sauntered towards farm number 29. My childhood came rushing back at me like an electric train forcing me to stop every few steps and take in the view. This is where I herded cattle and goats, where I walked barefoot, hunted birds and played football along the sandy roads.
However apart from the memories the area had changed remarkably since my childhood. Gone were the lush lands bristling with healthy cattle, gone were the tractors, the pick-up trucks. Instead a deathly silence hung over the area like curse. I walked on to the farm and despite my best efforts to peer into the neighboring farms I couldn't come up with a sighting of any cattle. Post Columnist Edem Djokotoe had featured my views on Kayuni a few weeks ago. As he rightly pointed out, my contribution was both nostalgic and reflective. But it it is not merely a case of romanticised nostalgia, or a yearning of the "good old days" but one that should lead us to facing up to some serious questions. For example how did Kayuni in a space of ten years turn from a place brimming with livestock and farm produce to one needing relief food every other year? What have the area representatives done about the problems besetting farmers in this area? Is it not a waste of commercial farming land if these farmers continue occupying it yet remain unproductive?
My mind goes to the opening lines of the documentary "Zambia, Good Copper, Bad Copper". The narrator says Zambia has had no wars, is a democracy and is endowed with many resources. It is therefore mystifying that it remains poor. Kayuni is only ten kilometres from Monze, has passable roads (at least better than the Chazanga-Kabanana road), receives good rainfall and has fertile soils. Yet this remains at variance with the derelict structures, the dilapidated deep-tanks that now house bats and the people who go about their affairs with an air of resignation.
Many shorn of any viable alternatives have resorted to leasing out vast swathes of their land while others have began to outrightly sell-off the land, opting to pocket the millions now rather than obstinately die of hunger. Robert Haangala does not fall in this class. You see he is the first born in my fathers family and his eyes light up when he recounts the good old days. He recalls how at one point he had more than 500 heads of cattle and how everyone was bathing in milk. I too recall such a time, though this time with a lump up my throat. The early 90s brought with them the twin evils of drought and government tightening spending as it implemented the famed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The free livestock medicines were no longer given leaving the area prone to corridor disease. The livestock economy crumbled as round after round of the disease wiped the stocks of animals to the extent that now only eight animals remain at the farm.
For Robert it was particularly dis-heartening because he had just bought his first tractor, financed by selling over fifty cattle. The tractor now forms part of the run-down infrastructure, decrepit and only useful for nesting chickens. His maize fields are not inspiring either. The sickly yellowish maize stalks glaringly lacking nutrients. With a shrug of the shoulders he tells me that the government have delayed to supply his cooperative with top-dressing fertiliser.
My view is that Kayuni has degenerated to such dire levels owing to chronic neglect from successive governments and systematic indifference on the part of the people affected. The good people of Kayuni have accepted their suffering without so much as a whimper. Believing themselves to be too poor to be given much thought. Robert tells me that, they keep voting UPND in the hope that a fellow Tonga can be president and look after their affairs.
I watched the kids play with dogs and cats and thought how once that was me. Although my world was much better then. These little ones will have to survive on relief food once again. Not because there was a drought, not because they are based in an unreachably remote area but simply because they didn't receive farming inputs in time.
Kids play with a cat
************************************************************************
The horrific road carnage that happened on Thursday last week cannot go without comment. Being a Ndola resident, it is inevitable that I know a few people that were on the fated bus. I think regardless of one's religious persuasion, death unites us in our feeling of utter helplessness. We hope for measures that will render such occurrences a thing of the past. As the president said, it baffles me that major cities remain linked by a thread of one laned roads. Dual carriage ways maybe expensive, but remember life is more expensive.
In a way "wading" was the theme of my excursion last week. From wading in the smelly gullies of Lusaka, to the annoying taxi drivers waving keys in my face to my own conflicting emotions as I spent a night in the land of my birth and childhood. The wading culminating in sharing the grief of a city as we mourned the victims of the Chibombo accident. I mourn the lost potential and dreams on that bus as I share my own fears through John Keats poem, "When I have fears". John Keats died when he was only twenty five of Tuberclosis, a then incurable disease. He forms part of what are called the "romantic" poets which include William Wordsworth, Percy Shelly, Lord Byron and the others. Their poetry was distinct for advocating a certain pristine utopia away from the cacophony of the city. Perhaps that is the only way to survive in a world as cruel as ours.
When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
Beautiful post Keith
ReplyDeleteThank you.
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