Letters from Zambia

I have been in Zambia for four weeks now, and I can say in all honesty that it has been the most interesting month in my career, which began when a dozen prawns cost 40 escudos at the Costa do Sol Restaurant in Lourenco Marques.

One soon learns that things get "buggered-up" in Zambia. Telephones and faxes are normally buggered up, as are vehicles and the DC-IO of Zambia Airways.      Zambians, like Malawians, usually place branches in the road to warn oncoming traff ic that some automatic disaster lurks around the bend. On my way to the office recently we encountered a branch on the tarmac that had been ripped off one of the glorious, spreading flamboyant trees that line the streets of Lusaka. Sure enough, around the corner was a battered green and white taxi, a Datsun Bluebird of early 70s vintage. Both its front tyres were flat, and its left back wheel was missing . My driver, complacent in tne air-conditioned cocoon of the official Mercedes, clicked his tongue and said, "Look, Excellency, completely buggered up.” I thought that: was a pretty accurate assessment of the situation.

 Lusaka has some attractive golf courses. The fairways of the Lusaka Golf Club are lined with flamboyant trees which are ablaze with scarlet blossoms at this time of the year.

The Chainama Hills Golf Course is pretty challenging, especially in the rainy season, when most of it becomes a marsh. The long par 4 16th hole, and the 18th, border a township, or compound as these places are called here. Especially on Sundays, the compound-dwellers stroll about the fairways, much to the irritation of the caddies, who berate them loudly, usually in the middle of one’s swing. As we were walking up the 16th recently, my partner, an eminent banker and Chairman of the PTA Banker's Association, remarked "the Chainama Mental Asylum is over there. Every now and then a loonie escapes and bolts across the fairway. Fair mucks up your concentration" he added morosely.If you look around you at Chainama, or anywhere else in Zambia for that matter, it is very clear that many Zambians lead rather miserable lives, yet they are a remarkably cheerful and friendly people. 

At the 18th at Chainama, there is an elevated tee from which there is quite a long carry over a vlei with reeds, before you get to the fairway, so you have to hit a decent drive to keep out of trouble. Unfortunately, the tee is usually populated by a horde of children aged about 12 or so, peddling balls and little bags of wooden tees, and chattering away like weaver birds building nests in a thorn tree. One thing one learns in Zambia is that there appears t:o be a strong British tradition of fair play and also that most Zambians have difficulty in pronouncing and "l" which they pronounce like an “r”..

As one mounts the tee, the chattering subsides into an unnerving silence, as ten pairs of eyes critically watch you address the ball. Just as you are about to commence your back-swing, there is a muffled snort of laughter from the gallery behind you. The Bwana stops his swing and turns around angrily, to be confronted with ten hands clapped over ten mouths and ten pairs of white eye balls rolling wildly in ten sooty faces. Under this sort of pressure even the mighty Faldo could be forgiven for duffing his shot, and as the ball inevitably thuds into the reed bed in front of the tee, a mighty chorus from the gallery, heart-rending in its sincerity, rises to the cobalt-blue Central African sky "Oh hard RUCK, sir, hard RUCK."

Multi-party democracy is just a year old in Zambia, and there is a heady scent of freedom all around. The newspapers are having a field-day, firing off loud and indignant broadsides at President Banda's excesses in Malawi, indulging in improbable headlines ("Thais ban sex") , and misquoting the South African Representative with joyous abandon. "I never said that" I said indignantly to a journalist from the Weekly Post the other day. "Oh sorry, sah, sorry" he replied. "Well", I said, "don't just say sorry to me, I'll be out of a job if you go on like that. Are you going to publish an apology and put the record straight?" "No", he said. "Why not?" I asked, totally appalled. "Because we have free press in Zambia, sah" he said and put the phone down.

Zambians have a pretty poor opinion of of their neighbours. They dislike the Zimbabweans; Angola is a mess; the Tanzanians haven't seen the light, the Malawians are living in the 18th century, and Zaire (which they pronounce Zai-ee-ree) is best not discussed at all, except for the music from that country. Zairean music is sweeping through Zambia, and everybody seems to be in love with an attractive Zairois singer called Tshala Muana. The music critics go overboard about her. Adulation knows no bounds."She is a kind of three-in-one mass audience stage artiste in today's highly treasured rhumba music", the Times of Zambia enthuses. "Some derive self-satisfaction from her display of enthralling body-work,and there are those who try to get closer to see her errotica-packed (sic) beauty. Charges K1000 for adults and K5OO for children".

The rhumba is about the only thing the Zambians admire about Zaire. I asked the Deputy Minister for Copperbelt Province what he thought about Zaire's imposition of a K74000 fee for a multiple entry visa (about R7S0 at the current wildly fluctuating exchange rate). "Surely this must hamper cross-border trade." "The hell with it", he said, "only a lunatic would want to go to Zai-ee-ree".

I went to a soiree at a lovely home in the bush recently. Everybody was dressed in formal evening wear, an ensemble from Kitwe tinkled away on harpsichord and piano, and a Japanese lady with a lovely voice sang some stirring stuff from "La Boheme" and "Turandot" . She had given up a promising future as a singer in order not to prejudice her husband's career in the foreign service, which says something for the old trade, I dare say, although I have a sneaking suspicion she might have got her priorities muddled somewhere along the line.

During that poignant moment in La Boheme" when the heroine debates to herself whether she should exchange her wild social life in Paris for the comforts of her reliable but impecunious lover (a dilemma no doubt familiar to some foreign  service officers), a ridgeback puppy wandered into the lounge from the throbbing African night, and relieved himself copiously and with evident satisfaction on one of the microphone's speakers, which emitted a malevolent hissing sound, like a Mozambique spitting cobra trapped in a corner. 

Our hostess, a strikingly lovely lady, with a predilection for Booth's High and Dry, who had recently driven her Range Rover into a culvert and was lame in her left leg, woke from a comfortable snooze with a string of curses, and proceeded to belabour the offending dog with a walking stick. The animal shrieked with dismay, the speaker sputtered and crackled, our hostess wheezed with paroxysms of rage, and the Japanese singer's voice rose to a sweet climax which was greeted with a polite round of applause from the audience. I suppose old 

Pliny would find that little has changed over the centuries, at least as far as Africa is concerned. Next time I'll tell you about woman who keeps lions inside her house and serves  the most  magnificent food at her dinner parties.

Good night.

Meintjeskop Courier, Volume 6, December 1992