Whether educated, or not, whether traveled or not, there is one retrogressive habit by which the majority of Zambians is identified. As matter of fact in the first republic, the then president, impalume Kenneth Kaunda, got a little worked up about it and ordered a study of the volume of pombe Zambians guzzled in a year. I was not imbibing at the time, as I don't now, but it turned out to be enough to evenly cover the entire Zambian landscape by an approximate height of eight centimeters. I doubt that study accounted for lituku, kancina, amantalakwa, sikokiyana, katankamanine uko, cipumu, imbamba, katubi, imbote, ifiseke, katata, umunkoyo, seven-days, to mention but a few. Because all these brews have the potential to knock one out cold. Interestingly, the population was about 5 million. That must have been some serious quaffing people did. Impalume Kenneth Kaunda was right to be concerned. It makes one wonder by how much the volume has risen, considering that the population has more than doubled and the rate of unemployment is relatively high.
If one cared so much as to convert even a fraction of that time spent on boozing into a series of coordinated economic activities, probably some of the problems we are grappling with today could have been prevented. Imagine if all drinkers in Zambia gave up an hour of their monthly drinking time, instead of using their hands to nurse a cold one or swirl icikale of opaque brew, they would commit them to a pick and shovel and in a flood zone, the extent of the flooding problem would be a little less than we experiencing today. Admittedly the hands technology would not yield a permanent solution but more than drinking beer, it would beget us a culture of solving problems by any means necessary.
A culture of thinking rationally and solving problems by any means necessary, is a strategy resorted to by those who are dealt a bad card many a time, pushed to a tight corner and cannot take it any more. I am talking about having the ingenuity and courage to put our resources to great use. Most Zambians lack the drive to do just that, be they educated or not, traveled or not. But then again, there is a special breed of Zambians who will not take it, regardless of their education, or international exposure. To them foolish pride is a refuge for irrational thinkers. Instead they pursue their goals with the precision of a brain surgeon, the focus of a smart-bomb, the speed of a heat-seeking missile and the courage of a wounded buffalo. A little information is all they need to get started. These people are like a needle in the haystack, they don't come by but once in a lifetime. Let's call them the turn tabs.
Their counterparts, the third dimension, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen. They want to feed well, sound sophisticated and more importantly dress well. I once met this young lady in my lawyer's office who had a mirror on her desk strategically positioned to give her feedback on her appearance at a glance. The frequency at which she consulted that mirror, I would swear, stroke me as someone who doubted the honesty of the instrument. If by chance the mirror convinced her to ask me for second opinion, I would have sided with the mirror. The reflection she saw in the mirror was a true image of her and no one else. Now, had she put all that consulting time and effort; checking and double checking, into reading a book to improve her inner-self, to improve the perception of herself, boost her confidence, and develop a positive mental attitude, she probably would have gained much more.
But reading, committing her mind to rigorous introspection, developing her governing values, sculpting her philosophies and refining her principles was not in her culture. She was not even a conversationist because had she even an inkling of what that is, she could have engaged me, the rough looking visitor, in some intellectual discourse. What the mirror image was not able to tell her, "more than you are, but less than you want to be," I would have told her. But engaging in conversations that are exploratory in nature, informative and perhaps enlightening was not one of her cultural practices. It used to be but it died when somebody subliminally convinced her that there was something wrong with her natural hair, her flat nose, her complexion, etc. She might have been thinking by constantly checking herself up in the mirror, she would experience the Pygmalion effect. That unrated thought, though, did not stop me from wondering, like I do each time I walk the streets of Zambia, about who would suggest those practices for her and many other youths like her. Because, sometimes that's all it takes - a suggestion.
A suggestion, not a threat, in an opportune moment can set off a domino effect ultimately turning a person's life for the better. The recipient of that input, if they appreciated it, would quit doing things that are ruinous to themselves. When they are given the right input and feedback, they have reason to begin seeing themselves in a much more positive light. They begin to resist the temptation to permit their imagination to slide into overdrive when simple words such as abroad, overseas, ubulaya, amangalande, kufyalo, are spoken. They would begin to differentiate truth from hype. That is what most of the stories they hear about ubulaya are - untainted hype.
When some of those living ku fyalo visit/return home, they take with them bunk. Lies-filled stories of how large they live. They would have prepared a thing or two to impress their admirers; it may be a t-shirt with some funny print, a pair of funny tailored jeans, icisapato or some foul smelling scent. To their admirers, it's all good because it came from ku mangalande. What a croak of nonsense!
That initial change in the quality of input provides an incentive for them to become turn tabs.
Mwe bakufyalo, be truthful, twapapata. Tell the truth. Help your friends and family understand the truth. Cishinka, ku mangalande, like anywhere else, there are no money trees and everyone who has any works hard for it. Stop lying ati "I get isaka na half per mulungu." Wenye! "And ...er...and I have set aside enough money to buy mazembe. Manje apa so nifuna kumanga nyumba double decker." Mwebaume mwe! Nyumba inkale double decker? What would Paul Ngozi say?
Very few Zambians who end up in foreign lands actually make something of themselves. Most of them spend time drinking Heineken, checking every hood they can find, and discussing politics, just like they did in shebeens before they crossed the pond. They would pause behind stretched limos and send pictures back home and lie. "This is how I roll," they would say, pointing at the gargantuan of a car. Really? And when their daring cousin fleeces them for change while they are nursing a cold one or swirling icikale ca opaque brew in the name of, "I miss this stuff, you know," don't blame him. Batila "mumbwe aitile mpashi, impashi nasho shaisa, elyo shamububa!"
The trouble that some Zambians living in foreign lands face, malibu yakuilombela for the most part. When they have been lying about theirs and their friends' economic status all along, when time comes to substantiating their claims, they perpetuate the lie by extending the web of lies - lie again to cover the lies told earlier. And some unsuspecting bystander begins to create castles in the sky about their sibling who got a scholarship to China. What you are forgetting is that your lies are like a pile of poop. If you dump and run, remember that when you return, it will stink just as bad.
It is an uphill battle to debunk some of these myths when they have been safely deposited in the corner of the subconscious mind of a third dimension operating under the influence. A sincere person, a transplanted turn tab, seeking to create a means of earning an income from a critical set of assets becomes the victim of this indistinguishable long drawn senseless hype. This may be a case of umusuku ubi utushe mpanga, I think. And it has to stop.
Let's help ourselves and our people, let's share the truth, the pure, the powerful, and the positive. Te cikale ca opaque beer nangula a cold one. Evidently, that has taken us nowhere. But if we freed enough of our people from the shackles of the third dimension to turn tab, there is no doubt in my mind that we will get where we want to be in good time.
We can move up and forward together mu cishinka.
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