“Do you have a valid passport? If you don’t, please get one because the Editor-in-Chief, Mr Vernon Mwaanga, wants you to cover the Second All-Africa Games in Lagos in Nigeria,” Ridgeway Liwena, who had just been promoted sports editor, told me.
Within days my travel documents, including my yellow fever certificate issued by the Ndola City Council’s Broadway Clinic, were ready. So a few days later I flew from Kenneth Kaunda International Airport to Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi en route to West Africa.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, for reasons that will become clear later, there had been a delay in our departure time from Lusaka; consequently I missed my connecting flight from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Lagos.
I was informed that the next flight to West Africa by the only airline that week would be on Sunday; so I found myself stranded in the Kenyan capital for seven days.
From the airport I was driven to the Ambassador Hotel, which is a stone’s throw from the Kenyatta International Conference Centre and Hotel Inter-Continental.
After checking in I told myself instead of worrying about my missed flight and the prospect of missing the All Africa Games opening ceremonies why not go out and explore this famous East African city called Nairobi, which means sweet water?.
But before doing that, I had to inform Ndola about my predicament. I jumped on a taxi to the offices of the East African Standard newspaper, which was, like the Times of Zambia, owned by Lonrho then.
Who do I find there?
Mr Frank Young, the former Government chief Information officer, who had given me and my Evelyn Hone College graduate Emmanuel Sakala, some working experience as cub reporters on the Zambia News Agency (ZANA) when it was established in 1969.
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” he asked me with a distant look, probably trying to figure out exactly where. I told him he looked like a ‘Mr Frank Young’ that I once knew in Lusaka, but was not too sure. He was delighted to “see a Zambian so unexpectedly and in, of all places….”
After explaining my situation, Mr Young allowed me to use the telephone to call Ndola.
As a keen follower of political events in East Africa and the Horn of Africa, I was thrilled at the thought of walking on the same streets and embankments bearing footprints of great men like Kenyan independence heroes Jomo Kenyatta, Odinga Ojinga, Ronald Ngala, Daniel arap Moi, Mwayi Kibaki, Thom Mboya, the Kariuki brothers, Charles Njonjo and novelist, James Ngungi Wathiogo.
I also visited the shop from where Mboya was shot and killed, a sad reminder of Kenya’s dark history. The window pane, with the bullet hole, has been preserved as a tourist attraction.
Locking my hotel room 104 to go for breakfast in the restaurant down stairs the following morning, I found my late brother’s best friend at college and Times of Zambia features writer, Daniel Mwale, also locking room 105.
“I was told by the receptionist that there was another Zambian in the hotel, but I did not imagine it would be someone I knew,” said the towering Mwale who was in Nairobi on a tourism industry bench-marking assignment.
We briefly toured Nairobi central business district (CBD) before paying our courtesy call on former Times of Zambia news editor, Faxon Nkandu, who had left to join the All Africa Council of Churches (AACC).
He invited us to their home in the Ambassadors’ compound for lunch. By then their daughter and BBC broadcaster, Maureen Nkandu Mundeya was just a toddler.
If you find yourself in a Nairobi tavern and ask for a cold beer (Tusker baridi sana sana), the locals will definitely know that you are a foreigner because Kenyans love their ale warm, or in Swahili, “wa moto”.
So as we waited to be served at the counter in a restaurant called Tina’s, we could hear someone speaking Bemba in this tiny place which was packed with young revelers, mostly students from the nearby University of Nairobi.
Finally, we located the man. It was Mr Fanwell Nunda, the former ZAFFICO managing director and Copperbelt and Luapula province permanent secretary. He was in a group of students from Makerere University in Uganda where he was pursuing further studies in forestry.
I had met the affable Nduna at the University of Zambia (UNZA) Ridgeway campus in 1968 when the Dr Kasuka Mutukwa-led National Union of Zambia Students (NUZS) members from Lusaka travelled to Kwame Nkrumah College in Kabwe for a youth festival.
“So it’s you, tata,” I shouted upon locating him as he and his team sat chatting animatedly. That was on Saturday. The following day I flew out of Kenya on board PAN-AM, an American airline, which, like Zambia Airways (ZA), has since been dismantled because it was unprofitable.
Most passengers, including yours truly, were probably unaware that our flight would take us to Uganda’s Entebbe Airport until the pilot announced on PAS that we would be stopping over for an hour and anyone wishing to leave the aircraft would be free to do so.
Entebbe Airport gained world prominence in the early 1970s when Israeli commandos staged a daring 90-minute raid to free hostages that had been held by dictator, General Ida Amin after he expelled Asian traders from Uganda amid international condemnation.
(For the record, this was before Tanzania and Zambia, which were among the strongest critics of Amin’s military coup that toppled Dr Milton Obote from power, sent their troops into Uganda and drove Amin out of Uganda. He fled to Saudi Arabia where he died in exile).
So as we trooped out of the plane for the 60-minute stopover at Entebbe, I noticed that Mr Timothy Kankasa, the husband of former UNIP Central Committee member and Women’s League leader, Mrs Chibesa Kankasa, was on board.
After greeting him, he told me he was travelling to Accra, Ghana, via Lagos and Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
As he was still rooted in his seat I asked him rhetorically: “Tamulefuma mukwayi (Sir, are you not detraining like everybody else?”).
Mr Kankasa said he would rather remain on board because, “Uyu muntu (Idi Amin) nifwe alefwaya (Bemba for: Amin must be looking for people like us (Zambian leaders) who are opposed to his illegal regime for reprisals).
I knew precisely what the old man was talking about because Amin was a brutal and unpredictable murderer of his own people.
Inside the airport lounge there was a big framed-mural of the ‘Conqueror of the British Empire’ gleefully staring down at everyone as he or she entered or left the foyer. However, what I found amusing, if not ironical, was the fact despite being a Muslim, a king-size bottle of the Nile beer was superimposed on Amin’s huge portrait.
Later we flew over Lake Victoria/Mwanza from Entebbe to Lagos International Airport after a brief stopover in Doula, Cameroon. My goodness, Lagos airport was teeming with humanity – travellers either waiting for their departure to various destinations or to be driven to their hotels in the city centre.
For a first-time visitor to Lagos, I found the situation intimidating if not scary as porters and taxi drivers massed around me like bees on a hive, offering to carry by luggage or drive me into the heart of sprawling city which was hosting the Games.
Suddenly, a driver from the All-Africa Games Organising Committee came saying everyone arriving for the Games should jump on special marked vehicles to transport them to the Games Village or the University of Lagos campus.
The following morning I did my accreditation with the help of Mr Fekrou Kidane of Ethiopia and Jan Chimpumpu wa Chimpumpu of Zaire who were on the African Sports Writers Association.
After the opening ceremony in the newly constructed Sululele National Stadium at which then Nigerian head of state General Yakubu Gowan presided, a friend of mine – a Nigerian seminarian in France, who had been recalled to act as an interpreter for teams from Francophone states such as Ivory Coast and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) liked me because “Alfred is a Catholic name”.
He took me by surprise when he offered to take me to the beach, if I wanted to. Vincent lent me his spare helmet as we were going to use a motor bike which, he explained, was the fasted way to travel on Lagos’ notoriously busy and congested roads. He was right.
If you happen to come from a country that is by the seaside with an endless coastline, you will probably not appreciate what greeted me when I saw this vast expanse of water, spreading for thousands of miles to the point where the water blends with the horizon. It was a sight to behold – something to wonder at.
“So this is the Atlantic Ocean,” I muttered to myself as my bewildered Nigerian ‘Samaritan’ looked on. Because I felt like immersing myself into this ocean with a rich history, I quickly took off my shoes and waded in the waters of this splendid not ocean, which I had only seen on the world map.
I looked North (towards Europe); I looked South; and looked West (towards the United States) and immediately remembered the sad history of the Slave Trade – the Slave Triangle – in which Africans captured from West Africa and elsewhere in the continent were abducted and shipped in across the Atlantic Ocean to work in American cornfields, cotton and sugar plantations.
I also remembered the history early European explorers like Paul Burke, Christopher Columbus, who is said to have discovered America, and Vasco Da Gama’s voyage from Lisbon, Portugal, and reached the Indian Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope to Bombay (Mumbai) in India in search of spices.
For someone coming from a land-locked country like Zambia, the panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean, or indeed any other ocean, is breathtaking to say the least.
Meanwhile, how did Zambia fare at the Second All Africa Games held towards the end of December 1972 and January 1973? The boxers and swimmers in particular made the nation proud as they brought home gold, silver and bronze medals for which they were fittingly feted at State House.
It was an experience of a life time for all of us who were there.
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