By VENKATESH SESHAMANI –
SCOT’S actress Louise Linton’s article in the Telegraph on July 1, 2016 entitled “How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare” has drawn a flood of tirades and trolls on twitter that it definitely deserves.
It is supposedly a piece based on her book In Congo’s Shadow, that tells of her “nightmarish” experiences during a gap year spent in Zambia where she landed “with hopes of helping some of the world’s poorest people”.
Her objective was to teach English to the villagers in some remote bush with a view to “educating them about the world”.
Seldom has one seen such a distorted portrayal of Zambia.
One indeed is left wondering what has prompted Ms Linton’s grotesque caricature of what is indeed one of the most admirable countries on the African continent; a country that has for long earned the sobriquet ‘oasis of peace’ amidst the vast African desert sands of civil wars, conflicts and conflagrations.
Ms Linton’s writing is replete with terminological inexactitudes (e.g. locating the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in the Congo) if not, to borrow from Shakespeare, “more devils than vast hell can hold”.
Well, Ms Linton is entitled to her opinion and I do not wish to spend much time criticising her. Instead, I would like to counter her piece by using this space to give my own picture of Zambia and its people.
My experience is not based on spending one gap year but on spending half my life of three score and ten years to date – and still going strong! – living and working in Zambia.
And so, though I lecture in economics at the University of Zambia, my professional area of specialisation, my knowledge of Zambia extends to other areas as well – to its indigenous social, cultural and spiritual mores.
Like any other country, Zambia too is a land of paradoxes. But in judging a country and its people, one has to assess what predominant features are found in those paradoxes.
Yes, Zambia has its share of violence and crime. Which country in the world is exempt from this?
But for Ms Linton to suggest that she could not sleep for fear that roaming bands of armed rebels could destroy her life is nothing short of a figment of the wildest imagination.
Perhaps Ms Linton got her geography wrong.
Yes, Zambia is a country where many of its citizens do not have access to education in formal schools.
But it is also a country where some of its educated citizens can give the graduates of the best colleges in the western countries a run for their money!
I wonder if Ms Linton is aware that thousands of Zambian health workers – doctors, nurses and midwives – have been working in the UK, Europe and North America.
Yes, Zambia does have an unflattering epidemiological profile. Malaria and HIV/AIDS are notable killers. But it is also a land of fitness-conscious and sporting people.
Zambia’s soccer team in particular is internationally renowned. For long, Kalusha Bwalya has been a household name not only in Zambia and Africa but the world over where soccer is played with maniacal passion and intensity.
I remember many years ago when Zambia had newly transited from a one-party government to a multiparty one, I attended an international conference in one of the cities in Europe.
During tea break one participant looked at my name tag and seeing Zambia there, immediately exclaimed: Kalusha Bwalya!
Then he went on to ask me: You now have a new President, don’t you? What is his name? Kenneth Chiluba?
I went on to explain to him that Kenneth was the first name of the first President and Chiluba, the second name of the second President!
The gentleman obviously goofed on the Zambian President’s name but not on the soccer star’s name!
Yes, Zambia is a land that abounds in wild life; it is home to the ‘big five’: lions, elephants, rhinos, leopards and buffaloes.
The country’s game parks therefore attract thousands of tourists every year. But it is certainly not a land noted for 12-inch rain spiders.
What is more, an internet file on Zambia Travel Guide states: “Encounters with aggressive snakes, angry spiders or vindictive scorpions are more common in horror films than in Africa.
Most snakes will flee at the mere vibrations of a human step and spiders are far more interested in flies than people.
You will have to seek out scorpions if you wish to see one”.
But Ms Linton says that she was “on the jungle floor in a fragile minefield of vines crawling with potentially lethal creatures – including the dreaded rain spiders up to 12 inches across”.
Did Ms Linton really see any of these creatures, especially rain spiders? Or was it a psychological aftermath of watching American horror films?
Yes, Zambia is a country where there are people who cheat, deceive, prevaricate and exploit others to serve their own selfish ends.
And such people exist in every country.
But the majority of Zambians display a love for peace, and show friendliness, hospitality and traditional values that can be only rarely matched by countries elsewhere.
Ms Linton should know that it is easier for a white woman like her to spend time in Zambia and end up rubbishing the country than it would be for a black Zambian woman to do so about the United Kingdom.
Yes, Zambians need to be saved in many ways. But, being a Christian nation, they have the biggest Saviour to do that for them in Jesus Christ.
They do not need a “skinny white muzungu with long angel hair” to come and play saviour for them. So Ms Linton, stop thinking like a megalomaniac. Confine your acting to your own world of cinema.
My only advice to Ms Linton is: if you cannot keep your mind open, keep your mouth and laptop shut.
But having said that, I shall still pray for her: “Father forgive her for she knows not what she speaks”.
Professor Ali Mazrui in his celebrated historical documentary “Africa: A Triple Heritage”,wrote that the white man claimed that he came to Africa in order to ‘civilise’ the native Africans.
But, in the professor’s opinion, the white man’s behaviour and treatment of the native people showed that it was he who needed to become civilised.
After reading Ms Linton’s piece, I cannot help feeling that even today, there are perhaps white men – and women – who need to be educated if not civilised!
Let me all the same end on a sanguine note.
Despite her hugely negative portrayal of her Zambian experience, Ms Linton admits that she did learn the value of some nice words, especially one – nsansa, which, in one of the Zambian languages, chibemba, means happiness.
Yes, happiness indeed. After all, is that not what has been man’s eternal question.
The author is professor of economics at the University Of Zambia