(New Zealand Tablet, about 1978)
Wellington to Lusaka. It’s more than 9,000 miles. It’s a journey from one culture, one history to another. Impressions come first, digestion and reflection later.
First impressions. Lusaka airport clean and modern. Roads to the city are good, but sprinkled with broken-down vehicles. A phrase – by now familiar – begins to be heard: ‘No spare parts’. A modern, impressive city centre surrounded by what is described as ‘high density, low-cost housing’. I’m glad I don’t have to live there.
Six hundred kilometres west to Mongu, the principal town of the Western Province, across flat savannah. Grass six feet tall, giving game in the National Park plenty of cover. The road is good – built by the Chinese. Shopping in Mongu: plenty of toy electric trains, cartons of nail polish remover, all imported from China to pay for the road. No sugar, salt, soap, cooking oil, batteries, tyres and limited supplies of mealie meal. A woman’s dress costs 25 Kwacha, about NZ $25, while average monthly earnings are about K40. How do people manage? Do they manage?
South, and then west across the Zambezi by ferry. A soldier on the ferry whiles away the time by blasting with an automatic rifle at birds… misses. Brings back memories of camping trips in the Tararuas… equally successful. Meet SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization) in Tanzanian trucks on the west bank. Suspicion (mutual) goes quickly with the discovery that an Irish man is not an Englishman or a South African, and the realization, on my part, that they don’t automatically regard every white as an enemy.
Sioma. Home for the next few months while learning Lozi. Lots of other languages but one’s enough at a time. James Connolly is parish priest. We were students together, last met in 1970. He’s put on weight… must go with the status. Brother Andrew O’Shea, aged 71, tall, fully alive, mentally and physically. I’ve got the questions; he’s got the answers. ‘Let’s hear who’s killing who’ he says as he switches on the radio. That just about sums up the usual news. We disagree on Ian Smith’s “internal settlement”.
Radio is our big link with the outside world. News is heavily laced with built-in editorials; commentary is straight-out propaganda. It’s a case of reading between the lines. For the BBC, a freedom fighter is a guerrilla they like, and a terrorist is a guerrilla they don’t like. A moderate is a politician they like, and an extremist is one they don’t. And so it goes. The first casualty in war is truth.
Village life. Grass huts, fields of maize, pawpaw trees, fishing from canoes, sun, laughter, music and dancing in the evening, the song of a paddler harmonising rhythm and paddle stroke, a slow, almost dreamy life. Scabies, malnutrition, measles, malaria, dysentery, leprosy, a blind ox, a woman taken by a croc, a child dies – disease unknown, soggy, torn clothes, ignorance, a cow dies of anthrax but is eaten just the same, scrawny dogs without the energy to fight except when rabid, childbirth in the back of a Landrover – the cord cut with an axe. Take your pick. Mother Nature is a good partner but a rough mistress.
People. Hospitable, courteous, friendly, warm, grateful, with time to talk and to listen, above all, human. Content with simple things. A bar of soap is a luxury. Add sugar and salt and you’ve got heaven. Apathetic, we’ve seen it all before, we’ll see it all again. Hopeless, why try? Nothing works. The newcomer’s got ideas? Agree with him, it keeps him happy. Do nothing. The venturous young have left for the towns, there to find unemployment. What pays? Crime. A woman scrambles past, baby on back, bundle on head, umbrella in one hand, suitcase in the other. The man, her first, second, third or fourth man, strides majestically in front, monarch of all he surveys. The roles are changing alright: the women now do the men’s work as well.
Back to the friary, the white man’s castle in the bush. It’s so easy to compare the best of ours with the worst of theirs, with inevitable conclusions. Does development mean that they become like us? I ask the cook a question. His inner voice says, ‘Give the man in authority the answer he wants’. He’s unsure, says ‘Yes’, pauses, waits, says ‘No’. One up for the cook. A ritual murder is discussed. A man’s heart and sexual organs removed, the murder probably paid for, price K40 to K60, by a storekeeper who believes that these trophies under his pillow will improve his business. Culture shock? Yes! The easy way out is to withdraw into a cocoon of clichés, the world of instant judgments, made without compassion. Curing is easier than caring. It’s functional, and that’s less demanding than the relational. Must get out and meet people.
Off to Shangombo at the far end of the district, 120 miles away on the Angolan border, formed by the Cuando River. We eat and sleep in Zambia, wash and swim in Angola. Safari? Sure, chasing the mosquitoes round the tent. Guests of honour at an evening dance. Son et lumière has nothing on this. Firelight reflects on white teeth and eyes, silhouettes black shapes. The women sing, led by a toothless granny who relishes her moment of glory as cheerleader. The men drum, while the likishi, the dancer, occupies centre stage. I’m told they have a special dance for me. The likishi arrives. It’s not the head-dress I notice this time, but the very large straw penis attached to his ceremonial trousers by a pair of braces. The women laugh wildly as he jumps up and down. No translation required. For a moment I glance at the sky… a satellite glides its arc through the stars. Dear God in heaven, what century am I in? A young man, fairly drunk, makes a serious sounding speech. I understand almost nothing. Small wonder. It was a mixture of Portuguese, Lozi, English and Sikwamashi.
On the way home, a policeman warns me to beware of falling into the air-raid shelters – the Hanoi/Tirana-style hole-in-the-ground ones – which were dug a few years ago, when UNITA was still strong in eastern Angola. Civilization has reached Shangombo.
To Livingstone for a meeting of the priests’ deanery. The best I’ve been at, well-prepared, hard work, a sense of purpose. Three days of it. 5 a.m. in Livingstone – what’s the noise? Police cars driving through the compounds with loudspeakers calling on people to go to the airport to greet the visiting Prime Minister of Finland, ‘to promote deep and lasting friendship between our two countries’. What’s Finland? Can you eat it?
Returning from Livingstone, a stopover in Sesheke, and a meeting with Tanzanian missionaries. They show us the wreckage of a plane shot down by accident. The pilot, the plane and the heat-seeking missile which brought it down were all American. The blessings of military aid! They show us their air-raid shelter, quite a large one, near the church. They checked it recently and found a python in residence… between the devil and the deep blue sea. A few weeks later they needed the shelter during a night-long artillery battle between South Africans and a combined Zambian-SWAPO force. A seminarian staying with them took his spiritual reading book into the shelter during the raid. He’s got his priorities right, that chap!
Return to Sioma and news of a change to Sichili. Problems about parish boundaries are different here… you’re anxious to give away as much as possible, if anyone would take it. It’s 120 miles wide and 150 long, population unknown. There are nearly 10,000 on the books, but how many are dead, have fallen by the wayside, have left or are newly arrived is known only to God. Seventeen Mass centres, each surrounded by from six to twenty-five villages make up the area covered. The rest, probably half the area of the parish or more, is untouched. New Zealand seems light years away. The occasional news items – a storm on the South Island, business as usual for Mr. Muldoon, UFO’s migrating to Canterbury – heighten the distance. Still the memories are good ones and there are no regrets.