Ukwa and the Road Gang

Ukwa and the Road Gang

            The Queen was already at breakfast by the time King Ukwa came downstairs. ‘Are you feeling alright dear?’ she asked. ‘Your face looks a bit puffy. Better take your pills before you forget.’

          ‘Yes dear,’ he said grumpily. ‘Doctor knows best.’

          ‘I see from this morning’s paper that you’ve been enjoying yourself inspecting the new road to Nowhere. But what’s the point of a new road to Nowhere?’

          ‘I’ve explained it all before,’ he said wearily. ‘If I build a road to Nowhere then it will become Somewhere. Nobody wants to go Nowhere but everybody likes to go Somewhere. They’ll be big lorries going up and down everyday. Buses all the time. That’s what we mean by development.’

          ‘All you’ll do is to spread HIV up and down the road. There won’t be a virgin left in Tongaland.’

          ‘There’s never been any virgins in Tongaland,’ he growled.

          ‘Anyway, dear, I’m so glad you took my advice and appointed yourself Minister of Roads. It has provided the opportunity for you to get out of the palace. I still remember how you used to enjoy yourself when you were a minister and man of action. Of course you were younger in those days.’

          ‘I am still a man of action,’ he growled.

          ‘Yes dear,’ she said. ‘But you needed to get a bit of fresh air. It's no good just spending all your time at the microphone every day, hiring and firing people, or just giving them a reshuffle. Anyway, after hiring and firing the same people three times over, you were getting bored. Now this new job of looking at roads every day, it gives you a sense of purpose, and even a bit of exercise.’

          ‘Yes doctor,’ he growled.

          She picked up the newspaper and waved it at him. ‘But in this picture, I’m not sure that you really were inspecting a road. As far as I can see you’re just standing in the middle of the bush, scowling at three Chinese gentlemen who are sitting on a log drinking mugs of tea.’

          ‘It would be better, my dear,’ he grunted, ‘if you were to look after my little box of pills, and leave me to look after the entire country.’

          ‘Yes dear, you’re quite right. But even so, I do know the difference between the middle of the road and the middle of the forest. All I can see in this picture are trees.’

          ‘This may come as a shock to you, my dear, but if you want to build a road through a forest, you first have to cut down the trees.’

          ‘Don’t get annoyed dear, I was only asking because in this picture I can see only three men and three hundred trees. I mean, where are the lumberjacks and foresters to cut down the trees and where are the lorries to carry them away?’

          ‘The lorries aren’t there because we haven’t built the road!’ he snapped, banging the table and squashing his pill box.

          ‘Don’t get angry dear, you know what it does to your blood pressure. I was only asking because I thought I should see hundreds of men with axes. You do remember that you promised to create millions of new jobs? So why haven’t you employed thousands of people to cut down these trees? People are saying that, in the whole year you’ve created only fifteen new jobs, and that was for fifteen additional deputy ministers.’

          ‘Look,’ he growled, ‘nowadays trees are cleared with two huge bulldozers pulling a massive steel chain in between them. Axes and saws went out with bows and arrows!’

          ‘But darling, I was just asking,’ she said, pointing again to the picture, ‘because I can’t see any bulldozers either.’

          ‘We’re waiting for the bulldozers to arrive from China,’ he shouted in exasperation. ‘They’re still being manufactured.’

          ‘But perhaps later,’ she persisted, ‘then you’ll be able to employ thousands of people to level the road?’

          ‘Certainly not! We’re using road graders!’

          ‘But you’ll employ labourers to make the drainage and culverts?’

          ‘Certainly not! We’re importing six front loaders!’

          ‘But you’ll still need lots of labour for crushing the stones and digging the gravel?’

          ‘You know nothing about this!’ he shouted angrily. ‘We shall use a Symonds Cone Crushers and an MBE!’

          ‘An MBE? What is an MBE!’

          ‘You see! You know nothing! An MBE is a Mechanical Bucket Excavator!’

          ‘Instead of creating a thousand jobs, you’re buying an excavator?’

          ‘You understand nothing,’ he sighed. ‘An MBE is much more cost effective. It doesn’t take time off for funerals. It works 24 hours a day and never goes on strike!’

          ‘So you’re road is going to going to employ only a few machines and a handful of Chinese operators! You’re not creating a single job!’

          ‘What nonsense you talk,’ he sneered. ‘Even as we sit here, there are thousands of people in Shanghai being employed to make these machines!’

          ‘An MBE may never go on strike,’ she said gently. ‘But it will never vote for you.’

          ‘And even better,’ he shouted, ‘it will never need a doctor!’

          ‘As your doctor,’ she said seriously, ‘I think you need a break, you’re over-stressed. It’s time you went to look for some more investors. I have decided to send you to America for ninety days!’

          ‘Oh goodee,’ he said, brightening up. ‘But America is a very mighty big place for such a difficult task. D’you think ninety days will be enough?’

          ‘Oh yes,’ she laughed. ‘It’s amazing what a man of action can do in ninety days!’

Pabwato Flyer

Pabwato Flier

          It was Sunday night and I was a passenger on the Pabwato Flier flight to Nairobi that was just about to take off from Lusaka. A steward stepped into the gangway for the safety instructions. ‘In case of an emergency,’ he announced, ‘put your head down between your knees and pray for survival. This is a Christian Airline, so we shall all be saved.’

          ‘What if I’m not a Christian?’ said a voice behind me.

          ‘Then you’re on the wrong aeroplane,’ snapped the steward.

          I turned to the creased old man sitting next to me. ‘I seem to recognize the steward,’ I said. ‘Isn’t he Splinter Kapimbe, the well-known businessman? What’s he doing working as an air steward?’

          ‘Because of the good business opportunities,’ my neighbour chuckled, tapping his nose with his forefinger. ‘Import-export, supplying requisites to the airline, that sort of thing.’

          ‘I see you know about these things,’ I said as I turned to take a good  look at him. ‘You’re even wearing the uniform yourself!’

          ‘I’m Dotty Scotty, the co-pilot.’

          ‘The co-pilot!’ I exclaimed. ‘Then why are you sitting in economy class? You should be up in the cockpit, ready to take over if the pilot croaks!’

          ‘I’m not allowed to,’ he said sadly.

          ‘Why not? Has your driving licence expired?’

          ‘No, it’s because my late father, Lotty Scotty, was born in Scottyland. So the airline is worried that I would divert the plane to visit my relatives in Scottyland.’

          ‘So what exactly are your duties as a co-pilot?’

          ‘I have to be on duty at the bottom of the steps to salute the pilot when he gets on or off.’

          While we’d been talking the plane had climbed high into the sky, and was making a huge U-turn. Suddenly a voice came over the inter-com. ‘This your captain Cycle Mata speaking. I thought you’d be interested to know that we are diverting to Mongu to pick up a few passengers who have been stranded there since 1964.’

          A huge sigh rose up from the passengers. ‘That’s why he’s called Cycle Mata,’ chuckled Dotty Scotty, ‘he’s known for flying round in circles.’

          But before we could get over our annoyance, things got worse. Our skinny mean-looking steward stood up to make another announcement. ‘Normally at this time we would serve supper, but unfortunately the entire catering budget has been spent on printing menus and on training workshops for the catering staff, leaving no funds available for buying food. However, I have my own small kantemba at the back where I am selling cheese sandwiches at two hundred pins each, and bottles of vintage Manzi at only fifty pins.’

          ‘Half a minute,’ I said to Dotty Scotty, ‘look at the first class section up front! The Chinese are all drinking champagne and a huge fat steward is slicing a roasted suckling pig! What a feast!’

          ‘That steward is called Great Bag of Money,’ explained Dotty, ‘and one of his many companies is the Kung Fu Restaurants Ltd, which has one of its branches on this plane.’

          But suddenly the Chinese champagne glasses began to tinkle to the ground as the plane dipped sideways for another huge U-turn. ‘This is your captain speaking. I have just heard from ground control that our Mongu passengers made the mistake of protesting against the late arrival of this flight, so they have all been locked up. In view of this, we are now heading straight for Beijing!’

          ‘Beijing!’ the Chinese cheered as the impoverished Zambians jammed in the rear shouted, and demanded to see the captain. Sure enough, within a few minutes the captain arrived, resplendent in a cream silk Chinese uniform.

          ‘As captain of this aircraft I am in command of all of you here. I don’t know why you have been shouting, and I don’t know why you are trying to run away from Zambia when it is your patriotic duty to stay there and work hard, but I can tell you that I am going to Beijing to collect some hard workers because I can’t employ lazy people like you, so you can just…

          But he was interrupted by a woman’s voice from the back. ‘I have to visit my sister in…’

          ‘Madam,’ the captain interrupted sternly, ‘much as we follow a policy of gender equality on this airline, it is your husband’s duty to speak on your behalf!’ So saying, he turned and disappeared into the Chinese banquet.

          But as he left, the same woman screamed from the back ‘The engine’s on fire!’

          Immediately our skinny little economy class steward ran into the first class and began to attack the Great Bag of Money with a small plastic fork, screaming ‘I told you not buy Chinese engines from Dubai!’

          But the Great Bag gave him a hefty clip round the ear, roaring ‘You silly bugger, it’s your fault! You bought diesel instead of kerosene!’

          Now the plane began dipping sideways again, and a different voice said ‘Vee leetun to Lu-sa-ka to collek mo chizz san-witches.’

          ‘That’s a Chinese voice!’ I said to Dotty Scotty. ‘Isn’t Cycle Mata flying this thing?’

          ‘Of course not,’ laughed Dotty, ‘they just let him use the microphone!’

________________

           As I came in to breakfast, Sara looked up from her newspaper. ‘You’re lucky to be alive! From what it says here, the engine exploded!’

          ‘It was under pressure from too many U-turns,’ I explained.

          ‘It says here that the aeroplane is almost wrecked. It will take until 2016 to mend it. So are you going to remain loyal to Pabwato Flier?’

          ‘I think I’ll choose another airline,’ I replied.

The Golf Course

The Golf Course

          ‘What on Earth next?’ hooted Sara, as she looked up from the newspaper. ‘Have you read this story about Kambilimbili grazing his cattle on Mpatamatu Golf Course?’

          ‘He’s supposed to be the Minister of Sport,’ I sneered, ‘but now he’s busy destroying a golf course. Our whole way of life is under threat from these barbarians.’

          ‘I don’t know why you read newspapers if they upset you so much,’ said Kupela, as she buttered yet another slice of toast. ‘We’ve got a new government with new ideas, but you two are still stuck in the past. And anyway, which of you has ever played golf? The only game you know is darts!’

          ‘You always argue the opposite of anything we say, just for the fun of upsetting your parents, even before we’ve finished breakfast. You know very well that that this monstrous upstart Kambilimbili is not in the business of introducing any new ideas, he’s just stealing council land.’

          ‘Your trouble is,’ said Kupela, ‘that you assume the worst instead of looking for the best. What Kambilimbili is actually trying do is to transform the ancient Bemba game of bulunshi into a modern form of golf.’

          ‘Bulunshi? Never heard of it!’

          ‘Well well, my know-all parents,’ Kupela scoffed, ‘Then I have to inform you of something you don’t know, probably because you’ve never bothered to read Audrey Richards book about the Bemba, who were famous hunters. Bulunshi was an ingenious way of hunting an elephant by using a stick to hit a stone right up its bum.’

          ‘Would that kill it?’ Sara wondered.

          ‘It would die a week later of constipation,’ Kupela explained, ‘providing enough meat to feed a whole village for a couple of months.’

          ‘Huh,’ I scoffed, ‘there aren’t any elephants in Northern Province.’

          ‘Precisely because they were all victims of bulunshi,’ explained Kupela. ‘That proves my point.’

          ‘So what’s this got to do with golf?’

          ‘Golf started in a similar way. The Scots used to kill ferrets by swinging a club when the ferret put its head up from its ferret hole. It was great sport. But after they’d killed off all the ferrets, they had to invent golf as a substitute.’

          ‘So Kambilimbili is not farming but playing bulunshi?’

          ‘Have you ever heard of a Bemba farming cattle? Of course not! He’s invented a modern adaptation of bulunshi, called bulunshi golf, which involves hitting golf balls up a cow’s bum.’

          ‘Oh My God!’ said Sara. ‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

          ‘Only if you swing the club clumsily and hit your foot,’ said Kupela.

          ‘So how do you get the ball out of the cow's bum?’ I wondered.

          ‘Ball boys are being trained by the National Service,’ she explained. ‘It’s the first time they’ve ever done anything useful. It’s all part of the government programme to increase employment.’

          ‘And does the National Service also mow the lawns and apply the fertilizer?’

          ‘No, the cows do all of that, the whole system is self-sustaining and eco-friendly. Hundreds of Americans are already flying in to play bulunshi golf, it’s the latest fashion in ethnic sport. New lodges are being built all over Luanshya to accommodate visiting golfers. It's just a pity you're so out of touch. You just don't know what's going on.’

          ‘It’s a pity that Kambilimbili can’t think up some more ideas like this,’ said Sara.

          ‘What are you talking about?’ laughed Kupela. ‘He’s a lateral thinker who is absolutely bristling with lots of new ideas.’

          ‘All imagination and no brains,’ I suggested.

          ‘So you may imagine,’ retorted Kupela. ‘I suppose you haven’t heard of his brilliant scheme of tearing up the railway line and sleepers between Luanshya and Kitwe, and registering the track with the International Olympic Committee. It’s now the official route for all international marathon races.’

          ‘But where shall we find the athletes for running up and down this track in the middle of nowhere?’ I wondered.

          ‘His ideas don’t stop there,’ explained Kupela. ‘He has used his position as Minister of Sport to throw all the students out of Yunza, which is now being rehabilitated as a SADC Regional Sports Centre. We shall soon be producing top-level athletes by the thousand!’

          ‘What will happen to all the Yunza students?’

          ‘The government has finally admitted that we don’t need any more unemployable university graduates, and instead we are going to train athletes to run round in circles at incredible speeds in order to earn lots of money and become world famous. Kariba Lake is to be turned into the world’s biggest swimming pool, and Kariba Dam Wall is to become the highest diving board in the world. Zambia Airforce is going to increase its number of aeroplanes to three to provide sky-diving, and the Great Bag of Maize is going to plunge from forty kilometers high in the sky in order to break the World Stupidity Record, and…’

          ‘And, and, and,’ I interrupted. ‘And Kambilimbili is just an odious little thief who is stealing land in Luanshya.’

          ‘But you have to realise,’ Kupela conceded with a sigh, ‘that some little things do go wrong. But they will soon be corrected by Our Great Leader, who is allergic to corruption.’

          ‘But you have to realise,’ said Sara, ‘that our Great Leader has just received medical treatment in Seoul, and his allergy has now been cured.’   

          

Prison Fraternity

Prison Fraternity

          Sara and I were having a quiet drink on the veranda when round the corner stepped a smartly dressed young man. ‘Mabvuto!’ I exclaimed, as I shook his hand, and Sara rose to hug her long-lost cousin.‘Where have you been? Haven’t seen you for ages! What happened to you?’

          ‘I’ve been in prison,’ he admitted.

          ‘Good gracious!’ exclaimed Sara. ‘What did you do?’

          ‘I did five years for stealing a tube of toothpaste from Spar.’

          ‘Did you really steal it?’ Sara asked severely.

          ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I was going for yet another job interview, and I thought that if only I could clean my teeth properly I would stand a better chance.’

          I thought back to the long sad story of Mabvuto's education. After we had helped him through secondary school and Yunza, he just couldn’t find a job. And now it had come to this.

          ‘Have a beer,’ I said, ‘and tell us all about it.’

          ‘I was sent to Most Marvellous Democracy Jail,’ he exclaimed.

          ‘Hah!’ Sara scoffed. ‘I thought jails were run like nasty little dictatorships, not democracies.’

          ‘The idea of the MMD jail,’ explained Mabvuto, ‘was that we should be educated towards more democratic behaviour. So we were allowed to elect the governor and jailers from amongst ourselves, and they ran the administration.’

          ‘So if it was really democracy,’ Sara wondered, ‘why didn’t you all vote for your freedom?’

          ‘Even in a democracy,’ explained Mabvuto, ‘you have to keep to the constitution.  Freedom comes with responsibility. Voting was the only freedom we were allowed.’

          ‘Is that what we mean by democracy?’ I wondered.

          ‘You may ask,’ he laughed. ‘But it did mean that because our governor and jailers were elected by us, they had to serve our interests. Otherwise we would vote them out. They had to put food on the table, medicine in the clinic, books in the library and money in our pockets.’

          ‘And did it work out like that?’

          ‘By the time I arrived,’ said Mabuto. ‘the MMD had been in power for twenty years. The governor was siphoning off our food money and the prisoners were starving. We were making maize bags but not being paid anything, and there were no medicines or books.’

          ‘Twenty years! Why did the prisoners keep re-electing them?’

          ‘The jailers were the only ones who knew how to count, and they counted the vote.’

          ‘So what did you do?’

          ‘We started our own party, the Prison Fraternity. As the only one who had been to Yunza, I secretly taught other prisoners how to count. So at the next election we were ready for them!’

          ‘And did the PF win?’

          ‘Of course. Once we could check the counting then we won by a landslide!’

          ‘And what did the PF promise the prisoners?’

          ‘We were promised that within ninety days we would all have more money in our pockets and more food in our bellies. And our new governor also announced that he was allergic to corruption. How we all cheered!’

          ‘And what about you, Mabvuto? Did the new governor appoint you to be one of the jailers?’

          ‘Unfortunately not,’ replied Mabvuto sadly. ‘I was disqualified because my father was not born in jail, and because I was not normally resident in jail. Because of this I was regarded as a foreigner.’

          ‘And did the new administration keep its election promises?

          ‘None of them, except that there was some action on corruption. All the previous jailers were locked up and charged with stealing.’

          ‘But how was that done? Surely you don’t have courts in jail?’

          ‘No, of course not,’ laughed Mabvuto. ‘So instead the governor set up his own tribunals, commissions of inquiry and kangaroo courts. The whole prison became one big witchhunt, with everybody accusing everybody else of having been involved in the previous plunder.’

          ‘But eventually the witchhunt ended when they ran out of suspects?’ suggested Sara.

          ‘Strangely, no,’ laughed Mabvuto. ‘After they had finished identifying all the earlier MMD thieves they started on themselves, pointing fingers at each other!’

          ‘Ha!’ I laughed. ‘Like a pig eating her own piglets!’

          ‘Exactly!’ laughed. ‘You see, in prison the spoils are quite small. So one gang of jailers are always trying to gang up on another jailer so they can throw him in the cells and steal his spoils.’

          ‘But why wasn’t the governor doing anything about this chaos? I thought you said he was allergic to corruption?’

          ‘The continuing corruption aggravated his allergy so terribly that he had to spend most of his time in the Prison Fraternity clinic,’ explained Mabvuto.

          ‘So he didn’t know what was going on?’ I suggested.

          ‘Worse than that. After they saw how sick his allergy had made him, they began the struggle for the succession. Each of our jailors wanted to be the next governor, so each was busy accusing the others of theft, hoping to be the only surviving candidate after all the others were fired and locked in the cells.’

          ‘So how did it all end?’

          ‘I don’t know,’ he laughed. ‘I was released some months ago, before it all ended.’

          ‘So what are you going to do now?’

          ‘Let me show you something,’ he said as he stood up and walked round to the front of the house and pointed proudly to a brand new red Mercedes S600. ‘I am now a prison graduate,’ he declared. ‘I have finally found out how the world works. So I have gone into politics.’

                   

           

Tear it Up!

Tear it Up!

          Last Saturday saw the return of Sparkling Margaret, with a bottle of Naughty Girl Sparkling Rose in each hand.

          ‘Good gracious,’ I said, as we all sat down on the veranda, ‘It must be seven years since you went back to Australia. Why did you leave us? It wasn’t because you reached the UN retirement age, was it?’

          ‘Of course not,’ she laughed, ‘I’m far too young for that. I left because I had solved all of Zambia’s problems and handed all my responsibilities over to the Zambian government. There was nothing left for me to do here except attend the cocktail parties.’

          ‘That didn’t stop the others staying on,’ said Sara.

          ‘The booze is cheaper in Australia,’ explained Margaret, as she opened the first bottle of Sparkling Margaret and filled our glasses, ‘so I decided to return to my roots.’

          ‘So what brings you back now?’ wondered Sara, ‘apart from missing us terribly.’

          ‘I just had a funny urge to make sure,’ she said, ‘that I really had solved all the problems, and that everything is now working perfectly in Zambia.’

          Just then our daughter Kupela came sailing out onto veranda. ‘Everything  working perfectly in Zambia?’ she cackled, spilling some of her gin and tonic onto floor. ‘You’ve come back at the right time! After all these years of peace, a terrible thing has just happened! An unprecedented scandal has shaken the country to its foundations! An opposition MP, Mr Mangle Kayungulu, has just torn up a copy of our Great Leader’s speech to parliament!’

          ‘Oh My God!’ screeched Margaret, raising her hand to her forehead in mock horror. ‘I thought I had left the country in safe hands! Now all my good work has been mangled! Tell me more, and I shall seek UN funding and expertise to investigate this problem and make recommendations for a return to peace and tranquility.’

          ‘With a thousand dollars a day for you as the lead consultant,’ I suggested.

          ‘Don’t sneer,’ said Margaret, ‘there could be some pickings in it for you.’ Then turning to Kupela she asked ‘Why did he tear up the speech?’

          ‘According to him, what the Great Leader actually said was completely different from the printed version which had been distributed earlier. So Kayungulu demanded that the house should debate what our Great Leader had actually said, and not the printed version, which he then tore up.’

          ‘Good on him,’ declared Margaret. ‘If the written version is not what Great Leader actually said, how can it be called his speech?’

          ‘Half a minute,’ I said. ‘Parliamentary rules require the greatest respect rather than vulgar  speaking of the truth. Dishonesty is the essential element in all polite and civilized behaviour. For example, members of the house have to call each other honourable even when each knows the other is not. Similarly a speech must be called a speech even when everybody knows it is not. And to tear up a speech of the Great Leader shows an intolerable level of disrespect!’

          ‘Huh,’ Margaret scoffed, ‘in Australia MPs just shout at each other. Doesn’t Kayungulu have freedom of expression?’

          ‘You’ve missed the point,’ I explained. ‘In a Christian Nation like ours, people believe that the Great Leader is appointed by God, so to tear up his words is blasphemy, like tearing up the Bible or the Koran.’

          ‘We have a similar belief in Australia,’ laughed Sparkling Margaret, as she reached for another glass of the sparkling wine. ‘We believe our leader was appointed by the Devil.’

          ‘Maybe,’ said Kupela, ‘there’s a much more simple explanation, and you are trying to politicize everything. I mean, look at these Barotse rebels who are being accused of malicious damage to state property for tearing up copies of the draft constitution. This quite overlooks the well known fact that poor people cannot afford toilet paper. So was the Barotse behaviour caused by treasonable intention or merely the call of nature?’

          ‘If the government can’t put more money in our pockets,’ I said, ‘at least it can put more paper in our toilets!’

          ‘This house has received twenty-five copies of the draft constitution,’ said Sara. ‘So we kept one for reading and consigned the remainder to the toilet. Except of course for the page on women’s rights.’

          ‘On the other hand,’ said Kupela, ‘there is the witchcraft explanation.’

          ‘Witchcraft?’ we all asked in unison.

          ‘Witchcraft,’ said Kupela, ‘is still very prevalent. Don’t you remember, some years ago, the opposition leader who held up a cabbage at a rally, then took a knife and cut the cabbage into four parts, each of which was thrown to different sections of the crowd. Before long the Great Leader fell apart.’

          ‘Have you gone off at a tangent?’ I wondered.

          ‘It’s the nyanga method of witchcraft,’ explained Kupela. ‘If the Leader is represented by a copy of his speech, and then you tear it in half, what exactly are you doing to him?’

          ‘I wonder,’ said Margaret, ‘whether the nation will ever get past this endless analysis of Kayungulu’s behaviour and start discussing the Great Leader’s speech.’

          ‘We can’t do that!’ laughed Sara. ‘There’s nothing to be said about it!’

          ‘What was the speech about? insisted Margaret.

          ‘Nothing,’ Sara replied.

          ‘What do you mean, nothing?’

          ‘Everybody was waiting to hear how he is going to implement his manifesto.’

          ‘And he said nothing about that?’

          ‘Absolutely nothing.’

          ‘But don’t people want to know why he said nothing?’

          ‘We already know why.’

          ‘And what is the reason?’

          ‘The manifesto has disappeared.’

          ‘What happened to it?’

          ‘He tore it up!’

          ‘How disrespectful,’ said Margaret.