We have lamented many times previously on the seeming willy nilly erection of billboards around Lusaka (and Ndola and Kitwe and Chingola and Solwezi and …). But this time the Lusaka City Council seem to have outdone themselves. We refer, of course, to the new billboards which have been erected in the centre island of […]
Read the rest of this entry »Author Archive
No Choice At All
It’s never a good idea to go shopping on Christmas Eve, but when a friend asked for help with getting a PVR decoder for her father for Christmas, it didn’t even enter my mind to refuse. After battling the Lusaka traffic, I got there later than planned, just before 3.30 pm. Finding a parking […]
Read the rest of this entry »Clean and Green
With Green Expo Zambia being held from 5 to 7 April at the Lusaka National Museum, we thought we would look at some clean and green alternatives to the many chemical-laden manufactured household cleaners. We scoured the web and not only are these made from natural products, but they will also help to keep the […]
Read the rest of this entry »In The Garden
Enjoy April. The lush greenery we have seen in the rains will soon fade and we will rely on our hosepipes and boreholes again, our booster pumps and storage tanks. Winter has its own charm and of course it is the season for bedding plants, for peas and beans, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce and tomatoes. It […]
Read the rest of this entry »Fool on the Hill
In an attempt to be glib, when asked if I went to boarding school as a child I would always reply “No, my parents loved me”. Inverted snobbery played a part in this answer but mostly it was a defence mechanism because although I started my school life, in Hong Kong as the son of […]
Read the rest of this entry »The Bowels of the Earth
Emerging from time to time from the murk of the pollution and the fumes from the Smelter could be seen the headframes of the two shafts that have served the old Nkana orebody for almost 90 years. Central Shaft and B Shaft are old and show it. The cages in Central Shaft are small, triple […]
Read the rest of this entry »Mufulira Mystique
The mention of Mufulira Dam usually meets with an empty gaze. ‘Oh, that’s that place out . . . near, um . . . Mufulira?’ is the general comment usually accompanied by an indecisive wave of a hand suggestive of it being ‘over there somewhere’. A popular weekend recreational choice back in the 70’s and […]
Read the rest of this entry »South Africa – The New Coloniser
I grew up in post-Independence Zimbabwe, a time when Mugabe was following his quasi-Marxist ideals. Luxury goods were hard to come by and anything imported was viewed with a mixture of suspicion and awe. I remember my mother buying tins of fish from Mozambicans who had stolen across the border near Mutare, keen to sell […]
Read the rest of this entry »Dr Livingstone, I presume?
“Dr Livingstone, I presume?” were the famous words uttered by Henry Morton Stanley when he found David Livingstone at Ujiji, Tanzania on 28 October 1871. “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” is also the title of a song, written in 1968 by the English rock band, The Moody Blues. Dr. Livingstone, I presume, Stepping out of the […]
Read the rest of this entry »The Eighth Day
I have been looking up some elements of Chinese culture that fascinate me since theirs is the oldest uninterrupted world tradition and found that “The number eight is viewed as such an auspicious number that any number with several eights is considered very lucky.” On March 8 Zambia officially recognises International Women’s Day – the […]
Read the rest of this entry »Muchinga Meander
Muchinga, the name of the escarpment which runs the length of Zambia’s eastern side, but now also the name of our latest Province, with Chinsali as its headquarters. Travellers to and from Nakonde and Tanzania would be forgiven for not knowing where Chinsali is, nestled as it is the hills sixteen kilometres off the […]
Read the rest of this entry »An Hour of Dark
It’s that time of the year again when citizens of the world are asked to spend one hour showing their support for climate change action, by turning off their lights. We all depend on energy, be it for cooking our food, charging our phones, running our computers or getting our morning cup of tea. […]
Read the rest of this entry »Fool on the Hill
There are no ghosts in our house, though it is built for haunting. Moorish by design, it’s more of an architectural beaux geste to Bunny Allen the former refugee gypsy White Hunter who washed up on the shores of Lamu in the 60’s and built several rambling castellated houses, than to the courtyards of the […]
Read the rest of this entry »