It is a pleasure to wander into the garden and pick fresh fruit. Pawpaw trees (papaya) are very quick and easy to grow. Allow the ripe black seeds from a pawpaw to dry for a day or two then plant them in full sun in good soil. You cannot predict whether the tree will be male or female and only the female bears fruit so plant half a dozen or more. Water well and fertilise with manure, compost or wood ash. When the tree is about six months old it will produce flowers. Male flowers are held on stalks about 30 cms long. Female flowers grow right on the trunk and are larger. You will need one male tree for pollination and several female trees if you have enough space. In a few more weeks you should have a good supply of fruit. If the pawpaws are not sweet add more potash to the soil (contained in wood ash if available).

Serve pawpaw peeled, de-seeded and diced for breakfast with a little orange or lemon juice, or Mandarin segments. For a dessert, liquidise pawpaw with the juice of a small lemon, 2 teaspoonfuls of rose essence (optional but good), and sugar to taste.

Bananas are trickier and take longer to grow, but are worth the effort. Bananas are grown from suckers so ask around to find a friend with suckers to spare. Amiran may have plants on sale. Transplant into fertile soil with added compost in full sun. Space suckers at least 2 m apart. They must be sheltered from wind as they are equatorial plants that need warmth and humidity. Prevailing winds are from the east so plant them on the western side of a tall wall, building or thick grass fence. Water generously and give a thick layer of mulch (30 cms or more) to keep the roots warm. This is a good use for grass cuttings. Wait patiently for the bananas to flower and produce a bunch of fruit. The fruit will grow bigger and eventually start to ripen. At this point the whole bunch should be cut off the tree and a large cube cut into the centre of the stem above the fruit. Insert a teaspoonful or two of salt and replace the cube. Then push a wire through the stem and hang the whole bunch in well-ventilated shade out of the rain (perhaps in a garage). This will sweeten the bananas and speed up the ripening process. When the bananas are yellow they are ready to eat. Each banana stem will only produce one bunch. So after harvesting the bunch, remove that stem. Take out some of the suckers leaving only two or three well-spaced plants. The other suckers can be planted at a suitable distance or given to friends and neighbours.

Cape gooseberries are not often available to buy. The plants are easy to grow if you can get seeds. But various problems beset these fruit, like chickens, birds and monkeys that gobble down the fruit without permission. If you can protect your plants from these thieves, grow about 12 in sun. The paper cases will dry out as the fruit ripens. Cape gooseberries are delicious raw, as jam and as a dessert lightly stewed with a little sugar. Add yoghurt, cream or custard.

Strawberries are very easy to grow. However they need protection from slugs and also birds to some extent. Do not grow in the same ground as last year. Dig compost and fertilizer into the soil and plant new plants grown on runners from the old plants. They are cheap to buy although it is a bit late to start this year. Water regularly. The small white flowers will be followed by large red berries. Eat them raw, or liquidise them with castor sugar and cream. They make a delicious jam: do not add water but soften the fruit in a pan then add the same weight of sugar and some lemon juice. Stir until the jam thickens and sets when cold.

Avocado trees should be in every garden; lemon trees are a must; granadilla vines (passion fruit) are easy and prolific. Experiment with a fig tree or a macadamia nut or a prickly pear. Are you growing enough fruit?

Psychopaths. They’re all around us. They’re in our homes, they sit down to dinner with us. They loom behind us in the back seat as we drive, our bulging eyes alert in the rear view mirror to the next twist of their unpredictable behaviour. They roam our neighbourhoods in gangs and extort money out of us each day. They are easily recognised by reference to the Psychopathic Personality Inventory which catalogues the following behaviours: craving social influence, fearlessness, stress immunity, Machiavellian egocentricity, rebellious non-conformity, blame externalisation, cold-heartedness and carefree “nonplanfulness” (REALLY? Who made that word up? Rolls off the tongue like peanut butter).

They are by definition amoral. In their interpersonal relationships they exhibit glibness and superficial charm. They possess a grandiose sense of self worth, are natural and pathological liars and are cunning and manipulative. Exhibiting a lack of remorse and guilt for their actions they are emotionally shallow and fickle, often behaving callously and showing a lack of empathy and responsibility for their own actions. They require constant stimulation to avoid boredom in their lives, they are parasitic often requiring the energy of others to drive them. They have no realistic long term goals and are irresponsible and impulsive. They are antisocial exhibiting poor behavioural control, delinquency and criminal versatility. Do these medical definitions remind you of anyone you know?

No! Not tax inspectors, RTSA officers or merchant bankers. Kids!! I know when I am acting out any of those traits my wife calls me childish and I know that my kids exhibit all of the above, some of the time. We spend our lives on guard against psychopaths, primed by Hollywood to watch out for the bogeyman under the bed, the axe wielding maniac in the headlights of the car and the terrifying shadow behind the shower curtain … and then we breed them! And now it’s time to take the buggers out of the maximum security wing of our own home, on holiday and let them loose on the world.

“Yes you do swear all the time! You’re always calling people the female dog word.”

“I don’t all the time!”

“My friend Tim says he doesn’t know how I live with you. He says my life must be a nightmare having you as a little brother.”

“Tell Tim I hate him and I hope he dies.”

“Every day of my life I wish I could suicide myself just so I wouldn’t have to be your brother.”

“Why don’t you just stab yourself to death then?”
“Are you crazy? Stabbing yourself is the worst way to die. I wish I could just shoot myself in the head.”
“Why don’t you shoot me in the head, then you would be alive and you wouldn’t have to put up with me anymore?”

“Don’t be an arse! Then I would be in trouble and have to go to juvey. It’s just not worth it.”

This Sopranoesque dialogue came from the bathtub not five minutes ago, though might just as easily taken place in a restaurant at maximum volume, and it saddens me greatly. One always hopes that their children will all meld happily like the Waltons; the older ones repaying the adoration of their littler siblings with kind mentoring and guidance. But instead of fulfilling the image I have always harboured of having a brother to stand back to back in the playground with, defending each other from bullies, they appear to nurse a vendetta worthy of a Shakespearian tragedy. They are only united in their love of the youngest, for whose attentions they constantly battle. People tell me that this will pass and they will become friends later on but I can’t imagine how teenage life with girlfriends, competitive sports and motorised vehicles will present fewer, rather than more, opportunities for brotherly conflict. If nine years old represents the transition from psychopathic childhood into adult morality where disagreements are less likely to be solved with a hockey stick, then roll on the next two or three years.

For now we have to find somewhere safe to take the family for a month where we can all be together as one big happy family and minimise the bloodshed. Like most former island dwellers, now landlocked, we seek out that cathartic boundary where the water and land meet. Perhaps so the crashing waves will drown out the screams of fratricidal loathing.

We have always managed to find such places in the past and my boys are lucky enough to be growing up as utter sons of beaches. They can all, thankfully, swim now which makes life easier and the older two benefited greatly from being thrown in a swimming pool with a scuba bottle and draped with about 20kgs of lead weights last holidays. I emptied the cutlery draw and a wheelbarrow of pebbles in after them and told them they were salvage divers who would be hugely rewarded for the recovery of all the stray items on the “sea floor”. Great plan! They didn’t surface for about 45 minutes, what bliss! This holiday they will build on the sailing instruction they had in the shipping lanes of the English Channel last year and will hopefully, spurred on by pursuit from Somali dhows, be competent sailors by the end of the holidays; if they avoid the currents, pirates and sea urchins. We have some work to do on the holiday cottage, which will keep the tailors and gardeners of Jambiani busy during our stay as Gillie’s lust for projects and the delegation of their execution takes no vacation.

Since we will be visited by friends during our stay I will be on kitchen duty and trying to have some fun with converting large pelagic, torpedo shaped creatures into delicate sushi servings, figuring out how not to convert squid into vulcanised rubber, and rebuffing the attentions of “Baby Fish” a young man we have in the past casually employed to help out. Mr Fish appears to have formed an affection for me which borders on the obsessive. He fawns on my every move, stares deep into my eyes at every opportunity and strokes the back of my hand whenever I lay it down on the kitchen counter. Now, I have never considered myself to be a homophobe and I like gays as much as the next man (unless the next man is gay in which case probably not as much) but I find his attentions somewhat overbearing and will strive to put him on the right track this visit.

We will frolic in the sand (I and the kids … not Baby Fish) try to offset the profligate gluttony and drunkedness with early morning exercise and secretly enjoy a break from spending an hour a day being humiliated and made to feel totally inadequate in equestrian endeavour by an animal with the intelligence of a lawn mower and the single mindedness of an F-16’s ejector seat. We will cycle for miles along the beach and incur the wrath of the bicycle hiring man for messing up his chains with salt and sand, and in hijacking their swimming pool strain the hospitality of the guests and staff at Spice Island, the Italian hotel along the beach. I wonder if they have fixed their sign … last year some xenophobe had knocked the letter “E” off Spice and the “I” and “S” off island for a laugh. So, being un-PC, we did … sorry.

Wherever you roam, have a wonderful vacation. And, if you have kids, good luck and don’t forget to pack the Thorazine.

Groundee Rent AGAIN

I use a saying “I may not always be right, but I am never wrong”. Well, it just goes to show you, my far better half did indeed prove me wrong. She is quite good at it, it is rather irritating but there you go, my boundless optimism was misplaced again.

Over a month had passed since I had seen Mr. Chilembo heading into Registry to put right the dreadful inaction of a chap so that my letter containing my cheque for ground rent could be retrieved from the registered post received desk at the post office. I had not received any receipts so I thought I had better go and check on the situation. Horror of horrors, the computer spewed out the same information, I had not paid a penny of ground rent!

Up the stairs I went again to Mr. Chilembo’s office and, as chance would have it, he was in. This, and you had better believe it, is a rare occasion to find any senior official actually in his office. That is why there is a positive raft of ladies about the place to issue excuses for the absences of their bosses. Why is a raft of ladies required? Well over half of them seem to be not where they are supposed to be so the others make excuses for all those away from their place of work.

I was somewhat loud and displeased with Mr. Chilembo. It was water off a ducks back but he did summon the person concerned to his office. This again was extremely lucky, he was in as well. Upon his arrival I recognised the man who had assured me 4 months previously that he had collected the letter. I called him for what he was, an oxygen thief and a bare faced liar. His response was that it was his task to collect mail but not Registered Mail! I resorted to mild mining language calling him, amongst other things, a silly bugger. He seized upon the term with outrage, “I am not a bugger”. I immediately apologised profusely, “No, you are not, at least buggers do something!” Mr. Chilembo called us to order. He asked me to return in the morning when all would be resolved.

The next day I called at the bank to ensure that the bank guaranteed letter would not have expired. Aah but! There is a new system, the truncated cheque system, so that if it goes into clearing it will bounce! Yes, you guessed it. “If the Left hand don’t get you, the Right one will!” I returned home, got my cheque book and a black pen, wrote out a cheque sufficiently large to cover two years worth of ground rent, returned to the bank to ensure that it had been correctly made out and then went on to the Ministry of Lands and Mr Chilembo’s office. There, after a short wait, I met Mr. Chilembo and there, on his desk, was my letter and the now useless cheque. I explained the situation and proffered the new cheque. “That is OK, Sir, now all you have to do is go downstairs and pay it in.” I turned purple with rage; he hastily assured me that he was only joking, escorted me back down the stairs, took me into a little office, gave the letter and cheque to another lady and told me to relax as all would be fine. It then took another 30 minutes before I was issued with receipts and went on my way, rejoicing, back to the bank with the old cheque which could then be credited back to my account, taking only two weeks to do so.

So, there you go, another lesson, hard earned, that the best thing to do in future is drop your garden servant off with a bundle of money whilst you stay at home and grow the cabbages, mow the lawn and commune with nature in general. This methodology should be applied to sundry activities, such as sorting out NAPSA, getting your motor vehicle fitness done (though this does incur a bit of a risk, the garden servant might possess a driving licence but, by the way that he handles the lawn mower, it might mean that your newly fit motor vehicle might need a spot of panel beating by the time it is returned to you!) as well other chores such as the renewal of road tax and carbon tax.  All of a sudden your life expands into oodles of spare time so that you can relax and cosset your blood pressure instead of the reverse!

There remains but one unanswered question. Did the responsible gentleman go and pick up only my registered letter and leave all the other mail, registered or not, behind at the post office? To assist in the regulation of my blood pressure I have reminded myself that Curiosity does not only Kill Cats!

In 1972 I returned to Nairobi to collect my Piper Comanche if not the wiser, at least a much poorer man, as Larry Popp had been justifiably upset about the loss of his Cessna Skyhawk I had hired. And most of all the small profit I had made from the British Broadcasting Corporation expedition had gone to help compensate him.

I was also having problems in another quarter; My second son, Howard Miles, had been born, and like his sibling James, he was perfectly healthy, his birth being closely monitored by Guy’s Hospital in London. However, communications with my wife Hazel had broken down at the time, because the British postal workers were on an extended strike, and no letters got through. All attempts to obtain a date from Hazel for her return to Africa were fruitless, and I had no available ready money to allow me to fly to Britain and discover the problem. So I vacillated, and this was to prove a terminal error.

I was happy to be reunited with my Comanche, to revel in the sheer power of the 250 HP engine, and the 160 knot cruising speed, but I was now again short of money so I had to get down to some hard work.

At this time, another very keen pilot, who had served a long apprenticeship as an engineer with East African Airways, Billy Mussett, agreed with me that we might be able to get something going together, and after he had checked out on the Comanche, I tried to get work for both of us.

I had been approached by members of the Ethiopian Royal Family, at act as guide to cousin of the Queen of England, Prince William of Gloucester. Then the sixth in line of succession to the British Throne, behind the Queen, his friend Prince Charles, and his father the Duke of Gloucester.

Prince William was a keen adventurer, knowledgeable concerning wildlife and a positive expert on birds. He had wanted to spend more time in the Lower Omo River, since he had passed briefly, down the river on his and Prince Charles’ boat ‘The Royal Barge’ but had been impressed with what little he had been able to see and hear.

I met Prince William and his travelling companion, Californian lawyer Bob Huskinson who had been his friend and confident at StamfordUniversity in California, and they both requested me to drop everything and take them to camp on the Omo. I was unable to do this immediately, but they arranged for an Italian guide to drive them from Addis Ababa, and drop them at Murle, where I would take over.

The  formalities were soon dropped in one of East Africa’s most unexplored regions, and William, Bob and myself were merely happy that in camp there were copious ‘fizzy’ soft drinks, and for the evenings an ample supply of ‘The Wine of Scotland.’

William and I differed on our selection of aircraft, I swore by my Piper ‘Comanche’, he, loved his Piper ‘Arrow’ a more modern retractable which he kept and flew in Britain. This Cherokee Arrow had ‘automatic’ features I distrusted intensely.

However, nothing I could say would sway him so I respected his opinion and only begged to differ. I think I was later proved correct in my opinion when the Prince was turning sharply out of his take-off during an ‘Air Rally’ at HalfpennyGreenAirport in the British Midlands. At the precise moment his stall speed was raised to a high level due to his accelerating turn, the undercarriage dropped down and the suddenly increased drag made Prince William’s aircraft unmanageable, he turned inverted and crashed, killing himself and his co-pilot. Prince William was a former diplomat, a businessman and chairman of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association; his demise was sorely regretted.

But this crash was in the future, and could not be envisaged, so the three of us enjoyed the pleasures of exploring the Omo, and cataloguing the enormous variety of birdlife which dwelt in the trees of the riverine forest, and the acacia thorn of the plains beyond.

On one such foray, William was watching the antics of an elegant coucal in the riverine forest, when a lurking buffalo rushed at us. It was probably suffering from rinderpest, a common killer disease of ungulates, which I had assumed responsible for the death of the majority of the lesser and greater kudu population on the east bank of the river. Rinderpest makes animals, especially buffalo, violently bad-tempered, and I just had time to bring up my .458 Schulz & Larsen and shoot the buffalo before it impaled the Royal Rear! William profusely thanked me for my timely intervention and asked my how it felt to have saved the life of my future King? “Just pleasure sire!” I replied, “It was duty – I am after all a British Highlands Officer!”

Too soon the safari came to an end, William, Bob and I flew back to Addis Ababa, The Prince left me a fine Holland and Holland rifle in 7mm Remington Magnum caliber, which I treasured until I lost it in the Marxist revolution, now just a few short months away.

• The illustration was photographed in black and white on a low-cost Polaroid camera as I had left my Nikon in Nairobi. It shows Prince William and myself (left) just after I had saved his life from a wild Cape buffalo. The picture was also printed on a page of the ‘Daily Express’ in 1972

Vested In Love

By Marsha Moyo

Music reviews are not something that we usually do at The Lowdown, as we don’t feel qualified to undertake such a task. But when Marsha sent us her latest album, we thought about it and realised that music is a personal choice and whilst we might not have all the fancy terminology, we all enjoy music so what further qualifications do we need. And thus started a couple of weeks of constant music in the office with all staff members declaring which was their favourite track.

Vested In Love is a twelve-track release that traverses the R&B spectrum of jazz, urban, dance, pop and rock. All twelve tracks were written, composed and produced by Marsha. She is clearly a lady with many talents. But it is Marsha’s strong and vibrant voice that we admired the most and her ability to match her voice to the mood and feeling of the song.

Vested In Love is Marsha’s third album. Her first album, Dark Child, was released in 2002 and her second album, The Fine Print, 2006.

By the end of two weeks and multiple runs through the album, favourite songs have gone by the wayside with everyone now agreeing that each track on this album is their preferred choice.

An album which we can certainly recommend, regardless of your age – there is something for everyone.

The Polish Refugees of Mbala
By Mary Mbewe

The pay cheque is definitely not one of the perks of working for a museum. But there are many other perks, not the least of which is getting to visit and find out about places that hold great historical and heritage value. Due to the poorly developed heritage management industry in Zambia, these places are mostly unknown to many people including (or especially!) locals. Since I started working for Moto Moto Museum in 2006, I have had the pleasure of visiting a number of First World War sites around Mbala. These include First World War fortifications built by British soldiers during the First World War, trenches at Kaseshya near the Zambian border with Tanzania, dug by British soldiers as part of the trench warfare that characterised the First World War and other sites at Mwamba or in the heart of Mbala town. While most of these sites are scenic, I truly appreciate them for their intrinsic value as part of human history.

This is definitely true of the Second World War Polish refugee camp site that is located about 1.5 kilometres east of Mbala town. Found there are the remains of the camp which was home to Polish refugees from 1943 to 1945. The site is located along a road fittingly called Little Poland Road and in a residential area called Little Poland. The only evidence that the site played a role in the Second World War are the remains of the foundations of the buildings that were built at the site, evidence of a grave located about 500 metres from the remains of the foundations and remains of small burnt pan bricks some distance away from the grave site. The remains of the foundations are located at Pastor Kaite’s residence. He was one of the first residents of Little Poland and he told me that he specifically avoided building on the foundations in order to preserve them. The grave is engraved with an eagle which is a Polish national symbol as while as engravings in Polish which translated means “Honour and Fatherland”, a Polish nationalist slogan which must have been common among the Polish in the diaspora.

So how did Polish refugees find themselves in one of the remotest districts of Zambia? During the Second World War thousands of Polish citizens were deported from Poland by Russia and Germany. Exterminations, deportations and imprisonment of Polish citizens were some of the methods employed by Russia to completely suppress the Polish political and socio-cultural identity. Polish deportees were taken to labour camps in Russia and Siberia, were they were forced into slave labour under dreadful living conditions. Thousands of Poles died from hunger, from the harsh climate and disease. But in July 1941, with the signing of the Polish-Soviet pact, thousand of Poles from the Soviet Union were released. With the help of Britain and America they were sent to refugee camps scattered around the world. Africa provided a safe haven for over 18,000 Polish refugees.

In Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), Polish refugee camps were located at Abercorn (Mbala), Fort Jameson (Chipata), Livingstone, Lusaka and Bwana M’kubwa in Ndola. Between 13 August 1943 and 15 September 1943, 561 Polish immigrants arrived in Mbala. Of these 561 Polish citizens, 82 were men (usually old or sick men as the able bodied were fighting in Europe), 242 were women, 216 were children and 21 were teenagers.

The Polish refugee camp at Mbala consisted of six sections of one roomed houses with thatched roofs, a large kitchen, hospital, a Catholic church, laundry area with concrete bath tubs, a farm which supplied part of the food for the settlement and a Catholic Community Centre where social functions were held. Considering the number of people that the settlement housed, the camp must have occupied a considerable area.

In 2010, Moto Moto Museum staff, led by Museum Archeologist Liwyali Mushokabanji carried out a rescue excavation on the site. The excavation was prompted by the chance finding of hoes by contractors building a house within the vicinity of the site. Only a portion of the site that was threatened by the construction of the house was excavated. From this two day rescue excavation, 198 artifacts were excavated and these are now housed at Moto Moto Museum for preservation and further study. The excavated artifacts which were found at a depth of about 3 metres consist of numerous building tools such as shovels and picks, lead to the conclusion that they must have been used for the construction of the settlement. Retrospectively, the findings give very little insight into the socio-cultural life of the camp, raising the necessity for further study of the site.

The site itself is an important part of international, national and, in the case of Mbala, local history. It has the potential to contribute to the development of Mbala’s and Zambia’s Heritage tourism. On the other hand, very few people including locals know about the existence of this important historic site. The site is not protected and there is no signpost pointing to the site. The National Heritage Conservation Commission under whom such sites fall has not done much to publicise or protect the site. Additionally, human activities such as the construction of houses and natural factors such as erosion and the growth of vegetation are major threats to the continued existence of the site. The construction of houses has been the major threat to the site and this has led to the destruction of major portions of the site, with building foundations and possibly graves being lost forever. Reports have been received of whole structures being on the site before construction of the houses commenced and it is most distressing to hear of them being destroyed. It is clear that houses have been built on places where there were remains even when these remains were visible. Pastor Kaite informed the writer that he deliberately did not destroy the foundations on his plot in order to preserve them. The little pockets of the remains of the site that this article has highlighted are threatened by total destruction due to human activities.

Moto Moto Museum has put on an exhibition at the Polish site, displaying pictures of the site and highlighting the site as well as threats to the site. Some of the artifacts excavated from the site are also exhibit. The Museum hopes that the exhibition will educate the residents of Mbala and particularly those on the site that this is part of Mbala’s history and heritage as well as the importance of preserving the site for the education and enjoyment of all Mbala residents as well as tourists.

Mary Mbewe is the Assistant Keeper of History at Moto Moto Museum, Mbala

Editor’s comment: It is very distressing that sites such as the Polish Refugee Camp are being lost through the disinterest of Government and quasi-Government bodies which have the responsibility for preserving Zambia’s heritage sites for future generations. We urgently appeal to Mbala District Council to consider suspending all building operations on this site and to the National Heritage Conservation Commission to have this site declared a National Heritage site. As Confucious said “Study the past if you would define the future.”

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ”
― Michael Crichton

Ninety four year old Rev. Aston Mhango of New African Methodists remembers that fifty years ago there were still lions and other wild animals that roamed about in Naluyanda area of Chibombo district – known as 6 miles by Lusaka dwellers.

In the 70s and early 80s most trees were gone, wild animals disappeared and if the trend continues, “this place will be a desert,” lamented Rev. Mhango. “This place was like Eden, full of trees, wild fruits, streams flowing and animals all over but everything is today gone – there has been indiscriminate cutting of trees due to charcoal burning, animals have been poached, streams have dried up and we do not seem to care about our environment at all,” Rev Mhango said.

These sentiments were echoed during a three day environmental and art entrepreneurship training workshop that was organized by German Development Cooperation (GIZ) for children and women at Naluyanda Integrated Development Organization (NIDO) in collaboration with Kachere Art Studio.

Using Funta-Funta art and highlighting climate change challenges, Kachere art studio was at hand to give environmental education and practical skills development on found materials that litter surroundings.

In this three day workshop, the learners started with easy exercises which ranged from how to use scissors, cutter knives and papers. After a short time the participants were able to transform plain paper into something unique like paper flowers, trees and animated shapes, much to the amusement of the children and mothers.

The workshop progressed into specific skills for youths and women such as toy making for boys, textile designing for women and occasion card making for girls.

Kachere artists encouraged the learners to begin to think outside the box and filled the children with enthusiasm about using solid waste materials in creative ways that will see them expand their imagination in the production of their art pieces. The women were motivated to ‘valika dothi’ (this is to cover discarded objects with homemade textiles to create beauty) in a way they have never dreamt of before.

By applying Kachere’s Funta-funta art, the learners graduated with Certificates of Competence that will see them not only being environmentally conscious but also becoming green artists in the making with a view to putting money-in-their-pockets and job creation.

Naluyanda community’s daily life has no time to think art or the environment; the ticking of the clock is ruled by hard work in the fields, looking after animals, early marriages, beer drinking and idling.

The Funta-Funta exercise was accompanied by environmental input to make the learners aware of what we throw away and showed them that waste like plastic, rugs, tins and bottles still have an unutilised value, a value that needs to be used and the only thing that is necessary is a transformation of what seems to be litter into something of value. Kachere explained to the learners that, “this is Funta-Funta art, there is no limit to it because creativity knows no boundaries,” and this philosophy was the kick start of the three day workshop which translated into a full art laboratory. Two German volunteers at Naluyanda, Katharina Schmitt and Christian Reinhardt joined the Kachere artists in educating the learners.

“The workshop was definitely a unique experience; it opened opportunities for our future. For the one year I have been at Naluyanda, I have never seen all the children focusing on their work with such enthusiasm,” said Reinhardt in an interview. “It was difficult to get the women to make a break for lunch. They were so engrossed in their art and at the same time enjoying themselves and laughing so much like I have never seen them before,” echoed Schmitt.

Meanwhile, headman Yenga Yenga from Yenga Yenga village reiterated that he hoped that the skills acquired from the workshop will be of benefit to the community. Joyce Banda, a mother, was all smiles after the workshop and said that she was one of the happiest persons alive in that she has finally acquired a skill that will help put food on the table. “I am so excited to carry on with handmade textile printing and I am ready to share this knowledge with my friends,” she said.

. . .and 11year old Watson Chunda was heard saying, “I swear, we never learn things like these in our school.”

As a final event Rev. Mhango planted a tree together with the children to mark a changing point in Naluyanda.
The seed is planted and now it’s up to the participants from Naluyanda to use and enhance their new acquired skills.

The workshop drew participants from Kakoma, Yenga Yenga, Ndalama, Scheme and Mwashama villages and was sponsored by German Development Cooperation, Alendo Travel & Tours and the Civil Society Environment Fund.