So I got this in my email this morning…
They call the Third World the lazy man’s
purview; the sluggishly slothful and
languorous prefecture. In this realm people
are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and
therefore indigent—totally penniless,
needy, destitute, poverty-stricken,
disfavored, and impoverished. In this
demesne, as they call it, there are hardly
any discoveries, inventions, and
innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some
still call it “the dark continent” for the light
that flickers under the tunnel is not that of
hope, but an approaching train. And
because countless keep waiting in the way
of the train, millions die and many more
remain decapitated by the day.
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and
watch yourselves die,” the man next to me
said. “Get up and do something about it.”
Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense,
steely eyes, he was as cold as they come.
When I first discovered I was going to
spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a
non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to
Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate
marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic
skin-heads, most of who are racist.
“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand
as soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Zambia.”
“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s
country.”
“Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”
“But of course,” he responded. “You just
elected King Cobra as your president.”
My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s
moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold
eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of
those American highbrows who shuttle
between Africa and the U.S.
“I spent three years in Zambia in the
1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined
with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba,
Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other highly
intelligent Zambians.” He lowered his voice.
“I was part of the IMF group that came to
rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your
government put me in a million dollar
mansion overlooking a shanty called
Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all—
the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead,
and the healthy.”
“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.
“I have since moved to yet another group
with similar intentions. In the next few
months my colleagues and I will be in
Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for
the broker that has acquired a chunk of
your debt. Your government owes not the
World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll
be in Lusaka to offer your president a
couple of millions and fly back with a check
twenty times greater.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is
incorruptible. He is …”
He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an
African president, just one, who has not
fallen for the carrot and stick.”
Quett Masire’s name popped up.
“Oh, him, well, we never got to him
because he turned down the IMF and the
World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest
thing for him to do.”
At midnight we were airborne. The captain
wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to
watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking
down.
From my middle seat, I took a glance and
nodded admirably.
“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We
came here on Mayflower and turned Indian
land into a paradise and now the most
powerful nation on earth. We discovered
the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to
pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia.”
I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.”
He curled his lips into a smug smile.
“That’s what we call your country. You guys
are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We
come in with our large boats and fish your
minerals and your wildlife and leave
morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food,
crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s
crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call
Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites)
take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you
are the Muntu. I get what I want and you
get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what
lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the
entire Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter
said and lowered his voice. “You are
thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how
most Zambians respond when I tell them
the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a
moment put our skin pigmentations, this
black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my
friend, what is the difference between you
and me?”
“There’s no difference.”
“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists
in the Human Genome Project have proved
that. It took them thirteen years to
determine the complete sequence of the
three billion DNA subunits. After they
were all done it was clear that 99.9%
nucleotide bases were exactly the same in
you and me. We are the same people. All
white, Asian, Latino, and black people on
this aircraft are the same.”
I gladly nodded.
“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled
fatalistically. “Every white person on this
plane feels superior to a black person. The
white guy who picks up garbage, the
homeless white trash on drugs, feels
superior to you no matter his status or
education. I can pick up a nincompoop
from the New York streets, clean him up,
and take him to Lusaka and you all be
crowding around him chanting muzungu,
muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me
why my angry friend.”
For a moment I was wordless.
“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the
African Americans do, or colonialism, or
some psychological impact or some kind of
stigmatization. And don’t give me the
brainwash poppycock. Give me a better
answer.”
I was thinking.
He continued. “Excuse what I am about to
say. Please do not take offense.”
I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and
prepared for the worst.
“You my friend flying with me and all your
kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your
head on the pillow you don’t dream big.
You and other so-called African
intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of
you. It is you, and not those poor starving
people, who is the reason Africa is in such
a deplorable state.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.
He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will
say it again, you are lazy. Poor and
uneducated Africans are the most
hardworking people on earth. I saw them in
the Lusaka markets and on the street selling
merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling
away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing
stones for sell and I wept. I said to myself
where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are
the Zambian engineers so imperceptive
they cannot invent a simple stone crusher,
or a simple water filter to purify well water
for those poor villagers? Are you telling me
that after thirty-seven years of
independence your university school of
engineering has not produced a scientist or
an engineer who can make simple small
machines for mass use? What is the school
there for?”
I held my breath.
“Do you know where I found your
intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing.
They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka
Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka
Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a
bunch of alcoholic graduates. Zambian
intellectuals work from eight to five and
spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We
reserve the evening for brainstorming.”
He looked me in the eye.
“And you flying to Boston and all of you
Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy
and apathetic to your country. You don’t
care about your country and yet your very
own parents, brothers and sisters are in
Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of
them living in squalor. Many have died or
are dying of neglect by you. They are dying
of AIDS because you cannot come up with
your own cure. You are here calling
yourselves graduates, researchers and
scientists and are fast at articulating your
credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in
this and that—PhD my foot!”
I was deflated.
“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting
the attention of nearby passengers. “You
should be busy lifting ideas, formulae,
recipes, and diagrams from American
manufacturing factories and sending them
to your own factories. All those research
findings and dissertation papers you
compile should be your country’s treasure.
Why do you think the Asians are a force to
reckon with? They stole our ideas and
turned them into their own. Look at Japan,
China, India, just look at them.”
He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he
said and grinned. “As long as you are
dependent on my plane, I shall feel
superior and you my friend shall remain
inferior, how about that? The Chinese,
Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch
better. You Africans are at the bottom of
the totem pole.”
He tempered his voice. “Get over this white
skin syndrome and begin to feel confident.
Become innovative and make your own
stuff for god’s sake.”
At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at
Boston’s Logan International Airport.
Walter reached for my hand.
“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it
a damn. I have been to Zambia and have
seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a
piece of paper and scribbled something.
“Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”
He had written only the title: “Lords of
Poverty.”
Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I
watched Walter walk through the airport
doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge
dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up
sad memories of home. I could see
Zambia’s literati—the cognoscente,
intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and
scholars in the places he had mentioned
guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I
remembered some who have since passed
—how they got the highest grades in
mathematics and the sciences and attained
the highest education on the planet. They
had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), only to leave us with not a single
invention or discovery. I knew some by
name and drunk with them at the Lusaka
Playhouse and Central Sports.
Walter is right. It is true that since
independence we have failed to nurture
creativity and collective orientations. We as
a nation lack a workhorse mentality and
behave like 13 million civil servants
dependent on a government pay cheque.
We believe that development is generated
8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our
degrees hanging on the wall. Such a
working environment does not offer the
opportunity for fellowship, the excitement
of competition, and the spectacle of
innovative rituals.
But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even
mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due
to political circumstances over which they
have had little control. The past
governments failed to create an
environment of possibility that fosters
camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and
encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba,
Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced
orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer
many opportunities for drawing outside the
line.
I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast
in the same faculties as those of his
predecessors. If today I told him that we
can build our own car, he would throw me
out.
“Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get
out of here)
Knowing well that King Cobra will not
embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s
begin to look for a technologically active-
positive leader who can succeed him after a
term or two. That way we can make our
own stone crushers, water filters, water
pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s
dream big and make tractors, cars, and
planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain
inferior.
A fundamental transformation of our
country from what is essentially non-
innovative to a strategic superior African
country requires a bold risk-taking
educated leader with a triumphalist attitude
and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly
strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a
moment and think about our country. Our
journey from 1964 has been marked by
tears. It has been an emotionally
overwhelming experience. Each one of us
has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger,
and disease. The number of graves is
catching up with the population. It’s time to
change our political culture. It’s time for
Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-
positive progressive movement that will
change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or
dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage
the remaining few of your beloved ones.

I saw this and said to myself another lengthy write which I would probably just skim through but I was surprised, just could not stop reading.

Lovely write up which got me thinking