| Chapter 7

Africa Revisited

Que sera sera. What ever will be will be, as Doris Day would for ever croon, compellingly ‘mixing memory and desire’ for you. Will I be this, or Will I have that, you might well ask. The only defensible answer is that you can do no better than to accept philosophically whatever it may be that the future holds in store for you; words of wisdom born of experience. The future is not ours to see Que sera sera, enough said. That is not to say that we cannot have a goal in life and aspire for a future that sees our hopes fulfilled. ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?’ asks Robert Browning, who was, for better or for worse, an incurable optimist. God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world! That may well be so, but can you reckon without the personal demons that haunt you? You may, for instance, be predisposed to letting things hang fire, only to see lost opportunities cocking a snook at you. As the Spanish would say, “Por la calle despues, se va a la casa de nunca.” By the street of by and by, one arrives at the house of never. Or it may be, there are your DNA parameters that limit your intellectual reach; some more, some less. There are the high-fliers and the low-fliers. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs as Marx mischievously rationalises the pesky variables in a so-called society of equals. That’s cold comfort for those who want to soar, but fail to.

So, with your clipped wings that keep you earthbound, you join the general gaggle of supplicants to peck around for the leavings that lie around. Sometimes you are pleasantly surprised at what you have snapped up, but, quite often, not quite as pleasantly as you would have wished. Either way, you cannot do without the ‘leftovers’ that you managed to pick up in that inevitable push and shove, can you?

Thus it was that I was compelled yet again to accept an opening elsewhere after certain developments at school had upset the rhythm of our lives in Lovedale. A break with the past is never easy, especially after you have put down roots somewhere and the place has already grown on you, but it was just as well.

Notwithstanding this uprooting, our replanting ourselves in Africa -this time in Zambia- was to help us reap a richer harvest in our lives both professionally and substantially than we had hitherto. And also, we were fortunate that it happened before the neo-colonialists had made serious inroads into Zambia’s economic independence.

Our earlier stint in Africa in the mid 50’s and early 60’s had seen the continent passing through a period of political unrest and upheaval. Equally, it saw the excitement that accompanied the success of its struggle for independence especially in Anglophone Africa, both East and West. Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah was the first to become independent. That was in 1957 and, soon after, Nigeria too under Aboobacker Tafaawa Belewa. We had the rare good fortune to have a ringside view of how Julius Kambarage Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta and Milton Obote fought and won Uhuru or independence for the people of British East Africa. It did not come easily, no, not by a long chalk. It was often won at great cost in precious human lives. We know how Dedaan Kimathi’s Mau Mau uprising was put down ruthlessly. The rest is now history. The great Jomo himself had been incarcerated for a long time. Enormous sacrifices had to be made by the indigenous people of an older generation. Yet, to the new generation of Africans ‘bliss was it to be alive’ and ‘to be young, very heaven’ for they had a whole new future to look forward to.

At midnight on that eventful day in 1961, I had the rare privilege of sharing that magical moment with the multitude that had gathered there to witness Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, president of the Tanganyika African National Union, proudly hoisting the flag of independent Tanganyika at the Uhuru Stadium in Dar es Salaam and exhorting his people to Umoja or Unity. The people of Tanganyika had come a long way when they lustily intoned their national anthem, Mungu Ibariikii Afriikaa (God bless Africa) at that historic moment. How, later on, Tanganyika became Tanzania when the island of Zanzibar agreed for a merger with mainland Tanganyika is also now history. Earlier, the people of Zanzibar had gained their freedom from their autocratic Sultan owing, largely, to the struggle for independence of the Afro-Shirazi Party and its leader Abed Karume.

In an earlier era, the people of Tanganyika had lived through hard times under the despotic Germans. They were pitiless colonial masters who treated the colonised like cattle. According to old timers, the indigenous people had literally lived through constant fear of being horsewhipped by their German ‘herders’ on horseback even for the most inconsequential infringements of their laws, which were at best only arbitrary. Hanging in public was quite common as an example of retributive justice. This was not as though they were upholding the rule of law, such as it was, but more like re-enacting the law of the jungle. After German East Africa was ceded to the British as a trust territory by the League of Nations, life became less harsh for the people. Yet, it was a life of regimentation for them and they were just as happy to be rid of British rule as well when they did, and not a moment too soon. And Nyerere became its first president.

The wind of change that blew across the rest of Africa, however, was yet to gather full force. The political ferment that we witnessed this time round in the Africa of the 70’s and 80’s, was no different in its intensity, but the arena had by then largely shifted to the colonies in Central and Southern Africa. Kaunda’s Zambia had already wrested her independence from the colonial powers seven years before we reached that country in 1972. The people were enjoying a period of relative peace and prosperity that they had not known before. It may well be, Sir Seretse Khama of Botswana and Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi had already beaten Kenneth Kaunda to the post in the race for independence. I am not sure if my rusty memory would bear me out, either way. And I am not very good at trawling the Internet.

It took a few years more before Zimbabwe gained its independence. South Africa was yet to win independence and Nelson Mandela was still marking time on Robben Island. Then there was the unfinished business of the Portuguese colonies. Augustinho Neto of Angola and Samora Machel of Mozambique were still leading the struggle for independence. And, last but not the least, there was Namibia.

In spite of all the happiness that freedom has brought and notwithstanding the wealth of Africa’s natural resources, all has not been well in many countries there. The people have been beset by a plethora of problems, not the least of which has been the corrupt, ruthless and megalomaniacal leaders they have been saddled with. These despotic leaders have without exception shown a proclivity towards clinging on to power by whatever means at their disposal. Idi Amin, Jean Bedel Bokassa, Mobutu Sese Seko, Sani Abacha, Frederick Chiluba and the list goes on. Thankfully, most of them have had their comeuppance. That we haven’t seen off the last of them, however, is indeed a sobering thought. You only have to think of Robert Mugabe and how from the word go he has incrementally arrogated to himself absolute power by sidelining younger, more capable aspirants to know how such leaders continue to be a festering sore on the body politic of Africa.

In refreshing contrast, the likes of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Leopold Senghor – he of the negritude fame- erstwhile President of the Ivory Coast and Nelson Mandela of South Africa were to stand apart in a class of their own as selfless leaders. Mandela stood towering above the rest. They, each of them, strode the world like a colossus. They groomed their successors and when the time came, made way for them gladly. Their people may have been critical of their acts of commission or omission when they were in power, and that was as it should be, but, regardless, the people recognise their integrity and selflessness and continue to revere their memory.

Joaquim Chissano the former president of Mozambique is a more recent version of such a leader. On Monday, 22 October 2007, at a ceremony in London’s City Hall, it was announced that the inaugural prize to reward African leaders for good governance and for leaving office voluntarily had gone to Chissano. Interestingly, even as the announcement was being made, Chissano was unreachable as he was in a remote part of northern Uganda trying to mediate between the government and the rebels. And it was his 68th birthday! On being told of what he was about, Kofi Annan the former UN Secretary General, is said to have exclaimed, ‘What a way to spend a birthday!’

The man behind the $5 million award -to be paid over 10 years, plus $200,000 a year for life- is Mo Ibrahim, a rags-to-riches, London-based Egyptian billionaire, whose eponymous foundation has instituted the African Leadership Prize. In so doing he has added ‘…a new chapter to his remarkable story, not because of the millions he has made but for what he has decided to give away’ as London’s Evening Standard reported three days later.

When asked why he was giving away his money, he said, ‘I’m a Nubian. In my culture, it is shameful that I should eat well while my neighbour is starving. In Africa, there is no safety net, so people rely on the extended family. I came from nil; I know what it is to have nothing. Besides, how many millions does a man need to live on? How many Mercedes can you drive…?’ I believe that in the years to come other great humanists of Africa would be rewarded for their past services to the continent. And, that other great Africans would reveal themselves to be humanists like Mo Ibrahim.

Not the least of that august pantheon is Kenneth Kaunda the first president of Zambia. The mention of Zambia at once brings to mind the familiar sight of Kaunda waving his trademark handkerchief, dazzling white as always. So does his constant refrain of ‘One Zambia One Nation’ even as he would address his people on the virtues of humanism in all fields of human endeavour. His full-throated rendering –he was a great baritone- of the Zambian National Anthem, ‘Tiyende Pamodzi’ still resonates whenever I think of Zambia. That he could meld the various tribes as diverse as the Lozis of Barotseland, the Bembas of the Northern Province, the Llambas of the Copperbelt Province, and the Tumbukas of the Eastern Province, to name but a few, is a tribute to the great vision of a man whose constant refrain of the oneness of Zambia had prepared his people to cut across tribal barriers and find common ground as a unified nation. But this was not achieved without initial hiccups.

At the very start, the fledgling nation of Zambia had had its problems in the form of a revolt led by a self-proclaimed prophetess. That was in the person of a woman called Alice Lenshina. With her as a spiritual leader, a horde of misguided people challenged the Zambian establishment and rose in insurrection. Believe it or not, they had been led to think that if they covered themselves with their own faeces they would be able to dodge army bullets! As one might have guessed, the stench of faeces could not ward off firepower. Except for this initial burp, it must be said, to the great credit of Zambians, that their nation has not suffered anything remotely like the internecine conflicts that some countries in Africa are chronically plagued with.

What was rather difficult to content with, however, was the ingrained idea in the Zambian psyche that work was something that others did, but not they themselves. There is this proverb of the Tonga tribe that pretty much sums up this attitude: ‘Sometimes people would do anything to make money; even work!’ It took Kaunda, even with the full backing of the cadre-based United National Independence Party, a long time to disabuse the people of this easygoing outlook on life and to instil into them the importance of work for survival in a competitive world. As to whether he was entirely successful, the jury is still out.

I have had the good fortune to meet the great man himself in person twice. The first occasion was a formal one at the State House on Independence Avenue in Lusaka when I had accompanied Bishop Thomas Mar Athanasius of the Mar Thoma Church for an audience with the president. I was with the UN at that time. The meeting lasted no more than half an hour. On our arrival, we were ushered into an anteroom to wait for the president. At the appointed time, the president walked in with a warm smile on his face. He was elegantly turned out in his well-tailored linen safari suit. A silk cravat was neatly wound round his neck. His wrist watch was on his right hand and a copper bangle adorned his left. And of course, the now familiar white handkerchief was loosely held between his third and fourth finger of his left hand. His firm handshake bespoke a strong character. The ensuing exchange was mostly about the relations between India and Zambia. At the end of it he rose, shook hands with us and bid us goodbye. That was in 1977. Or, was it 1978?

The second was an informal affair at our friend Mohan Koshy’s place at Esher in Surrey, a full quarter of a century later. He was in transit to Zambia. Dunstan, his constant companion and Man Friday was with him. He spent several hours with us reminiscing about Zambia. For an octogenarian, he appeared very well preserved, quite laidback and surprisingly energetic. Evidently, he follows a strict regimen. We were amazed when he enthusiastically ventured to knock a football around the front yard with Johan, Mohan’s eleven-year-old son. Even in retirement, he is frequently on the move traversing the world on lecture tours.

Zambia is a landlocked country that depends on its neighbours to offer her a lifeline, an umbilical cord so to speak, that connects her to the outside world for sustenance. Along with that, you think too of that bountiful gift of nature and the backbone of her economy, copper no less. You also think of the other things that Zambia is blessed with. Its great climate, for one. It is a Shangri-La! Besides, the fertility of its soil holds out great possibilities for the tillers of the soil. To this day Zambia has not suffered pangs of starvation unlike many an African country such as Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

And then you think of that mighty river Zambezi with its awe-inspiring waterfalls, so striking at first sight as to beggar all description, which the locals had always called ‘Mosi-o-Tunya’ or ‘the Smoke that Thunders’, mixing their metaphors with such remarkable felicity. And then David Livingstone had to go and name it rather unimaginatively after Victoria, his frowzy old queen whose appearance was certainly not the most inspiring! And this, after he is reputed to have gushed as soon as he set eyes upon the falls that it was ‘lovely enough to arrest the gaze of angels’! That his compatriot colonisers, who came later, in their turn named the area surrounding the falls after him was only to be expected. That the Zambians, however, have not stooped to changing the name of the place is a tribute to their sense of history not to say their broadmindedness in keeping alive the memory of David Livingstone who had done much for the emancipation of the indigenous people of Africa.

Where was I? Yes, at the break with the past. In the course of our professional lives, we are often forced to change tack when the winds are not favourable and all is not what it should be. As you may recall, that was what had happened to me back in 1955 when Ammu was expecting our first son Bobby and we would soon have a new mouth to feed. On my meagre earnings at St. Thomas College, Kozhencherry, I could hardly have hoped to bring home the bacon after starting a family. Thus it was that I had eagerly taken up a teaching position in erstwhile Tanganyika and moved to East Africa.

Then in the September of 1964 –to jog your memory again- there was another change of scene for me, this time to London for the purpose of honing my skills in the teaching of English. At the same time, quite opportunely as it turned out, Ammu went back to India to be trained as a teacher. At the close of the academic year, I was to join Ammu for a short spell and then together we were to return to East Africa.

But then, we were soon overtaken by events beyond our control. In the August of 1965 to be precise, we were compelled to change tack again, but this time for a different reason. It was our doubts about the level of care that our sons, Bobby and Bonny, had been receiving at their boarding school back in India that compelled me to give up our laidback life in Africa and join the Lawrence School at Lovedale in Ooty for a teaching job that was providentially on offer then. Truth to tell the position in Lovedale was much less remunerative than the one in Africa, but, of course, it was to prove professionally infinitely more rewarding in more ways than one. It was also considerably more reassuring as far as our expectations for the future of our children were concerned, for they had automatically found places in the school by virtue of my appointment.

Towards the end of 1971, circumstances once again conspired to upset the even tenor of our life, this time in Lovedale, which we had grown so used to over the little more than six years that had gone by since the August of 1965. What happened was that the headship of the school was soon to fall vacant, so applications for the post had been called for and prospective candidates short-listed. My name found a place in that list, I was interviewed, but that was as far as it went. A colleague who was senior to me, and whose credentials were no doubt impeccable, was offered the post. But my own self-image, as a professional, had taken a knock and would not quite let me come to terms with the prospect of having to continue working with him. Besides, I had no particular fondness for the man. Altruism could only go so far. Yet, realistically, I could not let go of the ‘bird in hand’ without an adequate alternative.

So, mentally I began casting my net wider as a way out of this dilemma. My close friends, who were privy to my state of mind, tactfully poured light scorn over any knee-jerk reaction that I might be contemplating. The outgoing headmaster, K. I. Thomas, who was also au fait with the quandary in which I had found myself, suggested a way out and asked me to apply for the Headship of the Punjab Public School at Nabha, which was on offer even as those self-diminishing thoughts were lashing about in my head. I needed no further prompting to apply, I was called up for the customary interview and I came away feeling quite sure that I had made an impression on the school governors. As I was waiting for the official letter of appointment, which did eventually arrive, my serendipity had another surprise for me to further soothe my sorely tested ego.

Shortly after I had been interviewed for the Nabha vacancy, P. A. George, AKA Thampy, a friend of ours from our Tanganyika days had contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in a teaching position in Zambia, where he was at that time working as the Chief Supplies Officer for the Zambian Railways based in Kabwe. I did not have to think twice to say that I was. Thampy’s contacts in Zambia had opened the way for us. And soon, an offer was forthcoming from Zambia.

Nothing could have been more fortuitous than that it gave me another option to mull over. That the Zambia package also included a teaching position for Ammu was an additional incentive. Besides, Bobby was sixteen, pushing seventeen, and Bonny, snapping at his heels. I realised that we would soon have to come up with large sums of money to send them to college. And as for our daughter Bina, who at that time was only three and a half years old, we realised it wouldn’t be long before she would also appear on the radar and be a part of the financial equation, to mix metaphors blithely.

Leaving Bobby and Bonny behind at Lovedale, Ammu, Bina and I, left Cochin on 7th January 1972 by an Indian Airlines flight bound for Bombay. Having spent the night there, we took an Air India flight to Nairobi on the morning of 8th January. We had a day’s stopover in Nairobi. My dad’s cousin Kunjaappichaayan and his wife Kunjoonjamma Kochamma met us at our hotel and took us out on a round of visits to their friends in Nairobi. I remember our visiting some expatriate Malayalee friends of theirs including the widow of the late Mr. Philippose, who had been India’s Trade Commissioner to Kenya until his untimely death not long before. And on the trot we called on another widow, Mariamma, wife of the late Mr. Mathen whom we had known back in Dar es Salaam. We also took in a bit of shopping. Late next evening we reached Lusaka by a Zambia Airways flight.

It was Sunday the 9th of January. Thampy and his wife Jolly were waiting at the airport to receive us. So was Brother Marcel the principal of St. Paul’s Secondary School of Mulungushi, where both Ammu and I had earlier accepted teaching positions. After the initial introductions, Brother Marcel left us in the care of Thampy and Jolly on the understanding that they would drop us off at Mulungushi in a day or two. We accompanied them to Kabwe. At a fair lick, Kabwe is a good two hours’ drive from Lusaka by road. By the time we reached Thampy’s place it was well past midnight and without further ado, we went straight to bed.

Jetlag notwithstanding, we ventured forth the next morning to go shopping for the basic things that we would need to get off to a start and hopefully adapt quickly to the new milieu that we had transplanted ourselves to. Wherever in the high street of Kabwe we went shop crawling, we found the shop shelves bursting with the kind of stuff that we could hardly have dreamt of finding in the shoddy retail outlets back in India with its self-inflicted socialist economy of self-denial. That the Indians have had second thoughts since then is another story.

In sharp contrast, thanks to the continuing demand for copper, although the warring Americans were on their last legs in Vietnam, Zambia had been enjoying an unprecedented economic boom since the first flush of her independence from Britain in 1964. Conspicuous consumption was getting to be something of a habit with the new ruling class of Zambians. Saving for a rainy day was the farthest from their thoughts. A story that was doing the rounds at the time was that the Zambian parliament had even contemplated supplying beer ‘on tap’ to every household for next to nothing, as they would water!

That this honeymoon was not to last very long would become a sad commentary on how the short-sighted money managers of the country had been lulled into a sense of false security. The beer story may well have been a canard put about by the detractors of the country, but the writing was already on the wall. At the time of our arrival, however, the long bread lines and the never-ending queues that made you foot-sore as you waited patiently to procure daily necessities were still some time away. But when it did happen, many a grumbling Zambian must have in his heart of hearts yearned for the ‘good old’ Colonial days, just as the Hebrews to whom the accustomed oppression of their Egyptian masters must have time and again seemed more endurable by far than the freedom of the Covenant as they dithered for forty years in the desert. Satisfying immediate needs would seem to be more pressing to man than abstractions such as the concept of freedom.

In the January of 1972, the Zambian shop-shelves were still chock-full. And, the Zambian unit of currency, the Kwacha, was still strong fetching more than ten Rupees to a Kwacha. And, S. M. Patel’s departmental store was the biggest of all the shops in Kabwe. Until independence, the place was out of bounds for ordinary African shoppers. If, however, they were willing to abase themselves, they could buy things like bread and milk and that sort of stuff through a hatch at one end of the shop where their presence could not offend the eyes of the lily-white shoppers. Dr. Kenneth Kaunda swore he would never eat meat again because, on one occasion, while Zambia was still Northern Rhodesia -so named after Cecil Rhodes the coloniser extraordinaire- Kaunda had been asked to go round to the back of a butcher’s shop and buy his meat through a hatch! Was this very different from the tradesman’s entrance that made a man feel diminished as he delivered his goods at the back of houses of the upper classes in England?

Even as we were browsing among the shop shelves at S. M. Patel’s, who should I run into but my old college mate Thomachen as he came round one of the bays with his wife in tow. K.U.Thomas -that was his official name- and I had been residents at the University Hostel, when we were graduate students at the University College, Trivandrum. We were thick as thieves then. We had parted company well nigh eighteen years earlier to go our separate ways after our final exams and had become teachers, he to Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia and I to Kozhencherry. I was not aware that he had since then moved to Zambia to work for the Ministry of Education. After the initial surprise and the ensuing small talk we parted company, promising to meet again. I could see that Ammu had warmed to Chellamma (that was his wife’s name) almost instantly. My wife Ammu has the uncanny knack of breaking the ice and easily making friends with strangers and this occasion was no different. They have been good friends since.

We spent a second night with the Georges. We had a lot of catching up to do since we had left Tanzania. We talked late into the night. At some point during the evening, I recall Thampy’s wife Jolly suddenly springing up as though she had remembered something, walking across the room to where the cuckoo wall clock was hung and pulled down its weighted chains. This was not something one would usually take any particular notice of, except that on this occasion the tug on one of the two chains was less than gentle and it came away in Jolly’s hands to Thampy’s obvious dismay. If looks could speak, the message would be unmistakable. It transpired that the clock had been acquired not long before that. If I were in Thampy’s place at that precise moment, I would have probably flown off the handle. Compared to my threshold of tolerance, Thampy’s reaction had been one of admirable restraint. Anyway, that little mishap put paid to any further unselfconscious chitchat that we might have had for the night. We retired to bed soon after. The next morning, after breakfast, Thampy and Jolly drove us to St. Paul’s, Mulungushi.

The school was a fully residential boys’ secondary school run by the Marist Lay Brothers of Canada under the auspices of the Catholic Secretariat of Zambia. It stood in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, on an extensive campus tucked away from unwelcome intrusion. The only sign of human habitation away from immediate environs of the school was the daily sight of smoke rising, as we were to learn later, from a few scattered clusters of mud-and-wattle dwellings that dotted the scrubland around the campus itself but hidden away well out of sight. During the day, a handful of the villagers emerged from their rondavels to make their way to the campus to serve as domestic help only to return at the end of the day. At night, however, sounds of beating drums coming from that direction could often be heard late into the night. It was well known that their revelry on such occasions was made merrier by long draughts of Chibuku, a potent concoction that they brewed from fermented maize.

The only occasion I remember seeing them in full force was when, in the first light of a winter morning that filtered through the fragile darkness, they descended on our backyard carrying empty tin cans and literally falling over each other as they did so. Even as we watched, still sleepy eyed, with ever increasing amazement, they began collecting, without so much as a by-your-leave, the white-winged termites that had in their tens of thousands carpeted our backyard, unable to take wing, after the rains of the night before. At first glance through the early morning haze, we had mistaken that ‘carpet’ for a touch of frost. Our helper Jackson who hailed from that neighbourhood was directing the operation. We could now surmise that he must have been the one to carry the news of this ‘windfall’ to the villagers. On asking him later what the ‘harvest’ was for, his cryptic answer was, ‘We fly them’. It took us a while to figure out that Zambians generally articulated the consonants ‘l’ and ‘r’ interchangeably. A ‘looking mirror’, for instance, would sound something like a ‘rookie milla’ when unschooled Zambians uttered it.

Kabwe, the nearest town, which could be reached only by a sixteen-mile stretch of narrow, corrugated, gravelled path, was the school’s virtual lifeline. And that would dissolve into a slippery track at the slightest hint of rain. It would then challenge the driving skills of even the most intrepid of drivers to negotiate what could only be called an apology for a road, with elephant grass hemming it in from either side almost all the way to Kabwe.

The faculty lived on the campus in detached three-bedroom, purpose-built houses, each with its own front-lawn and a sizable backyard that would do nicely for a kitchen garden. Ours was a spacious one with lots of ground back and front. It was perhaps the biggest among the staff quarters, which came in different sizes. It stood at the very end of a path that veered off at right angles from the access road to the campus. Along that path, which ran a hundred yards or so, you drove past a row of smaller houses to your right, starting with the Zambian teacher Eric Nawa’s quarters and ending with the Irishman George Champkin’s, and into our front yard and the car porch.

We would enter the house either from the carport through a side door into the kitchen or from the front veranda through a door at the left end that opened into the living room. The living room ran along the whole length of the veranda in front. There was a similar veranda at the back as well. As you entered the living room through the front door, to your left was the dining room with direct access to the kitchen. At the other end of the living room, a door led into a corridor. The bedrooms, all three of them, and a bathroom opened into the corridor. It was a spacious house that offered great possibilities for the home maker.

But the one big drawback was that the school did not provide round-the-clock power supply. Its ‘splendid isolation’ had its virtues but at the same time, set back as the school was some distance away from the national power grid, it made it difficult for the school to get hooked up to the power supply line. The school, therefore, had to produce its own power with the help of a diesel-run generator, but the supply was not unlimited. It lasted only for five hours or so in the evenings. It was lights out at ten! Strange as it appeared to the uninitiated like us, the fridge in the kitchen worked on the heat from a paraffin lamp with a glass chimney round its flame. The lighted lamp slid snugly into a slot at the bottom end of the fridge, which would then, by some alchemy, turn its innards cold! And if one did not sweep out the inevitable soot that the lamp gathered every few days, the fridge would turn warm and its contents go limp! The fridge was a Swedish-made Electrolux. And, we cooked our food on a paraffin-fired cooking range.

Although the house was said to be fully furnished, the furniture was at best Spartan. Besides, the three-piece suite in the living room had seen better days. The settee in particular had big splotches left behind by the previous occupant’s dogs. The drapes were definitely fraying at the edges. We had to have the suite re-covered and the furnishings changed.

It was the ground around the house that needed a makeover the most. We were told that the place was infested with snakes, especially the spitting cobra. In fact the house, which was the biggest on the campus, had lain vacant for more than a year before we moved in mainly because prospective occupiers were put off by the likelihood of having to deal with the infernal snakes and other creepy crawly creatures, like scorpions and spiders for instance.

A hair-raising encounter that I had with Tarantulas, the reputedly fearsome spiders, two years later, was one such. Thankfully it did not happen in our house. One of the other houses had fallen vacant when Fernandes, a colleague of ours, had gone on transfer to a school in Chipata in the Eastern Province. It took a few months before it was allotted to a new arrival, a Mr. Verghese from Kerala. Barely an hour or so after he had moved in, he came running to our place, looking agitated and beside himself with worry. It transpired that his bathroom walls and the bathtub were virtually crawling over with a horde of the hairy arachnids. He did not have a clue as to what he could do. At first I was at a loss too, but then I decided to use a flaming torch with a long handle to singe them first and then crush them with a broom from a safe distance to be doubly sure.

The house allotted to us was Hobson’s choice; it was either that or nothing at all. And we were determined to make the most of it. There was no fence along the borders of the ground, which was unkempt all over. So first we grew a row of bushes all around to raise a hedge. The ground had been covered with wild undergrowth. Machetes were used to cut them all down. The residents of the campus were free to borrow a lawn mower from the school whenever it was needed, so we too availed ourselves of that utility and gave the place more than a good going over. We laid out a lawn in front and started a kitchen garden at the back. Both the lawn and the garden flourished and in good time we could enjoy the fruits of our labour.

Soon the homestead assumed a character all its own. And when the time came for us to move to the Copperbelt Teachers’ Training College on transfer, there were quite a few teachers, who had cast covetous eyes in the direction of our made-over house, vying to beat each other to the post.

And as for the cobras, the threat proved to be rather exaggerated. In fact, with a sufficiently long stick to ‘crush its head’ from a safe distance, you could deal with it quite easily. Interestingly, spitting cobras are not known to bite its adversaries but rather ‘spit’ in their eyes when provoked. The stream of poison that it spat out in a trajectory from its reared hood could reputedly reach a distance of six or seven feet. Any wannabe slayer of the serpent, therefore, would need to wear protective shades over the eyes to pre-empt its potent venom from entering them and causing blindness; unless promptly attended to.

Our compatriot and friend O.D. George and Annakutty his wife, who lived just a hop, step and jump away from us, were momentarily flummoxed when a snake once trespassed into their house, of all places, through the hole in his toilet bowl! How the creature could have found access to the house the way it did was a mystery. Could it have been from the cesspit? Anyway, George quickly regained his composure and dealt with the problem although I do not recall the precise strategy he employed to get rid of the intruder. Malayalees are generally not known to recoil in fear when they encounter snakes.

In fact there are a few temples and shrines in Kerala that house snakes and venerate them. The one at Mannaarshaala near Alleppey is known to attract devotees in large numbers all through the year. Not many Malayalee men have a phobia about coming upon snakes unexpectedly.

I can recall only one occasion when I had to deal with a spitting cobra in Mulungushi. And this was after the trespassing reptile had had a brush with our dog Booty and spat in its eyes. Booty may have rushed at the intruder instinctively without knowing what was coming. And its yelps of pain alerted me that something was seriously amiss. I came out to see one very much roused cobra still swaying its raised hood from side to side as though spoiling for a spat. Our first concern was for the dog. While Ammu held the dog down, I sent a jet of water from the garden hose to wash out the poison from its eyes. Then I turned my attention to the snake which was still hot under the collar. With wrap-around shades on my eyes, I lunged at it with a long stick and predictably, with each prod, it spat out a fine jet of ‘spittle’ in my direction. It was done with such force that with every liquescent hiss, the snake’s hood hit the ground with a pronounced plop. And, it was not difficult for me to step back out of harm’s way each time. What was interesting was that the provoked serpent’s whiplash strikes grew weaker with each shy and the plops grew fainter. Naturally, the jets of spit had also become weaker. After a minute or two of this ‘give and take’, my finishing it off was just a formality. This is pretty much the same tactic that a mongoose adopts to do a cobra in.

Black mambas are a different proposition altogether. They are known to be the most poisonous of all snakes. The venom is neurotoxic. The creature is retiring by nature and extremely shy of humans, but if inadvertently provoked would attack with great speed. And the victim dies within minutes. In all my twelve-odd years in Zambia I never once saw a black mamba in situ. I did see a few in glass cases at a snake sanctuary in Kafue. Kafue is about half an hour’s drive from Lusaka.

Brother Leugeot (?) –I am not sure if I can ever remember to get French names spelt correctly-, who had been the Brother Superior in Mulungushi before our time there, was also a herpetologist of sorts. He had a strange fascination for snakes, which his colleagues could not quite comprehend. Wherever he went ‘hunting’ for snakes to catch them and milk their venom, he would invariably carry a survival kit containing anti-venom vaccine, syringes and what have you just in case. Sure enough, once in his attempt to bag a mamba, he was bitten by it almost as though it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. He, however, had the presence of mind to inject himself promptly with a double dose of the antidote. Yet, he soon lost consciousness and had to be rushed to the hospital. He lay in a coma hovering between life and death for some time before he finally pulled through. Perhaps, it was the double-strength anti-venom shot that saved his life. After that brush with death, he moved to Salisbury in Northern Rhodesia on transfer.

The Marist brothers of Mulungushi were a mixed lot. Austerity, Chastity and Obedience were the three pillars of their oath of allegiance to their order. This was not to say that they were all like puppets on a string. They were very much flesh and blood, each with his own character traits.

Brother Marcel Lemoyne, the principal, had a charismatic personality. In his interpersonal relationships, he was affable and had what one might call the deft touch. As an administrator, in dealing with either malingering teachers or intractable students, he had a way that was effortlessly effective. In his chatty approach to the fairer sex, one got the impression that he was not the sort of person who would want to remain stubbornly celibate for too long. He was an extrovert who enjoyed company and was not averse to a goodly tipple without showing any noticeable ill effects. This was not to say that he indulged himself as a matter of habit. He was not averse to a drink or two, but only socially and only in the company of his peers.

Not long after we joined the school, we were sorry to see him leave for Lusaka in the line of duty to assume the responsibilities of the Educational Secretary General of the Catholic Secretariat. We were to learn later that he broke the vow of celibacy he had earlier taken, married a Zambian lady and raised a family, which was as it should be for an outgoing person like him. How well this went down with his French Canadian compatriots of the Marist Order is not known.

Brother Leopold Robert, who took over the reins of the school after Brother Marcel’s departure, could not have been more different. As like as chalk to cheese. A private joke among some of us was that he was a leopard that changed its spots. He was not a particularly sociable person. You could never be sure where you stood with him. For instance, he would be quite approachable and ready to listen to you in the privacy of his office, but unreceptive and standoffish, especially during a staff meeting.

I remember one such that was convened at short notice to choose a head boy for the school. Some argued for taking the line of least resistance and choosing a student who they had found habitually recalcitrant and difficult to deal with in class. Testing the threshold of his teachers’ patience was his favourite pastime. He was, however, discerning enough not to trifle with all. The ostensible argument of those that had been at the receiving end of his antics was that he would turn over a new leaf when he was entrusted with such a responsibility. I forget the first name of the student. Mubanga was his surname. Ammu and I vehemently opposed the proposal, arguing that he would not be a role model for the students to emulate. In fact Ammu warned the principal that the boy in question would only lead the school, in her words, ‘to hell’. Nevertheless, in spite of the flaw in his character to be disruptive in class, we said we would not oppose his appointment as one of the prefects in view of his known leadership potential and the chance, however remote it might be, that he might rehabilitate himself. Our protest notwithstanding, the principal appointed him head boy.

Ammu remembers having had a row with him in her geography lesson soon after we had joined the school. It was her very first lesson in Mubanga’s class. As soon as the lesson began, making as though he was taking a book out of his desk, the boy lifted his hinged desktop and dropped it shut with a bang. Ammu gave him a knowing look. A minute later he did it again. This time she told him if he did it again she would exclude him from her class. He had apparently thought he could call her bluff and test her threshold of patience. He did it a third time. She deliberately walked up to him, caught him by his collar, stood him up and asked him to get out. To Ammu’s great relief, he did not resist. To this day, she has not been able to figure out how she had found the strength to do what she did.

The matter was duly reported to the principal. However, instead of taking disciplinary action forthwith, he merely asked the boy to attend his geography lessons in another stream. That miffed Ammu no end. A week later, the principal asked Ammu if she would care to have the boy back in her class. ‘Not unless he is ready to apologize in class publicly’ was Ammu’s curt rejoinder. As Ammu was teaching there next, Mubanga came to the classroom door and stood there trying sheepishly to attract her attention. Ammu went up to him. He apologised to her and added that he wanted to be in her class again, but implored her not to shame him in public. He looked sufficiently contrite. Ammu relented and let him into the class, but not before letting the class know that he had apologised to her. This incident must have weighed heavily with us when we later opposed the proposal that Mubanga be made the head boy.

It was not long before our worst fears were proved right. It was the last day of term. Mubanga and his fellow prefects skulked out of the campus after supper, went to a shebeen in the village and got themselves drunk on Chibuku. Totally inebriated, they lurched back to the campus. They saw that the lights in the principal’s office were on and, inexplicably, decided to go straight to his office. Could they have feared that, their absence having been discovered, the principal was waiting up to haul them over the coals? Could it have been intended as a pre-emptive show of unfelt remorse? In the event, they could only respond to the principal’s grilling in incoherent monosyllables, their confusion having been compounded by their wooziness. After sending them off to their dormitories, believe it or not, he came straight to our house and knocked on our door. Looking suitably chastened, he told us what had transpired and told Ammu how right she had been after all, adding with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, ‘He did not lead them to hell exactly, but he did lead them to a bar!’ In an instant, his stock went up in our eyes.

As we had feared, Mubanga was expelled from school after the matter had been referred to the Ministry of Education for their ruling, which was given without delay. And this was in spite of our entreaties that he need only be stripped of his responsibility but that he should be given another chance to rehabilitate himself. Four years later, on our way to Kitwe in the Copperbelt, the police flagged us down at Kapiri Mposhi. We had by then got quite used to this routine. This was done every now and then to make sure that we had our national registration cards and the car’s papers on us. They would also check to see if the car was roadworthy. Invariably, the lights all round, the hand brake, the tyre treads, and the horn and the wipers would all be checked. We would have a private laugh every time we heard the officer saying, ‘Hootaah, Saah’, ‘Wipaah, Saah’ and so on. This time it was no different. When one of the police officers finally bent down to give us the ‘go ahead’, lo and behold, who do we see but Mubanga our hero himself in person and in a police uniform! He was as happy to see us as we, him. After all, he had rehabilitated himself!

That brings to mind an encounter of a different kind that I had with the police, this time not far from Kitwe. I was driving slowly up a gradient, having to tag along with increasing impatience behind a long, flat-bedded truck that was wheezing along. Obviously, I could not see the road ahead beyond the brow of the hill, but the driver of the truck waved me on from his high perch. Disregarding the unbroken double line running down the middle of the road, I stepped on the accelerator, overtook the truck and was coasting along down the other side of the hill when, as if from nowhere, a police car appeared, its siren blaring, flagged me down to the verge as it shot past and came to a screeching halt in front of our car. A man in police uniform got out of the car and as he approached me, I asked him, sounding miffed at having been pulled up, ‘What is this all about, constable?’ Instantly, I knew that I had riled him as he gave me a glare and shot back, ‘I am not a constable! I’m the superintendent of police. Follow me!’ He got back into the car and signalled to me to follow his car. We drove straight to the nearest police station at Mindolo. I was asked to wait, while he went into his office and slammed the door behind him, still in a huff. After I had cooled my heels for what seemed like ages, he came out, told me what my offence was and asked me to pay the prescribed fine. Fortunately, no one I knew had witnessed my humiliation.

I am afraid the thread of my story is once again lost in the narrative. Let me pick it up from where I left off at Mulungushi. As I was saying, there was more to Leopold than met the eye. He kept his cards close to his chest, but he improved with use and one could warm to him all right, even if only slowly. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised when he gave me a testimonial which, among other things, said, “…Pupils appreciated his lessons and his ‘savoir faire’. His command of English language made him valuable. He took an active part in the School Magazine and was in charge of preparing the boys for a national quiz. (They came second). Our teams, under his care, came first and third in a public speaking contest run by the Rotary Club. Mr. John was elected Secretary-treasurer of the newly started Staff Club. He did very good work at St.Paul’s.” Coming as it did from someone who was parsimonious with words, of course, I was flattered no end!

That reminds of an inspection report that P. B. Kopolo, the Regional Inspector of Secondary Schools, had written after observing my English Literature class on 26th January 1973. Let me quote the relevant part. “…The topic was ‘James Ngugi’ taken from ‘The River Between’. He read the story to the class and paused when and wherever he felt it was necessary to explain or clarify a word, a phrase or a sentence to make sure the pupils were following him. From time to time, he would check on their comprehension by asking them questions as he proceeded. …Discipline, tone, atmosphere and attitude were quite sound. The teacher’s voice was (is) very good indeed. Mr. John knows what he is doing, hence his steadiness and confidence in himself even when before the inspector.” If this sounds like trumpet-blowing once too often, let me hasten to add that it was mainly this report that was instrumental in the Ministry of Education’s promoting me later to the headship of the English Department at the Copperbelt Secondary Teachers’ College at Kitwe.

While I am still puffed up with self-praise, I might as well add to my list of testimonials the one that I received from R. C. B. Sibisi, the principal of the said training college when I later left it to join the United Nations Institute for Namibia. Let me quote the relevant part from it: “…Mr. John has performed his duties as head of the department and Lecturer very well and earned himself respect from his colleagues and students alike for his academic competence and professional integrity. …he has proved himself an able organiser of language teaching materials. He ran the language laboratory of this college very successfully during his tenure of office. The college will certainly miss his services. Finally, I am pleased to state that Mr. John’s character during his stay at the college was beyond reproach – a testimony to his religious background.” Not being a church-going Christian, I am to this day baffled by how he could have drawn such a conclusion. I had never worn my religion on my sleeve.

To go back to the brothers of Mulungushi, let me begin with Brother Lucio who joined the school some time after we had. He was from Spain and he was full of life and high spirits. And that was only as it should be from someone with his Latin joie de vivre. He liked his wine and his badminton in equal measure. He was a frequent visitor to our house. More than once, he gifted us large, wickerwork-covered flagons of rosé brought in on the quietby long-distance truckers and meant mainly for the brothers who liked their table wine. The brothers would occasionally invite the faculty for a film show followed by aperitifs and dinner. On one such occasion, Lucio regaled us with Spanish songs of which I can remember only his version of Guantanamera. He had a good singing voice.

And then there was Brother Mailloux. He taught Biology. Did I say ‘taught’? Of that, his students were certainly not fully convinced. His management of classes was almost comic. He always struck others as being a bit of a clown. Whether this was by choice or by necessity to make up for his weak classroom persona was anybody’s guess. With his lean frame, ungainly gait and his squeaky voice, he was the ideal candidate for nomination not so much to the manly brotherhood of Marists as to the mirthful brotherhood of clowns. In spite of his harmless looks, that he could be mean-spirited if he so chose was never more apparent than when he had made a fuss and kerfuffle about the school giving our Mubanga of the Chibuku fame a reference to apply for a job after he was expelled. In the event, unbeknown to my colleagues, I gave him one. I suspect that Mailloux was a constant embarrassment even to his co-religionists from ‘French’ Canada.

Brother Manuel, who was from Spain, was the perfect foil for his compatriot the outgoing Lucio. Stern and unsmiling, he was uncharacteristically introverted for a Spaniard. His one saving grace was his tennis playing skills. Many were the afternoons when he and I would knock the ball around on the one and only tennis court on the campus. After Brother Leopold, it was his turn on the rota to be the principal of the school. We left Mulungushi shortly after his elevation.

From my Marist colleagues to some of my other colleagues was a leap across a chasm. For sheer commitment to work, not many could touch the brothers. Of course Mailloux was an exception to that rule. The only Zambian on the staff, Eric Nawa, I was soon to learn, enjoyed some sort of unspoken immunity from censure by virtue of his ethnicity. The powers-that-be were uncharacteristically loath to pull him up for his acts of omission and commission. His teaching, such as it was, proved to be only an apology for one. He consumed inordinate amounts of booze, whether it was of the native variety Chibuku or of beer, and could drink anyone under the table. The delayed ill effects, however, would descend upon him with a vengeance only the morning after the night before. And, if he turned up for teaching regardless, often with his shirt tails hanging, you could make an educated guess as to why. And, many were the times when he took ‘sick’ leave after going on a binge the previous night.

One Sunday evening, Eric was our guest along with all our colleagues for dinner at our place. For any social occasion in Zambia, it was de rigueur to provide beer in large quantities, literally by the crate. Zambians would give the Germans a run for their money, any day, as the biggest beer bibbers in the world. Guests would be free to help themselves to as many bottles as they wanted to consume. Those who fancied beer with their snacks would usually limit themselves to one bottle or two at most on such occasions. And then, it would only be with a dignified gap between. We were flabbergasted when Eric made a beeline for the beer crates, helped himself as I remember to five bottles of beer at one fell swoop, carried them in the crook of his arm, sat himself down in a corner and then proceeded to quaff the stuff straight from the bottle one after the other, opening each bottle with his teeth, totally unmindful of the others in the room. I saw him, ‘doing the honours’, once more. I did not keep count after that. Sure enough, he was absent from classes the next day.

If Eric shirked work without any qualms of being noticed, George Champkin did so with so much more finesse. He was not one to indulge himself overly. He never feigned sickness and never absented himself from school. He would turn up in the staff room on the dot at five minutes to eight, carrying in the crook of his arm not bottles –perish the thought- but a tall pile of exercise books. Anyone seeing him for the first time would think, there was a conscientious teacher who had the interests of his students at heart. He would deposit the books loudly on the long table in the staff room, with an air of smug satisfaction.

If anyone, however, thought that George had brought in the books duly corrected, then he would be woefully mistaken, for if that were the case, why would he want to carry the very same pile of books that had remained unopened all day long in the staff room, back to his house? It was the same routine every day and it was not as if the brothers hadn’t noticed it. Being a good practising Catholic and a Paddy to boot, he could get away with this bit of deception as apparently the good Catholic brothers were apt to turn a blind eye when one of their own flock strayed from the straight and the narrow. Anyway, he left the school a year or so after we had joined and the brothers must have secretly heaved a sigh of huge relief.

George Champkin had been our neighbour. His wife was not a teacher. They had a son, a chubby, fair-haired toddler who was pretty much left to his own devises when his mother was in the kitchen. He was a sweet child. He would sometimes stray into our house especially when O. D. George’s kids were there to play with our daughter Bina. He would have, strapped around his waist and between his legs, a thickly padded diaper that would now and again get fully ‘loaded’. I remember, on one occasion, when the ‘dyke’ inevitably broke and the stuff was running down his legs, Ammu had to take him back to his mother, who was obviously embarrassed and suitably apologetic.

When the Champkins left, they had a garage sale for disposing of the things they were leaving behind and making a little bit of cash on the side. And Verghese of the tarantula fame bought some of that stuff. Among the things he bought, there was a wooden tea tray and thereby hangs a tale. Not long after that, when some of our compatriots from Kabwe paid him a social call for the first time, he served them tea and with it a typical Kerala snack. The snack happened to be ‘ariunda’ ora Ping-Pong sized ball of hardened rice-flour dough sweetened with molasses. As it happened, he served the round things after putting them straight into the recently acquired tea tray. As he went from one guest to the other, he was blissfully oblivious of the ariunda running all over the smooth tray, skittery somewhat like blobs of mercury on a tabletop. And amid the quiet mirth that went round the room, no one had ventured to tell him that those balls could have been served in a plate on the tray!

In more ways than one, Verghese was known for doing and saying the wrong things at the wrong time. When once he visited our place, we served him cup cakes complete with their paper cups. It was quite some time after he had gone that we chanced upon two chewed cake cups thrust between the cushions in the settee in our living room. Again, once as he was walking home from school, he suddenly felt the urge to relieve himself and without feeling the slightest bit self-conscious, he unbuttoned his fly and smugly took a pee with the nearest tree for cover. George our compatriot who had caught him in the act told him gently that it was not the done thing in these parts. His immediate response was, “Georgeay, Annaan moothaalum maramkettam marakkumo?” Roughly translated, it meant something like ‘Oh George, will a squirrel ever forget how to climb a tree?’ In spite of this gaucherie, people were inclined to bear with him as he was still trying to get to grips with his new life.

His clumsy efforts to learn driving gave his colleagues more cause for endless merriment. One or two of them, who had earnestly tried to help him with his driving, gave up in despair because he was practically unteachable. His hand-eye co-ordination was always out of sync. Grappling with the floor shift and the foot pedals after starting the car on his own, on one occasion, he had lost control and driven his Volkswagen straight into a thicket. He came back on foot to seek assistance. When asked by his sympathetic neighbours what had happened, he kept repeating, ‘My hold on the steering wheel was steady. I never let go of it’. Next thing we knew, minus tyres, his badly dented car with its ‘eyes’ shut was seen propped up on bricks, in his garage.

He spoke English in a flat monotone, not having a clue about stress and intonation, let alone pronunciation, which was an obvious crossover from his mother tongue. A week or so after he started teaching, he urgently buttonholed me in the staff room and said, “Yoosufay, (Oh Yoosuf) nyaan parayunnathu pillaarke manasilaakunnilla, avar parayunnathu enikkum.” What he said was that his students did not understand a word of what he said as he what they said. His colleagues would say behind his back that he spoke two languages. One was, of course, his mother tongue Malayalam and the other, Gibberish! It had not taken very long before the brothers decided that they had had enough of him. They were, however, kind enough to give him a reference for him to apply for a job elsewhere. He was a good Catholic after all. Interestingly, soon after that, he found an opening in Nigeria.

Another colleague from Kerala, O. D. George was a friendly sort. He and his wife Annakutty were much younger than us. They helped us a great deal when we were settling in. Annakutty helped Ammu to set up her kitchen, which took a day or two, and until that was done we had eaten at the Georges’. George would drive us to Kabwe for our shopping needs every two days or so since there were no shops in Mulungushi. This went on until I could buy a car, which took about two weeks what with having to apply for a loan and get the money released. George taught Maths at school and was a good teacher. They soon became our family friends.

George liked ball games and struck a pretty ball. There were no flies on George and he never missed a trick. At weekends, he used to play gin rummy with his friends in Kabwe. Ammu and I were also soon roped in to help enlarge the ‘quorum’. We played for fun and sometimes also for stakes. But, the amounts risked were never too high. But if one were a chronic loser, one could be out of pocket pretty steeply.

Each of us took turns at hosting these card sessions. The hosts of the day always provided sustenance during the long hours that it took to end a session of cards and, not infrequently, to offer sympathy to him who needed it most. That is, to him who lost his shirt on any given day? There was one among us who, defying the law of averages, kept declaring a full hand far too often not to have aroused suspicion that he was not above cheating. Yet, no one was willing to question his honesty since he was the oldest of the group. Except, on one occasion, George who flew off the handle as a last resort.

On that occasion, we happened to be the hosts. George spotted the ‘legerdemain’ and caught him red-handed as he was deftly swapping his dealt hand with a full hand that had presumably been secreted under his thighs earlier. George then proceeded to give him a tongue lashing in no uncertain terms. Initially, the man protested his innocence but to no avail. Someone tried to mollify George, but he went on relentlessly until the delinquent sat there stripped of all dignity, a sad figure of a man who should have known better. And, although it served him right, as hosts we felt bad about not having tried to stop George from venting his ire on him in pubic. This incident caused a lot of bad blood between some of them and us. They had assumed that we had deliberately engineered this confrontation. Anyway, to cut a long story short, this proved to be an object lesson for us and we never played cards again for stakes.

In 1980, along with his family, George left for South Africa to better his prospects as a teacher. We had by then moved to Lusaka. In transit to Johannesburg, they stopped over in Lusaka for two days. We had put them up and, as luck would have it, disaster very nearly struck them. George and I were out doing some last minute shopping downtown, when my car was broken into and George’s bag nicked. Their passports and tickets and travellers cheques were all in that bag.

We reported the matter to the nearest police station but instead of acting promptly, the officer in charge wanted to go through the customary bureaucratic rigmarole of preparing a first information report and what have you. Irked, I had to flash my diplomatic ID –I had by then joined the United Nations- before he would detail an armed constable to accompany us. And, he led us to a spot where we saw the thieves rifling through George’s bag. It was uncanny how he could have zeroed in on them so unerringly! As soon as they saw us, they cut and ran but leaving the bag behind. And, to his immense relief, George was able to retrieve everything except the traveller’s cheques. We contacted the bank, got those cheques cancelled and new ones issued to replace the lost ones.

They had not been so lucky on an earlier occasion a few years before. Break-ins have been endemic to Zambia for as long as anyone would care to remember. Every expatriate will have a story to tell of how he was robbed or his house broken into at some time or the other. Thus it was that George’s house was broken into late one evening. The family had retired to bed early. It was not long before they heard riffling noises in the house. When Annakutty turned on the bedside lamp, what does she see but the thief dropping from his hand something that he was holding as he made haste to bolt out of the bedroom. They were terrified. George came running over to our place to seek help. Ammu and I locked our front door and accompanied George back to his place to give them moral support, if nothing else. We returned to our place about half an hour later, only to find that our house had also been broken into during that short span. The intruder must have shrewdly guessed that George would come to us and had planned his operation carefully. He must have been someone who knew our relationship to guess what George would do. To cut a long story short, George lost a wristwatch and we, a two-in-one radio-player. While this drama was being played out, fortunately Bina was sleeping in her bedroom undisturbed as were George’s children in theirs! We had momentarily become partners in distress.

We were sorry to see the Georges go. A quarter of a century was to pass before we met them again. And the occasion was our fiftieth wedding anniversary. They brought us a gift, which we shall always treasure. It was a beautifully preserved, hollow Ostrich egg, with African motifs painted round its lacquered surface and its big end mounted on a polished wooden base. It now adorns our sitting room.

Thomachen and Chellamma were frequent visitors to Mulungushi, especially on weekends. Their daughters Reena and Anita would be with them, of whom the younger one Anita and our daughter Bina were roughly the same age. And that gave our daughter Bina one more friend to play with over the weekend. They would spend the day with us before going back. This was a welcome change for us from the tedium of our isolated existence at Mulungushi in the back of beyond, as one might say. Thomachen taught at the Kalonga Secondary School in Kabwe, only a half-hour drive from our place. And, we would return the compliment by a ‘day-spend’ with them, from time to time. Even after we shifted to Kitwe and later to Lusaka, we kept in touch.

When people relocate to unfamiliar surroundings, it is quite natural that they try and make the most of what is obtaining in the new milieus that they find themselves in. Zambia has a great deal to offer in the way of beautiful settings that nature has bestowed it with. Mosi-o-Tunya, for one. Again, Zambia, as with African countries in general, is a country of distances between human settlements. From the Copperbelt to Livingstone, for instance, is a good eight-hour drive with not many towns in between, if you chose to drive non-stop. Rarely would folks on a holiday, with time on their hands, trouble to step on the accelerator and do that stretch at one mad go.

In fact, every hour or so, you would pull up at a lay-by, set back out of the way of traffic for the benefit of road users. They are generally kept clean and tidy. There are concrete benches and tables too for the weary traveller to rest and recuperate. With the help of some sustenance to go with it, a stopover is always enjoyable when you are travelling in a convoy. On long trips, each car would always carry a hamper of goodies for the travellers to stop and munch when they feel peckish and beverages to wash it down. One such stopover remains deeply stuck in my olfactory memory, if only for the wrong reasons. After a long drive, when you feel stiff in your legs, usually you make it a point to pull up at a lay-by and stretch your legs for a few minutes before you get back behind the wheel.

On that occasion, after I got back into the car and pulled off without instantly realising what I had stepped on a moment before, my nose was assailed by a familiar smell. And the stuff stank to high heaven! The truth is I had been cautioned about just such a possibility and been advised to look where I was going, but I had laughed it off, adding rather crudely, ‘If people shat, it would smell, wouldn’t it?’ We had to backtrack hastily to the lay-by. As I was cleaning my shoes, the others grimaced in disgust. A deodorant had to be repeatedly sprayed in the interior of the car before we could resume our journey. Even then the offensive smell lingered for quite some time. After a pregnant silence, my wife said completely deadpan, ‘It does smell, doesn’t it?’ For the first time I realised that it was not only Indians who ‘defecate everywhere’.

We visited Livingstone twice. On the first occasion, we had Titus Mathew and his family, our friends from our Tanganyika days, accompanying us and on the second occasion it was Thomachen and family who accompanied us. On both occasions, we made progress at a stately pace calling on friends at Lusaka, Monze and Choma, the customary ‘watering holes’ on the way. The last stop was at Choma where we spent the night with our friends Sunny and Lillykutty, both teachers at the Choma Secondary School. It was a school run by the UCZ viz. the United Church of Zambia, the Protestant counterpart of the Catholic Secretariat.

Livingstone is about two hours away by car from Choma, with no human settlements to speak of in between. As far as eye could see, the road stretched like a ribbon across the savannah rising and falling to the horizon. Now and again you would pass through short strips of forestland. Animal crossings are clearly signposted to warn the unwary driver. I recall at least one incident in which a passing driver was instantly killed when he drove into an eland, which chose that very moment to cross his path. And elands are not exactly the smallest of creatures!

In those days, it was a single-lane, macadamised road, with hardly any room for an oncoming vehicle to pass you without its driver being compelled to pull up on the hard shoulder if your car were hogging the road. When we were on the highway, we did not see many cars or, for that matter, many people, which was not particularly surprising in that part of Africa. That reminds me of the time, some years later, when we drove all the way from Francistown in Botswana to Livingstone in Zambia, a distance of 500 kilometres, without seeing a single living thing on the highway except for an ostrich or two! Incidentally, by the time we reached Livingstone we were virtually covered from head to foot in fine white dust and looked somewhat like Casper the Ghost. We were driving through the Kalahari Desert, after all. Africa never ceases to amaze you.

When you have covered about three quarters of the distance from Choma to Livingstone, still twenty miles or so short of your destination, you begin to hear a distant rumble that grows louder and louder until it turns into a deafening roar as you get closer to the Victoria Falls by which time you will have already turned on your headlights full beam and wipers full speed to make the road ahead visible, even then just barely. Such is the overarching range of the spray that is blown up from the churning waters below! In the rainy season, you would need to walk to the viewing point wearing a hooded mackintosh, unless of course you are dying to look like a wet chicken after the drench. And when the river is in full spate, the misty spray that settles like a mantle over the tumultuous rush of waters would make viewing the falls in all its glory well nigh impossible. But as if to make up for that, your eyes meet a stunning rainbow arcing over the falls as the sun shines through the fracturing mist. And, only in summer, when the flow of the river has turned thin, can one view the full magnitude and depth of the falls and, churning at the bottom, the white waters that adventure seekers in their kayaks dare to negotiate. And nary can a man, seeing the falls for the first time, view it without an involuntary intake of breath.

Since independence, there has been a concerted effort to revive Zambian folk art forms like tribal dances and music. As Zambia is a multi-ethnic society made up of many tribes, the government had from the outset embarked on a programme of national integration, the main plank of which was to institutionalise English as the official language of Zambia. John Mwanakatwe, the first Minister of Education in independent Zambia, had set this in motion. But this did not mean that the Zambians were willing to forget their culture, which they did not have to be told was inextricably tied up with their heritage. And in line with that, the government had set up cultural villages to showcase the customs and traditions that had been and still are part and parcel of their everyday life. I clearly remember visiting one such village near Livingstone on our second visit there.

And Bina, our daughter, was with us. She was nearly four. And Anita, Thomachen’s daughter was also in the group. When we went into the enclosure, a masked dance troupe was about to perform. The dancers had on scary masks. As they began to dance to the accompaniment of crashing drumbeats and ululations that rose from the throats of the chitenge-clad women, who were part of the troupe, it scared the living daylights out of the girls so much that they screamed, ran to their mothers and clung to them tightly as though their life depended on it. They had neither seen anything remotely resembling the outlandish dancers nor heard the banshee wails of the dancing women before. For their sakes, we had to leave all too soon.

On our return journey from Livingstone, we stopped over in Choma as usual. It was about that time that a cousin of mine, a nurse who was working in Choma Government Hospital, was going through a spell of depression because a doctor in the same hospital had led her up the garden path –the primrose path of dalliance. To make matters worse, she had missed her monthly periods for a while. Fortunately, that scare soon proved to be a false alarm. Smooching with the lover you trust often prompts you to lower your defences willingly. Not to put too fine a point on it, “Greater love hath no woman than this, that she lose her cherry for a lover”. But then, you soon learn from your mistakes, don’t you? Ammu and I decided to take her with us to Mulungushi in the hope that a change of scene might help her recover from the experience, which it did. The cousin in question later immigrated to Canada, got married and raised a family. Not long ago, she became a proud grandmother when her daughter delivered a baby boy. Life force goes on.

Our stay in Mulungushi, Kabwe, did not last very long. The fact is I have always been a bird of passage without staying in any one place for long. This has had its flipside in as far as I have not been able to develop the necessary social skills to make enduring social relationships and enrich my social life. Am I being too hard on myself? Put beside my wife’s natural gift for making friends, I have always found myself wanting. And her ribbing me for my standoffishness in company has been a source of secret discomfiture to me. Thankfully for me, the scope for social life in Kabwe was rather limited.

Malayalee expatriates are generally a clannish lot and would find something in common to keep them engaged in social and cultural activities. In Kabwe, however, numbers did not warrant setting up anything like a Kerala cultural society as the one that Lusaka had at that time under the name of the Kerala Kala Mandalam. Those in our circle of acquaintances in Kabwe found the local Anglican Church a social meeting point on Sundays. After the service is over, they would stay back for tea and snacks and a chinwag in the parish hall. Then they would all repair to one of the houses and play gin rummy. As I have already mentioned, Ammu and I later opted out of that and for what reason you already know. Then there was the Hindu Hall in Kabwe that showed Indian films once in a while and held Bingo sessions. The women in particular enjoyed those diversions.

I remember once, the Hindu Hall had even staged a wrestling tournament. With their make-believe double nelsons and aeroplane spins and their knee-drops and what not that the so-called World Wrestling Federation re-enacted ad infinitum everywhere they went, they bamboozled the poor suckers, mostly men, who would come in their hundreds to mistake ersatz blood for the real thing with a willing suspension of disbelief that beggared description.

Visiting friends was another way of spending free time. Bobby Korah and his wife Kunjamma were among the few friends we liked to visit from time to time. The Korahs never failed to return the compliment. Bobby was a soft-spoken gentleman as to the manner born. He is settled in Kottayam now and we do occasionally run into each other either at a wedding or a funeral, both of them occasions that Malayalees generally use for a bit chinwag along with ostensibly sharing the joy or the sorrow as the occasion demanded.

Another family that we exchanged visits with was that of Dr. Joy Cherian. He also happened to be Ammu’s cousin. Joy was an impressionable young man who was easy to influence and he wore his heart on his sleeve. For a while he had kept aloof from us based on hearsay about my having something of a wandering eye. Happily, that distance did not last too long. His wife Valsa was somewhat of a gushing chatterbox who hit it off with Ammu from the word ‘go’.

We had always tried to maintain a friendly relationship with Thampy and Jolly since they had been instrumental in our coming to Zambia. But that was soured somewhat if only for a short while in the wake of the gin rummy fiasco that had put someone close to him in the dock, which no doubt had served him right at the time. But that was only a passing if rather unhappy phase in our relations. We have remained good friends since.

There were three other Thampys and their families in Kabwe. They were occasional callers at Mulungushi and they were Kalonga Thampy so nicknamed because he was teaching at Kalonga School, Vickan Thampy so called because he st-st-stammered and Kochu Thampy or Little Thampy because he was the youngest of those who bore the pet name of Thampy. And then there was Dr. Oommen who was known to his friends as Sunny.

The frequency of visits exchanged between friends and the length of time you spend with each of them has a lot to do with what you may or may not be able to enjoy in each other’s company. At least, that’s how I looked at it. For instance, Vickan Thampy’s speech impediment made it difficult for me to sustain an uninterrupted conversation with him without our feeling somewhat embarrassed. As to who would be embarrassed more, I was not sure. I would therefore make haste to leave after a few uneasy minutes of having tried to keep the conversation flow smoothly. His wife Rohini, on the other hand, and my wife Ammu were two of a kind when it came to small talk. So, she would want us to stay longer although she would not say so in so many words. On one occasion, after we had been there a few minutes and I was already squirming in my seat, Bina our daughter wondered aloud why Rohini was not asking the customary question, ‘What would you like to drink?’ And Rohini shot back rather indelicately, ‘ninte appente kundi onnurekette, aadhyam; that is, ‘Let your dad’s bum settle more firmly in his seat, first’. Touché!

How my lack of finesse in relating to people was again exposed, in a rather unsubtle way, comes to mind. This happened in Lusaka. Tommy, an aeronautical engineer with Zambian Airways at the time and a family friend, had learned quickly enough how I was disposed to picking up a magazine or book that happened to be lying around and start reading it without so much as a ‘by your leave’ to the company present. Once when we rang his door bell, he opened the door to let us in, but turned right round without even a word of greeting, hastily gathered up all the reading material in the room and quickly bounded upstairs to return a moment later. Our quizzical glance in his direction prompted this straight-faced response from him, ‘When you are ready to leave, Yoosuf, I shall let you take all those magazines with you’.

Again in Lusaka, on another occasion, when C. C. Abraham, another occasional friend, pulled up at our place, got out of the car and was about to come in when he realised that Ammu could hardly speak. She had been having a bad bout of laryngitis at the time. He went back to his car, got in and, as he was driving off, turned his head in our direction and said archly, ‘I shall come back when Ammukutty’s throat is well again’.

Your social skills gone rusty with disuse have a way of refurbishing themselves if you are in congenial company. The most frequent of our visitors to Mulungushi was Thomachen along with his family. And every time we went to Kabwe for whatever reason, we never failed to call on them. He was great fun to be with. And he has not lost his touch to this day. He has the gift of the gab and in verbal sparring he could give as good as he got. At the same time he has a self-deprecating sense of humour that lets him laugh at jokes at his expense. He is perhaps the only one whose friendship with me has endured. I know that is not saying much for my interpersonal relations. I suppose I cannot go back to undo the quirk in my genes. Ammu enjoyed their visits immensely, for when she gets together with Chellamma there is no knowing when their chatter ends. Bina too enjoyed these visits. Anita and Bina were playmates and remained so until Bina started school.

Bina had gone off to the Dominican Convent, which she did not exactly take to like duck to water. Of course, she enjoyed the swimming pool there. She also remembers the excitement the children had for the Easter Egg Hunt, which was all too brief. These redeeming moments, however, did not quite compensate for her dislike for a boarding school. She could not hit it off with the sisters either, whom she thought were cold and distant in their attitude. It may well be, she had transferred to them the resentment she subconsciously bore us for our having sent her to a boarding school. Perhaps she was too young to grasp that commuting to school every day from Mulungushi in the middle of nowhere was not an option at all.

The two years or so that she later spent as a day scholar at the Garneton Primary School in Kitwe was in refreshing contrast to her Kabwe spell away from home. She enthusiastically took part in all the activities at school. I remember her being one of the Magi in a Nativity Play that the school staged for the Christmas of 1975. Mr. Habanyama, the headmaster of the school was quite fond of Bina and was sorry to see one of his more lively pupils go when she did leave for Lovedale in 1976. Poppy Kalkat was her best friend in school and they were inseparable. Poppy was my colleague Inder Singh Kalkat’s daughter. Kalkat was the physical director at the Copperbelt Secondary Teachers’ College where I had moved by then. The Kalkats were our neighbours on the campus. Mrs. Kalkat was Bina’s class teacher at Garneton. Bina commuted between home and Garneton in Mrs. Kalkat’s car with Poppy beside her.

Garneton was also the place where the aficionados of Demolition Derby would gather without fail once or twice a year to have a bash at one another, not with their fists, which is a no-no in a society that played host to you, but in their jalopies until one car emerged a little less beaten up, after having wrecked the other cars out of recognition. To the barrel-chested, redneck Afrikaner farmers settled in Zambia, this was the one big idea of having fun. And all the while, their wives and children would be busy with their barbecues. They cook heaps and heaps of Boerewert (?) sausages and whatever and have a ball the whole day. Let me flit back to Kabwe again.

Malayalee idea of having a good time is rather more restrained and less unself-conscious that that of the Boers. The visit of Alexander Mar Thoma, the Metropolitan of the Syrian Mar Thoma Church, to Kabwe was a nine days’ wonder to those of us who had been starved of any excitement, staying as we were in a provincial town shorn of events. And Malayalees in Kabwe were falling over backwards in wanting to entertain the bishop during his stay in Kabwe. As the doyen of the Malayalees there, it was P. A. George alias Railway Thampy who quite willingly undertook to host the bishop during his two-day stopover.

However, it was also he who drew up a roster showing who would entertain the bishop for a meal and when. As it happened, it fell to our lot to host him for lunch on the very same day that a reception had been arranged for the good bishop to meet the ‘who’s who’ of Kabwe later that evening. There was nothing wrong with that except that Ammu had also been asked to make huge amounts of a savoury snack –parippu vada –a deep-fried savoury snack made from mashed lentils mixed with condiments,to be precise- for the evening ‘do’.

On any other day it would have been a cakewalk for her. When after lunch the bishop noticed how Ammu was still busy in the kitchen, he enquired why and was rather upset when he learned that she had been entrusted with a double chore on his account. And later he made it a point to express his disappointment with the organisers of the reception for their thoughtlessness. They had no answer to this expression of mild reproof. It is a measure of the man’s sense of fairness that he should feel unhappy that Ammu had been ostensibly put upon because of him, even in a matter as trivial as this.

We saw another side of his character later on when it was our turn to put him up for a night during his second visit to Zambia. That he did not allow himself even a modicum of creature comforts in his self-imposed Spartan life came as a revelation to us. It is not as if bishops in general are role models for renouncing worldly life! We were in Kitwe at that time and we had got our guest bedroom ready for him with a ‘deluxe’ mattress for him to sleep on. The next morning when we took his bed coffee in, what do we see but the great man sleeping on the counterpane spread on the floor! And the bed hadn’t been slept in!

It could well be, it was this ascetic side of the man that made him appear aloof and unapproachable at times. Or perhaps his busy pastoral preoccupations might not have offered him opportunities to meet and mingle with everybody at all times with ease. He would, however, always gladly ‘suffer children to come unto’ him no matter how busy he was. With the laity, however, he was seen to maintain a certain reserve, which was perhaps a reflection of his introverted nature.

This brings me to another bishop, the much-reviled Roman Catholic Archbishop of Zambia, Immanuel Milingo. By the Church, that is. In sharp contrast to the said Bishop Alexander, Bishop Milingo was an outgoing churchman and a great crowd puller. It was his penchant for faith healing that brought people from far and near to meet and interact with him. This obviously flew in the face of Catholic orthodoxy that made him persona non grata in the eyes of the Church. The Pope promptly summoned him to the Vatican, issued an interdict preventing him from giving the Sacrament, and relegated him to a sinecure in the Church bureaucracy.

The next thing we knew, to the great consternation of the Church he broke his vow of celibacy and married a Korean girl, a Moonie no less, claiming that the church had no business interfering with what God had intended for him. The story goes that Rome rusticated him and sent him to a remote monastery somewhere up in the mountains of Italy to do penance, from where he is said to have escaped while the guarding nuns were having their siesta and made his way back to Zambia. Since the Roman Catholic Church does not defrock its bishops, he continues to be within the fold and holding forth against celibacy. His wife had been compelled to leave him when the Church had kept him incommunicado.

Just as outgoing as Bishop Milingo, but certainly not as joyfully earthy as he, was my colleague of yore, the Italian American Jesuit who went by the name of Ugo Nacciarone. He was a man of many parts. Of average height, he had a scholarly bearing which was enhanced by his bespectacled face that sat impassively under a well-groomed salt and pepper thatch, except when on occasions he would give the hint of a smile and then heartily break into a grin if sufficiently enthused by whatever stimulated the smile in the first place. His sartorial preference for the chequered lumberjack shirts and chinos that he customarily chose to wear looked rather out of character for a cleric like him, on whom the sombre cassock that the members of his order, the Society of Jesus, wore would have been more in character. Then again, he might well have been the exception to that rule. His ruggedly handsome Latin looks might have argued a fiery Latin temperament lying hidden under that calm exterior. However, every time you interacted with him, you invariably came away with the impression that he was a man of equable temper that sat well on his scholarly shoulders. Maybe, his Jesuit training would have helped to round off his rough Latin edges. And as a good conversationalist, he made friends easily.

He was on the Mathematics faculty at the Copperbelt Secondary Teachers’ Training College in Kitwe, where I was posted in 1975 to head the Department of English. He was also a keen amateur astronomer, who was often seen during cloudless nights gazing at the stars from vantage points on the campus through his portable telescope complete with its three-legged stand. If teaching Mathematics was his chosen profession, astronomy was indubitably his passion. He had a special knack for getting others interested in star-gazing. Our sons Bobby and Bonny were so taken up with Ugo the pied piper that they were often a captive audience when he, transmogrified for the moment, eyes all lit up, enthusiastically expounded on a star in the distant firmament that he would from time to time make them take a peek at through his telescope.

Then there was John Suffolk, all of six foot two, with the slightest hint of a stoop and a lumbering gait. His blond hair was always sleeked down from left to right like Hitler’s, but he was clean-shaven without the former’s tell-tale toothbrush moustache to mar his longish but pleasant face. Like the Englishman that he was –he was from Bath- he had a special flair for the understatement. Quite a sociable person, John had a wide circle of friends cutting across all sections of people. When he courted, cohabited with and later married a Zambian girl, that too a divorcée with a child, it was to him the most natural thing to do as a gentleman. And he became Stephen’s putative father and later along with his wife took him with him when he returned to England. He too was on the Maths faculty, but without Ugo’s esoteric interest in the galaxies. Rather, his interest was in reading, reading widely and desultorily. He kept in touch with me for a while after he left. In fact, when he came back to Africa, this time to Zimbabwe to take up a position at the University of Harare, he did not forget to resume contact.

If John Suffolk was clean-shaven, the other Britons on the staff, David Evans and Jim Davies, chose to sport moustaches and sideburns, which was all the rage in the 70’s. Like most Welshmen, they were both dark-haired. While Jim was short and chubby-faced and had a thick thatch which seamlessly merged with his whiskers somewhat like singer Elton John’s, David was of average height and had a somewhat thin mop that revealed a fast receding forehead like Sean Connery’s in his prime on a face just as masculine and handsome. Like John Suffolk, they were both likeable and were great company which belied the brooding image of the stereotypical celluloid Welsh a la Richard Burton. Jim, in particular, had managed to break through my defences and break the ice first. Many were the times when we would have tête-à-têtes on a wide-range of subjects of topical interest, during our free hours from teaching. When I left for Lusaka in 1977, I remember his giving me a copy of “The New Oxford Book of English Verse” as a parting gift and inscribed in it was the message, ‘Best wishes for the future, Yusuf. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. Jim Davies CSTC 1977’. I still randomly dip into that anthology on the rare occasions that poetry takes my desultory fancy.

Ole Kappelgaard the Dane was another colleague. Our two quarters were cheek by jowl. He was our in-your-face neighbour as our two front doors confronted each other leaving us virtually no room for arm’s-length comfort, figuratively speaking. He spoke good English but with the slightest hint of a Scandinavian accent. If I were to take a blind etymological guess, his surname might conceivably reflect a genealogy that extends back to chapel wardens, but there was nothing remotely churchy about our man. If anything, he was an agnostic. Tall, lean and handsome with a rakish look, he could pass off as a stereotypical celluloid hatchet man with his dark glasses, French beard and shaggy mane. But as the cliché goes, appearances can be deceptive. He too became a friend. His main claim to our attention, however, was his fondness for good food and the frequency with which he descended on us with a hail-fellow-well-met grin on his face. Ammu remembers his having tucked in on one occasion a whole bottle of pickled Kapenta (a tiny fish native to Lake Tanganyika somewhat like your anchovies) at one ‘go’.

I must mention in passing that Ammu is on the whole a great cook and she cooks delicious breakfast staples like the South Indian Appam, Puttu, Dosa, Idli, Uppumaa, you name it. Did I say Uppumaa? Well, as to which of our two versions of this semolina-based sautéed savoury, rather like the Moroccan Couscous, is tastier has been a bone of contention between us for some time now.

There was a period when she was called away to India to take care of my parents and had to leave me to fend for myself, but only after I had run out of all the pre-packed meals that she had stuffed in the freezer. That was what dragged me into the kitchen, willy-nilly, to take up the challenge of cooking. Whereas cooking was serious business to Ammu, I could only dabble at best. My initial assays at this arcane art proved to be burnt offerings to the gods. I therefore wisely took the line of least resistance and chose the simplest fare to prepare for the table. And, Uppumaa seemed to be the most compliant to yield its secrets to me quickly enough and to become my main sustenance until her return, desperately longed for.

It was too on one of those lonely days that I played a reluctant host to my friend Thankachen who barged in unexpectedly, his wife Lizziaamma in tow. You may have guessed, quite rightly too, that I cooked Uppumaa for the occasion. I also rustled up a chicken concoction to go with it, rather grandly called Maryland Chicken no less, having earlier sourced its recipe straight out of a cookbook that happened to be lying around unnoticed until that providential moment. No prizes for guessing how the attempted dish turned out. This has since given my friends ammunition to take pot-shots at my culinary misadventures. Me, me and more self-deprecating me! Let me quickly get back to Ammu’s gastronomic offerings, fit for the gods, most of the time if not always. If her attempts occasionally failed, I have a sneaking suspicion that it was deliberately intended to avert an Evil Eye.

Her cooking is nothing if not eclectic. She is an avid practitioner of all styles of cooking. She can make a good Iraqi dolma, having been tutored in that art under my mother. That goes for her sautéed lentil and rice gruel which we have named Parippu kanji in Malayalam. The Syrian Christian variety of chicken or mutton stews and her fish ‘mollies’, both cooked in virgin coconut milk, are my favourites. Her own mother, a wonderful cook in her time, was her preceptor in this regard. Ammu’s meat samoosas too always turn out crisp and delicious. And eating them took my mind back without fail to my Dar-es- Salaam days and the samoosas that the Cosy Café and the Naaz Restaurant unfailingly conjured up for their patrons.

I might add even at the risk of sounding immodest that it was yours truly who initiated her into the art of making samoosas. I must confess, though, that I had had a little bit of prior coaching from my erstwhile colleague Roshan Ali, who combined his pedagogical pursuits with a weakness for making hors-d’oeuvres to go with his evening cuppa. But that’s another story. She is quite a wizard too with pickling meat or fish or vegetables. Even cookbook aficionados will have to defer to her in the esoteric art of getting your pickles just right, I dare say. To this day, wherever she may be, she has never missed watching TV cookery shows, whether by celebrity chefs or by cookbook writers. It is life-long learning for her, experimenting and experimenting. You win some, you lose some.

Her fish curry of the ‘red’ variety, for example, could be a hit or a miss depending upon whether her not always obedient ‘salt’ and ‘chilli’ buds did her bidding or be wayward. Her home-made sweet wine laced with cinnamon and what have you has been fancied by many although I find it a teeny bit cloying, not to say intrusively spicy, for my palate. She makes an excellent cup of coffee, but coffee has not exactly been my ‘cup of tea’ as a hot beverage. Alas, she has yet to get to grips with making a cup of tea the typical wayside-Indian-teashop way. That also goes for her yoghurt preparations like kaachia moru (sautéed buttermilk) and pacha moru (savoury buttermilk) although her yoghurt-based pachadi and uppumaanga pachadi (salted, mango-based pachadi) would hold their own in any competition. And my wife’s Biriyaani (pilaf) is top notch, by any standards.In sum, ‘much might be said on both sides’.

To her, cooking is not a chore but a sublime recreation. Strange as it might seem to any working mother, Ammu’s penchant for spending her after-school hours in the kitchen, experimenting with new culinary creations or her readiness to cook large quantities of food on request for parties held by our friends wherever we had moved in our peripatetic professional life was a topic of discussion among women. That she spent the better part of the day in the kitchen may also have had something to do with my general disinclination to draw out a conversation unnecessarily. Add to that my withdrawing nature, and the picture of my reluctance to engage her in small talk is complete, I confess. What’s her way out? Perhaps, sublimating her dismay at my reserve into culinary exertions?

The mention of Kappelgaard and his weakness for Kapenta had involuntarily sent me off at a tangent to bring up Ammu’s love for cooking, especially Malayalee cooking, and to wax lyrical on her pickling skills. We had another Malayalee ‘cook’ on the campus in the person of Alice, a teacher of English by profession and the wife of Edwin Moses Prabhaakar my colleague. She could give Ammu a run for her money in cooking skills. Her forte was Malaysian and Chinese cooking, which was natural for someone like her who was born and brought up in Malaysia. Many were the times we had the great good fortune to enjoy her cooking, as the Edwins were our closest friends on the campus. They had three well-mannered children, a boy and two girls: Tushar, Tarun and Tamara. Tushar and Tarun, the boy, were soft-spoken and serious in their ways. Tamara the youngest was a bubbly, high-spirited girl whom our daughter found good company although Tamara was three years or so older than Bina who was eight at the time. When they migrated to New Zealand later, we were sorry to see them go. Ammu, in particular, missed Alice’s company.

Another good friend on the campus was the elderly but the surprisingly sprightly Sherrie Doongajee, a Parsee lady from India. She was a petite spinster who wore her age well. She was, one could say, very well-preserved almost as though age could not wither her. Of course, it was known that she had retired as the principal of the Home Science College at Chandigarh in Punjab. Her teaching spell in Zambia may have therefore been more a part of her regimen to keep exercising her faculties the best way she knew rather than to earn a living. That her zest for life continued undiminished was never made more apparent than when we met her in Jaipur three years later, this time occupying the principal’s seat at the prestigious Maharani Gayatri Devi Public School for Girls. On that occasion she graciously took us out for a grand dinner at an old-palace-turned hotel. I forget the name.

There was a certain motherly aura about her that endeared her to the young ones. She would fuss over the children on the campus and pamper them with little gifts that she always seemed to have in ready stock at her residence when they called on her, which was often. She loved flowers and the garden she tended in her front yard was the envy of many a wannabe horticulturist on the campus. She was also a good chinwag and Ammu liked her the more for it. As a good hostess she would sometimes cook Parsee dishes when she entertained. We remember her most of all, and that fondly, for interceding on our behalf to get our son Bonny a place for his undergraduate studies at the prestigious Faculty of Commerce of the Punjab University, long after their admissions had been closed. That he rather foolishly –so we thought at the time- did not avail himself of that opportunity to our great chagrin is neither here nor there.

The other lady on the faculty was a snooty, forty-something spinster from India in the person of a Ms. Allappa whose first name escapes me now. Square jawed and tall, she could look down her nose at the likes of those she considered beneath her to hobnob with, and that excluded almost no one. She kept herself to herself except at the time of staff meetings when she was on occasions heard pontificating on matters academic and willed others, not so much by her words as by her demeanour, to defer to her views lest we forgot that she was the head of Educational Psychology, the bedrock of pedagogy. She thought it was not de rigueur to socialise with the rest of us. With her McGill University credentials, she gave the impression that she was a cut above her colleagues. We were not exactly Ivy League in her eyes. Her office faced mine just across the corridor. Whereas my door was mostly kept open during the mornings barring none from coming in, hers always remained forbiddingly closed. It was so off-putting to those who maintained an open-door policy. The only sign that she was in was when one would hear a stentorian ‘Enter!’ in her high pitched tone, in response to a student’s tentative knock at her door. Her one saving grace was her sartorial taste. With her sleeveless blouses to go with her elegant sarees on her lean figure, she was always well turned out; to give the devil her due. I confess I didn’t like her at all.

Our principal R. C. B. Sibisi was a portly gentleman whose social skills were in happy contrast to those of the uppity lady from McGill. He mingled with all his colleagues freely and was quite a party animal. He never missed an opportunity to rub shoulders with the staff and the students alike with a joie de vivre that belied his advancing years. On special occasions such as Independence Day, he would eagerly step in with the students when they performed, complete with assegais and shields, tribal war dances that rumbled the ground on which they stomped with joyous abandon. He was a Zulu, no less, from South Africa and a distinguished product of Fort Hare University College. For South Africans, it was like Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard all rolled in one. We had developed a good rapport between us soon after I joined the college, which came in handy when I needed a reference to apply for a position with the United Nations two years after I had joined the college. He gave me a glowing testimonial, which must well have weighed heavily in my favour in the UN offering the job to me.

Looking back, I feel that the experience I had gained in using the newly-installed language laboratory at the teachers’ college for remedial work in communicative English was also a factor that landed me the UN job. Indeed, that had given me the hands-on experience I needed, sitting at a master console, to monitor the speaking skills of the trainees and take them along over their headphones, either one on one or as a group. This experience was invaluable when I had the use of language labs later, first at the UN Institute for Namibia in Lusaka and later still at the King Saud University in Riyadh to deal largely with the phonological and morphological errors the students were wont to make. At the Copperbelt Secondary Teachers’ College, the source materials were Books 1 and 2 of ‘Speaking English’ by John Wright and the audio cassettes that went with the books to give the students oral proficiency.

That brings to mind an occasion when Bina, our daughter, had the cheek to correct her mother when she pronounced a certain word wrongly. The word in question was ‘egg’ and Bina was hardly eight at the time. Curiously, most South Indians tend to pronounce words such as ‘egg’ and ‘every’ with an intrusive initial ‘y’ sound so that the words would sound like ‘yeg’ instead of ‘eg’ and ‘yevery’ instead of ‘evri’. And Ammu was no exception. Apparently, my efforts at smoothing the rough edges of her English over all those trying years had not fully rubbed off on her, but, instead, had ended in our rubbing each other up every time I assayed a correction.

Bina, Ammu and I were on our way to the Kitwe market one day when two of the teacher trainees going shopping downtown thumbed a lift with us. As we were on our way, Ammu happened to mention among other things that she had run out of eggs. Predictably, she used the deviant pronunciation, whereupon Bina piped up and corrected her with a straight face, “Mother, that word does not start with a ‘y’”, which goes to show that even one’s own issue is not above a filial ‘put down’ to make a parent look foolish. To Ammu’s great embarrassment, the students could be seen trying hard not to fall over with laughing.

Clearly, those students had for a moment failed to consider ‘the beam that is in thine own eye’ in involuntarily relishing Ammu’s discomfiture, only to feel sheepish the very next moment for having reacted the way they did. Often, the non-native speakers of a language fail to discriminate between different speech sounds of that language and in articulating them are likely to transfer approximations from the first-language sounds they are accustomed to. To give a random example in this context, Southern African students of English often tend to insert an intrusive vowel sound between two successive consonants or after a final consonant as, for example, when they pronounce ‘headmaster’ as ‘headimaster’ or ‘practice’ as ‘prakatis’ or ‘clothes’ as ‘clothis’. I remember once having intervened when a Namibian student, practising in the language lab, was caught saying: ‘Isi smoking goodu for your helethi?’ I had half a mind to say chuckle, but desisted.

But seriously, the obvious answer would be ‘Of course not!’ But, does that message register in good time? Not by a long chalk! It took me twenty two years of heavy smoking, and of having to put up with every smoker’s bane of hemming and hawking that I could hardly shake off, before the cautionary message finally sunk in. I had turned forty by then. Sadly, I still bear the cross of that addiction in the shape of recurring sore throat and laryngitis, which, I’m afraid, ‘shall follow me all the days of my life’.

I distinctly remember the day I decided to kick the habit, once and for all. It was some time in 1970 and we were in Lovedale at the time. My constantly clearing my throat had so disturbed our child Bina’s sleep, night after night, that Ammu was getting desperate by the hour with having to wake up every now and then to shush her back to sleep. Need I add that I was not getting enough sleep, either? On that fateful morning, I got out of bed rasping and gagging with a violent bout of coughing. The strain almost doubled me up. My throat ached, my ears hummed and there was such a surge of light that blew up in my eyes that I saw stars swimming all around. It was more than I could take.

I dragged myself downstairs, my mind made up, and threw what was left of my stock of cigarettes into the trash can. And as an earnest of my resolve, the expensive Ronson lighter which my London friends had given me as a parting gift, engraved and all, I gave off to Kuppusaami the Sumeru House attendant. What had begun as the attempts of a growing-up boy to be ‘a regular guy’ and pretend to be ‘in the right set’ and what later was tediously touted to be ‘this is my last fag’ routine, I finally realised I had had enough. I have never smoked again. And to prove to myself that I have what it takes to be constant in my self-denial, I sometimes purposely seek out my smoker friends at social gatherings to test the threshold of my resolve to put behind me twenty two years of self-indulgence that I had assiduously cultivated with more than a little help from some ‘friends’ and ‘dear ones’.

Chacha –that’s how I addressed my father-in-law like everyone else in his family- may have been one of those who encouraged my smoking habit, albeit unwittingly. Two days after my marriage to Ammu at her parish church, we went from my family home to hers, as was the custom, largely to be plied and pampered with goodies. Mark you, I was moving from a strictly ‘no-smoking zone’ to hitherto unknown territory. And the first gift that the son-in-law received from Ammu’s ‘old man’ was a box of cigars! You can well imagine how pleasantly surprised, nay secretly overjoyed, I was at the thought that I could openly indulge myself in this liberal milieu without feeling guilty. Was he showing me that he was not one of those stern, standoffish elders who would draw the line and expect me to know my place?

When it was my turn to draw the line, with my children that is, I could hardly have been the kind of role model to have done it with conviction. Any stricture like “Don’t do as I do; do as I said” would have cut no ice with them for obvious reasons. Bonny was hardly five when he displayed early signs of what was yet to come. Without betraying any tell-tale signs of self-consciousness, he had picked up a dried leaf from the courtyard, rolled it up and taken it to his lips with great deliberation, and pretended to drag on the make-believe fag with great panache, even as he was pacing up and down in front of his other grandfather. Was he testing my father’s threshold of patience? The only concession he might have made to my old man’s sensibilities was not to have gone through the whole hog and strike a make-believe match to light the ‘filthy weed’. Or, that might have been just his lack of experience. On being pulled up by my father, who was momentarily dumbfounded, Bonny said without batting an eyelid that his ‘Appicha’ –that’s me- did it all the time. Of course, he could not sustain such studied innocence for too long.

Sure enough at senior school, he like Bobby and many others before him would skulk away during free time to smoke a furtive cigarette in the ‘bogs’, far from the prying eyes of their housemasters. Sometimes you overhear snippets of whispered exchanges about the goings on among their peers, often interesting but sometimes alarming and invariably revealing. Substance use was just a step away from ‘fags’. If that was only a passing phase with an experimental drag or two on nothing more harmful than marijuana and not one that led to its serious abuse or, worse still, to that of hard drugs, then you as a parent would heave a sigh of relief that they have not had their brains addled. You might then conceivably let bygones be bygones, unless of course you are a self-righteous prig. Which I believe, I could not unctuously pretend to have been in front of my children without feeling positively ill at ease.

From their belated confessions I have since come to learn that they have had their experimentations with marijuana and their share of trips. How much of this had resulted in their inability to achieve their full potential educationally, I shall not hazard a guess about. After all, that deficit might well have been a congenital manifestation.

When we were staying at 24 Milima Road, in the leafy Lusaka suburb of Woodlands, not far from the State House where Dr. Kaunda the President lived, our manservant happened to be a local man by name Hewitt Kabiinga. His compatriots would without fail call him ‘Hewitti’, by blithely adding the intrusive vowel sound instinctively. He, his wife and child were staying in our servant’s quarters, only a shouting distance from where we were. He was a man of few words, a silent worker who occasionally appeared with eyes glazed and suspiciously stoned out of his head.

But we never tried to find out why since he was a good worker and went about his chores totally ignoring the presence of others in the house. He would be heard humming a local tune under his breath especially when he was polishing our tiled floor with red oxide wax. With the two floor brushes he wore on his feet like slip-ons, he would first splay his feet wide and then bring the toes together to keep time with the tune that he hummed sotto voce. The floor would shine, but not so his face. When we came to learn later from our sons, his one-time ‘patrons’, that Hewitt was also the local supplier of cannabis to his other regular customers, which included the soldiers at the State House, we could put two and two together and have a knowing laugh.

Incidentally, a chance discovery once gave us cause to suspect that our daughter Bina too might have had her ‘high’ moments. This happened some years after our retirement in 1994. We were vacationing in London at the time in question and we happened to be staying in her apartment on Kilburn Road, which she was sharing with a Caribbean colleague of hers. We knew her only as Marie. One day, when they were both away, Ammu felt rather peckish and on rummaging in the fridge found a cake and proceeded to eat it with relish without realising that it had been ‘spiked’ with what we later learned was cannabis sativa. For the rest of the day she was woozy and fuddled and I could tell that both Bina and Marie appeared shamefaced for a day or two. To whom had that cake belonged? We thought of questioning Bina, but desisted. That Bina was not averse to a cigarette in those days, however, was pretty obvious from her tell-tale, nicotine-darkened lips. That’s what her London stint had led to. Thankfully, they have all given up smoking since and, I venture to add, using headier substances.

Whether we like it or not, drugs are here to stay. They frighten some, they fascinate others. And they each have their reasons. Incidentally Carlton Books in London published in 2000 the Agenda Series comprising four titles to set the record straight and ‘contribute impartially to the debate’. Incidentally, Bina our daughter, AKA Miriam Joseph wrote two of those books and they were titled, ‘Speed’ and ‘Ecstasy’. These books were a print-media sequel to the TV Channel 4 Documentary Series ‘Rush’ by Windfall Films, of which she was the associate producer. I can only say that the inferences I made –rightly or wrongly- about her pursuits which led to her writing these books could not have made me experience ‘ecstasy’ in the normal sense of the term. Both the acquired meaning and the original meaning of the word, as we know, no doubt carry overtones of exhilaration.

As does the word ‘speed’; which, both denotes and connotes. Whether it was that of a sybarite on a psychedelic trip or that of a speed fiend on the make behind the wheel of an incompliant machine that led to my cars being wrecked, one followed by the other, I have not been able to ascertain to this day; it was a double whammy, nonetheless.

The first casualty was a Fiat 124 (Special) and the other was a BMW 518. And both carried diplomatic number plates by virtue of my UN job at Lusaka and that’s what probably saved my sons from the wrath of the powers that be. First, Bobby got his friend John Alexander to drive my post-office-box red Fiat into an unhelpful ditch. The Fiat was stolen not long after it was on the road again and I was relieved no end, for it had comprehensive insurance cover. It was then that I bought the white BMW 518. And we had to travel down to Gabarone in Botswana to buy it; for by then cars in Zambia had become thin on the ground like snowflakes in summer.

It was now Bonny’s turn to take out my BMW for an uncontrolled spin around the Woodlands Roundabout at the bottom end of Independence Avenue, where it met the top end of Milima Road, and succeeded in sideswiping an unsuspecting lamppost, to leave a large dent on his passenger side. Need I say that I picked up the tabs to get the cars repaired on both occasions in order not to lose my no-claim bonus on my insurance cover? Just before we left Zambia, the BMW too was disposed of.

The thrill of flirting with danger often inspires youth to act rashly on the spur of the moment, and Bobby and his friends were no exception. And again, a car featured in this ‘deed of derring-do’. This time round, his friend Derrick Samuel was behind the wheel of his own car, or was it Joe Owen? Anyway, the three of them contrived to take a ‘wrong’ turn and drove straight into the tradesmen’s entrance and came to a squealing stop before they reached the guardhouse at the rear of the State House; only to startle the presidential guards, who recovered soon enough to train their guns mena