DAMAGED BEINGS
[The Curious Case of Colonialism and the African]
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Children should not, cannot fail.
It is adults that fail children.
Granted, some children are born both structurally and functionally challenged.
Defective. Mutants. Imbeciles.
It is a given that treating such handicapped children and the non-defective the same is wrong.
Each child needs appropriate attention and care.
Children are programmable beings.
Explains why the very best of our teachers, professors of art, languages, manners/culture, science, hygiene, and such important things as business and mathematics, should be the ones to teach our children.
Langeni umwaice inshila yakwendelamo, nelyo nga akota, takafumemo.
Now you understand what I am talking about. The Catholics know.
It all started when I was born. But then, truth be told, this crap is really old.
When I was born, that is when the shit began. For me at least.
I was the first, much-anticipated child of Mr Kanyenga Mbeta and Ms Mwayi Wanga, a celebrated child.
So, as an undying memory that brought them together and would keep them together till death ended it all, they had a name for me.
Chikondi. Love.
This is a pagan name, the priest, an alien, said. So if you want your child to be a baptized Catholic, you must change his name.
They were beyond stunned.
What was pagan about Chikondi, love? My parents stared at each other in utter consternation.
These strangers are really strange, tacitly, they agreed.
So as an act of loyalty to the strangers’ god, and out of fear of their god’s wrath and being left out on the trip to heaven, Peter, I became.
After one of their saints, my parents were told.
To this day, there is nothing really saintly about me.
Chikondi would have been just fine a name for my character and heritage. It was a name laden with such meaning.
They found me in the bush, looking after cattle, part of my family’s wealth.
Then they said, frowning upon my way of life, I should stop what I doing and go to school.
I obeyed.
I sat in that school as a dry sponge, ready to take it all in.
And take it all in I did.
Instead of teaching me about the various breeds of cattle that there are, instead of teaching me about how you vaccinate cattle to preserve their health, instead of teaching me about the different varieties of grass that enhance cattle nutrition and health, instead of teaching me about artificial insemination to multiply my animals, instead of teaching me about the many products that come from cattle, shoes, bags, processed meats and all, instead of building upon my extant culture, they did something else to me.
They dislocated me.
They taught me about the Prairies, and the British mmonarch. They even said that their king was now my king.
Imagine that.
They found me eating with my hands. That’s uncouth, with a sneer they reprimanded me..
Their manners became my manners.
They said something about a Dr David Livingstone from a place I now forget.
I hear he discovered something and named it after a woman he admired. To this day her name has become our name.
When the exam came, they asked me to state the number of planets.
I said nine. They passed me even when the planets now are only eight.
That is how I got all the degrees I now have.
Having satisfied their grooming, they certified me educated.
Educated? I don’t think so.
Groomed. Yes. Moulded. Shaped. Mentally hijacked. Corrupted. Colonised, if you like.
I miss my God.
He and I used to be one.
These people found me living with God. In my hut.
God was in my village, in our midst.
When they came, they got my God from my village and put Him in the sky.
He is still there.
They even came with a picture of their god.
He looked like one of them.
They thrust their God upon me. They said that theirs was the only god. That there were no other gods. That is how their god became my god.
These days when I seek His presence and interventions I look up the skies.
I never look within like my forefathers had always done before.
My God loved drums. Drums and He were one.
The strangers stopped all that.
These sounds are devilish, they admonished.
They summon evil spirits from the dark pits of hell, they warned.
What they didn’t know was that it was this same evil that had kept us alive and well since creation.
It was us.
Why do you pour all this tasty brew onto the ground beneath that tree? Lividly, they asked.
That is how, my form of worship, became evil. And I began to dislike my ways.
Drink the stuff instead, they insisted.
And now, see, together with my libations, my liver is also gone.
My God was spirit.
Instead, the aliens created God in their own image.
They run everything now, including my life.
The installation of their application software in me is now complete.
I am like a programmed automaton now, a puppet incapable of initiating my own individual action.
I am now 60.
Altered. Damaged. Utterly corrupt. A man with no identity and esteem.
Educated, I now frown upon my own kind,
I treat my culture with disdain, as inferior.
I can no longer identify with my own tribe, my own people.
They see me as different.
I speak English.
I speak better English than the average person in London.
But I am not yet accepted as an Englishman.
I am still viewed and treated as a savage requiring control and improvement.
I barely use my mother’s tongue, Chichewa.
The other day someone, pointing at an eagle, said to me, ‘look at just how beautiful that mbalani is.’ I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
These days, for me to ably perform my conjugal rites, I now use their medicines, Viagra and all, instead of Mwanya, Mvubwe, or Mtototo. They said that my herbs were primitive.
Unlike in my village, in the city where I now live, largely because of the diet of these strangers, impotence amongst men is now more common than electricity or cultured women.
Siyabonga became Siavonga.
Queen Elizabeth became more important and respected than Kalonga Gawa Undi.
Pumpkin leaves seasoned with groundnuts became anathema, food for the poor.
The Kwacha lost its light.
It became worthless and dark, the picture of Zambia today.
Along the way, a people that used to fend for themselves since the beginning of time began to rely on donor aid.
The people could no longer re-plant the seed that they harvested.
Fooled, they began to rely on engineered ones.
My eyes became saucers when the other day I found thr headman wearing a Chacago Bulls skipper as he was having a meal using a fork and a knife.
Now they want me to drop my wives and take on other men. We do it all the time, they brag.
Regarfing me primitive, civilisation, they call it.
To this day, children in Mwandi are taught about Peter and Jane, and Alice in Wonderland.
They learn more about Sparta and Saskatchewan, about Europe and the Unitef States, than they do about their own villages, traditions and lives, about Mali, Kermet, Namibia or Eswtini.
Never are they informed about exemplary heroes and heroines in their history, never are they reminded about those celebrated and revered women, important and stellar fixtures in our midst who had the capacity to summon the Spirit of rain in times of drought and then rain would come.
I am a driver, you see.
But I drive vehicles I neither manufacture nor own.
Always, they tell me where to go.
Now they even tell me what to grow, when and what to eat and who to mate with.
I cannot create my own wealth.
They pay me.
I cannot self-determine.
The direction I must head towards is always dictated to me.
My family has no cattle anymore.
Once proud farmers in my village, we now own a shop which sells goods we don’t make.
I feel lost.
I am disconnected from my land, my God and my people.
Is there still time, Nyamalenga?
I find myself looking at the skies again.
It was when someone said ‘happy Independence day’ to me that I started to cry.
Kachamba ukakhota suwongoka. That is how I felt. Perhaps that’s the way I am.
This mind of my own has become a dangerous prison for me.
I want to smash my head. I want to break free.
Educated? No.
Groomed. Hijacked. Taken over. Utterly corrupted. Damaged. Hacked.
I want a new mind.
I want my freedom back. I want to be restored.
Nyambe un-set my mind. Re-make me, Mwari.
You see, the real battle isn’t out there, to keep the aliens at bay.
The real battle is within, to protect and thrive innate freedom, to manifest the God within.
Eerily, from the grave and to the heavens, Bob Marley’s words echo and ring strong, urging all wilted leaves to turn green again. His spirit, the Spirit.
‘Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.’
Indeed, the future is in the past.
We must become again the people we once were.
Indeed, the future is in the children, our children. We must teach them right.
And always remember that knowledge is both innate and acquired.
Protect and save the children NOW.
You see, they are the aliens’ prime target.
Freedom is coming. It is inevitable.
It isn’t here yet.
Created that way, we used to be independent.
We are not anymore.
A cat cannot indefinitely continue to live its life as a dog.
When a rat is forced not to be itself, insurrection is unavoidable.
Birds must be birds. Freedom is that existential environment that permits any entity, any being, to fully express its integrity and capacity as intended by design.
This then is the default setting of life.
Hope springs from the self-correcting character of Nature.
The original will always be superior.
Nonetheless, copies have their own place.
Aluta continua!
The struggle continues!
In due season.
Yes. Then harvest.
Dr Canisius BANDA
Development Activist
24 October 2024
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