22 October 2012

Azungu!

Mzungu (plural Azungu) is the southern, central and eastern African term for a person of foreign descent. Literally translated it means "someone who roams around aimlessly" or "aimless wanderer". 

As soon as a Malawian kid catches sight of my light skin, it immediately sounds a warning cry: "Azungu!" Within seconds there's a whole bunch of children surrounding us. They will then make use of their communication skills in English: "How are you? What's my name?" (mistaken for "what's your name?"). Or they will straight away proceed to their most popular plea: "Give me picture!"

Vijay pulls out his camera and the children pose for a photo. Watching them when they have a look at the picture is the best part of it! Everyone tries to be as close as possible to the camera. The small ones - at the back - jump up and down in order to catch a glimpse of the photo. And they all erupt in laughter.







06 October 2012

The village of Chona (no electricity, no running water) PRESENTS: A special lecture on Aeronautics

The village of Chona, Zambia is not really a village at all but more of a focal point, a place of infrastructure where the wider community gathers.  It has a health clinic, a school, a small market and a well meaning everyday the community for miles around descend to Chona before heading back to their small plots of land and huts in the evening.  It is here at the local school, with so many pupils that the school starts at 7am to 5pm working in two shifts, where I offered to give a lecture on Aeronautics to the eldest math and physics class.

The small classroom, packed with fifty Grade 9 pupils wait patiently as I am presented.  As with the impeccable politeness of all Zambians they stand when I enter the class room, greeting me formally yet warmly.  I forgot to ask them to sit and they continued standing until the head teacher intervened and gave the instruction.

As with schools in the UK, all the pupils wore a school uniform, shirt and tie for boys and skirt, blouse and jumper (?) for the girls.  At this age in school, their shirts were not torn or over used and almost all had a note book to write in.

I started at the beginning.  The most that any of these children had ever gotten to an aircraft is seeing the large airliners silently cruising through the blue skies kilometers above them.  Had they ever asked themselves about how it could fly?  Or even how big these aircraft were?  From their astonishment I would say no.  Their initial shyness, coupled with ignorance soon gave way to intrigue and fascination.  Aircraft, aeroplanes, helicopters are understandable to small villagers like themselves who may have never even been in a car before.

They started answering the questions I posed them.  One boy, even answered correctly as to why the aircraft needed a tail using his knowledge of the large African birds around them.  Another correctly answered to what would happen if the aircraft started to go too slowly.  Their questions too became more sophisticated, 'Sir, how do you get oxygen into the aircraft?', 'Why can't you open the windows?'

The greatest part of the lesson was taken up by practical maths.  They were to work out in relation to other modes of transport how fast an aircraft travels at.  Speed is not something they are accustomed to.  The question 'How fast can you travel by bike?'  Was met with shrugs until they could think about how far their house was and how long it took to get to school.  30 minutes to travel 7km equals 14km/h.  The car, which most had never travelled on, was worked out to be at 120km/h.  But how do you work out the speed of an airliner?

I gave them a few clues: 1) Airliners cruise at roughly Mach 0.9, 2) Speed of sound is roughly 300m/s.  A few brave children, came to the black board to work it out.  Having no calculators all calculation must be done long hand or mentally.  When they worked out the speed at 972km/h they were astonished!  Shouts of surprise and murmurs of disbelief filled the classroom and exploded to a raucous when they found out that fighter jets can travel at 2-3 times that speed.

Hands were shooting up now and the questions flowed one after another non-stop.  But time was now over and I left them in a state of wonder.

As Mr. Moses, the senior teacher, said as we left, "Thank you.  It is inspiring to the young village children to realise where they can emerge with studying and the usefulness of it."





05 October 2012

What has happened to Travellers?

One of the many joys I used to have was to meet other travellers.  Each meeting used to be an explosion. Two sets of experiences clashing and fusing into a helix of conversation, telling stories and sharing ideas about about the ills and woes of our host country and with wild and crazy and sometimes intelligent ways to solve them. These conversations starting at midday would stretch into the early hours of the morning and even the occasional incoherent ending fueled by local beer would give nuggets of gold.

My conversations now seem to revolve around where we've been, where we're going before falling back on life in Europe.

What happened to the politically wired travellers with an axe to grind? And the ones with several axes? Where are the socialists, the communists, the capitalists, the anti-capitalists and the anti-capitalists capitalists? Where are the environmentalists and the anarchists?

I call all these people to come find me and let's toast to Africa's successes and woes. Let's solve the continents' issues with useless rhetoric and see where our ideas lead us.