Two Men of Broken Hill

In this series of articles I have been telling you about the work my father and I have done in Zambia with the National Police Aid Convoys. Now I would like to do something a little different, and tell you how it all started; with two men born two hundred thousand years apart. Both were born at Broken Hill in Zambia, and both spent their formative years there, when neither of them wore shoes. One left with a promise to return, the other stayed there for all of his days.

One man is my father, the other could be the father of us all.

The Broken Hill Skull, also known as the Kabwe Cranium, was found in a zinc mine in 1921. It belonged to an adult male, and he belonged to an early species of human called Homo rhodesiensis. Many believe that H. rhodesiensis evolved into modern man. For all his significance to us now, Broken Hill man would have lived simply; eating meat that he hunted with his spear, using tools that he knapped from flint, socialising with his extended family unit and speaking with them using a rudimentary language. He would have known other men who passed through the area on their way into the rest of the world, but he stayed where he was, happy in his home with all that he could need.

Sadly there were many dangers in the life of Broken Hill man. His species spread all over the world, and the remains of another H. rhodesiensis man have been found in Boxgrove Quarry, West Sussex. They were gnawed on by a large carnivore. At this time humans were not the top predator, and while Boxgrove Quarry man was bested by a wolf or a bear, Broken Hill man would have had to deal with ancestral lions, hyenas, and wild dogs, not to mention the dangers of hippos, elephants, mosquitoes and tsetse flies. Disease would have been a constant presence and it is likely that he lost more than one family member before he himself died. His skull shows that ten of his top teeth had cavities in them, and pitting in the bone suggests that he suffered a great infection before he died, either from the infection itself or from starving to death because it was too painful to eat.

Two hundred thousand years later the other man from Broken Hill is returning to the land of his birth, now able to heal the hurt that tooth decay can cause. He is too late for Broken Hill man, but he can help hundreds of others by providing a facility to which anyone may come for help. My father is in the process of furnishing a dental clinic in Lusaka to give something back to the country which gave him so much. 

First published in Southwell Life, June 2015.

July's edition of Southwell Life is published tomorrow. Be sure to take a look at all of its fine articles!

It's that time of year again folks...

June is looming and we are once again gearing up to follow our containers out to Zambia. Since last year the good people of the National Police Aid Convoys (NPAC) have sent twenty-eight shipping containers to seven different countries, four of which went to Zambia full of clothes, books and medical equipment. The primary ethos of NPAC is that nothing gets wasted, even space on the containers. Every inch is crammed full of aid donated by companies and generous individuals. On one memorable occasion an ambulance was loaded in, and then filled with latex gloves, dressings and sanitising hand gel.

This time last year we were heading off into the unknown. I had never been to Africa before, the closest being a holiday to the Canaries, and while Dad was born there he moved away fifty years ago. A lot can happen to a country in fifty years. Independence, the movement to democracy, a slowly growing economy and a steadily growing gulf between rich and poor. The trip with NPAC last year started in Lusaka, launching us right in with a few days of hard work at the Makeni and Mycepa clinics for dentistry and cerebral palsy respectively, before we set out to see exactly what the combined might of NPAC is capable of. Nyimba East Primary School was a delight. The kids were smart and enthusiastic, and the teachers told us how much they love working there with the equipment they’ve received. The children are proud of their uniforms and books and their school choir is winning contests. They let us sit in on a dress rehearsal for an upcoming event and it was a joy to see. Search for Nyimba East School Choir on youtube and you can see the choir for yourself. We left Nyimba on a high, but under no illusions that every school would be so fortunate. As we drove away from the capital we saw a steady decline in living conditions around us until we came to an area ravaged by tsetse flies, where cattle are impossible to keep and crops are trampled by elephants so parents have to choose between feeding their children and sending them to school.

I have often been asked how I dealt with the emotions inherent in such a trip, and while I can’t deny that on occasion tempers ran high, the itinerary was planned so cleverly that we ended the experience tired, determined and hopeful. To view success first meant that we knew what we could achieve and allowed us to keep that in mind while planning how to help struggling communities. It also helped that we were in a great group of people and we kept each other going with humour and comfort when it was needed. I’m excited to see people we met last year and find out how our friends are doing in Nyimba and Mwape.

If you’d like to help, visit www.npac.org.uk to find out more.

First published in Southwell Life, May 2015.

Our Lunch with KK

Last time I wrote about Kenneth Kaunda’s political career. This time I’d like to tell you about the man we met at his home in Lusaka.

KK turned ninety last year, and as he knew David Scott and the work NPAC does in Zambia, we were invited to lunch at his home. We arrived after we’d been reclaiming our luggage at the airport, so all we’d had to change into is the clothing we’d packed in our hand luggage. Fortunately I had all of my clothing in my rucksack, and so I was feeling pretty fresh, but Dad had made a schoolboy error and packed his anti-malarial medicine in his suitcase. Luckily he had a clean dress shirt, tartan tie and his Caledonian Society presidents’ medal. My Dad has great priorities.

When we arrived we could hear music coming from the reception room and entered to find a bit of a jam session in progress. KK frequently has lunches to which he will invite many interesting visitors, and we were in attendance with a German music group who came to Zambia to investigate the possibility of setting up a dedicated music college. It turns out the first president of democratic Zambia has hidden talents. He’d pulled out a guitar and the whole group was singing along to a well known hymn, shortly followed by the Zambian anthem. After the musical interlude was concluded conversation turned to our purposes for visiting Zambia. KK was delighted to learn that Dad was born there, and that they had a Caledonian connection, KK’s father having been an ordained Church of Scotland missionary, and when Dad presented KK with a glass vase he had made in the colours of the saltire it took pride of place on the table in front of him. We have since learned that KK keeps the vase in his bedroom, along with the policeman’s helmet that David Scott had given him on a previous visit.

While we ate KK told us about his wife, Betty, to whom he was married for sixty-six years and who died in 2012. She was a strong woman and a good friend and advisor to KK, who consulted her frequently on affairs of state. It’s clear he misses her desperately, and his personal assistant, Linda told us that he regularly visits her grave in the gardens of his house to sit and talk to her. Dad told KK about my Mum and how they’ve been married only thirty years, and he responded with the advice to “have patience”.

KK came to the front steps to wave us off and sang Good-bye-ee, then this ninety-year-old man who has to walk with a cane ran up to his balcony like a dynamo and waved his trademark handkerchief as we drove away.

You can tell why KK was chosen to bring his country to democracy. He is gracious and commands the attention of a room when he speaks, but he is also humble and has a sense of mischief that belies the gravity of his office. He made us welcome in his home and shared his wisdom with us, while giving his full attention to each person and making it clear that he learns from everyone he meets.

First published in Southwell Life, April 2015.

Kenneth Kaunda

In 1962 my grandparents played host to a young man with a vision of a democratic Zambia. Kenneth Kaunda was 38 at the time, and president of the United National Independence Party (UNIP). Forty-eight years later my father would finally meet the man he’d peered at from behind his nurse at the age of four. The man who became the first president of an independent Zambia.

Kenneth Kaunda, known affectionately as KK, was born in 1924 in Lubwa, Northern Rhodesia, to Malawian parents. His father was a Church of Scotland missionary, and instilled in his eight children the values of the church, especially charity and love of your fellow man. KK was the youngest of the eight and trained as a teacher. In 1951 he quit teaching and became the Organising Secretary of the Northern Province Northern Rhodesian African National Congress (ANC). That’s a heck of a title, so in 1953 he became Secretary General of the ANC instead. In 1955 the ANC, led by its president Harry Nkumbula made an unsuccessful bid for the leadership of the country against the largely European led Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (FRN). Later that year Nkumbula and KK were imprisoned for two months for ‘distributing subversive literature’. This turned out to be a formative experience for KK. Upon their release his friend and colleague Nkumbula changed his stance and started to sympathise more with the FRN and their view of power with property. KK disagreed with the new stance of the ANC and so in October 1958 he formed the Zambian African National Congress (ZANC). Six months later the ZANC was banned and KK was sentenced to nine months in prison.

During his early political career KK had garnered a lot of support for his view that life would never improve for black Zambians unless they were proportionally represented in government. While he was in prison some of his supporters formed the United National Independence Party (UNIP) and upon his release in 1960 he was elected president. Using his position at the head of this new party KK set about building a successful campaign. He visited Martin Luther King Jr in Atlanta, Georgia, but in 1961 the UNIP staged protests which turned to violence, leading to road blocks and arson. The 1962 elections saw a UNIP-ANC coalition with KK in the post of Minister for Local Government and Social Welfare. In 1964 UNIP gained a rousing victory with KK at its head, making him the first President of an independent Zambia.

KK remained in power until the joint pressures of economic downturn and international pushes towards democracy meant that Zambia could either spiral into civil war, or a drastic change was needed. KK implemented a ruling which allowed for multi party elections, thus effectively ending any chance he had of re-election. A free and democratic election took place in 1991 and UNIP lost to the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). He was one of the first African statesmen to relinquish power in the name of a democratic vote.

Next month I will tell you about the time that we met this hero of a man. How he commands the attention of a room, how he is a gracious and wise host, and how he plays a mean guitar.

First published in Southwell Life, March 2015.

Back to Their Future

Everywhere you go in rural Zambia, it is usually the children you see first. They line the roads waving and grinning because to even see a car is a terribly rare event. They are thrilled to meet new people and will greet you over and over, to show off the English they know and in hopes of becoming friends. You are dragged over to meet their families and welcomed in to eat with them with smiles and open arms. Family is important here, because often family is all you have between you and the world, but sometimes family does not offer the safety it should. There are countless cases of the abuse of girls and young women at the hands of their male family members. For a long time this went unchecked and unchallenged, but education is helping to counter the damage done by ignorance. Project Luangwa works to educate young people, to help make their lives better. At present they are focusing on teaching young women that they do have a choice about what happens to their bodies, and teaching young men that they too have a choice. Tradition does not have to dictate their future, and they do not have to bow to pressure from ‘the way it has always been’. There is no shortage of minds to soak up knowledge and combat ignorance. The schools we visited with the National Police Aid Convoys (NPAC) were bursting at the seams with children so keen to learn that they even did what their teachers told them!

PEPAIDS is another charity which aims to educate, in particular, young people who have been affected by HIV/AIDS. Often these children are the sole carers for sick relatives or younger siblings, so when PEPAIDS gives them the chance to have some time off they leap at it. Camp Zambia is run so that children and young people can come and learn some life skills, as well as being able to relax and be children for a while. One particularly heartwarming story is that of Jack. His father had died and his mother was seriously ill, so he was the head of the family, responsible for caring for his siblings and his mother. He came to camp Zambia with nothing more than the clothes he stood up in. He didn’t even have any shoes. Volunteers at the camp got him to stand at one side of the yard and imagine everything he could want on the other side. He told them he just wanted to feed his family. They asked what he had on his side of the yard, and how it could help him get to the other side. He had a slingshot to scare off monkeys, so he decided he could go out into the bush and catch guinea fowl. This he did, and his family had a decent meal for the first time in weeks. One day he caught two guinea fowl, so he took the spare and sold it at market. With the money he bought himself a pair of pink jelly sandals, meaning he could walk further into the bush and thus catch more fowl to sell.

They say the children are the future, and Zambia’s future must be bright!

If you’re interested in the work done by any of the charities mentioned, please take a look at their websites:

Project Luangwa: www.projectluangwa.org

PEPAIDS: www.pepaids.org

NPAC: www.npac.org.uk

First published in Southwell Life, February 2015.

Charity Connections

The National Police Aid Convoys was founded on a basis of strong links in the community. During the Balkan war local police officers used their knowledge and connections to deliver aid directly to people in need. NPAC now sends shipping containers to around a dozen countries around the world from Albania to Zanzibar. Freight costs are high for regions that are less accessible but money raising efforts through warehouse sales, talks and presentations, legacies and donations keep the aid moving. A recent talk by three Southwell dentists at the Bramley Centre library raised £315 for NPAC, Bridge 2 Aid and the Mercy Ships. NPAC have to plan a long way ahead how much aid to send and where it’s needed. We use out links with local people and visits in person to find out if aid has arrived, is being used, and is being looked after. As long as these three criteria have been fulfilled we will offer more support in the future.

NPAC has links to organisations in the UK that supply specialist items such as sewing machines, shoes, bicycles, and artificial limbs. There is a surfeit of equipment in this country which is perfectly serviceable; the major challenge is getting it where it can do some good. NPAC is ideally situated to provide transport that smaller charities cannot afford. The large containers that NPAC sends run at about £4000, but if a charity wants to send smaller items they are invited to pay just a share of the container so their shipment can get to where it needs to go.

NPAC has warehouses all over the East Midlands where volunteers give their time to sort through the goods donated and decide which can be sold to pay for shipping costs, and what could be better used in specific projects abroad. During our trip to Zambia my father, John Peterson, was involved in setting up the dental clinic at the Makeni Trust in Lusaka. He had sent over some equipment already, including a dental chair and some cabinetry, but there is plenty more to take out on NPAC’s next trip, in June 2015. The warehouse closest to us is gradually filling up with medical and dental equipment donated by the Nottingham Dental Society, Westbridgeford medical practices and Lincolnshire podiatrists and physiotherapists ready to be serviced and tested before shipping. John says “I have seen the difference these donations make to the people we visited and hope to do more. NPAC cannot fulfil every request that comes in but we do like to keep our promises.”

If you’re interested in the work NPAC does, check their website at www.npac.org.uk or email secretary@npac.org.uk.

First published in Southwell Life, January 2015.

African Appetisers

Mum and I are the gastronauts of the family. Brother and Sister will experiment within the food groups they like, and Dad will eat what he’s given and be grateful, but Mum and I like to do something a little different every year. Everywhere we travel influences the food we make, and heading over to Zambia opened up a whole new continent of gastronomic possibilities for me.

While we were there I crossed three new animals off my Glutton Club list. Goat – delicious stewed, tender and flavourful; impala – similarly tasty, especially breaded and fried; and kudu, which is another type of antelope. Kudu I did not like. It wasn’t an unpleasant texture, being something like tender lamb, but the flavour was unexpected, being something like tuna. It did not marry well in my head.

Most people in Zambia get their carbohydrates from nshima, the Zambian national dish. It is made by adding mealie meal, a finely ground corn flour, to boiling water, and stirring until the desired consistency is reached. The nshima is formed into a ball, and is then used to scoop up the accompaniments. Make no mistake, to Zambians this is more than a mere alibi food, nshima is the central component of the dish, and all else is frippery. My father grew up in Zambia and has fond memories of mealie meal. Indeed, most ex-Zambians speak of nshima with misty nostalgia in their eyes. It isn’t quite the same anywhere else.

The meal I enjoyed most was probably with our good friend Chieftainess Mwape. She served us nshima with goat casserole, greens, beans, carrot salad and boiled potatoes. Quite the feast, considering her village is in the middle of both elephant country and tsetse fly country. The elephants trample and eat any crops other than cotton and tobacco, and the tsetse flies cause sleeping sickness in cattle. The people of Mwape struggle for food at the best of times, but while we were there it was a particularly lean season. The river was low and the food was scarce, but thanks to the work of NPAC and the tremendous organisation of the Chieftainess, most of the people of Mwape will not need to buy clothes or supplies for school, so they will be well fed until the river rises and the crops can grow and be sold.

First published in Southwell Life, December 2014.

This was apparently the only food we took a photo of. These little golden plums were tart and refreshing, and I still don't know what they're called!