I have been on a journey the past few weeks that has been counter to the sojourn over the past coupla months with Zed culture. Right now I am trying to set up a media company and am looking for funding for my first project and have encountered the worst of Zambia. We declare ourselves to be a Christian nation, yet the people I have encountered have been very close-minded, uncharitable, dismissive and at times shockingly devilish with their terrible manners including dastardly phone and email etiquette, disrespect of my time, and unnecessary condescension that stems from making sure I know my place, (which I know already is at the bottom of the barrel which is why I am looking for help to lift myself up), so they can feel better about themselves! This is not what Jesus would do! So with my mphamvu (strength/ energy) in the doldrums and my confidence shot, I have been carrying on as a being that is merely extant, floating along the sea of life with direction but no conviction. I wrote about my experiences in this recent post, and this is yet another recounting of an instance where I have once again been sucked in by Twitter by tweets from people who are far from twits.
While looking for inspirational quotes, (which I use to keep me trudging on professionally), I came across a conversation between Zambians in the country and Diaspora talking about how it is important for us to start creating our own content that isn't informed by what people from the outside, mainly the West, expect from us. That we should tell our stories in as unadulterated and raw a form as possible and not bend too much to package things to fit into formats that was not created with us in mind. More importantly how we have to validate our very being, the diversity that exists in our physical, spiritual, and cultural identities and not hold ourselves to one ideal, or worse, an external ideal upheld by global media that is defined by Western biases. I was able to see the voice of Zed Youth through this convo. Sometimes one feels alone and even though I have heard of youthful disgruntledness and calls for change, I have not really felt it beyond my own circle, and the few times I have has been in the tech world with my visits to BongoHive and Asikana Network (but I don't count that as techies are naturally collaborative: they are intrinsically inclined to be open and inclusive). It is lovely to see this community spirit on-line, and to see passionate, informed voices talking about what is wrong with Zambia and what needs to be done to fix it. More importantly, it is comforting to know that there are unadulterated, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, impassioned dreamers like me and my friends in all sorts of places and that circles like mine exist in Zambia in more ways that I thought, on- and off-line. I also discovered some new blogs that these clever twits own and/ or contribute to. You can check out the people I found on Twitter and their corresponding blogs here:
Most importantly, I was led to this lovely spoken word piece about remembering our past before colonisation, recognising what change was brought from the West and it's consequences, realising how all of this has shaped our present and current state in order to forge into the future without malice, without lusting for vindication, but with peace, wisdom, charity, grace, pride, confidence and most importantly, in our own varied ways. Our history is not to be obliterated, it has happened and it has shaped who we are, but we are also the masters of our own destiny. We can decide how we create the future and keep the thread of what it is to be diverse on the continent with our numerous ethnicities, as well as within the country boundaries that were imposed on us to define our national identities, and even on a more macro scale as Africans. I think Zambia is going through a tough phase right now, wrangling with who we are and how to define that and on what scale.
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