Lusaka, Zambia

(Notes from a journey to Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia, Sep/Oct 2015.)

Lusaka's main thoroughfare is Cairo Road, named after the ambitious but never-finished road that Cecil Rhodes wanted to build across British occupied territories from the Cape to Cairo. Between a mall and the Lusaka City Market, we loaded up on music from Zambia and neighboring countries, from artists like Angela Nyirenda, Lucius Banda, Mumba Yachi, Billy Kaunda, and a compilation of Kalindula music. Lusaka even has a South Asian quarter with a Radha-Krishna temple (which lists upcoming events in Gujarati), a mosque, streets named after Delhi, Bombay, Karachi, Sind, and Gandhi, and retail stores with Indian origin traders who’ve been around for generations.

As with Malawians and Mozambicans, what impressed me is how polite Zambians tend to be in their everyday interactions with each other; they nearly always start with a greeting—nothing like the directness common in Delhi. In so many ways, women too seem better off than in north India. Just as often as men they loiter in Lusaka's public spaces, drive cars, and run restaurants and shops; they dress in all manner of comfortable and varied attire, with much fewer hangups and social pressures about covering up their bodies. Lusaka is in fact a modern bustling city of 1.7 million with malls to nearly rival those in Gurgaon, a decent live music scene (we attended two concerts), busy street markets, and three universities (Zambia has come a long way from having only 9 university graduates in 1964, when it won independence from Britain). The campus of the University of Zambia reminded me strongly of my own alma mater in India. [—Namit Arora, October 2015]