Monday, 30 April 2012

Fresh Zambian journalism

I must admit. I am not reading newspapers in Zambia often, not even every week. The reason is that I can’t take bad journalism. The Post and Weekly mail newspapers I sometimes browse through and get an idea what the president has been busy with. Or not so busy. I don’t mean to undermine him or anybody else. Except the journalism.
Recently I noticed a thin magazine called Bulletin&record. Already from the contents I got interested. And from a huge picture of the vice president Guy Scott. I didn’t know much, if anything about him, so I decided to buy the Bulletin. And was very pleased about its quality. The February number includes plenty of interesting articles and themes: new Muchingu province in the north, Choma as the new provincial capital for the Southern province, a local couple producing tea in Ndola, Livingstone and its current hiccups, money and banking in Zambia etc.







Take the current situation with Choma versus Livingstone. The latter will lose its province capital status. Livingstone is already losing tourists. After ten years of downhill, Victoria Falls Town on Zim side is back on the map also for tourists. At the moment even a bit cheaper than Zambia. According to Livingstone Tourism Association chairperson Kingsley Lilamono, the relocation of the provincial headquarters to Choma doesn’t take much away from Livingstone. It has to start concentrating only on boosting tourism.













Then there is the case of Lusaka. The face of the capital city has changed enormously in the last, only two years time with all the new Manda Hill, Levi and Makeni malls. Will there be clients for all? At the same time there is a huge challenge making Zambia the area’s breadbasket, which could be the case. If... more efficient methods in agriculture were being used and if Tazara railway connecting Zambia to the big sea-port in Dar es Salaam would be used for its all potential of six million tonnes instead of 500,000 tonnes per annum.












And then.. there is the issue of gays. I was actually surprised about the article even published as homosexuality is illegal in Zambia. Bulletin&record interviewed a 19 year old Zambian man, whom the editors named John. He had spent only a few minutes chatting with the journalist in a restaurant and was very nervous. One can understand his feelings considering the harsh penalty of being gay: 14 years in prison. According to ‘John’ the gays meet nowadays in the internet facebooking. Still being careful and afraid all the time.
Bulletin&record is a breath of fresh air in the journalism field in Zambia. For how long as it costes only K5000. Anyway, I have started looking forward fresh numbers. 
Ansku Tiilikainen

The case of malaria

Before moving to Lusaka almost three years ago, me and my family went through some thorough check up with a doctor. All the possible vaccinations were given. And malaria. Yes, prophylactic to prevent the deadly sickness. Especially for the kids, said the doctor. We actually started asking him about the necessity of the medication. Result: we got threatened by him with an ultimatum. If we don’t give prophylactic to our kids, they will be taken into custody. Wow, that was something. Anyway, we bought one pharmacy bagfull of Lariam, the strongest and worst-side-effect tablets. Those stood on the recipe.
As we got down here, we started asking around about malaria. Some researchers said that it’s almost non existing in Lusaka. Or how they put it, one must really have a bad luck to get it into the system here in the capital city. We also saw a doctor here, an experienced Indian chap at CfB hospital. ”Are you crazy, you should not take any more of that Lariam or rather no other prophylactic either.” He adviced us just to take care in the evenings that we are protected with natural ways, long sleeves and sprays. And mosquito nets above the beds. So did we, as soon as we got organised in our rented home with our own furniture. Before that especially our youngest one looked mostly like a leopard with tens of bites.. No malaria, fortunately.







We stopped taking Lariam immediately on the same evening after coming home from that doctors appointment. Nasty headaches disappeared and horror dreams were history. After only three weeks of munching Lariam, we were left with the same bagfull, which nobody will probably ever buy. Or take for free. Since then we have opened that bag only for some pills in order to prevent malaria when going to the Falls or into the bush. But, some doctors and other people say, that having that preventative poison in the body might actually hide the symptoms so that the blood test would not show malaria clearly. Good point! So, it’s good to think beforehand and at the same time keep in mind that malaria is a very severe disease which never goes away without strong and powerful treatment. This case just shows how different we look at the case of malaria in the North and here in the South where it’s almost a fluelike episode. For many, a yearly nuisance.


Ansku Tiilikainen