Chasing illusions and  getting disillusioned Pichen Kazembe
Pichen Kazembe

Pichen Kazembe

David Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts
There is a brutally honest video circulating on social media. It has the usual puffed-up American pontifications. A young female American university student asks a panel under the chairmanship of a university professor a politically correct question about America.

She does what is expected of patriotic Americans who abide by the law, the kind of people depicted in Albert Hammond’s hit song “Free electric band”. Her dutiful question is: Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world? A lady panellist talks about “diversity and opportunity” while a gentlemen panellist talks about “freedom and freedom” and concludes, “Let’s keep it that way”.

Each time I play this video I recall my undergraduate years and Arthur Miller’s book “Death of a Salesman” and poor Willie Loman and his hallucinations about America, the land of his illusions. Another poignantly instructive play about the death of America as originally envisaged is “A Street car named Desire” written by Tennessee Williams.

Much of the music of our time has also been quite definitive where America is concerned. If you have ever watched traditional dancers doing their thing, so to speak, like me, you will have been struck by the creative genius and fluidity that each of the dancers brings to the arena. But sometimes you see an old-timer who in his days must have wowed the crowds just shake his head and leave the dance arena as if to say no one remembers me anymore.

This reminds me of some of the things an uncle of mine who was always reminiscing about his past life and the lost glory was fond of narrating. As he told you his glorified stories he would drop in names casually as if you too knew the people in his episodes. Amazingly he was quite with-it in some ways.

The man was only functionally literate and knew hardly any English except as it featured in the pigeon known in our part of the world as Chilapalapa or Chilolo. Ricky Nelson will remember that he had many hit songs in his days as a teenage heartthrob. Then the music changed with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and others and Ricky Nelson went into limbo.

Then in one last gasp song he came back promisingly with the song “Garden party”. And yes, you guessed it! Garden party, that popular music venue in Kambuzuma’s Section 6 was named after this song by Ricky Nelson.

Ricky Nelson’s song goes like this: I went to a garden party To reminisce with old friends A chance to share old memories And play our songs again When I got to the garden party They all knew my name No one recognised me I didn’t look the same Does this sound familiar? I suspect that this is how Andrew Ngoyi of O.K. Success fame might feel if he attended a Zimdancehall bash in Harare Gardens today.

Some people might remember his name and even recall some of his hit songs like “Kufamba kwako kwanyanya” and “Joji mudiwa wangu” with James “Bindura” Chimombe. Few if any would recognise him. I remember an afternoon at the old Book Café at the Fife Avenue Shopping Centre in Harare. Jackson Phiri had finished his slot and was telling stories about the Lipopo Jazz Band and about Bado, Kado and the others in that band including himself.

But his juiciest story if you knew what he was talking about was the one about how he was part of the Pichen Kazembe band and as their plane descended upon the City of Blantyre in Malawi he began to feel wistful, wondering just what he would offer the adoring crowds awaiting them.

So he composed the song “APhiri anabwera” which became a phenomenal hit. The song was introspectively satirical. Jackson Phiri appeared to laugh at himself. Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda banned the song, saying it was a caricature making fun of migrant workers from Malawi who come back home to die. They bring nothing with them — only empty suitcases. The Garden Party song also has the following words:

Played them all the old songs Thought that’s why they came No one heard the music We didn’t look the same I said hello to “Mary Lou” She belongs to me When I sang a song about a honky-tonk It was time to leave. Quite a debilitating experience, to do your very best and not even make a ripple on a people’s consciousness. I dare say that some of the shocked faces in the video not only went through angst because of the one dissenting voice that seemed to surprise even the professor.

One man on the panel dared contradict the popular sentiment and reeled off statistics that debunked the claim that America is the greatest country in the world. This down-and-out picture of America is well documented in other people’s songs.

The world in America is especially dark and bleak for people of African descent. Albert Hammond in “It never rains in southern California” sings: Got on board a west-bound 747 Didn’t think before deciding, what to do

All that talk of opportunities, TV breaks and movies Rang true, sure rang true This greenness and naivety borne out from inexperience is true of all young people looking to go up in the world. Fabulous green pastures are always beckoning somewhere else.

But as life always teaches us, it is not everyone who finds their Eldorado. Many find disillusionment instead, and normally shy away from people from home if they should be so unlucky as to bump into them. The usual thing done is to spin tall tales about how things are clicking and how they have come up in the world. They will, with Albert Hammond and others, sing:

Will you tell the folks back home I nearly made it Had offers but don’t know which one to take Please don’t tell them how you found me Don’t tell them how you found me Gimme a break, give me a break It goes without saying that in such cases you’re not like to be invited home.

To do that would be to kill the illusion, and that is something they would rather hold on to, no matter what. The hope is that things will look up sometime, that they must inevitably get better somehow in due course. In most cases such people are out of work and may even be homeless vagabonds. They tend to be hungry most of the time as well and will get off you what they can. The story of the Mutare man who after 25 years of wondering and rootlessness came back home to a long-suffering wife in very much the prodigal son motif.

In his absence the wife had made good without him, but like the good church-going person that she was, she forgave the man and even went to spend the night with him in her bedroom.

When she did that her fate was sealed. By next morning he had killed her most cruelly, cutting her throat and vanishing. The poor woman was found by one of her daughters lying in a pool of blood on her bed. The man allegedly committed suicide after killing his wife. The foolish man came back home after unsuccessful stints around the world and accused her of having been seeing other men. In his sick mind that was the only way she could have turned her life around after he abandoned her.

Typically he was shifting blame and ignoring the fact that he had fled his home with a good time girl who then ditched him once they were in the United States of America. When Elisha Murimba came back home all he had was an empty satchel. That was all he brought from his many years of greener pastures.

The Pichen Kazembe song about Mr Phiri coming home with nothing, but an empty suitcase comes to mind. Back to the panellist and his startling revelations and statistics about America. Those who, like moths, are attracted to the bright lights will want to disregard the man’s argument about the USA not being the greatest country in the world.

He pummels the professor for allowing students to believe that America is the only country in the world that has freedom. What about Canada, England, Australia and Belgium, he asks. He goes on to say there are 207 states in the world and that something like 180 of them have freedom. This means that there is nothing special about America.

The statistics the dissenter gives show that there is absolutely no evidence that America is the greatest country in the world, being 7th in literacy, 27th in Mathematics, 22nd in Science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality and so on and so forth.

You had better not believe it. There is no gold on the streets of America and the pastures there are greener only in a metaphorical sense. David Mungoshi is a writer and social commentator, a retired teacher and editor.

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