My sister and her husband adopted three children of a deceased relative and welcomed them into their home in Lumbadzi about a decade ago. The eldest of the three, a nine-year-old boy called Bright, proved to be something of a complex character. For instance, he would sell the exercise books and pens my sister had bought for him, converting them into money to buy petty food items.
One day, Bright failed to return home after school. A frantic manhunt was mounted, but it yielded nothing, as all his friends insisted that they had not seen him. The following morning, however, a man brought him home, explaining that he had found him among a group of boys who had been cheering gulewamkulu the previous night.
Boys possess a natural curiosity about things that appear to defy ordinary explanation. I was five years old when I first encountered gulewamkulu. My father was then the pastor of Kongwe Congregation in Dowa District. One day, I ventured out of the manse—as the pastor’s residence is known in the CCAP—and had not gone very far when I heard strange groaning and screaming. My eyes soon fell upon two-legged figures in the distance—figures unlike anything I had ever seen before. They pointed at me and uttered unintelligible sounds, sending me into a panic. My heart leapt into my mouth, and I took to my heels, racing back to the manse, where I hid myself.
When I had recovered from my fright, I learnt that the strange figures I had encountered were akapoli. A multitude of questions raced through my young mind: Where had they come from? What were they doing? Would I have survived had they caught me? And, most importantly, how could I avoid them in the future?
Over time, I came to understand that gulewamkulu consisted of numerous characters, all essentially dancers. Many questions nevertheless remained unanswered, and my curiosity persisted, albeit from a safe distance. In time, however, my curiosity extended to many other things, and I began searching for explanations to the mysteries around me. I have written on this column, for instance, about how my brother and I once wondered how an electric bulb worked and attempted to assemble one ourselves, using thin wire mischievously extracted from the wire mesh fitted to windows and an empty bottle.
Bright’s curiosity, unlike mine, seemed to be almost exclusively confined to gulewamkulu. Living in Lumbadzi and in such close proximity to an international airport, I would have expected him to develop a fascination with aeroplanes and to wonder how these enormous machines manage to defy gravity and fly. There was also a project at the airport in which the Japanese installed solar panels. I would have expected Bright to be intrigued by solar energy and eager to discover what he could about this remarkable technology.
One of the problems we face as a country is that too few of our own people desig and make high-technology products. Consequently, our young people have very few local figures to look up to in the technological arena. They are therefore easily drawn towards pursuits such as gulewamkulu, partly because they know several people who practise them and can see them at close quarters.
We ought to expose our boys and girls to the achievements of people such as William Kamkwamba of Kasungu. Elsewhere in the world, Kamkwamba has become something of a celebrity, inspiring countless young people to appreciate the importance of perseverance, ingenuity and the courage to try something new. Hollywood even made a film about his remarkable story, yet in his own country he remains virtually unknown. Some of the very teachers who ought to be introducing his story to their pupils may never even have heard of him. Had Bright encountered William Kamkwamba at school, perhaps his curiosity might have broadened into an interest in building windmills.
When Felix Kambwiri developed a prototype helicopter at Madisi in Dowa, the general reaction among many Malawians was one of skepticism. I argued, however, that the real value of Kambwiri’s project lay not so much in his suddenly establishing a helicopter assembly line and being inundated with orders for aircraft from home and abroad, but in his potential to become a role model for aspiring young Malawians. His machine could have served as a prototype for others to study, scrutinise, identify its shortcomings, and improve upon. And perhaps, in the process, Bright’s curiosity might have been redirected towards helicopters.
We need to search within our communities for technological initiatives in which ordinary Malawians are experimenting, inventing and creating, then deliberately place these before our young people.