IT is only human that when certain “negative” comments are made the first reaction is to create defence barriers without properly analysing such comments because if this was properly done, one may conclude that the comments were made out of lack of understanding.
Take for instance the comments of the planner of the original town plan for Lusaka, the capital city who was quoted to have said: “It would be a mistake to treat Africans as if they were Europeans; it would be ridiculous to expect them to accept the responsibility of the white man; and it would be foolish to offer them those bodily comforts which generations and generations of habit have made necessary to the white man”
One white Munshilumbulwa was overhead saying: “I do not hate the black man; I hate the black man’s propensity to dilute standards.” Now it is like the good Doctor said “If you want to know how a crocodile lives ask the hippo”
This is particularly true when discussing our built environment especially that the British trained town planner made the above comments as a justification of his design philosophy when he was preparing the Lusaka initial town plan in the early 1930s.
Take the case of Lusaka itself, there was a time when nearly all the embassies had their offices somewhere around Cairo Road in the Central Business District of Lusaka and landlords enjoyed reasonable returns in dollar rentals of their properties and there was a scramble for office space then.
Usually, central business districts everywhere attract high demand for space because this is where most business activities take place and local authorities receive a good chunk of rates for properties located in the town centre.
With the successful invasion of the entire central business district by street vendors coupled with shortage of parking spaces the embassies and other business houses have relocated and abandoned this part of Lusaka.
One doubts if landlords in this area are now having full occupancy of office space and receiving economical rentals for their investment. Could it be that this is an example of what Munshilumbulwa meant about diluting standards?
The design concept of locating shops or trading areas on the ground floor and offices or flats located above is desirable and has been accepted everywhere and this is the approach in most parts of Lusaka’s central business district.
Maybe then, the issue could be with the form of the design solution which has produced Western type of shop arrangement, may be a typical African open air markets complete with stands should have been considered as a design solution at least on the ground floors then vendors and traders would have just fitted in without much disruption of traffic as is the case today.
Anyway if there was anything wrong or un-Zambian about the current state of things our patriotic political leaders would have done something about it to avoid the possibility of abandoning the capital city when it becomes unmanageable as has been the case in other countries.
During colonial days Africans lived in Chilenje or Matero in Lusaka or Chamboli in Kitwe while the whites lived in Kabulonga and Woodlands in huge mansions complete with green lawns and swimming pools.
This changed soon after Zambia attained political independence with people quickly leaving their African residential areas to occupy Kabulonga and similar areas without any orientation at all.
Now a number of swimming pools are breeding grounds for frogs and mosquitoes or they have been buried altogether in spite of the money invested in swimming pools while the once green lawns are now subjected to fire during the dry season.
Now this may not have anything to do with the “bodily comforts” the learned town planner was talking about, there are certain things that are looked down upon in the Zambian culture and tradition, for instance you may have noticed the agony parents go through during weddings when it comes to that part where the groom is asked to kiss the bride!
And so it is with the Zambian dress code you do not walk around almost naked in front of your children or indeed your in-laws and vice versa and yet this is what you may have to do when you maintain a swimming pool and in any case maintaining a swimming pool is not cheap.
Yet when people swim in God given Lake Bangweulu, which in fact is a much bigger swimming pool, it is for free and you not need to apply cleaning chemicals or disinfectants and as is expected boys swim away from girls at the lake in accordance with Zambian culture.
So away with the bodily comforts derived from the small swimming pools. As for the green lawns why spend K10 or so per litre of fuel when a stick of matches can be just as effective after all although local authority regulations prohibit starting fires in towns the regulations are never enforced.
The state of toilets in homes is often a useful indicator when assessing the level of cleanliness in a particular house that is why those who have not used waterborne toilets should be taken through an orientation as was the case at now Mungwi Technical Secondary School although rumour has it that the standards have been “diluted” back to the use of pit latrines.
In some houses, one would know the number of people who have taken a bath just by counting the scum lines showing in the bath tub while in some cases one may require to apply spirit of salt to clean the bath tub because ajax or boom cleaning detergents would not just do.
Now people have been bathing even before the colonialists came on the scene but one needs to analyse and understand the various styles of bathing which were applicable before the bath tub was imposed on the poor African to avoid concluding that this may be a bonafide case of diluting standards.
One method of bathing was to enter a large body of water such as Lake Bangweulu or any river for that matter; apply soap on your body and scrub yourself with a stone like the ones sold at Kapirimposhi and once again immense yourself in water and that’s it the job has been done.
The other method is to put warm water in chibafa or any large dish and keep sprinkling water and scrubbing yourself with the same standard stone all over your body until you are done.
All these processes did not call for the cumbersome exercise of cleaning of the bath tub with boom dish washing liquid or anything like that, so how could this be diluting of standards?
So the problem is with these British trained architects who keep specifying use of foreign, alien and labour intensive sanitary fittings such as bath tubs for bathing instead of, may be, a shower at the most which approximates the bathing methods that were in place before colonisation.
In fact when it comes to use of water closets or toilets it is a fact that some in-laws have refused to sit on the same toilet pan used by their son in-laws because according to them it is taboo.
However, we will not go into details of lavatorial discussions to discover the various ways of answering this particular call of nature in existence before imposition of the water closet which may explain the reasons why this apparatus may have changed colour in some homes apart from those reasons attributed to those water utility companies that supply or used to supply coloured water.
In Zambia a number of landlords who own houses are reluctant to rent houses to some quarters of society or are forced to introduce security deposits because of the high levels of vandalism and lack of appreciation of well maintained homes.
One landlord cried when he found brazier or mbaula burnt marks in various places on his carpet tile finished floor in the lounge by his tenant. Some tenants have rented houses only to turn one of the bedrooms into a chicken run while the children sleep in the seating room all covered with that familiar smell associated with chicken runs.
Now to explain this phenomenon as a prima facie case of failing to accept the responsibility of a white man may be over stretching the true state of things there may, after all, be an explanation of bad design or designing outside context.
One must first of all understand not just the life style but also the social and cultural context for those whose problem one is providing a design solution to.
Surely an architect cannot, for example, blame pigs for doing the unthinkable on the carpet tiles he specified to be laid in a piggery.

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