• The author (right) at Shiwa House with another visitor Webby Nsalamu.

By MOSES KABAILA JR-
THE insatiable appetite and will to achieve big things in life make more sense with a visit to the Shiwa House dubbed the Africa House by prolific English journalist Christina Lamb in her book.
The moment you see this massive house in the middle of the bush in Shiwang’andu District, the energy to work even harder just rushes through your body. It is no wonder that First Republican President Dr Kenneth Kaunda (KK) found it easy to spend time at this mansion with its famous builder and owner Sir Stewart Gore-Browne whenever the two had something to share.
The beautiful Shiwang’andu, was built by Stewart Gore-Browne, a British colonial who came to what was then Northern Rhodesia to fulfill a dream, and ended up playing a major role in the territory’s peaceful transition to independence as the nation of Zambia.
As a white man supporting the movement for independence, Gore-Browne was loved and respected by Dr Kaunda.
According to records, Sir Stewart Gore Browne was born in England in 1883 and from a young age, he did rough draft designs of his dream home he hoped to one day build.
In 1911 during his first visit to Africa, he fell in love with the continent and decided that the house he has always dreamt about would be set up in Africa.
A walk around the massive Shiwa House yard today gives that feeling of appreciation that Gore-Browne decided to build his dream house in this part of Zambia. The opulence, elegance, beauty still amount to what can be termed as only coming true in one’s dreams.
The mere fact that this house is reality only triggers more dreams, the story behind this house gives no room for not dreaming, let alone believing.
In an extract from the book Discovering Zambia, Molly Joyce writes that when Gore-Browne returned to Africa, Northern Rhodesia in 1914, he set off from Ndola looking for an ideal spot for his house which he found at Shiwang’andu.
“My African friends are nearly all Bemba and they told me how good their country was. So I decide to go and see it,” he would say.
“One day, after we had been on the march for several weeks,” he recalls, “we came to a lake in a cradle of hills. I knew I had found what I was looking for. That day, beside the lake , I shot my first rhino” and of the lake he wrote ” I was surrounded by a hilly country, and along its shores were groves of rare trees, of kind sacred to Africans. Friendly folk inhabited the one big village on the lakeshore and there were a dozen herds of different wild game. The surrounding land seemed to be reasonably fertile judging by the crops that were ripening there. I knew at once that I had found what I was looking for.”
Chipembele (rhino) as the local people (Bembas) came to call him because of his wise but stern personality compared to a rhino, taught the local people all sorts of skills that helped to create his dreams.
To this day, the inside of the house brings back the thought of what used to happen when KK visited the mansion. Just by the entrance, Sir Gore-Browne had displayed a certificate of recognition by Dr Kaunda presented to him in 1966 during Independence celebrations.
The certificate nicely displayed in picture frame hangs next to another piece of recognition presented to Gore-browne as a Lieutenant Colonel in the British army by King George the 6th.
When Dr Kaunda came to power in 1964, he decorated Gore-Browne as the Grand Officer of the Companion Order of Freedom, Second Division.  King George V1 of England, however, had also knighted him for his services as a leader in the British army.
The words on the document read: To my Trusty and well-beloved Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, Greetings! I Kenneth David Kaunda, President of the Sovereign Republic of Zambia, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Zambia, having regard to your services whereby you have given your high and invaluable services to the national cause, which resulted in the attainment of independence by Zambia, I do by this warrant appoint you Grand Officer of the Companion Order of Freedom, Second Division, given under my hand at Lusaka, the 24th of October 1966.
It is said that Gore-Browne used to bring KK to talk privately with him at Shiwa House. Sometimes KK would even hide from colonial masters and other authority at the house in a hole at the centre of the kitchen and a big stove would be pulled over the hole.
Sometimes Sir Gore-Browne would also hide with Dr Kaunda to avoid questions from the police who would be told that he had travelled to England whenever they came to look for him.
Sir Gore-Browne was active in the United Independence National Party’s (UNIP) push for independence of Zambia
When he died in 1967, he was buried on the hill overlooking the Shiwa Lake. At his funeral, it is said that Kaunda remarked that ‘Gore-Browne was born an Englishman but he has died a Zambian.’
Today, people who have had an encounter with Sir Gore-Browne say he used to believe that- “anything you want to do, you can do!”
Whether he meant creating an empire in the middle of nowhere or travelling from Chinsali to Lusaka to fight for independence is not known but clearly, the man had a positive influence on his beloved friend Kaunda.
From the day the house was finished in 1933, to date, a lot has happened at Nshiwag’andu House. The most interesting thing, however, is that Gore-Browne’s dream still stands strong. His grand children have restored and put back the grandeur touch to the house. The C and J farm, the Shiwa Lake, the Kapisha Hot Springs all just some of nature’s master pieces still found at the estate.
The magnificent three-storey pink-bricked mansion, with a tower in the centre, a red tiled roof, and a line of elegant arches supporting a first-floor terrace from which a Union Jack flag once fluttered completes a visitors trip to Shiwang’andu.
For sure this is a house of dreams.