You can take the boy out of Africa, but . . . . .
Chris Whelan recently spoke to members and future members about growing up in Africa, specifically in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), a British Protectorate until it was granted independence in 1964. Chris’ father was a justice of its High Court, and after independence he ended his legal career as a Judge of the District Court of WA.
In contrast, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was a self-governing colony, and it took a civil war to resolve its future as an independent country. Chris spent most of his school years there, boarding at St George’s College, a Jesuit school in Salisbury (now Harare) from the age of 9. and only spent time with his family back in Northern Rhodesia, three times a year. It took Chris a while to figure out how to manage all of this without frequent corporal punishment, and all ended well when he graduated as dux of his school.
When Chris showed us his map, he pointed out the shape of the northern border of Zambia, with a tongue of land that belongs to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a former colony of Belgium. This land coincidentally contains most of the copper that can be found in the region. However Zambia has enough copper to be a major source of foreign earnings, and it was also a major grower of tobacco. The other thing Zambia has is plenty of water - and thus hydro electricity. The dam on the Zambezi River may be the largest in the world.
However with lots of water comes lots of insects bearing diseases like malaria (estimated 20,000 new cases a day) and African Sleeping Sickness, usually fatal and also caused by a parasite, spread through the bites of tstse flies.
Lots of water also describes the world famous Victoria Falls of the Zambezi River, which separates modern day Zambia and Zimbabwe. The town on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls is called Livingstone, named after the Scottish explorer Dr David Livingstone, I presume! He was the person who named Victoria Falls for Queen Victoria, the only time he used a non-African name to designate a place on the maps he was sending back to Royal Society in London.
Chris kept everyone enthralled ("I could have sat there for another hour" said a relatively new member), so we’ll try and get him to come back and continue taking us through another episode of “Life of Chris”, next year.
