Bottom Up

Ode to Chancellor College, Our Chancellor’s College

Abiti Joyce Befu also intra-nationall  known as MG 66, Alhajj Mufti Jean-Philippe LePoisson, SC (RTD), Nganga Maigwaigwa, PSC (RTD), the Most Paramount  Native Authority Mzee Mandela and I,  the Mohashoi, are in the so-called City of Zomba this week.

We are here to pay homage to the institution, the structures and the people that made us what we are today. Chancellor College is the home of democracy.  While many people in Malawi were resigned to their fate believing this great federal republic was a one-party State, Chancellor College was conducting competitive Students Union elections. 

While all around us there was no freedom of expression, Chancellor College was already publishing The MUSE and other publications where students exchanged unfettered political views.  The poem ‘Come Come And Mend (CCAM)’ was first published here.

While all over this hitherto beautiful country people were speaking in cryptic tongues and  metaphors, the Writers Workshop meeting every Tuesday in Room B, afforded us that rare chance to be creative writers that we are today. It was in Room B that we tapped from the creative genius of Jack Mapanje, Steve Chimombo, Father Patrick O’Malley, Zangaphe Chizeze, Marx Iphani, Thom Likambale and Dick Chagwanjira.

That is why we are here.

We are here to thank Professor Dr Edrine Lora Kayambazinthu because it was her who taught us the value of sociolinguistics and the role of social anthropology in development.  We hear she still keeps our essay to teach the current students how to write an academic essay. We hear.

We are also here to thank Professor Dr Brighton Uledi Kamanga because had he not forced us to read those huge Russian, American, and British novels, we would not have been the avaricious readers that we are today. If nobody can cheat us today, it is because we are well read thanks to Professor Uledi  Kamanga.

We will meet and ‘bavarder avec les professeurs’ in the department of French to honour the fountain of our knowledge of French literature, Francophone literature and francophone life philosophy. It was here that we learned about Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett and Andre Malraux and their existentialist philosophy. It was here that we studied Leopold Sedar Senghor and Aime Cesaire and their Negritude philosophy.

We will also visit Café A and Café B because it was here that Mabwana, the late Traditional Authority Kapoloma, and Time, two jocund kitchen and nutrition specialists, as cooks are called elsewhere,  kept reminding us, as we struggled to get the best of Chambo and boiled Mangoni patotoes,  that we were  future leaders  of  this country and we needed to behave well.

We are here to laugh out loud with Registrar Dr Benedicto Okomaatani Malunga, Professor Dr Wiseman Chijere Chirwa, Professor Dr Fidelis Edge Kanyongolo and Professor Dr Garton Kamchedzera. You can see that we are very discerning in choosing friends, acquaintances and ujeni because, we believe, you are what your friends are.  If you pick foolish, self-denigrating, and visionless people for friends, you will be foolish, self-denigrating and visionless.  The rich chat, share knowledge and success tactics among themselves.  That is why foolishness, wealth, and poverty are cyclical. Only those who choose to break this cycle live to tell a different life tale.

We are also here to sympathise with and give moral support to our friends in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies. We will advise them to stop interviewing green flies, rats, jiggers and bwanoni’s when getting opinions about how well this country is performing. Instead, they should start being patriotic, interviewing themselves, the air and speculating like Economist Intelligence Unit of the (dis)United Queendom (dUQ)and rate our leaders favourably. Always.

We will remind Dr Boniface Dulani and his colleagues to read Walt Whitman’s Poem of The Dead Young Men of Europe five times and memorise  Louis Althuser’s theory  of Repressive and Ideological State Apparatuses of Control before they go out to interview the bees.

That is why we are here.

The Malawi Revenue Authority and other State terrorist apparatuses are welcome to meet us at Dark Diamond Lodge where we will be lodged during our expedition to this old and abandoned capital.  

Related Articles

Check Also
Close
Back to top button