Zambian Buddhism

The fast chant vibrates the air, while all eyes are on the gilded temple.
Vertical blinds flop in the mild breeze, and the yellow walls feel clean and clinical. As the metal foldaway chair digs deep into my bottom I am reminded of long-winded PTA meetings at my children’s school.
This is so different from the last time I was in Zambian Church. Then a spontaneous a’cappella choir filled the church. The high notes rose through the air while the lower voices stayed earthbound. There were no musical instruments, just uninhibited voices escaping through the thatch roof.
But now the voices beat out a toneless chant, while on stage the director leads the chant with a large drum.
M. is now Buddhist. She believes it gives her energy and self-help – she makes no prayers to an unknown god and instead gains the wisdom to solve or accept her own problems. Compared to Christianity, which relies on prayer to another being, she believes Buddhism make her more self reliant.
M. says Buddhism has helped her cope with work and family, and that the chanting provides relaxation while the philosophy helps ease the stress of her high-powered job.
All around me middle class Zambians are escaping the stresses of their own lives.
The director halts the drumming suddenly and turns to his congregation. A few women pull out pens and notebooks. As the director begins his sermon, I watch as M. scribbles down his wisdom:
Accept suffering in your heart.
Charity is acting with courage – attain enlightenment from within not from without – we can summon faith
A young boy slips out to play in the sun. Other children, catching his flight, look appealingly to their parents and then follow.
Ask what I can do to make sure each child is raised in happiness.
The director is a genteel Bemba man who studied at Birmingham University and found Buddhism in Glasgow in 1976. He brought its philosophy to Zambia the very next year and says the congregation is somewhere in the hundreds, although he refuses to be specific.
Praise is the Buddha that is yourself – suffer what there is to suffer – enjoy what there is to enjoy.
The women scribble his phrases like they are dictates on wisdom itself. But the midday heat is growing oppressive. A young man brings out two electric fans and aims one to the male side of the room, and points the other at the women. The breeze makes the heavy lady in front draw in a deep breath.
The director pulls forward a large screen television and announces a film. The children hurry inside, and we watch a black and white video on Shintoism in Japan
I long for some movement, some singing and dancing – the jovial abandon of the churches I remember. If this is development, then I want to go back to the past.
A Japanese woman in a chitenge dress with ‘Africa’ printed across her tiny busom stands up to give a sermon. She speaks English, but I understand not a word and wonder how the Zambians around me are coping.
Finally there is a song, and the director is joined by four other men, but the musical lilts are carefully measured, as though too much would be a bad thing and self-control the one true aim.
On the way back to M.’s house the road is blocked by police. M. thinks President Levy Mwanawasa might be ready to pass. We have to detour, but M worries that she doesn’t know which way to go. We take a right toward Kalingalinga, a poor township on outskirts of Lusaka. Along the roadside huge signs announce churches with labels as diverse as Jesus Christ Baptist, Divine, Jehovah – even Messianic which appeals to Christians and Jews who love Israel. There is so much room for belief here and I have to wonder why??
The road through Kalingalinga is lined by market stalls selling everything from potatoes to charcoal. Children in tattered clothes hold out their goods as we drive past. This is the Africa I knew, the Africa I haven’t seen at M.’s house.
We stop at Manda Hill for groceries and enter Shoprite, a South African supermarket. It sells everything, even fruit wrapped in cling film – none of the torn off sheets of newspaper that shopkeepers used to use. At the back of the store, in a cold room behind the refrigerated meat counter, young people hack at meat for packaging. A line of people stand at the door hoping for special cuts. M. wants a bone for the dog – but everyone is turned away.
The toy aisle is tightly packed with bright playthings – four shelves are given over to dolls and all of them are white or pink. In this African nation, not a black or brown or doll is for sale. No wonder M.’s daughter loved her black Barbie-lookalike.
I try to pay for M.’s groceries, but the shop assistant thinks I’m a fool when I a 5,000 kwacha note for a 23,000 bill. I thought it was 50,000 – just so many zeros. I feel like an idiot, but M. laughs.