Not for the first time, I openly assert
the fact that I get the greatest inspiration not from the greatest
philosophers, most achieving sportspeople nor the most distinguished
politicians. Instead it is the closest of my friends that inspire me the most. I am one
person who would not pay a motivational speaker in the hope of getting
motivated to do big things.
Anyway, excuse my constant reminders
about my lack of ‘celebrity’ centered motivation. In this blog, I’d like to specially acknowledge one of my friends as having
inspired the birth of this blog site. The truth is that I credit Keith Hamusute
for inspiration, encouragement and support towards the creation of this blog
site. Keith himself has been maintaining a blog site he aptly calls ‘footprints in the dust’ since 2010 and I had been a regular visitor on his blog site since
2011. He is such a free thinker and an articulate writer. Every time I visit
his blog site I can certainly feel the reverberation of his astuteness. Every
blog post he put up, 80% of the time felt like my own words, my thoughts which
had been plucked right out of me.
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| "Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs" |
The reason for that I believe is simply that we are from the same generation, born around the same time, and then grew up experiencing similar circumstances even though we grew up in very different and distant places. Funny enough by the time we met, we shared a lot of things in common. We listened to the same kind of music, supported the same football team, went to the same church and the list of the common things that bound us during our time together is endless. To cut the long story short, after more than 2 years of following Keith’s blog site, I knew I wanted to tell my own stories in my own way and more importantly to exploit the 20% that was in my mind that he didn’t tell. As much as 80% of what he said felt like it was coming from me, I still wanted to blurt out that other 20%.
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| Blog stats |
I am not known to speak out my mind
much, but I do write and have always liked to write quite a lot. In writing
I have always found an outlet for all my thoughts. In fact, my spoken words are
many a time lost in excessive verbiage such that over the years I have learned
to speak less believing a man of few words easily gets his point across.
However I must confess I had reduced on reading and consequently writing. Life
just became too busy for everything else except reading and writing. The
closest to reading I ever came across was a study text book. As the years went
on, I read less and I stopped writing at all. The last diary I owned and used
to write memoirs of my daily life and experiences was in 2007.
So a little over a year ago, I found
myself in a perplexity that William Shakespeare would refer to as; “to be or not to be,
that is the question!” I chose ‘to be’ and I set up this blog site with the first blog post published on
13th June 2013.
Since then I have put up thirty nine
(39) posts, twenty seven (27) in 2013 and 12 so far this year. The very first post
(debut in sporting language) is my favourite of all posts I have published so
far. It is my favourite because it got me out of my shell and thus shed off 'my waned love for writing'. I always
believe my blogs are really followed by a few of my friends but I have come to
realize that some posts have appeared on google search results there by being
accesed by a a lot more people. For this reason, I decided to track the most
popular posts.
As at 13th June 2014, the most popular blog was 'Trevor
Noah on Zambian escalators', having had 1447 plus visits with the
closest popular blog accounting for just over 257 visits of the total blog page
visits at 6240. However, I suspect the only reason the post attracted that many
readers is simply that the name Trevor Noah can easily come up on Google search results, thus a good number of the visitors 'accidentally' get to the blog.
One other reason could be that a lot
of people just didn't believe what Trevor had said of Zambians and their incredulity
towards escalators hence have been on the search for any material related to
the story of escalators in Zambia as described by non-other than South Africa’s comic par excellence himself – Trevor Noah. However, for a very
long time before the escalators blog was published, the most popular blog had
been 'ice-cream and bikinis'. The
reasons this was popular I really don't know but I suspect everyone was just
amused at the connection between the two.
The blog which I had the most fun
writing, ‘the photographer in me’, though, has not proved to be popular. I actually wrote that
particular blog just after attending a wedding ceremony on a weekend and as
throngs of photographers jostled around in the hope of getting as many shots as
was possible, I felt at times some of them were crossing the thin line of
photographic etiquette. As soon as I got home I decided to write something
about it.
The other thing I noticed is that
even though I blog on my experiences and thoughts which most of the time center
on life in Zambia, the blog site is more popular outside Zambia than it is in
Zambia.
The most traffic is generated from the USA, Canada, Germany, South
Africa, Netherlands, Ukraine, United Kingdom and yes China. However my mention
of some statistics of the blog site since the first blog was published, is not
to showboat or create a perception that I maintain a very successful blog
site. The reason for this blog is not a numbers measurement but just a celebration
that after one year, I didn't drop the ball by the way side.
Instead, blogging has helped me rediscover my love reading and writing as well as adding a different dimension as I have developed a habit of following other blog sites among them, 'one more pair of boots' by Muuka Mary Gwaba, 'this is life' by Susan Mwape and another very successful and interesting blog site ‘diary of a frustrated brotha’. There are a few more other blog sites I enjoy reading and from
which I am learning each day what blogging is all about.
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| TREVOR WAS RIGHT: Escalators still fascinate many Zambians like these copper-belt residents waiting for their turn to 'ride' |
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| I shot this: The two gentlemen in the picture at the weekend told me they traveled from Kalulushi to Ndola just to come and have a feel of the escalator. |
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| HALLE BERRY BIKINI MOMENT! This scene from the James Bond movie 'die another day' probably made the bikini a very popular item. The name bikini in a blog post made the blog popular i think |
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| Zambians having a bikini moment |
On my blogs, I seek to speak my mind on
anything even discussing topics I’d not normally address every other
day. My philosophy is that free thought, free expression and self-determination
are truly the real creek of true happiness. Every man has got to think freely. Even the man in prison has got to have a
free mind though the body is incarcerated. Humanity must thrive on self-expression.
It is okay to express one self, even when others feel you are stupid or not
making any sense. That is just their opinion and each person needs to have
their own independent opinion.
Those that have taken their time to
engage me at any level of discussion or commentary regarding the material I
have put up have not always agreed with me. One Zambian lady who resides in the
United Kingdom was so annoyed with my blog “retired in national interest, the professor
Chirwa story” such that she sent a private message to my google+ inbox to tell
me that I have got to be ashamed of myself. We didn't really engage further as the next message she sent me was to
just tell me that we live in different worlds.
However I’d have loved to hear more from her and get her complete opinion on
the entire Clive Chirwa and Zambia Railways affair. However I truly understand
that not everything that is my opinion will be shared by all. After all,
depending on the time and place, I may not hold the same opinion years later
when faced by different circumstances in a different place at a different time.
For this reason the blog aptly
declares; “Free
thought and expression is my philosophy. Thus my opinions on this blogsite are
formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority,
tradition, or other dogmas. I will not accept ideas proposed as truth without
recourse to knowledge and reason.”
