Inspired By The Zambezi – David Lisle Whitehead

A new book “Inspired by the Zambezi” by David Lisle Whitehead has just been self-published.
It can be purchased for ZKW 150 from The River Club or from Zig Zag in Livingstone. The book costs US$20 from Elephant’s Walk in Victoria Falls.

The book – a “must read” has been very favourably reviewed by Tony Weaver –

“David has written the most delightful memoir about his life in Barotseland, and his lifelong fascination with the Lozi people and the Bulozi kingdom. Titled Inspired by the Zambezi, and sub-titled Memories of Barotseland and a Royal River – the mighty Liambai, it is one of those gems that anyone travelling to the region simply has to beg, borrow, buy or steal – preferably buy, as all proceeds from its sale are going towards building a school near Makusi Village on the Zambezi in Sesheke District.

It was a remarkable upbringing, all the more so given that David went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, studying under Nobel laureate, Prof Hans Krebs – even I knew who Krebs was, having learnt about the “Krebs cycle” in high school biology.

As he says in his memoir about growing up in Bulozi, “relating my experiences in Bulozi will, I hope, serve to illustrate how lucky I was to grow up in such a magical, friendly world dominated by the fantastic Zambezi River. We lived amongst an amazing tribe, the Malozi, from whom I learned many lessons while imbibing their colourful language as if it it were my own. I even used to dream in Silozi; and sometimes I still do.”

The book is populated with colourful characters, some of whom went on to become household names in Southern Africa – the Meikles brothers, after whom the famous Meikles Hotel in Harare is named, the Susman brothers, founders of the modern day Woolworths, and the various members of the royal families of both Bulozi and Lesotho (Constantine Seeiso, later to be King Moshoeshoe II, was his Oxford tennis partner).”

0