MLK BLVD Project

For about five months I lived in a flat on Martin Luther King Road in Lusaka. I immediately associated it with the Martin Luther King Jr boulevards, streets and ways that I'd been to over the years: Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Oakland, New Orleans. In the US, naming a street after MLK is about creating a symbolic connection between black neighbourhoods and a city; a repudiation of centuries of apartheid policies.

In Lusaka, Martin Luther King Road is in affluent Kabulonga, home to a disproportionate number of white expats, NGO workers and upper-middle-class Zambians. Our neighbour had cousins, sons and nieces spread across the world studying or running businesses in Australia, Texas and the UK.

In the style of many southern African neighbourhoods, MLK Road Lusaka is completely surrounded by glass topped walls, heavy metal gates and underpaid security guards from nearby townships. Most of the landscaped area between the walls and the drainage ditches that abut the tarmac is kept immaculately trimmed by a squad of blue-coverall wearing young men. They cut the grass, bent over double, with blunt scythes.

The MLK BLVD project is a blog of crowdsourced photos from different Martin Luther King roads, boulevards and ways from across the US and the world. It's really worth looking at.

It's also making me really regret not taking better pictures. I basically have only a photo of my gate during a hail-storm. If anyone has better photos I suggest you upload it to the MLK BLVD project Flickr pool. Also, I seem to remember many African cities having MLK roads, photos of which would probably ad great perspective to the project.

Hole in the Wall

One of the rules of Feng Shui is that bad spirits travel in straight lines and anything in their path is prone to misfortune. That's why, for example, many Chinese restaurants will put a barrier in front of the door forcing you to go left or right as you enter and thereby neutralizing the bad luck.

A manifestation of this ancient principle happened last Friday, when a car driving down Martin Luther King Street (my street) approached the T-bone intersection with Roan Road and instead of slowing down, accelerated through the concrete block wall.

In my neighbourhood live former presidents, NGO czars, and affluent Zambians and is consequently a maze of walled compounds. From the street all one sees is ten-foot-high whitewashed walls, black gates and the occasional 4-wheel drive roaring past. For those without a car and driver it can be very oppressive. So it was almost therapeutic to walk out my gate Sunday morning and see this perfect Hulk-sized hole in the neighbourhood's armour.

With the car long gone, I could see my neighbours easy chairs and braii stand (barbecue). I felt the urge to explore further but right then a guard in fatigues and a beret popped up with his arms crossed. I decided not to take a photo.

There has been a guard standing there, in front of the hole, day and night now for almost a week and this morning for the first time there were men rebuilding the wall. By evening it should be secure again and the guard can finally move from that inauspicious spot.