By Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D. Emeritus Professor of Sociology
Author of the Internationally acclaimed novel “The Bridge”.
An African/Zambian man is riding in a taxi north of Belfast on a gravel road in Northern Ireland with great urgency. A Middle-aged Irish woman is driving south, on the same gravel road, from her small Irish village. The unlikely couple finally meets at their Internet secretly pre-arranged rendezvous on the rural road under the most inauspicious circumstances, in a romantic face-to-face encounter. A Police Squad car and an ambulance soon arrive on the scene and the African/Zambian man is arrested. This is the dramatic beginning of the transoceanic romantic love adventure story between Trish and Kamthibi. Because of compelling circumstances beyond their control, Kamthibi agrees to take Trish with him to visit his boyhood village in Zambia in Africa. Kamthibi and Trish develop a deep passionate romantic love for each other, which leads them to cross so many bridges.
I had been teaching the undergraduate course “Cultures of Africa” for nearly ten years at the college teaching my American students in the 1990s. I had been using Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” as a supplementary textbook. I had also read Chinua Achebe during my secondary education at Chizongwe Secondary School in 1971. I read Chinua Achebe as an undergraduate at University of Zambia in 1976.Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” deals with dramatic social change in the African societies at the beginning of British and European colonialism in Africa over a hundred years ago in the 1880s.
I asked myself: “Where was a novel about social change in contemporary Africa of the 1970s and 1980s and may be to the early 1990s?” I could not find any good novels that I could use to teach. I told myself: “Why not write that novel yourself? You don’t have to wait until someone else does it!” This is how the writing of “The Bridge” started.
I wrote the first raw manuscript of “The Bridge” in just 14 days in 2001. I wrote from 8:00 hours or 8:00am in the morning to 8:00pm or 20:00 hours in my office. I took a break for lunch for about one hour. That’s when I knew with humility then, that writing was a gift for me because I thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of creative writing that is an indescribable experience. I will never forget the first moment I realized that the novel I had written was great is when I gave it to an American sophomore or second year undergraduate student at my college who worked at the College Writing Center. I asked her to edit the raw manuscript for grammar, spelling, sentence construction, and punctuation.
She walked into my office with the edited manuscript a few days later. After a few minutes of small talk, the moment of truth had come. I asked the student what she thought of the novel. She got visibly emotional. Her exact words were: “At the end I cried.”
“Why?” I asked
“Because I was afraid Trish was going to be killed.”
Once the student left and closed my office door, I leaped from my chair and jumped up and down pumping my fist in the air with pure joy. I knew then that “The Bridge” as a teaching tool for Zambia/Africa was going to be something special for college and university students. During the last 16 years since its first publication in Lusaka in Zambia in 2005 and by Lynus Publication in 2013 in New York, it has had great reviews and comments from various readers from different walks of life; Zambians in the diaspora, Zambians in Zambia including the Center for Curriculum Development (CDC) in the Zambia’s Ministry of Education, teachers in the United States and Zambia, the Writer’s Digest, and positive essays and comments from over a thousand of my American undergraduate students.
I creatively and skillfully incorporated with romantic passion into “The Bridge”, Zambian/African customs, social change, languages, globalization, poetry, race and diversity, challenges of travel, a bit of African history, role of tribes, racial harmony in Zambia, urbanization in Zambia and rural village traditions. As a college or university teacher for more than thirty years, I used “The Bridge” to encourage passion for knowledge in my students and creative critical thought.
There are too many evaluations, comments, and reviews of “The Bridge” that have stood out over the last sixteen years. Here are just a few of these numerous reviews.
“The book is rated 84% and approved for use in Zambian Schools as a supplementary book to aid the teaching and learning of English and Literature in English in Grade 10 – 12.” – The Curriculum Development Center of the Ministry of Education in 2016
“Author Mwizenge S. Tembo’s passion for his subject in THE BRIDGE infuses every page and is infectious. In this story, Tembo brings Zambia to life, “like a secret hidden at the end of a mysterious bush trail.” Impressive visual descriptions and incredible attention to detail make the reader feel as if he, too, has entered Zambia. The story concept is compelling and
includes enough suspense to keep the reader turning pages.” – Writer’s Digest 15″ Annual International Self-published Book Awards 2007
“I am slowly progressing with ‘The ‘Bridge’. It is quite vivid in explanation. The sex is depicted as if it were a video film!” – Dr. Wilkinson Kunda Lecturer or Professor at University of Zambia, August 2005.
“The Bridge” is available in Zambia at Book World book stores and Pensulo Publishers in Lusaka. It is available on Amazon.
