Zambian Patron of the Arts Mulenga Kapwepwe

In recent weeks, I've spent a dedicated hour every Friday, scouring key sites for world news: Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and CNN.  TV is the worst place for me to consume news, because what I get is what is fed to me.  CNN is among the worst, for example, at obsessing for hours or days on particular topics:  from flooding to murders, to rioting and accidents.  It's as if nothing else is happening anywhere else.  Newspapers and magazines are fine, but they're a small inconvenience and cost I simply do not need to tolerate and incur.  Online, however, the news are in my control and choice, and over the years news sites have put more and more of their reports and features at us consumers' disposal.  I can scope quickly, and read, watch or contemplate whatever it is that catches my attention. 

That preamble done, let's head off to Zambia, and meet Mulenga Kapwepwe.  She is the patron of the arts, sports and education, with an actively creative mind and seemingly boundless energy.

"I don't think Shakespeare went to a playwright school so I'm sure I don't have to."

What a wonderful feature on Kapwepwe, her country and her work.  Hers is an easy-going manner, and it feels rather natural to admire, appreciate and like her.

"I grew up in an environment where the struggle for the country, the liberation of this country, was very much a part of the conversation in the home," says Kapwepwe, a renowned Zambian playwright and daughter of the country's former vice president, Simon Kapwepwe.

Imagine talking about things of such national import at home.

"For me, Zambia is not an abstract concept," she says. "It's something that I heard being birthed in the house that I lived in -- even the name of the country, the answer came from our house. Literally. My father coined the name and it was agreed that this country would be called Zambia."

I think Zambia must've been an abstraction in the 20 years leading up to its fateful flag-raising in 1964.  It is a real country now, in ways it wasn't before.

"I'd begun to write the history of my tribe," she recalls. "And as I got into it and I dug into it, I thought this would make a really good play, but I didn't know how to write a play," explains Kapwepwe. "I told myself, 'Well, I don't think Shakespeare went to a playwright school so I'm sure I don't have to."

This is such an endearing admission.  I, too, am working on my very first play.  I conceived it five years ago, and it wasn't until this summer that I began to actively research it and sketch it out.  But first, like Kapwepwe, I have to learn how to write a play.  I am very much in the midst of that as well.  Like Kapwepwe, I am confident I can learn how to write the play I have in mind.

Reference: She's written plays, built libraries and started an orchestra... Meet Mulenga Kapwepwe, Zambia's patron of the arts.