The Lost Years Log
We have decided to set up this blog to let the many people we have met and interviewed know where we stand.
“The Lost Years” is a project that Kapote Mwakasungura and Doug Miller have been slowly putting together over the last 3 or 4 years. Our original goal was to record the history of Lesoma, the Socialist League of Malawi. Then as the government of the late Bingu waMutharika began to rehabilitate the memory of the life dictator, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, we were incensed that this rewriting of history was leaving out the innumerable stories of people who suffered at the hands of Banda and his henchmen and henchwomen.
We came to realise that we are all getting older and that we needed to record the stories of the people who were detained, forced to flee for their lives into exile or submitted to the reign of fear in face of the repression unleashed upon the country. We have interviewed more than 35 people from the north to the south of the country, high and low, who gave us their insights of how the energy and enthusiasm of the nationalist struggle was subverted and turned into the fear and abuse imposed by Dr. Banda.
“The lost years” has been the phrase along with “we have been forsaken” that recurs in so many of the interviews. People feel left out and rejected and that their trials and tribulations are ignored and unappreciated.
We are now at the writing phase even though we haven't finished all the interviews we wanted. Time is pressing and so we are settling down in a couple of quiet places over the next month to re-listen to the interviews and develop the book to a publishable stage. What follows is the story of who we are and how we are doing. The process of writing reflects the challenges we are facing and our commitment to get this side of Malawi's stories written and known more widely.
We have decided to set up this blog to let the many people we have met and interviewed know where we stand.
“The Lost Years” is a project that Kapote Mwakasungura and Doug Miller have been slowly putting together over the last 3 or 4 years. Our original goal was to record the history of Lesoma, the Socialist League of Malawi. Then as the government of the late Bingu waMutharika began to rehabilitate the memory of the life dictator, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, we were incensed that this rewriting of history was leaving out the innumerable stories of people who suffered at the hands of Banda and his henchmen and henchwomen.
We came to realise that we are all getting older and that we needed to record the stories of the people who were detained, forced to flee for their lives into exile or submitted to the reign of fear in face of the repression unleashed upon the country. We have interviewed more than 35 people from the north to the south of the country, high and low, who gave us their insights of how the energy and enthusiasm of the nationalist struggle was subverted and turned into the fear and abuse imposed by Dr. Banda.
“The lost years” has been the phrase along with “we have been forsaken” that recurs in so many of the interviews. People feel left out and rejected and that their trials and tribulations are ignored and unappreciated.
We are now at the writing phase even though we haven't finished all the interviews we wanted. Time is pressing and so we are settling down in a couple of quiet places over the next month to re-listen to the interviews and develop the book to a publishable stage. What follows is the story of who we are and how we are doing. The process of writing reflects the challenges we are facing and our commitment to get this side of Malawi's stories written and known more widely.
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