THE AFRICA HOUSE tells the true and bizarre story of one Stewart Gore-Browne. He arrived in Zambia in 1910, fell in love with a lake in the middle of nowhere, and dedicated the rest of his life to building an English country estate there.
When Stewart Gore-Browne reached Lake Shiwa Ngandu (known locally by the Bemba people as the Lake of the Royal Crocodiles) in Northern Rhodesia in 1914, he thought he was in heaven. He had finally found the area where his manor would be built. He could "live like an emperor" something that he would never achieve in the UK.
This is truly a refreshing story of a man whose vision to transform an area of African wilderness into a working community actually happens. Stewart Gore-Browne, an eccentric English aristocrat, gave up a given career in the British Army to pursue his African dream. He selects his unique site in Northern Rhodesia (now modern day Zambia), befriends the local indigenous population and literally teaches them to build a small community under his direction, with its centre point being The Africa House.
Built in 1921, this incredible English country estate is very much part of Zambia's history. Explore the house and gardens, or interact with the locals and see the community projects. Enjoy nature drives and game viewing on horseback or spend some quiet time fishing on the dam with your own fishing guide.
Building the Dream
He builds Shiwa Ng'andu, the equivalent of an English stately home, set in its own landscaped grounds. Such was the extent of the ingenuity shown by Gore-Browne that he even created his own brick factory using locally sourced clays.
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Food, furniture, and all other necessities had to travel by land and canoe more than 400 miles from the nearest rail halt, and Lamb, foreign-affairs correspondent of London’s Sunday Times, vividly details how extraordinary Gore-Browne’s overly ambitious achievement was. In a place where lions and crocodile regularly ate the unwary and leopards peeked in the windows, he built a three-story building, “part Tuscan manor house, part grand English ancestral home,” surrounded by gardens and orchards.
In a remote corner of Africa stands a magnificent three storey pink bricked mansion, with a tower in the centre, a red tiled roof and a line of elegant arches supporting a first floor terrace from which a Union Jack flutters...
It turns out that it was built between the two world wars by Sir Gordon Stewart Brown on a declining inheritance that went unusually far in the wreckage of British imperialism. This twenty-room mansion stood self-sufficient with modern amenities and its owner spent his days hunting rhinoceros and reading the classics in Latin from a fully stocked library.
Love and Relationships
He loved the place, but he was lonely, and madly in love with a woman twenty years old than him who was unfortunately married. Even more unfortunately, she was also his aunt.
In the last decades of the British Empire, Stewart Gore-Brown build himself a feudal paradise in Northern Rhodesia; a sprawling country estate modelled on the finest homes of England, complete with uniformed servants, daily muster parades and rose gardens. He wanted to share it with the love of his life, the beautiful unconventional Ethel Locke King, one of the first women to drive and fly. She, however, was nearly twenty years his senior, married and his aunt. Lorna, the only other woman he had ever cared for, had married another many years earlier. Then he met Lorna’s orphaned daughter, so like her mother that he thought he had seen a ghost.
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And when his dream is achieved, he finally marries Lorna Goldman, the orphaned daughter of Lorna Bosworth Smith, who had been his first love. It's really surprising that the young girl had married him as there was a great age difference and he already had problems with his sight. Their marriage is also a real "eye opener" of that period.
Political Involvement and Legacy
Gore-Browne worked tirelessly to gain recognition for the black African at a time when no African could sit side by side with a white man. This desire for equality saw Gore-Browne drawn into the political battle to see large parts of Africa returned to self-government and in so doing he became a great friend of Kenneth Kaunda, the first Prime Minister of the Zambia, when it gained independence.
Here he is to a British policeman trying to shut down an illegal shebeen “While you are stuffing your fat faces with beer and chicken and slurping your whiskey sodas, they are surviving on one bowl of watery porridge. And you begrudge them one bowl of millet beer you wouldn’t even let your dog drink!” He knew Kenneth Kaunda, who often stayed at his house, and when Independence came, renounced his British citizenship for Zambian.
Through Gore-Browne’s chronicles (personal letters and journals) and the skill of the author Christina Lamb pulling it all together, the reader gains a fascinating insight of life in Northern Rhodesia from the time of the Great War through to Zambia’s independence in 1964 and Gore-Browne’s death in 1967.
He fought for African independence and was the first and the only white man to be made a Grand Officer of the Companion of the Order of Freedom (the Zambian equivalent to a knighthood).
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Lamb (The Sewing Circles of Herat, not reviewed) chronicles his unhappy marriage to a much younger woman, his failed agricultural ventures, and the house’s evolution into a famous landmark. She also describes Gore-Browne’s commitment to Zambia’s independence and to African education, as well as his friendship with the newly independent nation’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda.
Despite all of this, the author portraits Gore-brown wonderfully and very neutrally by stating facts not judging. The author lets the judging of Gore-Browns character to the reader.
Final Years and Reflection
He was disappointed to have no role in the state after independence, Kaunda finding him inconveniently white, and he spent his last years alone in his house with his servant and friend Henry.
Here’s the end of Gore-Browne’s last letter: “Yes, 84 years are plenty . . . I find my memory is quite childishly feeble now. . . However I’ve had a good life and lots to be thankful for. Henry sends his respectful regards.” This is a great epitaph, and I hope I can say the same for myself at 84.
His house now is crumbling, and his son, interviewed by the author, called in a monument to one man’s suffocating vanity. What a whiny little bitch. Children are so uncharitable to their parents.
So what that his house is crumbling, and the idea never really worked out. He had a great time trying.
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