Lusaka

Of course, again, the Black Panther Party, the George Jackson and Jonathan Jackson, his brother, you know, their deaths were also significantly involved in creation of Black August Month.

So the Black Panther Party, you know, had that international presence when Eldridge Cleaver, you know, took the panther, got out of this country, ended up in Algiers, and then had the opportunity to meet Seto Ayo, Michael Tabor, and later met him twice when he had left Algiers with Connie Matthews, his companion, and they moved to Lusaka.

And I was traveling from out of Tanzania, and I stayed with them down in Lusaka.

And again, Michael Tabor, who was out of Harlem.

He was a legend here in Harlem, both as an athlete and a political leader.

Well, I think we left off talking about the Panther 21 and the whole legendary Harlemite, Michael Tupor, who changed his name to Seto Ayo after a great Zulu warrior in South Africa.

And what a fantastic individual he was, both as an athlete and political leader in the Black Panther Party.

And I had a chance to live with him in Lusaka.

He did two JVs, one with ShopRite, one with MTN.

He went into Lusaka and really grew the client base of the bank from 1.3 to 6.3 million.

That's quite a lot in five years.

And so the current set of results, the last set of results, last six months, showed that suddenly it was too much, too quick.

I was again Zambia's permanent representative to the African Union and permanent representative to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa until 2021, end of 2021.

When I returned from diplomatic duties and came back in my country in Lusaka, I decided to join politics and I was actually among the presidential aspirants in our country when the ruling party lost election.

The party that was led by Edgar Chagwalungu lost election and there was a review of who should be our next leader.

I was among the eight participants who had indicated that we wanted to be a leader of our party.

And this closure of the polling over the counting related to violence that had occurred at totalling centres.

Again, the violence was occasioned by the ruling party, the UPND.

Their thugs attacked isolated places in Lusaka and Kawi, but the ISIS used this as an excuse to shut the counting.

And when the counting resumed, President Ndaka Ndecherema began to register unassailable lead.

... and trainer, Yvonne, she's a, she's amazing.

Yvonne Makenda is, um, joined us this past year, and she's a midwife, a nurse, and completing her neon- her master's in neonatal nursing in, in Lusaka.

And she was with me, and she, she s- she saw me [laughs] and she saw the, the sniffle start, and she's like, "Are you crying?" [laughs] I'm like, "Just really," it was, like, it's, that's huge.

Like-

Um, now, I saw a statistic, you know, earlier, and I'm sure some of you saw it.

It came across maybe your newsfeed or you saw it, but, uh, there's a new statistic that is saying that at least 1,000 divorce cases are being recorded per week, okay, in Lusaka.

I don't know how accurate that is, but the last time I checked, the rate was going higher and higher.

I don't know the authenticity of that one, but the rate of divorce cases is consistently increasing as the days go by.

I have been an immigrant my whole life because my parents were freedom fighters and had been banned from South Africa during the apartheid era.

And so I was born in Zambia, Lusaka and grew up in Kenya and then emigrated to Canada as a refugee.

And so that is probably, you know, at the root of how I identify myself because I have lived in many places and all of them have been an interesting adventure.

And I, you know, spent my high school years in Canada and then got into the technology space and have built a career in tech as a marketer working at, you know, some of those companies you mentioned in the introduction across a few countries, so Canada, U.S., and most recently in Dubai in the UAE and have also spent some time working in South Africa and Mexico as well.