Review: The Jive Talker

Jul 11 2008 by Jenny Wood, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

A BEAUTIFUL real-life tale which ends with a young Perth student falling in love while carrying out charity work in Malawi has been put down in print.

The revealing and touching memoir by Samson Kambalu describes his life up until the point he left Malawi and arrived in Perth to marry local lass Susan Reynolds in Kinnoull Parish Church.

‘The Jive Talker’ is Samson’s story of growing up in Malawi and recounts how Aids claimed the lives of six members of his family, including his beloved mother and father who was the inspiration for the book.

Samson was born in Malawi in 1975. His father dreamed of being a doctor but had to settle for hospital administration and a lifestyle on the move with the job and his ever expanding family.

He is the ‘Jive Talker’ of Samson’s memoir - a father with thwarted ambition and boundless optimism, who died of Aids in 1995.

Life for the Kambalu’s was tough at times. The family moved from periods of feast to real poverty and deprivation, and back to plenty again, depending on their father’s professional fortunes.

But Samson has not wallowed in misery for his memoir.

“Don’t let the tourist take your picture,” he recalled his father saying, “next thing you know, you are in an Oxfam appeal.”

However when a Scottish tourist visiting Malawi ordered a young Samson to remove his shoes for a photograph he relented, but posed with his hands on his hips “figuring that she couldn’t use that picture for an Oxfam appeal because a hungry person wouldn’t look so full of himself”.

Samson recalls a country in which no dissent was tolerated, where political opponents ‘disappeared’ and a portrait of Malawis’ Life President Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda was always guaranteed to be watching over.

But his memoir also reveals Malawi was a country with a young boy obsessed with books, girls, fashion, football and Michael Jackson and Samson was fortunate enough to win a free education at the Kamuzu Academy - ‘The Eton of Africa’.

In August 1998 he met Perth student Susan Reynolds when she was in Malawi as part of the Church of Scotland World Exchange.

In 2000 the couple were engaged and on July 28, 2001, Susan and Samson made their own formal link between Scotland and Malawi when they tied the knot in Kinnoull Parish Church.

The couple now live in London, where Susan is a teacher and Samson has become recognised as one of the UK’s most promising young conceptual artists.

‘The Jive Talker’ by Samson Kambalu is published by Jonathon Cape.

Jenny Wood