When I enrolled as a freshman at University of Zambia in 1972, it was the best of times. The University of Zambia was the only new prestigious university in Zambia, a country of 4.5 million. The country had just obtained independence from British colonialism in 1964. Thousands of students from 113 high schools in the entire country sat for highly competitive exams in order to qualify to get spots into my small freshman class of 350 students. The academic competition was brutal. We exclusive enrolled students were the crème de la crème of the entire country. Although the entire small student body of 1500 had worked hard to get a university education, we felt a certain humility because the whole nation had paid for our free education. We were to be the future leaders of our country.
Professor Mwizenge Tembo, Emeritus Professor of Sociology University of Zambia 1976 graduate.
Although virtually all of us during the four years never lost focus on the hard work of obtaining a college degree, we created plenty of time for social life of being young, playful and sometimes engaged in fierce campus student politics. Toward the end of the academic year, something happened that changed my life. There was a concert on the campus graduation forum or mall during which students were milling around. This one guy was standing a few feet from me. He was wearing brown pants, a red shirt, and a black jacket vest. He had coke glasses. We walked toward each other and shook hands. We said we had seen each other during classes and in the large Lecture Theatre One lecture hall but never talked. We had small talk. We did not know at the time. That was the beginning of our deepest friendship to last our lifetimes.
The coincidence was that James Lutuli (not his real name) and I double majored in Psychology and Sociology. We took exactly the same classes every day for four long years. We walked to the campus dining room together after class. My room on the 5th floor of Africa Hall was just down from his room on the ground floor of Kwacha Hall. We admired and unsuccessfully chased the same girls. We did not have any malice toward those girls because being rejected among us guys was very common. We talked and laughed so much most of the time we were together. We went to some of the best parties in the capital city of Lusaka on weekends. We both came from good but poor families whose parents were together. Since we students did not own cars, we often walked many miles at night back to campus after some of the parties because we could not get a ride. God must have created our deep friendship so that both our lives were like living in heaven on earth. Of course, we both had larger circles of many friends on campus.
When the Epstein files scandal broke out this year, President Trump admitted that he and Epstein had been very close friends for 15 years. But he says he did not know that Epstein was a pedophile or was sexually molesting 14- or 15-year-old girls. Who among the 330 million Americans believes his denials that Trump did not know what Epstein was doing? Do the 37% of Trump supporters still believe Trump’s denials?
If there are still Americans who believe Trump’s denials that he did not know that Epstein was a pedophile, I am here to tell you that if my best friend James Lutuli had been a pedophile, did drugs, robbed banks, was stealing, used vulgar language, assaulted women, I would have known about it. That is what happens when two people are best friends; they intimately know each other’s character. In addition, because you are best friends you are also likely to participate in whatever your friend is doing, good or bad. That’s what close friends do. If James Lutuli had been a bad or vile character, he would not have been admitted to University of Zambia. Neither would I have been friends or let alone best friends had he had such moral turpitude.
The Epstein Trump scandal only confirms what most of us have been aware of during the last 9 years since 2016; the Trump presidencies have forced Americans to live in a moral sewage. Besides the rapturing Epstein file scandal that appears to be the cherry on top of the moral sewage pie, there are some recent nuggets that really infuriate me. No one had lost their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits since the earliest government shutdowns in the 1990s. Because it never occurred to those past Presidents to starve people. But not with Trump. Trump decided they would cut SNAP benefits for 42 million people for no other reason than to maximize cruelty and human pain and suffering.
British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist Jane Goodall was known for her 60 years of studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park in East Africa, died on October 1, 2025. Her groundbreaking lifelong work debunked the myth that only human beings were capable of making tools. She died at 91 years old doing what she loved; giving speeches and talks about nature and advocated for wildlife conservation. But what impresses me the most is that her work helped burst the bubble that because we live in apartments and huge houses in cities, drive cars, and even have Ph. Ds and believe in our superior religions, that we are not animals. On the contrary, we humans are animals.
Impala in the Luangwa Game Park in the Eastern Province of Zambia in Southern Africa.
When I was five years old 66 years ago in the late 1950s, I lived at Chipewa Village in Lundazi district and also later in the Luangwa Valley in Eastern Zambia deep in the wilderness among wild animals night and day. We human beings even to this day behave just exactly like other fellow wild animals. This has become very apparent to me looking at dozens of videos of the horrible Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and abductions that are happening in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland.
The intimidating (ICE) agents wear masks to hide their identity, carry long guns, wear military fatigue, they are big muscular males just as lions look like in the wild. We ordinary Americans going around our everyday lives are the impalas, deer, wildebeests, buffaloes, antelopes, birds. Since the inauguration of the new President in January, word has rippled that ICE human lions were going to hunt, abduct, deport us to unknown countries, and some of us were going to die in the process. All of this was going to happen to our suspected fellow undocumented animal neighbors we have come to love.
Cape Buffaloes in the Luangwa Game Park in the Eastern Province of Zambia in Southern Africa.
What is happening is the classic predator and prey threatening and often deadly drama that happens in the wild. The Lion King in the White House Den has dispatched ICE human lions to hunt in Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles for undocumented human wildebeests, impalas, deer. American human animal citizens have been warned that ICE lions are roaming in the neighborhoods. We the animals have to go to the grocery store to buy food. We have to go to our animal church, to the doctor, animal parents take their children to school, they go to the courthouse to report to animal immigration. Some of the ICE lions are lurking around churches so they can pounce on the unsuspecting victims once prayers are over. Some human animals in these neighborhood are in hiding, living in hell, and in fear everyday as the ICE lions can stalk and pounce at one of us at any time night and day. The ICE lions are the kings of the jungle just when we Americans believed and thought we were civilized, above animals, and live by rule of law.
One video clip from the South Side of Chicago validates that we are animals after all. Two ICE lions had been stalking this rather large wildebeest human along the neighborhood street. The lions leaped out of their SUV and pounced on the lone unsuspecting human wildebeest. Cars were driving by. The wildebeest yelled for help in Spanish. There was a struggle and the wildebeest human fought for its life. The ICE lions grabbed him and dragged him toward their SUV. He was yelling for help and resisting. The ICE lions threw him to the ground and pinned him down trying to grab his hands and cuff him. He fought and resisted. A crowd of human animals gathered and were screaming epithets. “Let him, go!!!!” Cars were honking. The struggle continued as the hollering and screaming human male and female animals gathered around. The screaming, hollering, yelling got so loud, and the struggle was taking so long that the two ICE lions were spooked and run to their SUVs and sped off. The human wildebeest was bruised but was saved and would go home to his family to live another day.
The ICE human lions will never stalk or even attempt to attack the elephant rich who live in suburbs and red states cities. The ICE human lions look for the weakest and most vulnerable in poor black and Latino neighborhoods and cities. Once they slum to the ground and cuff these American human animal citizens, they can feast on the 143-billion-dollar ICE budget that ensures each ICE lion can earn thousands of dollars per day abducting American human animal suspected undocumented victims even though they have lived here for decades and have committed no crimes at all.
I was 6 years old herding goats at noon on the edge of Chipewa village 65 years ago in 1960 in the Eastern Province of Zambia in Southern Africa.
“Mwizenge!” Uncle Mzimphu called. “Take a bath and wear the school uniform your grandmother bought you. I am taking you to school.” Schools had been introduced in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in the 1920s.
Students at Boyole Primary School in Lundazi district in Zambia in 2006
I was very excited and nervous. My grandparents had been telling me for a while that I would go to school soon. The day had finally arrived. My uncle and I walked one and half miles or two and a half kms to Boyole primary school. When we reached about 50 feet or 15meters to the Sub A (Grade 1) classroom door, my uncle held my small hand. I could hear the students singing. My uncle knocked on the door. The teacher opened and my uncle let my hand go as I entered the classroom. The teacher Mr. Mbuzi directed me to squeeze between 5 students on one of the desks. The class had 40 students. It was a religious education class. The teacher resumed drawing a long, big snake on the blackboard as the students were singing.
Teacher Mr. Mbuzi: Adam Adam
Class Response: Adam na Eva (Twice)
(Adam and Eve)
Class Response: Chinjoka cikulu cikamnyenga Adam,
Adam na Eva
(A big snake tempted Adam,
Adam and Eve) (Twice)
The Headmaster and Teachers at Solwezi Secondary School in 2016
Since that first memorable day in the village, I went to school for 20 years from first grade to secondary school, undergraduate, and up to completion of my Ph. D. in 1987. I taught college or university students for 41 years.
As millions of the19 million Zambians and others in the whole world go to school everyday starting from nursery or kindergarten, primary, secondary schools, to colleges to universities, I ask myself: What has been best about my school learning experience? Who are the best teachers in my humble opinion? What are the best classes to take?
Teachers from numerous countries and nationalities at Chizongwe Secondary School in the Eastern Province of Zambia in Chipata in 1971.
My learning experience in school debunked one of the most common myths; the belief that in order for students to learn best, boys have to have male teachers, girls must have women teachers, Zambians must have Zambian teachers, black students must have black teachers, white students must especially have white teachers. I must have been one of the luckiest students because I had teachers from many identities of the world. During the 20 years of my education, I had some of the best indigenous Zambian/African male and female teachers. I had teachers from Britain, United States, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Canada, France, Holland, Norway or Scandinavian countries, white and black, men and women teachers of numerous nationalities. The different English language accents of the wide variety of the teachers are what echo in my warm memories of them.
Students at Nkhanga Basic School in Lundazi district in the Eastern province of Zambia in 2006.
I found that learning in school was very exciting because the teachers and the new knowledge stoked my curiosity. During one cold but sunny morning at 9 hours, I was in my Standard 3 (5th Grade) class. I was at Tamanda Upper School in June 1964. My geography Zambian teacher Mr. Phiri, who was as tall and slender as a giraffe entered the class. Students had nicknamed him “Interior” because when he taught European influence on African history he would always repeat: “Europeans could not penetrate the Interior of Africa!” His other nickname students gave him was njolinjo as he was so tall.
“Class!” he said as he adjusted his small glasses as a giraffe would on his nose on his small head. “Do you know that right now on this bright sunny early morning here at Tamanda, in another part of the world far away in Japan it is dark and midnight and people are asleep?”
My village classmates and I glanced at each other with bemused astonishment. I was instantly fired up and wanted to learn more and more.
I was able to build on the knowledge from my family and my Tumbuka tribe culture. Often, I kept some of the new school western knowledge separate and parallel from the knowledge from my indigenous Tumbuka tribe culture.
All teachers do their trained best to teach students skills and provide knowledge. This could be writing, science, technology, math, geography, history, reading, English literature, social studies, chemistry, and physics. Virtually all the best teachers share their souls with their students as they teach. This sharing of the soul, which is never in every teacher syllabus, is what philosopher Michal Polanyi would call the tacit dimension of teaching and learning. The soul is embedded in the personalities of the teachers.
I have numerous personal examples. This is why I am not too excited about replacing teachers with Artificial Intelligence (AI) or teaching Avatars because the souls the teachers share with students are very crucial and invaluable. The souls of the teachers perhaps provide the most significant essential part of creating our human lifelong important social bonds and connections that school and learning provide for both the students and teachers.
Math teacher at Nkhanga Basic School in Lundazi in Zambia in 2006
The classes you take as a student tend to be generic until later in high school and college when you take electives and choose majors. The electives you take in high school can change the trajectory of your entire future education and career. Never choose easy electives.
When I was in ninth grade or Form III at the prestigious Chizongwe Secondary School in Zambia 56 years ago, I talked to Mr. Newton who was my white British teacher. I did not have much confidence yet although I was a smart or intelligent student. I told him I did not know whether I could do well if I took physics and chemistry electives because they were very hard. “Mwizenge, yes take the two electives,” he said. “I know you can do well. You are a good student.” I would never have taken the crucial electives and made it to the highly competitive University of Zambia in 1972 and went on to get my Ph. D. That teacher, Mr. Newton, made such a difference in the trajectory of my education and my life.
Not just lukewarm interest, but passion in the discipline as much as possible must determine the choice of your major in college. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to go to class for 4 years in a major in which you have no or minimal interest. Passion is what is going to drive you through the best and worst or most challenging times in the long four years you will be pursuing your undergraduate degree and perhaps beyond.
Numerous incidents happened in June during which mask wearing United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons were conducting raids apprehending suspected undocumented people in Los Angeles. Many of the people ICE targeted were not violent criminal suspects but day laborers at Home Depot, farm workers, children, street vendors and car wash workers. Some public protests happened against ICE raids with some limited violence in one city block near a Federal Building in the large city of Los Angeles of 500 square miles and 3.8 million people.
President Trump seized the opportunity to swiftly deploy 700 marines and 2,000 National Gurd troops. Two months later, a former young Dodge employee in his 20s was apparently assaulted at 3.00am in Washington, D.C. President Trump seized the event to deploy 800 National Guards to fight crime in D.C and to assist the mask wearing ICE agent goons to apprehend any suspected undocumented citizens walking the streets of D.C. who tend to be brown people.
One incident documenting the patrols in the fight against violent crime in DC caught my attention. A resident of Washington DC is shown on the pavement of the city block approaching two National Guards shouting at and berating them. The resident is seen wagging his finger at them when he suddenly hurled an object at the one National Guard troop that landed on the left side of his chest. The 2 guards gave chase as the suspect turned around, crossed the street and sprinted away as fast as he could as the two guards furiously gave chase down the block until they apprehended the suspect and cuffed him. When the report said the hurled object was a Subway sandwich, I could not stop my loud laughter with my chest rocking up and down. I felt awful that I could not stop laughing with tears in my eyes over the serious incident.
However, my laughter suddenly turned into utter dread and fear after watching the former Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News video clip. Jeanine Ferris Pirro is now President Trump’s Department of Justice Attorney for the District of Columbia who was bragging in the video clip that throwing a sandwich at law enforcement officers had earned the suspect going to jail. She further emphatically said the suspect was going to be charged with a felony which, if convicted, would earn him many years in prison.
This tragic news sobered me so much that I secretly schemed to save some money by earning some free food since I am a retired poor senior surviving on a limited social security income. I hatched a plan. The suspect was now nicknamed the Sandwich Slinger. The Trump DOJ hauled him to court and as expected charged the suspect with a felony. But the Judge released the suspect on bail under his own recognizance. The trial might be next month.
Since the suspect Sandwich Slinger was out on bail, I intended to travel to Washington DC and scout the Subway fast food places he likes to patronize. My friends and relatives who live in DC were in on the scheme. They texted and updated me on the suspect’s every move up to the last minute. The Sandwich Slinger would be purchasing a sandwich from the Subway fast food restaurant on 14th Street downtown DC at 4:00pm Eastern Standard Time.
I quickly hopped on the Metro underground train, briskly walked 20 minutes and stood waiting fifty feet or 15.00m on the sidewalk next to the Subway Restaurant exit door. I could see through the glass doors that the suspect had just bought the sandwich and was coming out. He walked out about ten feet or 3meters when I suddenly jumped in front of him 20 feet or 6ms away.
“Hey!! Sandwich Slinger!!!” I growled at him. He froze.
“Hear you hurled a Subway Sandwich and hurt a National Guard!! You sun of a gun!! F bomb you F bomb your girlfriend and your mom!!! Explicative you!!” I wanted to really rile and piss him off. He uncorked the Subway Sandwich and seemed unsure whether to hurl it at me.
“Go!! Ahead!!!” I growled with my ugliest Clint Eastwood scowl with intense eyes, twitching nose, and quivering lips.
“Make my day!!!” I growled angrily, jabbing my forefinger on my forehead. “I bet you can’t hit me with a man’s hundred mile per hour deadly major league fastball!! I bet you can’t hit me with a deadly strike right here on my forehead!!!” I angrily jabbed my forefinger on my forehead several times.
The suspect unwinded and angrily threw the 6inch or 152mm sandwich at my forehead. I snatched the sandwich out of the air with my quick reflexes before it could slam into my forehead and I took a swift bite at it.
“You just made my day!!!” I growled as I chewed, squinting with my Clint Eastwood scowl. “Make my day again!!!”
To my surprise, the Sandwich Slinger dashed into the Subway again and this time bought a 12inch or 304mm sandwich which he hurled at me again. I snatched it in midair again.
“Call the police!!!” the gathered crowd was now shouting.
Holding on to my 2 free subway sandwiches, I sprinted escaping to the Metro that took me to Manassas. I jumped into my car and drove for 2 hours back home to Virginia Shenandoah Valley. I learned on the evening news that the National Guard and FBI could not apprehend the suspects in the DC 14th street Sandwich Slinger duel despite numerous 911 calls to the police from the public. The law enforcement officials were too distracted looking at the Epstein Files in the White House.
I woke up at 3 am facing a star-studded sky under an open tent sleeping in my clothes surrounded by maize fields at a remote rural village farm in Africa. Dozens of other funeral goers around me were still sleeping. This was during a 3-day funeral wake and burial for my 84-year-old brother-in-law who had passed away a few days earlier after a long illness. This was near Muyayi in remote Chief Mwase Mpangwe in the Lundazi district in the Eastern Province of Zambia in Southern Africa.
Author Mwizenge Tembo riding the bus.
My challenge that caused me anxiety in the wee hours is that I was supposed to be back in the capital city of Lusaka before sunset that day; a distance of 433 miles or 696kms or 10 hours of bus ride. If I missed my only bus ride, I risked losing my Service Apartment reservation and forfeiting my prepaid deposit. My 30-year-old nephew volunteered to drive me in his small car for 15 miles or 24Kms to the Lundazi-Chipata main road for me to catch the Lusaka bus at 4 am.
The 51 miles or 82kms of this part of the paved road was horrible. There were rough monster potholes all over the road. I had travelled on it by bus since 2012. I ask each time I ride the bus to get a seat near the front of the bus from the capital city of Lusaka. Would I be able to get a seat near the front of the bus this time going back to the city?
When I heard the loud sound from the distance in the pitch darkness and saw the bus headlights emerging, I raised my bright small one double AA battery Redline flashlight to the rapid flickering emergency mode, high above my head to draw the attention of the driver. I made sure the bright flickering flashlight was pointing to the ground because I did not want to blind the bus driver. The bus stopped as I rushed to the door with my backpack and carry-on bag.
Used the flashlight to signal the bus driver
“How far, Sir!” the young conductor shouted as he swung the door open.
“Lusaka!!!”
“Hurry Get in!! Go to the very back where the only empty seats are!!!” The Conductor tossed my bag in the bus undercarriage and slammed it shut. The bus moved on.
“Sir! Can I get a seat near the front?” I asked the conductor again. “I get sick if I sit in the back!!!”
“Unfortunately, sir,” he replied. “There is nothing up front. You have to go to the back!!!”\
I knew then I was in deep trouble or even danger. I awkwardly sat down on seat number 27 as the bus swung and bounced my large stomach around for one minute. I quickly pulled from my 65 years of rural travel experience from 1960 when I was 6 years old and rode on the Central African Bus Services (CARS) when Zambia was Northern Rhodesia during British Colonialism. I travelled on some of the most primitive early dirt or gravel roads. I am now 70 years old.
First, I had to stand in the isle with my feet spread three feet or one meter apart. I leaned the small of my back and tail bone against one of the seats. The bus was wildly swinging side to side of the road and bounced up and down and suddenly braking avoiding deep lethal potholes. I remembered a page from the professional downhill snow skiers, including the famous Lindsey Vaun who often go at speeds of 60 miles per hour skiing on their two legs. When downhill skiers fly at that speed, they use the tendons around their knees as hydraulic springs with shock absorbers. I lowered my upper body by about half a foot and slightly bent my knees. My knees and tendons were now shock absorbers for my body.
I actively used my hands to hold on to the head seat rests in front and behind me. As I bobbed my head up and down, swung back and forth and sideways, I felt like the famous boxer Smoking Joe Frazer trying to avoid the barrage of swift dazzling boxing jabs from the Greatest boxer ever, Mohammed Ali.
The sick looking passenger in the next seat had his head hanging out of the window as he was vomiting. The six passengers being tossed around at the very back of the bus were having it the roughest. The many sudden numerous movements in virtually all directions would require expert explanations from the eminent Astro Physicist Neil de Grasse Tyson. My memories of kinetic, potential energy, and Newtonian Physics from my Grade 12 or Form V Physics class from 54 years ago in 1971 Chizongwe Secondary School, would not do enough justice to understand all the numerous physical traumatic movements and challenges I was experiencing all at once.
After two hours or 51 miles or 82 Kms after Mgubudu Stores, the bus suddenly was quiet and smooth riding. This silence was probably what Astronauts feel once their capsule breaks through the gravity barrier and becomes weightless.
I sat down with a huge sigh of relief. The rest of the bus ride for the next 382miles or 614kms or 8 hours was very smooth all the way to the capital city of Lusaka. The Zambian government needs to repave those 51 miles or 82kms part of the Chipata-Lundazi road which has been horrible since 2012 or during the last 13 years. Warning: Readers are strongly advised not to try to risk travelling like this if you are over 70 years old as it could be dangerous and perhaps even deadly
Four decades ago, when I was in graduate school, the university assigned us a small two-bedroom married student housing apartment. As students with limited means, my wife and I furnished our small apartment with a small, nice rug, a 13-inch black and white used TV, a small rickety coffee table, and other knick-knacks we obtained from yard sales. My wife’s younger brother gave us a stereo record player with an amplifier, turntable, and two speakers.
We arranged all these items on a small, short shelf and placed the small coffee table in front of the amplifier with the parental strategy that the small coffee table would block our 18-month-old toddler from messing with our cherished record playing musical system. He was just learning how to walk. Something astounding happened. The front of the amplifier had several knobs, dials, and some buttons.
To our surprise, our son waddled over to the front of the amplifier and leaned his tiny little elbows on the small coffee table. His tiny forefinger reached for a tiny quarter inch long round button that was sticking out of the amplifier and pushed it in. A small red light came on. He pushed it in and out and the red light went off. Before we could say no! no! no! my wife and I froze and realized that if that is all he did, his action was not harming the stereo. We let him do it. That was the start of the biggest obsession in the history of toddlerhood.
All day our son would wander through the small living room and walk back to the coffee table and push that button on and off. Sometimes he would leave the red button on and walk away, only to return thirty seconds later to turn it off. He would go to the corner and play with his toys. He would suddenly get up and walk to the coffee table to push the button. He did this all day for months on end.
This is what President Trump is doing with the tariffs red button. One day the tariffs are on and the next week they are off. Another day he threatens Brazil with 50% tariffs and China 145% tariffs. Then he drops the tariffs on some countries. He announces a deadline for raising tariffs and when the day is about to come, and the stock market crashes, he drops the particular tariffs. Except the tariffs being pushed on and off are not the harmless toddler pushing of a stereo button. There is actual harm that might be happening to the markets, the American domestic business, and the world economy.
Everyone in America should realize that the way these tariffs are being turned on and off, the consequences of these erratic actions might be similar to the fate of the Titanic. We should be mindful that when the Titanic hit the iceberg, it took two hours and forty minutes to sink. I hope and pray I am wrong. The tariffs that President Trump is messing with daily, will perhaps take months before they hit American domestic businesses and us consumers.
The country that sells goods to us does not pay tariffs. American companies initially importing consumer goods will try to absolve the higher costs because of the high tariffs in order to stay in business. This is what many companies and even small businesses might be doing right now. The businesses will eventually pass the costs to us consumers. Prices will then rise, and unemployment will rise as companies will lay off workers.
Some among us will argue that to address possible negative consequences of tariffs if applied recklessly to our economy is just fear mongering by democrats and libs until the impact hits everyone here at home. Meanwhile, according to the National Public Radio (NPR) report of July 20, 2025, Trump slapped 50% tariffs on one of the poorest and smallest countries in Africa and the world. The news headline says: “’We are on our knees’: U.S. tariffs devastate Lesotho’s garment workers.”
Prior to the tariffs Lesotho was called the denim capital of the world manufacturing garments for American consumers. The country had unemployment of 50% and now in addition up 40,000 workers might have to be laid off because of the Trump tariffs. Lesotho is 30,355 square kms (11,720 sq mi) and has a small poor population of 2.34million.
It seems nothing will deter President Trump from obsessively hitting on and off every day that tariff button, not even the Republican Congress. I have questions for members of (Make America Great Again) MAGA and the nearly 77 million who voted for Trump which was only 49.87% of the population, is this chaos and massive corruption we are living in now what you voted for? What about the 89 million Americans or 36% who did not vote, did your refusing to vote cause some of these terrible consequences?
My father was a teacher at Dzoole Primary School 30 miles or 48Kms along the Chipata-Lundazi road in Chief Chanje’s area in the Eastern Province of Zambia in Southern Africa. This was 60 years ago in 1965. I was 11 years old and in Grade 6 at Tamanda Dutch Mission Boys Upper Boarding School.
One day during the that August school holidays, my young 25-year-old dashing Grade Six English teacher Mr. Lyson Mtonga arrived near our house at Dzoole School riding his sports bicycle. He called and told me to tell my 2 older sisters that he was coming to visit them that evening after dinner. My oldest beautiful first-born sister, Kabuthu Tamara Mary Stella, was 18 years old. Her younger beautiful second born sister, Mwangata Christina Bridget, was 16 years old. Mr. Mtonga proposed marriage to my first-born sister Mary Stella. Both were teachers. They got married a few years later.
Some of the most exciting years of my Chizongwe Secondary School holidays were spent at Mr. and Mrs. Mtonga’s house when they were teachers at Chalumbe Primary School. This was 58 years ago from 1967 to 1970. Chalumbe School was located 25 miles or 40Kms along Chipata-Lundazi road. Mr. Mtonga exposed me to his hobbies which included listening to music because they had a gramophone in their living room with numerous records, bird hunting, photography as he owned so may cameras, and ballroom dancing. Among many features of his happy personality was his laughter, which everyone could hear as his laughter always echoed outside when he was in a house or in a room.
Death of Amulamu Brother-in-law
In February 2025, 55 years later as I am living in the United States, I received a phone call that my brother-in-law had been seriously ill for months. I talked to my sister Mrs. Mtonga. I talked to my brother-in-law who sounded weak. I promised him that when I returned to Zambia, I would play the Jim Reeves ballroom dance songs on my laptop computer. He and my sister could dance ballroom once again. We laughed. I had already planned to travel to Zambia before I received the alarming phone call.
I took the 18-hour flight from the United States to Zambia and arrived by bus in Chipata on Wednesday March 19, 2025. That evening, I went and visited the ailing Mr. Mtonga for about an hour and returned to my hotel. I had not seen him since 23 years ago in 2002. I was planning to return to Lusaka that next day on Friday when I got the fateful call from my nephew Gasion Banda. Mr. Mtonga had passed away that morning at Chipata General Hospital. I immediately changed my plans. I had to travel by bus to Mwase Mphangwe along the Chipata-Lundazi road to attend the funeral.
Next morning I went to the Chipata-Lundazi turn off where I got a lift. I had strict instructions to drop off at Muyayi bus stop which was 71 miles or 115 Kms from Chipata in Chief Mwase Mpangwe’s area. When I dropped at Muyayi at 4:00pm or 1600 hrs. Zambian time, the small bus station had a small shop. I saw a motorcycle with a young man calmly sitting beside it. He agreed to take me to Mr. Mtonga’s farm which was west of the road on a two-track gravel road which was surrounded in many parts with overgrown rain season grass.
Five minutes into the motorcycle ride, the young man was speeding when we flew high in the air and fortunately landed avoiding crashing.
“Hey!!!! Iwe!” I shouted. “Slow down!!!”
“Sorry bamdala (old man),” he responded. “I did not see that big bump”.
“Just take your time!! Be careful. I am in no hurry”.
We finally turned left through a small 2 track grassy road and arrived at the funeral. There were large fields of tall maize around the small brick house. I spotted a small tent shelter which had just been built. Women were drawing water. There were mourners sitting everywhere. I got off the motorcycle with difficulty as my legs felt cramped. I paid the young man.
The Funeral Wake or Nyifwa
I took my small carry-on bag and my backpack to the brick house where my bereaved sister was with women mourners. I joined the men mourners under the tent. Dinner was roller meal nshima with soy pieces as ndiyo or relish. We ate in groups of six men sitting on the ground around the nshima. I was very hungry. The meal was delicious, perfect, and just what I needed. We laid down on the ground tent to sleep. The women mourners were sleeping opposite us men with a huge bone fire roaring between us.
My niece brought me a thick blanket. I folded my night robe or sleeping gown and used it as a pillow. There was a huge roaring fire in front of us. When I laid down and faced the sky, I could see the beautiful moon and the twinkling stars all night. We talked and laughed all night. The mourning wailing or chitengeolo could be heard all night. There were church men and women’s choirs singing funeral songs all night.
An African culture textbook author Khapoya (2013) says: “Marriage is also conceived as a relationship between two extended families rather than just between a man and woman.”(p.24) Therefore, when a man and woman marry in African culture, it is not only the two people who marry but two large extended families marry and get to deeply know each other. For 2 days and three nights I met so many nephews, nieces, in-laws, and numerous relatives from Mr. Mtonga and Mrs. Mtonga’s large extended family members whom I would never have met had I not attended the funeral.
One moment will stand out for the rest of my life. As I was sitting in the tent with the flickering flames of fire when a man walked up to me.
“Mwizenge Tembo! I am Donald Ng’uni!!”
“I cannot believe this!!!” I yelled excitedly as I grabbed and vigorously shook his hand and slapped his back many times.
“Donadi!!!! You even have grey hair now!!” I was so happy to see him 56 years since 1969 when Mr. and Mrs Mtonga were teaching at Chalumbe School. We laughed and talked about the naughty things we did as children.
“You were a little younger,” I told him. “There was a young boy who was 14 years old about my age of 14 at that time. We loved each other so much. We were so happy together. We were always laughing. I was always excited and looking forward to being with him during the school holidays. One school holiday I arrived at the house and asked where the boy was. I was suddenly told he had passed away at his boarding school.”
“That was my older brother Kingswell.” Donald said.
“That was Kingswell Ng’uni your older brother?” I asked. “I must have forgotten. I cried and was so sad and missed him so much that whole school holiday. I miss him even up to this day.”
I was quiet for a while as the memories of his brother Kingswell flashed before my eyes. I was momentarily sad again. Donadi told me about all his troubles and struggles in life. He is married and had 3 grown children.
Mr. Mtonga’s body was driven from Chipata General Hospital to the farm that second night. More than 300 men and women slept around the huge bonfire. A few people slept in the few cars. Choirs sung all night. The next morning at 10 hours, the more than 500 mourners travelled ten miles or 16 Kms to the funeral church service. Burial took place at the village burial site for so many people who lived on many farms and villages in the area.
[I do not feel it is appropriate to put too many photos of the funeral on Facebook. If you belong or are related to these clans, you can ask me to send you the 48 photos I have from the funeral. I would advise you to download the photos and print them for your children to get to know many of their relatives and family members. Keep the history that way. These are not all the clans. Mtonga, Zimba, Tembo, Zerweck, Kabinda, Mayovu, Banda, Nyoni, Mpande]
There was an alarming story in the press two decades ago that many mothers in an east coast town in the United States were expressing frustration. They had had it. They did not know what to do. Their children had to participate in so many extracurricular activities after school. The multiple after-school activities included piano, soccer, football, basketball, ballet dance, violin, piano lessons, swimming, reading tutoring, and martial arts practice and lessons.
Between rushing around and participating in these activities, the mothers had barely enough time to go through a drive through fast food restaurant window to grab some fast food which the kids quickly ate in the car as the mothers drove on to the next activity.
Once they arrived home late that evening, the kids had to do their homework before they went to bed. The families had no time to sit together to eat dinner. What was the solution? The town council apparently announced that everyone in the town had to pause what they were doing and go to the nearest restaurant and sit together to eat dinner between 6 and 7 pm. What does all this mean?
Most Americans including children live the so-called fast paced life in which they are multitasking; texting, talking on the smartphone, responding to ping notification sounds on their cell phone, anxiously checking email every few minutes, scrolling through the social media to make sure they are not missing out, watching tik tok videos, driving, attending to five open windows on the lap or desk top computer, listening to music on the cell phone, playing video games, all at the same time 24 hours every day.
On top of all of this, most citizens run around all day at a hectic pace from one activity to another including maybe 3 jobs and 18-hour days of stressful work either to pay bills or to maintain their rich lifestyle. Reports suggest that most Americans do not get the full eight hours of sleep. Since as recently as the 1980s, nearly everyone has no time to waste. How is this affecting our lives here in the United States?
Alan Lightman, In Praise of Wasting Time
In a few 9 short pages of his first chapter, Alan Lightman, In Praise of Wasting Time, describes visiting a village in Cambodia in Asia. The women perform all necessary daily chores and tasks in a relaxed manner with no consciousness of time. The author describes how decades ago he used to wander through the woods and play around ponds wasting time as a boy before arriving home after school, while growing up as a child in the United States. He contrasts those bygone early days with his life now hyper connected to the grid in the digital world. Every moment from when he wakes up, he is wired to the loud, addictive, and intrusive world of the internet which does not give his mind and senses time to rest.
“If we are so crushed by our schedules, to-do-lists, and hyper connected media that we no longer have moments to think and reflect on both ourselves and the world, what have we lost? If we cannot sit alone in a quiet room with only our thoughts for ten minutes, what have we lost?” (p.7) He asks the reader so many questions in the first chapter.
Lightman’s main argument is that we need to return to some of the practices from the period before the technology of addictive hyper connectedness when we had time to waste. We need time to rest, play, unplug from the grid because we need that wasting of time for our minds in order to think, rest, and be creative. We need time away from the loud hustle to just rest our brains and minds. The 90-page book has 8 chapters in which he addresses such topics as The Grid, The Rush and the Heave, Play, The Free-Grazing Mind, Downtime and Replenishment, Chronos and Kairos, and Half Mind.
The Book Reviewer
The reviewer grew up in Zambia or Africa in villages in Southern Africa 65 years ago in 1960. He now lives in America in the western developed world. He looks back and realizes the timeless life in the village that he enjoyed during his childhood was so precious and gratifying for the human soul. That lifestyle is characterized as Kufwasa among the Tumbuka people of the Eastern Province of Zambia.
The introduction of British colonialism in the then Northern Rhodesia and the school introduced some significant social changes. But the changes were not enough to destroy the primordial lifestyle of living in a traditional village world of timelessness. There was resistance. He lived through rapid urbanization, westernization, and now the internet technological grid. That wasting of time in Zambia and elsewhere is slowly shrinking and disappearing. This applies to the world in general, including the rest of the Third World which used to be a bastion of resistance to the western rebuke and criticism of wasting time because of underdevelopment.
Lightman briefly explores the changing nature of attitudes to time in history and how wasting time is related to the most creative of the human minds, especially inventions. In discussing how the nature of time is different in the Third world, I was perplexed at how the author does not discuss or mention the nature of wasting time in the giant and largest continent, that is Africa. It has such a complexity of cultures and history of time.
Recommendation
I highly recommend this book if you want to explore and understand why our contemporary stressful lifestyle might be responsible for a wide range of social pathologies including psychosomatic illnesses, the lack of creativity among children, college students, and adults. Many people today experience high levels of depression, anxiety, suicide, divorce, dysfunctional families, political conflict, decline of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism, emotional stress, social alienation which causes loneliness, isolation, attention deficit syndromes among children, crime, being victims of war and violence, lack of attention for the poor, low incomes, and unemployment.
Alan Lightman, In Praise of Wasting Time, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, New Delhi: Simon & Schuster Publishers, TED Books, 2018, 90 pages, Hardcover, $16,99 (K403.80)
I grew up in a very normal family of a father, mother, 3 brothers and 6 sisters. This was in the social environments of rural villages of the Eastern Province of Zambia and urban areas in Southern Africa since sixty-five years ago in 1960. I played normally with both girls and boys as a child. I attended church and went to school. Although I had known them all those many years, one day something happened that was sudden as it was also stunning that changed my life forever: I discovered girls.
At the time I was living at Chalumbe School north of Chipata where my older sister and brother-in-law were teaching. Suddenly I noticed attractive girls everywhere I went. I began to think, talk with my friends, fantasize, and dream about them. I wanted to talk, hold, kiss, dance, have sex with them, and be in their company. These beautiful girls were 13 or 14 years old. When I sometimes met them walking along the bush path, I would nervously greet them. They would shyly smile while responding and then they would giggle and run off laughing.
This was in 1968 and I was 14 years old at the beginning of my wonderful, exciting, powerful, and gratifying heterosexual adventure that was to last the rest of my life. After years of searching, meeting my wife at my age of 24, while both of us were in college at Michigan State University, was the most significant event in our lives. We got married at St Ignatius Catholic Church by a gay priest and we had 3 children. Both our families anticipated, celebrated, have enjoyed, and were supportive of our marriage. Do we give the same support to those in same sex marriages?
The biggest impact my parents had on my life is that they taught us to have empathy toward others. This empathy has compelled me to ask questions during the 57 years in which I have greatly enjoyed the deep and emotional pleasure and privilege of enjoying my heterosexual orientation. I have always wondered about the emotional pain and misery the people who have other forms of sexual orientations endure about being denied the opportunity to enjoy their sexual orientations. Many religions call these orientations sinful.
Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Queer people (LGBTQ) include homosexuals, gays or lesbians who have the sexual attraction to someone of the same sex. Intersexual are people whose bodies (including genitals) have both female and male characteristics; Hermaphrodites is the original Greek term refers to intersexual people who have both female ovary and male testis; Transsexuals or Transgender are people who feel they are one sex even though biologically they are the other sex; Bisexuality is sexual attraction to people of both sexes. All of these millions of people have the same deep overwhelming sexual desire that heterosexual males who have sexual attraction to someone of the female sex and heterosexual female have the sexual attraction to someone of the male sex.
Why are all these people who are as human as we heterosexuals prevented from experiencing the joy, the sexually gratifying experiences that I and other heterosexuals have and take for granted? Many people believe there is a God who banished LGBTQ human beings, especially those who are homosexual, to this lifelong cruel perpetual misery of being ostracized and hated by society all their lives. Many experience depression, suicide, fear, anger, frustration, and anxiety because society has denied them the opportunity to enjoy their sexual orientation. This might be wrong. Social scientists estimate that nearly 10% of the American population may be either gay or belong to LGBTQ. This means an estimated 33 million Americans may be gay or LGBTQ. Many live quiet but miserable lives. There are those who live in 195 countries of the world that might be outside Western world who might wrongly believe that being gay is an exclusive attribute of western moral decadence. This belief may also be misguided because 10% of the global population of 8.2 billion or 820 million people may be gay or homosexual.
Sexuality is probably the most powerful instinct that influences and dominates our entire lives in a largely positive or sometimes negative manner depending on our social upbringing as human beings. As we enjoy the advantages of social equality, globalization, advocate for democracy, freedom, justice and the championing of human rights, let’s make sure we extend the same empathy to gays, those who are transgender and members of the LGBTQ. Let’s also extend to them the gift of love, respect, the dignity of inclusion, and kindness that we extend to every man, woman, and child who is heterosexual.
I grew up in a very normal family of a father, mother, 3 brothers and 6 sisters. This was in the social environments of rural villages of the Eastern Province of Zambia and urban areas in Southern Africa since sixty-five years ago in 1960. I played normally with both girls and boys as a child. I attended church and went to school. Although I had known them all those many years, one day something happened that was sudden as it was also stunning that changed my life forever: I discovered girls.
At the time I was living at Chalumbe School north of Chipata where my older sister and brother-in-law were teaching. Suddenly I noticed attractive girls everywhere I went. I began to think, talk with my friends, fantasize, and dream about them. I wanted to talk, hold, kiss, dance, have sex with them, and be in their company. These beautiful girls were 13 or 14 years old. When I sometimes met them walking along the bush path, I would nervously greet them. They would shyly smile while responding and then they would giggle and run off laughing.
This was in 1968 and I was 14 years old at the beginning of my wonderful, exciting, powerful, and gratifying heterosexual adventure that was to last the rest of my life. After years of searching, meeting my wife at my age of 24, while both of us were in college at Michigan State University, was the most significant event in our lives. We got married at St Ignatius Catholic Church by a gay priest and we had 3 children. Both our families anticipated, celebrated, have enjoyed, and were supportive of our marriage. Do we give the same support to those in same sex marriages?
The biggest impact my parents had on my life is that they taught us to have empathy toward others. This empathy has compelled me to ask questions during the 57 years in which I have greatly enjoyed the deep and emotional pleasure and privilege of enjoying my heterosexual orientation. I have always wondered about the emotional pain and misery the people who have other forms of sexual orientations endure about being denied the opportunity to enjoy their sexual orientations. Many religions call these orientations sinful.
Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Queer people (LGBTQ) include homosexuals, gays or lesbians who have the sexual attraction to someone of the same sex. Intersexual are people whose bodies (including genitals) have both female and male characteristics; Hermaphrodites is the original Greek term refers to intersexual people who have both female ovary and male testis; Transsexuals or Transgender are people who feel they are one sex even though biologically they are the other sex; Bisexuality is sexual attraction to people of both sexes. All of these millions of people have the same deep overwhelming sexual desire that heterosexual males who have sexual attraction to someone of the female sex and heterosexual female have the sexual attraction to someone of the male sex.
Why are all these people who are as human as we heterosexuals prevented from experiencing the joy, the sexually gratifying experiences that I and other heterosexuals have and take for granted? Many people believe there is a God who banished LGBTQ human beings, especially those who are homosexual, to this lifelong cruel perpetual misery of being ostracized and hated by society all their lives. Many experience depression, suicide, fear, anger, frustration, and anxiety because society has denied them the opportunity to enjoy their sexual orientation. This might be wrong. Social scientists estimate that nearly 10% of the American population may be either gay or belong to LGBTQ. This means an estimated 33 million Americans may be gay or LGBTQ. Many live quiet but miserable lives. There are those who live in 195 countries of the world that might be outside Western world who might wrongly believe that being gay is an exclusive attribute of western moral decadence. This belief may also be misguided because 10% of the global population of 8.2 billion or 820 million people may be gay or homosexual.
Sexuality is probably the most powerful instinct that influences and dominates our entire lives in a largely positive or sometimes negative manner depending on our social upbringing as human beings. As we enjoy the advantages of social equality, globalization, advocate for democracy, freedom, justice and the championing of human rights, let’s make sure we extend the same empathy to gays, those who are transgender and members of the LGBTQ. Let’s also extend to them the gift of love, respect, the dignity of inclusion, and kindness that we extend to every man, woman, and child who is heterosexual.
White Mulantwishika Phiri, The Conflict Between Alice Lenshina Mulenga and 1964 Government, Lusaka, Zambia Educational Publishing House, 2021, Paperback, K110.00 ($4.00).
BOOK REVIEW
by
Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D
Emeritus Professor of Sociology
Introduction
A large, excited ululating crowd had gathered and created a circle in the middle of Seleta village in Chief Magodi’s area in the Lundazi district of the Eastern Province of Zambia. In the middle of the large circle was a famous figure. I was 6 years old, and I was anxiously moving around the outer edges of the standing crowd trying to have a glimpse of the famous figure. Hundreds of adult legs were blocking my view and the view of many of us children as I tried desperately here and there to see. I failed to see the famous figure. The figure was Elesina or Lenshina as us the Tumbuka called her. The figure was Alice Lenshina Mulenga. This was in 1960 when she was touring her congregations, including at my father’s Seleta Village where converts had built a Lumpa Church Temple.
In August 1964 I was 10 years old. My family lived at Dzoole Primary School north of Chipata. My father, mother, brothers, and sisters were worried. There was tension, sadness and anxiety in our Tembo family of 9 children. For days we did not know whether we would see our second oldest 15-year-old sister Christina alive. For days there was news on the radio and many rumors that a religious war had broken out in our home district west of Lundazi including my mother and father’s Chipewa and Seleta villages. Over a total of six hundred people in our two villages alone may have been burned in their grass thatched houses, killed, and massacred. Our sister Christina at the time was attending Kanyanga Catholic Girls Mission Boarding School which was right in the heart of the religious war. That school was about ten miles or 16Kms. from our two villages. The tension was unbearable as we waited every day for what seemed like days on end. My sister came home barefoot, haggard with the only dress she was wearing. The Northern Rhodesia army had fortunately evacuated her school.
Excitement about the book
These are the reasons why since August 1964 61 years ago, I was very excited recently to buy the book: The Conflict Between Alice Lenshina Mulenga and 1964 Government. Even though I have read a book John Husdson, “A Time to Mourn: A Personal Account of the 1964 Lumpa Church Revolt in Zambia”, 1999, and I have gained some information about the Lumpa Church civil war over the years, there are still so many things I do not know or understand about that deadly Zambian civil war.
The book: The Conflict Between Alice Lenshina Mulenga and 1964 Government opens the very first sentence in Chapter One in a simple, plain, but dramatic way. “Alice Esther Mulenga died at 18:00 hours Zambian time on 24th October 1953 at Kasomo village of chief Nkula, Chinsali District, Northern Province of Zambia”. (p.1) The book goes on to describe how she resurrected from the dead in front of her grieving mourners. She then reported that she had received instructions from God and Jesus Christ. This is Alice Lenshina Mulenga’s dramatic beginning of perhaps the most influential spiritual and religious leader in Zambia in her short 25 years of life.
The book describes how Lenshina from her small modest Kasomo village established very strict moral and religious edicts as she successfully built the Lumpa Church that eventually had thousands if not at least a million followers. She had followers and congregations in the Northern Province around Chinsali, Luapula Province, Lundazi in the Eastern Province. Eventually she had followers in Livingstone, Lusaka, and all the way to the Copperbelt towns.
Historical Foundation
The historical foundations of the leadership of the Lumpa Church and the politically vital United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia’s fight for independence from British Colonialism was deeply embedded in Chinsali in Chief Nkula. “The former Vice President Simon Kapwepwe and Alice Lenshina Mulenga were grandchildren of the great Chief Nkula, where also the first President of the Republic of Zambia Dr. Kenneth Kaunda was found among them as grandchildren of Chief Nkula”. (p.29)
This is among the many fascinating details of the rise of Alice Lenshina and how she was so closely related to the two influential UNIP and other leaders in the struggle for independence: Kenneth Kaunda and Simon Kapwepwe. She even blessed them as they moved forward in the struggle against colonialism.
What started the Civil War?
What ignited the worst deadly religious civil war in Zambian history in August 1964? The civil war started with conflicts between competing and clashing demands of the members of the United National Independence Party (UNIP) and members of the Lumpa Church. What may have started as personal individual disagreements between individual Lumpa church and UNIP
members escalated to beatings, killings, arson, violence, revenge murders and civil war. Alice Lenshina and her top leadership escaped to Angola. Thousands of Lumpa followers fled to seek refuge across the Congo or Zaire border. The new independent UNIP Kaunda government apprehended Alice Lenshina in Angola and put her in detention without trial for many years. She was released in Lusaka with restrictions. She died in 1978.
Book Strength
This book is very useful for Zambians or anyone who already had some knowledge about the tragic religious civil war in Zambia in August 1964 just as Zambia was gaining her political independence. I personally learned from the book as it answered some of the questions I had about Alice Lenshina and the deadly war between local UNIP members and her Lumpa church members. For example, I never knew that Alice Lenshina, President Kaunda, Simon Kapwepwe, and UNIP leadership together tried very hard to stop the fighting and establish peace in the villages in the affected areas. There was tremendous human suffering and death both in the villages and in the bushes many people had escaped to in fear and many died of hunger and illness in the bush. The book does describe the disintegration of the Lumpa church after the civil war. I had heard so much in my own villages about “Zione” and “Kamtola” and how some of my relatives had converted and gone to join the church at Kamtola at Zion. Survivors returned to my villages and quietly resettled.
Famous Hymn
There is a famous Lumpa Church hymn that we used to sing that I have always remembered from childhood. The beginning was:
Leader:Natulongane wonse!!!!
Congregation:Natube bana bacine………
But over the last 65 years since 1960 when I was 6 years old, I had forgotten the rest of the lyrics. I was relieved when I was able to sing again and complete the rest of the hymn as the author was able to reproduce all the lyrics of the hymn.
Natulongane bonse tube bana bachine twiba ngabalwani balya balechusha imfumu
Nefwe ngatwalishuka mulwani alipimpa
Aletufumya kuli tata
Translated:
“Let us meet together Faithful children, we should not be like Enemies who made the Lord suffer.
We are lucky Enemies are still following to separate us from God, Amen!”
The regrets I have are many. I wish I could read the findings of the commission of inquiry into the Lumpa church and the civil war. I wish I could read it as I am sure it is at the National Archives in Lusaka. I wish I had already been trained on how to conduct research in the 1960s and 70s; I would have been able to interview President Kaunda, Simon Kapwepwe, and Alice Lenshina to find out exactly what happened.
Criticisms
This book reviewer is a highly trained expert who has faced, and continues to face, the difficult challenges and agonizing circumstances for conducting meaningful research in Zambia and publishing books for 45 years ago since 1980. I am reluctant to spend too much energy dwelling on the criticisms of the book. There are many things that could have been done better. Sixty-seven pages is too short. Doing some of those things would challenge and require whoever the critics are to carry the button from the book author to conduct deeper research themselves in 2025 in order to answer more questions that arise from the book. But I am thankful that I have knowledge that I did not know before I read this book. I am very grateful to the author Mr. White Mulantwishika Phiri and the publishers.
Pa 25 January 2025 nkhaluta ku town ya Richmond kuno ku Virginia ku United States of America. Nkhaluta na kunjira mu Lewis Ginther Botanical Garden. Sono nkhayowoya vyose ivi nkhaona mukati. Kwene ici nkhufumba nchakuti kasi tingapanga botanical garden uko ku kaya ku Lundazi? Nanga mu Lusaka?
Bird of Paradise is one of my favorite flowers
Mlaza found in the Luangwa Valley
Orchids have so many varieties. Chinaka flower is an orchid.
Pa 25 January 2025 nkhaluta ku town ya Richmond kuno ku Virginia ku United States of America. Nkhaluta na kunjira mu Lewis Ginther Botanical Garden. Sono nkhayowoya vyose ivi nkhaona mukati.
Lewis Ginther Conservatory Botanical Garden Green House
Muli tumaji twa mist or tiyowoye kuti nyankhubinda.
Many tropical flowers and plants in the green house
I first slept away from home 70 years ago in 1959 when I was 6 years old. My mother and I were travelling from Lundazi to Chasela Primary School and spent a night in Lundazi before we were to catch the Central African Road Services (CARS) bus service the following day. We slept in the Lundazi Council Rest House opposite the present day Lundazi Bus station. It was 3 pence or tiki to sleep downstairs and susu or six pence to sleep upstairs. It was noisy all night. This was during the British colonial Northern Rhodesia which is now independent Zambia in Southern Africa. Since that time, I have spent numerous nights in rural Zambia Rest Houses and motels. I have slept in motels and lodges in Lusaka and the Copperbelt.
High above the wall was an iconic photo of Nelson Mandela.
I have spent nights in hotels in Johannesburg, London in the UK, in Amsterdam in Holland, in Jamaica, and in the United States. As the popularity of Airbnbs has exploded, the popularity of Serviced apartments has also exploded in Lusaka. What I love about them is not only that they have laundry, cleaning services, and comfortable living arrangements, but I get to cook my own food. I stayed at a Serviced Apartment for a month when I decided to go and visit relatives in Lundazi and Chipata. When I returned the Service Apartment was fully booked. I found another one at the Upland Apartments along Leopard Hill Road.
When I entered the gate, the first thing I noticed was the sound of construction. It looked like 5 apartments were completed. Many more were under construction. The landscape around the front of my apartment was gorgeous with beautiful flowers. When I entered the apartment, the first thing that surprised me was that all the furniture in the whole apartment was unique and different like nothing I had seen before. There was a huge TV in the living room. The tables, kitchen cabinets, chairs or the furniture just looked very odd and different. I had never lived in a place where nearly everything inside seemed to challenge almost everything I had experienced about an apartment or even a house.
Mr. John Chanda; the owner of the Chandaland Serviced Apartments
I cooked my dinner, took my shower, and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I boiled a big mug of tea and was walking to the living room couch or sofa when something just hit me. High above the living room wall above the sofa was a very large, odd picture frame with a large photo of some man raising his fist high in the air as a symbol of defiance. Within a split second, I recognized the man; it was the iconic photo of the great Nelson Mandela. How did I miss it the previous night? Numerous questions exploded in my mind. Who puts the photo of Mandela in a Serviced Apartment? Why? Who was the foreign owner of the apartments who did this? Was he trying just to ingratiate himself with Zambians or Africans? What did it all mean? Is it why I had slept so well because the revolutionary heroic spirit of Nelson Mandela was always guarding and watching over me? Was the spirit of Mandela bathing over me as I innocently slept during my first night in the apartment? Whose mind was behind the uniquely artistic creative aura of the whole apartment? I was overcome with curiosity with numerous questions.
A carpenter at the construction site.
I talked to a young employee who gently broke the news to me. The owner of the Upland Service Apartment was a Zambian, Mr. Chanda. I was stunned. How could a Zambian do something so unique in which he was not just following what foreigners especially Europeans or bazungu had already done? When I finally met Mr. Chanda, we immediately laughed and hit it off. We went into friendly tribal Zambian banter of mbuyaship between Bembas and Ngoni Easterners. During the few days, there were loud sounds of construction as a large number of over 30 young men worked all day.
Artistic coffee table in the apartment.
Before I left for Kenneth Kaunda International airport on my last day, I was able to talk to Mr. John Chanda and take a tour of the construction site. The 57-year-old told me he had been to the United States where he obtained his master’s degree in business administration. When he returned to Zambia, for many years he co-owned and was a CEO or Managing Director of a large truck transportation company. He decided to build service apartments employing his own unique style which I loved. He obtains Rosewood and Teak wood from villagers in rural Zambia. All the unique furniture was made on site providing carpentry and other skilled jobs to the local Zambian population.
I cannot wait to spend time again at the Chandaland Serviced Upland apartments at 097-906-9729 or 077-793-6868. My biggest challenge now is how can I build my own Serviced Apartments and call them Temboland apartments so that I can beat this Bemba man from Kasama?
Since I came to the United States 48 years ago in 1977 to graduate school at Michigan State University to pursue my master’s degree in Sociology, I have lived away from members of my family in Zambia in Southern Africa. I lived 8,000 miles or 13,000Kms, and 18 hours flight from my family members. The cheapest round trip air ticket ranges from $1,200 to $2,000.00 or K32,000.00 to K54.000.00 by today’s Zambian Kwacha. Work schedules were very demanding. The painful regret I have had to live with the rest of my life is that it has been impossible for me to visit the sick, attend weddings and funerals of close family members and childhood friends. It was most painful during the era before the cell phone. Because I was lucky to even receive letters 6 weeks later informing me about some significant events. Buying postage stamps was too expensive for many of my relatives.
My sister Mary Stella and her husband Mr. Mtonga during the last hours of his life.
The funerals over the years that I could not attend were my mother Enelesi Kabinda in 2018, my nephew Victor Mayovu, my uncle JJ Mayovu, my aunt Mrs Rosemary Nya Zghovu, my niece Dora Mayovu, my sister Mwangata, Christina, Bridget, Mrs Zimba, numerous nephews and nieces, and close friends such as Mike Moono and my dearest friend Dr. Vincent Musakanya who passed away in UK in 2019.
I received a phone call in February from one of my adult nieces, Mable, that my 84-year-old brother-in-law Mr. Mtonga was very ill. In fact he had been sick for months and was bedridden. My 78-year-old sister Stella was nursing him at home. I talked to my brother-in-law. He sounded frail as I could barely hear his voice on the phone. To cheer him up I said I would bring him some music so that he and my sister could dance ballroom once again next time I saw him.
He and my sister loved to dance ballroom to Jim Reeves; they danced the twist to the Beatles music when they were a young dating couple in romantic love in the mid-1960s when I was 11 years old. My promise would have been empty promises except that since I retired, I had already planned a prior visit to go home to Zambia to visit relatives especially my father who is 105 years old. I kept praying that my brother-in-law would still be alive when I arrived in Zambia the next month.
Zambian and African marriages are not only a union of a man and woman but a union of two extended families. This is what I loved the most when I was growing up. When Mr Mtonga and my sister married, they created a spectacular home where all the young relatives from both sides of the family assembled and lived. Since they had a large stereo record player in their small 2-bedroom home, I was introduced to music, ballroom dance, and Rhumba dance. I was introduced to photography as a hobby. I had warm memories as a 14-year-old spending time at their home during school holidays from Chizongwe Boys Secondary Boarding School from 1967 to 1970.
The moment of visiting with Mr. Mtonga finally arrived after my two months of prayer and anxious anticipation. My sister took 6 of us close relatives into his bedroom. I was both relieved and shocked to see his physical state. He was laying down on a mattress with blankets and other covers around him. He was half propped up with pillows and cushions. He was not the vibrant Mr. Mtonga I had last seen 23 years ago in 2002. He was small and emaciated. He smiled with his white sparkling eyes when our eyes met. I shook his hand and clasped it for a while. I talked about my long journey from the United States and my fond memories of him at Chalumbe Primary School where he and my sister had been teachers.
There was no time to waste. I had bought the 3 CDs boxset of his most favorite music to which he and my sister had danced ballroom; country singer Jim Reeves. I had downloaded over a hundred songs to my laptop.
I whipped out my laptop and played the first song: “Distant Drums”, then “Guilty”, “He’ll Have to Go.” “Welcome to my world”. As he heard each song, his lips moved, his face brightened. I could see his mind and brain grinding to warm memories from 58 years ago. This was such a joy to see and witness. I suddenly had an exciting idea.
As the 6 relatives were chatting with commentaries, I asked my 78-year-old sister to dance ballroom with me as her husband watched. My sister was wearing a bright yellow top and skirt. This is how my 78-year-old sister danced ballroom with me her 70-year-old little brother. We danced to Jim Reeves’s “I can’t stop loving you” for 3 minutes. Mr. Mtonga beamed with excitement and looked like he wanted to stand up and dance. I took photos of Mr. Mtonga and my sister as they sat together as my sister muttered proudly: “This is my husband.” We left as Mr.Mtonga looked tired. He was like a baby who had had too much excitement for a little too long.
The following day at 1400 hrs. or 2:00pm, I got a cell phone message that my brother-in-law Mr. Mtonga had been rushed to the Chipata General Hospital emergency room where he had passed away peacefully at 9:00hrs or 9:00am. I began to cherish my last moments with him. As days passed, I began to think, “Did I contribute to his death when I helped create a moment of so much joy and excitement in him during what turned out to be his last precious hours of life?” What do you think?
(Warning: The last part of this column channels the Martin Short character Ed Grimley of Saturday Night Live (SNL) television series in the United States in the 1980s)
After 16 exhausting hours from Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C, the excitement of the final descent to Lusaka Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Zambia in Southern Africa is overwhelming. It is hot and the rainy season is steaming humid outside the airport terminal. I chat with the taxi driver who is taking me to the Rnbnb or Serviced Apartment across the city. The bill boards have large photos of Zambia’s six deceased Presidents over the last 60 years of Zambia’s independence from British colonialism in 1964. This is reflection of Zambia’s fortune of having a robust peaceful democracy devoid of deep violent and deadly political scandals, coups, and other national political tragedies.
Jet lag is no longer a minor inconvenience that lasts maybe only two days at the author’s age of 70. I needed to recuperate in my apartment for a few days before taking the challenging and grueling 753Kms. or 467-mile bus trip to the village in the remote district of Lundazi in the Eastern Province of Zambia. Each time I visit my 105-year-old father, I rightly have a well-founded fear it might be my last visit to see him alive. It is such a great rare privilege for a few people in Zambia let alone in Africa and the Third World countries.
I arrive at the bus terminal on Freedom Way at 3:30am as the bus was departing at 4:00am. Unfortunately, the bus had only 7 passengers for a 50 passenger capacity bus. So last minute the bus company used a taxi driver to quickly whisk us to board another bus that was going to Lundazi at the main massive Intercity Bus Terminal. Once we arrive there, we were quickly lead through a maze of over 50 buses that were departing and some arriving from all parts, towns and cities of Zambia
The historic Lundazi Castle Hotel
After 12 grueling hours, I arrive in Lundazi. After all the passengers had claimed their bags, I could not find mine. My bag was lost. But how? The bus conductor said he had just received a cell phone message. Another disembarking passenger 80 miles or 128kms earlier at Kaulembe bus station had mistakenly offloaded my bag because the size and color were very similar to hers or his. My bag would be brought to me the following day. How could I lose my bag in tiny rural remote town Lundazi?
How could I explain this to anyone? I had travelled and flown for more than 50 years or may be since I was 10 in 1964 when I first travelled by bus going to boarding school. I had never lost my bag. I now wish my bag had been lost while I was flying between Los Angeles, New York, London, Zurich, and Casablanca or may be between New York and Abudabi; Flying between exotic places except travelling by bus from Lusaka to tiny remote Lundazi. All my bathing stuff and change clothes were in my bag.
During the night at the Lundazi Castle Hotel, I had nightmares about my missing bag. What If I just never got it back? There were so many irreplaceable items in it.
The following day, the young Billie bus officials happily gave me back my bag. I rushed to my hotel room and first placed my bag in the middle of the room and stared at it. It was all intact. This is when the Martin Short character Ed Grimley took over in my excitement. I jumped around my hotel room with joy.
“I am so excited to get all my stuff including my electric shaver and vlogging camera. I am feeling so mental with sheer joy!! But what if I opened the bag and there was nothing but a huge stone in it? I would be so sad. But if I found all my stuff intact, I would be so thrilled!! I would take three baths and change my now stinking underwear. Maybe I should not open the bag until the morning so that I would not be disappointed. But then I would not be able to sleep just thinking about what could be inside the still locked bag. What if the person carefully picked the lock? What if nothing has been stolen? What did the person who got the bag by accident think? Was he or she tempted or not tempted to open it? Were they afraid of witchcraft? Maybe they thought it was a sting operation from the bus company and the Zambia police and American President Trump’s FBI? I would like to meet the person who had my bag for 12 hours? What was in their bag that they left with the bus?”
The Author
I was relieved and glad when I opened the bag that everything was there and untouched. Have you ever lost a bag while traveling?
Once I arrived by bus in Lundazi recently, I faced a special challenge. The bus station was being renovated. So, the entire area was blocked off. No one was allowed to walk through to the shopping center and market. You had to walk all the way around Tigone Motel and Castle Hotel to get to the Shops and Market. After asking around, I was told there was a short cut. I was shocked that it was very narrow. I was nervous and anxious. The local Lundazi people were just walking through it with no thought. I stood there for a few minutes. Would my big fat American body walk through? What if I got stuck and they had to contact the police to use a crane to extract me? I was relieved when I was able to walk through without having to twist my body sideways to walk through like nkhara or a crab. Most if not all Zambians are so slender or slim.
After flying for 16 exhausting hours from Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C, the excitement of the final descent to Lusaka Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Zambia in Southern Africa is overwhelming. There is the slight jerk of the plane’s initial thud of spinning tires first kissing Zambian soil and a whiff of twirls of brief blue smoke from the tires’ initial contact with the tarmac. I look at both sides of the runway. It is the rainy season, plush green in contrast to the dead brown bare trees in hibernation in the especially brutal winter in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The thrill of arriving at my childhood home never gets old.
A bicycle has 2 wheels
The next week, I travelled for 11 grueling hours by bus to my home village in the remote provincial town of Lundazi in the Eastern Province. I was visiting my 105-year-old father. My mother passed away in 2018 at the age of 88. Arriving by taxi to this village through tall grass with non-existent roads to the end of the world is testimony to the power of family and love. I am 70 and grew up in the village as a 6-year-old 65 years ago in 1960.
My village has over 300 men, women, children, young and old residents. According to our Tumbuka tribe traditional kinship relationships and clans, I am agogo or grandfather to most of the children. A dozen of the children 6- to 8-year-olds gathered curiously to greet and see agogo ba ku America (grandpa from America). I told them to go and get some red clay from the anthill so that we could do something I did when I was a child a long time ago in 1960. We used to mold figurines of people and animals, I told them. The children looked amused.
“I will mold and show you a wheel for the first time!” I said. “Since there are no wheels anywhere here in the village, in Lundazi, in Zambia, and even in America. There are no wheels anywhere in the world!!” Since the children attend Boyole School, one of them raised his hand with a smile as if in a classroom.
“But grandpa from America, you must be blind,” he said. “My uncle just rode his bike to Nkhanga shops. The bike has two wheels!!”
The children laughed. The kinship relationship expects and endorses grandpa and grandchildren to have often brutal teasing and joking banter going back and forth.
“You listen to me!!!” I barked. “I am telling you there is no wheel. I am telling you because I am a professor and a genius from America. I will arrest you now for defying me the genius.”
I proceeded to make small strips of tiny fiber from the chiyombo tree bushes. I was going to use them just as plastic handcuffs, also known as flex cuffs. The children fled into the bush laughing.
This is parallel to the unfortunate fate of Trump’s tariffs. Why reinvent the wheel when the negative impact of tariffs have been well known since Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776 which is 249 years ago?
Every newly elected President has the right to try to implement their own new policies. But they have to be done and planned in a proper way. Signing hundreds of executive orders does not replace carefully crafted good legislation passed through Congress. After a hundred days, we are all waiting like the passengers of the doomed Titanic, for the devastating impact these tariffs will have on the economy and our everyday lives.
Over the last 249 years and even since I took an Econ 100 class as a sophomore 51 years ago at the University of Zambia in 1974, the negative impacts of tariffs have been well known; increased consumer costs, reduced economic competition, long term economic decline, and trade wars in which other countries retaliate. One wonders why Trump and MAGA supporters would describe tariffs as beautiful? Paul Krugman the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, was discussing the negative impacts of tariffs this morning on National Public radio.
The stubbornness and recklessness with which these tariffs are being implemented guarantees only that Trump will stay in the news every single day during the next four years. There won’t be any meaningful benefits. Congressional Republicans and MAGA faithful will continue to support these policies even though they will hurt even the very Trump political supporters and voters. These are probably the 39% in the opinion polls who still think his performance as President during the first 100 days is excellent. The nation is living in the Twilight Zone.
Fifty-four years ago, in December 1971 barely 7 years after Zambia obtained independence from British colonialism in 1964, 65 students and I graduated from the then Form V and now Grade 12 from the historic prestigious Chizongwe Secondary School in Chipata in the Eastern Province of Zambia. Each member of that graduating class scattered all over Zambia, Africa, lived in Europe and the rest of the world. There were no periodic class reunions during those 54 years so that we could have found out how the members of class’s lives had turned out. Through word of mouth, some occasional phone calls and letters, random encounters, we kept track of some happy uplifting achievements, training, marriages, job advancements, travel, tragic events in lives, and deaths of members.
From left to right: Michael Ngulube, Kennedy Ngoma, Ben Kalinda, Ruskin Jere.
After my being a lecturer or Professor at Bridgewater College in the United States for 31 years, I retired as Emeritus Professor of Sociology in 2021. Each time I called my classmate Ben, he kept saying: “Just a few of us of the 65 are still alive today in 2025.” That’s when it hit me: “What would happen if some of the few of us met in Lusaka?” The idea was so thrilling, it kept me awake for weeks.
I had to choose the venue where we could meet. We could have met at one of the restaurants in numerous glamorous shopping malls. But I wanted us to meet at one of the old Lusaka historic venues where some of us had great times during our young days in the 1970s: The Ridgeway Hotel. But I did not know the new name of the hotel until I used my cell phone to book a taxi on the Yango app. Cell phones did not exist in the 1970s. The hotel is now the Southern San Ridgeway. I was so glad they kept part of the old hotel name.
I had so many great but also terrifying fantasies about the meeting. What if the four guys did not show up? What if some of them were ill and in wheelchairs and could barely speak? We were all in our seventies. The moment had finally arrived. It was now Friday March the 7th 2025, two minutes to 11:00 hours rendezvous time as my taxi pulled up to the Ridgeway Hotel.
Mwizenge Tembo, Emeritus Prof. of Sociology
I had not bothered to make a reservation. I walked through the lobby towards the old cocktail lounge I remembered so well. I was stunned when no one of the hotel staff stopped me to say: “Sir! You cannot go to this side unless you have a reservation.”
“Tuyuni!!!” I said to myself in my Tumbuka mother tongue language. “The Birds!!!!” I said to myself in English.
The nostalgic memories just gushed in my mind. There is a pond with matete river reeds in it with beautiful yellow and black colored noisy mpheta birds weaving nests. This is the cocktail lounge location where I had great times with my friends in the 1970s. I sat down at a table for four on the edge of the pond.
My phone rang. Mike said he was just driving around the corner at the Lusaka Civic Center. I was so happy and relieved. They were coming. Michael Ngulube walked in. I hugged him with a big laugh. Then it was Ben Kalinda, Ruskin Jere, and Kennedy Ngoma. The excitement was over the brim and put us all on cloud nine. We could not stop talking and laughing. It was memory after memory and we existed in timeless moment. The waiters asked if we wanted drinks. I was hardly surprised that none of my classmates asked for beer. To think that we used to drink like fish. The last time I had a beer was maybe 25 years ago in two thousand and I did not even enjoy it. We ate a delicious buffet lunch.
Ridgeway Hotel pond mpheta birds weaving beautiful nests.
After five hours, we had talked and exchanged so much. Effron Lungu had passed away who had once been Minister of Foreign Affairs in President Sata’s administration. Abdul Munshi had passed away. He was our Zambian classmate of Indian parents. Munshi was a Kwacha Hall or resident roommate of the current Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa in the 1970s when some of our classmates were students at University of Zambia. We talked a great deal about our towering figure Headmaster Mr. J. S Mei who was classified as a colored South African. We greatly admired and respected him. We greatly missed our classmate Charles Kateketa, probably one of the most intelligent, humorous, socially gifted, and witty of our class. Many of the 65 have died.
We did have some time to talk briefly about just some of our great career achievements and especially about challenging and overcoming European anti-African or anti-black racism. We had all passed so many tough major formal examinations during our schooling lives. It was not surprising that all of us achieved great heights in our professions.
· Ben Kalinda was an aircraft maintenance engineer with Zambia Airways in the 1980s. He is currently: “Non-Destructive AirCraft Engineer” who is most qualified in Africa, Asia, and South America.
· Ruskin Jere was Managing Director of Microfin Africa which is a subsidiary of Africa Banking Corporation in Africa. He retired in 2013 and now does some consulting.
· Michael Ngulube was first a “Beer Taster at Zambia Breweries” who ensured quality control of the product. After working at Zambia Breweries for 20 years, he retired as an assessor of “Brewing Raw Material” using his Chemistry technical knowledge.
· Kennedy Ngoma retired after being Ancince Maritime Internationale (A.M.I) Projects Manager; CACITEEX Logistics Zambia Limited Operations Manager. He currently owns his own company as Managing Director Trading and Transport Logistics Company: Sodizam Solutions.
· Mwizenge Tembo is Emeritus Professor of Sociology after teaching or lecturing at Bridgewater College in the United States, at the University of Zambia, being a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Zambia. He has worked in academia and universities for 41 years.
If you were a Zambian among a population of 3.5 million people at independence in 1964, we were very excited, optimistic, and euphoric. Because suddenly we had social equality, freedom of movement, speech, and tremendous economic and educational opportunities became available after we completed From V. Zambia was facing many major problems at independence especially great expectations for development; education, transportation, health, natural resources, agriculture, employment, mining sector, housing, democracy, self-governance, freedom, challenges of tribalism and the country’s political unity, independence for neighboring countries which were still under the oppression of racist white or European colonial rule such as Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Mozambique, Angola, South Africa.
All the five Chizongwe Secondary School graduates were ten to 14 years old at Independence in 1964. There were millions among the 3.5 million who had been born in the 1950s who were 10 to 15 years old. What is the significance of this fact?
The population of Zambia is 19 million. Zambians who were born in 1995 and are younger than 30 years old may be about 70% of the population which is about 13.3 million young girls, boys, women and men. The five Zambian old guards are part of the small remaining population that worked very hard and benefited from Zambia’s original education policies which aimed at filling skilled manpower positions during the first 27 years of development after independence in 1964. There was a severe shortage or lack of Zambian skilled manpower immediately after independence.
And yet those who are over 65 years old are only 2.4% which is only 456,000. Therefore, there are fewer elders and old guards today in Zambia who are the Chizongwe group’s age of 70 years or more to teach younger people about what were some of our and the country’s struggles, challenges, successes and triumphs and experiences during the first 27 years of our independence from British colonialism.
I have been taking photos for 57 years since 1967. My father bought be a cheap plastic camera while we were at Kasonjola Primary School in 1967. To day I found this beautiful lovely photo. This is my niece Alice, the first-born daughter of my first-born oldest sister Mrs. Mtonga. Alice was probably about 3 years old while visiting my mother, Alice’s grandmother Enelesi Kabinda. My grandmother has just given Alice a bath. My late mother’s other names were a NyaNthula or a Mphikira Nkhondo. My mother is in the back ground cooking. On her back is my 8th born younger sister Theresa or Anyina Gasion Banda. This was 55 years ago in 1969 or 1970 at Kasonjola Primary School north of Chipata along the Chipata Lundazi Road. The other two are children I have encountered duirng my long Freelance photography as a public service.
After graduating from University of Zambia in 1976 with a double major in Sociology and Psychology, I was a Staff Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies of the University Zambia. The following year, I was very excited to fly to the State of Michigan to do my Master’s Degree in Sociology at Michigan State University in the United States of America in September 1977. After spending a long successful three years away from my beloved country of Zambia, I was ready to return home in January 1980.
Although I had spent the best of times while in the United States, there was nothing better than sweet home. I had a small contingent of Zambian and African student friends with whom I had a good time. But for all those years, I had been periodically home sick as letters from relatives and friends in Zambia took six weeks. International phone calls were expensive, cumbersome, rare and largely unknown. The inventions of emails and cell phones were still 28 years away.
One of the most important things I greatly missed when I was away from home for those three years was speaking my Tumbuka mother tongue language and the Lusaka Nyanja. As I boarded the plane in Detroit in the United States to return to Zambia, I was very happy and nervous. What would it feel like to speak Tumbuka again after speaking only English for those long 3 years? Will I have forgotten how to speak Tumbuka my mother tongue? How exciting was it going to be when I was back in the streets of Lusaka for the first time listening and talking to my fellow Zambians in Lusaka Nyanja? It was going to take me over 24 hours to fly to Lusaka. First, I had a layover of 12 hours at London Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom before flying to Lusaka later that evening.
I boarded the beautiful giant Zambia Airways DC 10 jet with Zambian flag colors painted on the outside. I sat down in my seat and was fastening my seat belt when the sweetest thing happened. One young Zambian man steward was near the front of the plane while gesturing and communicating with another young woman stewardess who was toward the back.
“Iwe, kabili uleteko pilo imozi when you are coming back,” (Bring one pillow when you are coming back this way) the woman said in a typical Lusaka City Zambian language.
“Ningalete bwanji pilo kabili I have to bring drinks pa tray for aboma passengers on the way apo pakati.” (How can I bring the pillow when I am carrying drinks on the tray for those passengers in the middle?) the man responded pointing to the passengers.
At that moment I was so happy, thrilled, and overjoyed. I was tempted to rise up and hug the stewards while jumping up and down and dancing repeatedly shouting: “I am back home! I am back home!” But I had to restrain myself. I was afraid I would be arrested as a deranged passenger and the Heathrow Airport police were going to escort me out of the plane and detain me as a mad man.
Forty-four years later I still get goosebumps when I remember that moment of great joy. This is the power and significance of language. Language evokes some of our deepest memories of moments of social intimacy in the society and the group to which we belong. When I arrived at Lusaka International Airport early the following morning, my uncle the late Mr. J. J Mayovu met me at the airport. He welcomed me as we hugged and spoke our deepest Tumbuka, my mother tongue. I spoke Tumbuka smoothly. We laughed as I was so happy to be back home on Zambian soil with my family and my beloved fellow citizens of Zambia.
Objectives
The objective of this article is to discuss the challenges or problems of publishing in Zambian native or indigenous languages. Before I discuss the significance of Zambian indigenous languages, I should discuss why perspectives on the subject of publishing in indigenous languages are uniquely important at this time in 2024. I am among the few Zambians today who are 69 years and older and have had experiences sixty years ago from the 1950s about indigenous Zambian languages that may benefit the 19 million Zambians today.
The population of Zambia in 2020 was estimated to be 19 million. The proportion of the population in the country that was under 14 years old was 45.74%, those between 15 and 24 years old were 20.03%, those between 25 to 54 years old were 28.96% and but those between 55 and 64 years old were only 3.01% and those above 65 years old were even smaller proportion of 2.27% or 431,300 of the population of 19 million. These few surviving about 5% of the population are the few people who were born before 1955. These are the few remaining people who are supposed to be both custodians and transmitters of the 72 Zambian indigenous or native languages.
The age statistics that are the most important for the crucial possible important role of older speakers of indigenous Zambian languages, like this author, are that Zambians that are younger than 30 years old may be about 70% of the population which is about 13.6 million young girls, boys, women and men. Therefore, there are fewer elders today in Zambia to teach younger people about our history, customs, native languages, and our traditional culture, perhaps due to the high death rate in the 1980s of older Zambians who are now over 55 years old because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. A large number of Zambians who would be about my age of older than 69 died in the late 1980s because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Urbanization also takes its toll in weakening the influence of indigenous languages in Zambia as the 45.15% of the urban population is rising. This means increasing numbers of Zambians leaving rural areas lose their connection to rural areas where the source, strength and origin of our traditions are the strongest especially including spoken indigenous languages.
Number of Indigenous Languages in Zambia
A discussion of Zambian languages would be incomplete without first determining how many indigenous languages exist in Zambia. According to the Wikipedia, there are 72 indigenous languages in Zambia with English being the official language. Some experts argue that these 72 are not all languages as some are dialects.
There are seven native or indigenous languages that are officially recognized by the Zambian government. According to Wikipedia, these seven languages also represent major regions of the country. Bemba is spoken in the Northern Province, Luapula, Muchinga and the Copperbelt. Nyanja is spoken in Lusaka and the Eastern Province, Lozi is spoken in the Western Province, Tonga and Lozi are spoken in the Southern Province, and Kaonde, Luvale and Lunda are spoken in the Northwestern Province.
How many people of the 19 million Zambians speak these indigenous native languages. According to the 2000 Census Bemba is spoken by 35% of the population, Nyanja 37%, Tonga 25%, and Lozi 18%. According to Gordon, data from the same 2000 Census shows some of the languages having very small numbers of the Zambian population speaking these languages as first, dominant or primary language in their lives; Bemba 30.1%, Nyanja 10,7%, Tonga 10.6%, Lozi 5.7%, Kaonde 2.0%, English 1.7%, Lenje 1.4%, Namwanga 1.3%, Senga 0.6% and Lamba 1.9%. What these numbers suggest is that the seven indigenous languages may represent certain regions and populations of the country. But do the people, most or some of them, speak only these languages in their everyday lives? These questions bring me to the problem of putting the cart in front of the horse or putting the cattle bulls in front of the cart or wagon. Both animals may never be able to pull the cart forward.
Putting Cart in Front of Horse
If you want a horse or 2 cattle bulls to pull a loaded cart or wagon, it makes sense to tie the animals in front of the cart. Then they will be able to pull and carry the loaded cart forward. But if you make the illogical mistake of putting the cart or wagon in front of the bulls or the horse, the cart will never be pulled forward. This is a cautionary tale on how to handle the issue of challenges and problems of publishing in Zambian indigenous or native languages for the speakers of the languages. Any new policy advocating change must be aware to avoid putting the cart in front of the horse.
Zambia has had a policy of communicating, broadcasting, publishing, and teaching in the seven official native languages since independence in 1964. The Ministry of Education officially approved the orthography of the 7 languages in 1977. There may be fewer Zambians today speaking and let alone reading and writing using the seven languages. If a new policy of publishing as rights to free expression is advocated, wouldn’t that be placing the cart before the horse since fewer Zambians may be reading and writing using these seven native languages? If, however, Zambians are speaking using some of these native languages in larger numbers, shouldn’t the new policy focus on the spoken language only? These are some of the ideas that will be discussed in this article. Next will be the description of the major objectives in discussing challenges and problems of publishing in Zambian languages.
Objectives
The article will next first explore how to help promote writing in languages that are not part of the 7 languages used in education and on national media. Second, discuss the assertion of the fact that the 7 languages used in education and national broadcasting were bestowed upon us Zambians by missionaries. Third, explore and show the value of linguistic diversity in national development. What can we gain as Zambians by having literature – folktales, poems, music, intangible cultural heritage expressed in all the languages in Zambia? Fourth, investigate what are the historical and current problems of producing literature and other art works in so-called minority languages? Fifth, examine what are some of the best practices around the world where artistic expression in all languages of a country is promoted?
Exploring how to help promote writing in languages that are not part of the 7 languages used in education and on national media should pose many hard questions rather than just provide easy policy answers. The answer to this question also answers the fourth objective of this article: investigating what are the historical and current problems of producing literature and other art works in so-called minority languages?
These hard or difficult questions are justified if your serious aim is to avoid placing the cart in front of the horse as proposed earlier in the article. Before we even discuss how to promote writing in languages that are not part of the 7 languages used in education and national media, do we have a booming and thriving existing writing, reading, and publishing in the 7 languages among the vast majority of the 19 million Zambians? If the answer is likely no, what would be the justification for the Ministry of Education, policy makers, and Right to Write advocates for supporting expanding writing in languages that are characterized as minority languages because very tiny numbers of the 19 million Zambians speak those languages? For example the author’s Tumbuka language has 2.5% primary speakers, Lenje 1.4%, Bisa 1.0%, Lungu 0.6%, and Lala 2.0% just to mention a few of the 72 languages and dialects.
Another very important factor that must be considered is the distinction between primary and other speakers of a native or indigenous Zambian language and those who might be readers and writers of the languages. Speaking is the easiest, least costly, and most direct way to learn and enjoy directly communicating and creating immediate emotional connection and unity between the speakers. Audio books may be more accessible to most Zambians rather than books. However, becoming a reader and writer in the language is more demanding and more difficult to achieve and enjoy. Reading requires investment in both formal schooling and machinery for printing when publishing in the Zambian languages. The financial capital required and other resources may be in short supply in a Third World country like Zambia.
Discussing the assertion of the fact that the 7 languages used in education and national broadcasting were bestowed upon us Zambians by missionaries may be a legitimate observation. But should we throw out those missionary and colonial decisions? If we did this as Zambians, that would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Let’s keep some of what the missionaries established.
I had bought a Tumbuka Bible at a Christian Bookstore that used to be located in Chamba Valley near Kaunda Square in Lusaka in the 1980s. I lost that bible and wanted to buy another one in 2022. The Christian store did not exist and I spent all day driving in Lusaka to many different places. I could not buy a Tumbuka Bible anywhere. Are any of the publications or books in the 7 official Zambian languages widely and easily available anywhere in Zambia? Occasionally I see that Maiden Publishing has some books in Zambian languages.
The only thing that might be true today is that the number of Zambians who speak exclusively just one of the 7 native languages chosen by missionaries may have shrunk. Multilingualism is much more common in Zambia than might have been 60 years ago in 1964 at Independence.
Dr. Sombo Muzata is a millennial who was born between 1981 and 1996. A brief conversation I had with her may illustrate some of the challenges or problems in publishing in Zambian languages. Dr. Muzata is Assistant professor or lecturer at James Madison University in the United States of America. Her father was Luvale. Her mother was Bemba and she was primarily raised in her mother’s Bemba family. Her native languages are Luvale and Bemba. She can speak Chewa/Nyanja. She can understand and can speak Tumbuka. She can understand other Zambian languages too, but can’t speak them fluently. Dr. Muzata may represent thousands if not millions of Zambians who are multilingual. How would publishing in Zambian languages be implemented when there is so much that has changed and is unknown?
Dr. Muzata concluded: “….our Zambian languages define us as a people. They are a core part of who we are. I look for any opportunity to speak my language and those that I know. I hope people are proud of their languages and can speak without shame.”
The new multilingual population of 19 million Zambians may have a different language population distribution, needs for spoken languages, reading, writing, and publishing. Their media participation given the internet may be different from the Zambians who spoke the 7 original languages established or chosen by the missionaries from the early 1900s to 1964.
When I was researching and writing my book: “Satisfying Zambian Hunger for Culture” in 2012, I faced a difficult challenge. I was writing Chapters on “The role and influence of traditional dances among Zambians” when I could not find any research material on “YouTube” and other social media, and the internet about the dozens of traditional dances in rural provinces of Zambia. Today in the social media in 2024 I thoroughly enjoy spending hours watching video clips of dozens of Zambian traditional dances which Zambians from rural areas upload.
The significance, exploration and showing the value of linguistic diversity which is embedded in cultural diversity in national development, is evident in contemporary culture of Zambia. What we gain as Zambians by having literature – folktales, poems, music, intangible cultural heritage expressed in all the languages in Zambia is self-evident especially in the diversity of the music and dance today in Zambia. Comedy and other shows on television that include different Zambian languages speakers including English. The internet, social media, the variety of dances at Kitchen parties and wedding receptions demonstrate the multicultural and multilingual nature of Zambian society.
Fifth, examining what are some of the best practices around the world where artistic expression in all languages of a country is promoted can benefit us Zambians only if we have definitely found what works and does not work for us. Professor Muna Ndulo once warned that adopting new foreign cultural practices from different countries is not like buying a new refrigerator. If you buy a new fridge, if you have the right voltage, you can plug it in anywhere in the world, the fridge will work perfectly. But this is not the case with culture. You cannot export democracy or a religion, for example, and simply introduce it to a country and have it work. This may be the challenge for Zambia in the attempt to encourage publishing and promoting native or indigenous languages including the 7 languages that are officially recognized used in education and the media. It will not be easy to simply mimic or copy what other countries have done.
Recommendations
1. The government, all political parties, and top experts in institutions of higher learning should conduct a massive survey covering the whole country. The survey will determine how many Zambians are speakers, readers, writers, radio and media viewers and listeners of particular specific Zambian languages. What proportion of the Zambian population are multilingual and in which Zambian languages? The 7 official Zambian languages should be included in the focus of the survey.
2. The results or findings of the massive survey should be used to implement policies that will promote the use of Zambian languages through internet social media, publishing of books, and audio books. The results should be used to conduct all annual writing competitions with awards in all schools in designated Zambian languages. The competitions should be in literature – folktales, poems, music, intangible cultural heritage expressed in all the languages in Zambia and especially Zambian traditional music.
3. The Zambian government should establish a major publishing and printing, and media communication center for printing, publishing, and producing all creative material in Zambian languages. The printing and publishing should be heavily subsidized by the government so that the published material, especially books will be cheap and affordable by all citizens of Zambia from the rural to urban areas.
Conclusion
The significance of our 72 mother tongues, dialects, native or indigenous languages is that they represent some of our deepest expressions and connections to our families, relatives, friends and country. The history of our primary languages goes back to perhaps thousands of years living and migrating on the vast African continent. All the Zambian 72 languages may have buried in them thousands of years of some of our Zambian/African history and deepest indigenous knowledge and influences on the world. For example, Dr. Chisanga Siame, using historical linguistics, philology, the etiology, phonology, and morphology of Zambian and African languages discovered that the Bemba term uku tunkumana about two thousand miles away South of Egypt may have descended from the name Tunka Men the name of the ancient kingdom of Sudan suggesting a connection between the Bemba of Zambia people and the ancient Egyptian civilization.
This article deliberately does not have definitive answers on policies for publishing in Zambian languages because answers are difficult to come by as the situation of languages has been very complex and changing since Zambia’s independence from British colonialism 60 years ago in 1964. The article asks more questions than provides answers because the article is meant to provoke thought, question some of the existing policies, and stimulate discussion. The future is unknown as our increasingly multilingual society of One Zambia One Nation is different from what it was 60 years ago at independence in 1964. This author is one of the very few Zambians who have lived through this long period and have lived through and witnessed the social change in language.
How do we as a nation effectively teach speaking, reading, and writing both English and our 72 native or indigenous languages, especially the official 7 languages of Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale, Lunda, and Kaonde? The Zambian Education system has tried several different policies but none have been found to be very effective, or at best have mixed results, in achieving good standards of speaking, reading, and writing the English official national language and the 7 official Zambian languages.
Isabella Mukanda, Unveiling Greatness: Chronicles of Inspiring Lives: James Muma Mwape – A Zambian’s Global Odyssey, Foreword by Dr. Mwizenge S. Tembo, 66 pages, Paperback, K168.00 ($7.99)
BOOK REVIEW
by
Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D
Emeritus Professor of Sociology
When any more of the 7 billion human beings or 19 million Zambians are born today, we belong to a specific gender, family, society, country, and numerous other circumstances that define our identity. But wherever we live, our life experiences are either long or sometimes short. What happened during the short or long-life span of one man is the subject of this book. It describes the life of a Zambian James Muma Mwape. Why is this book important? James Mwape was never a prominent famous politician, or someone who was the President of a country, leader of a major organization like the United Nations, political party, a major bank or a university, or a Minister in the Zambian government. But he overcame incredible challenges and obstacles in his 60 years of life and became successful. If his experiences are very common, what made him unique? What was compelling about his life?
James Muma Mwape was born in Luapula in the Northern Province of Zambia. A single mother struggled to raise him in Zambia while fighting poverty. He grew up in Mufulira. When James Mwape suddenly passed away peacefully in his sleep in his New Jersey home in the United States on April 27 2023, this sent shock waves particularly in the Zambian African community. This man known for his humility had touched so many lives and played such a prominent role in the Zambian and other communities. Many people including Zambians, his acquaintances, including this book reviewer assumed they knew James Mwape. But this was not the case.
What happened is that author Isabella Mukanda had conducted a very candid personal interview with James Mwape ten years before his sudden and untimely death. Unbeknownst to Mukanda, that interview revealed so many personal deeper aspects of James Mwape’s life after his death; details that were not previously known. The details of his life make him an inspirational figure after his death. He lived in several countries including China and Poland during his hard and difficult quest for a better life. He overcame obstacle after obstacle such that the reader is left wondering how he survived to be such a strong kind person that was full of passion and kindness. Where did the motivation come from to do all the things he did in life?
He raised a family with his partner Ruth, worked as a science teacher, he helped so many people including creating and hosting the prominent annual Mwape Peer Awards. He always strove to gain a better education in spite of his difficult circumstances. He personally experienced so much suffering, struggle, pain, and anguish. He wanted to help people, humanity and especially his native country of Zambia so much. The reader might wonder where he drew his inspiration from.
Some would say the inspiration was from his deep religious faith in Christianity. His life was both a mystery and had uncomfortable complexity. The reader is left asking and wondering how James Mwape drew so much good from his pain and suffering? He was never a bitter person.
What makes the book a compelling read is that it is short and the interview was very short and as James gave to the point responses. The reader is left making their own conclusions about how he overcame so many challenging and difficult circumstances. Was it his mother, the country of Zambia he grew up in, the random people that he met and helped him in his life? To the author’s credit, Isabella Mukanda never editorialized James Mwape’s life. Mukanda has two other unrelated short stories at the end of the book: “Tabernacles of Evil,” and “Breaking the spell: A True story about one family’s struggle with mental illness”.
I would strongly recommend this inspirational short book, as I do in the foreword, to all readers from all backgrounds; circumstances, social classes, race, age, gender, history, and countries of origin. This is not a book about the suffering and triumph of just a poor Zambian, or African. He could have been an Asian, European, or person from numerous origins and identities, It is a book of life and how one James Mwape overcame the existential problems of obstacles, pain, and suffering in life. One can see the suffering in the eyes and images of millions of migrants to day on the American Southern border with Mexico, poor migrants floating on rickety boats trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in North Africa, and migrants in many parts of Africa, South America, Europe, Australia and many parts of the world. This book will both expose you to suffering and how some humans overcome some of that suffering to achieve a form of triumph in life.
Chishimba M. Lumbwe, Ruminations: Politicians, Politicians, Everywhere; But Hardly a Statesman in Sight! A Brutally Frank Satirical Look at the African Society in the 21st Century, Lusaka, Pensulo Publishers, 2022, 266 pages, Paperback, $14.82 (K300.00)
Introduction
In the past fifty-nine years since 24th October 1964 when Zambia got its independence from British colonialism, we Zambians have had seven Presidents. We should not only be proud of this outstanding achievement against all the obstacles, but we have had peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next. The first President who is the founder of our peaceful nation was President Kaunda who had led the nation for the first 27 years of independence.
After yet another general election year in 2021, for the seventh time power was transferred from the outgoing President Lungu of the Patriotic Front (PF) political party to the incoming President Hichilema of the United Party for National Development (UPND) at a public ceremony at Heroes Stadium. During these 59 years, there has been the rise and fall of political parties, candidates, and presidents. Millions of Zambians of several generations have participated in election campaigns and have voted. Presidents have proposed and implemented development plans, have made numerous cabinet appointments including ambassadors. The question which may be the biggest elephant in the room is “what is the uniquely Zambian or African political culture that has evolved in our country over the last 59 years?”
Ruminations
Dr. Chishimba Lumbwe is a medical doctor who was a State House physician for three presidents. He worked closely in the top corridors of Zambian political power for more than forty years. He has written a book titled: “Ruminations: Politicians, Politicians, Everywhere; But Hardly a Statesman in Sight! Satirical Look at the Zambian/African Society in the 21st Century.”
Ruminations are when a person has many deep thoughts about a specific problem. The problem might be their marriage, job, family, why a relative died in the family, why they did not get a particular job. Ruminations are associated with negative thoughts as the ruminator is trying to understand may be an existing or past problem. Dr. Chishimba Lumbwe in this book has been ruminating about Zambian and African politics since 2015 but with a twist; he is ruminating using satire or while being funny. He tries to make the reader laugh about our Zambian or African politicians and our political system since we inherited it from our British colonial Westminster parliamentary system in 1964.
Instead of using the conventional chapters in the book, Dr. Chishimba Lumbwe uses 12 Ruminations. The 12 ruminations include: Rumination 1 – Blood is Thicker Than Water, But Not Thicker Than Opaque Beer; Rumination 2 — Politicians, Politicians, Everywhere; But Hardly a Statesman in Sight! Rumination 6 — Why Politicians Always Think It’s Always Their Time to Eat; Rumination 8 — What Happens When A Political Party Tastes The Heady Pill of Power; Rumination 11 — Job Description for the President of Zambia.
In his book, Ruminations, Dr. Chishimba Lumbwe who was at one time a State House Physician, provides us Zambians and African citizens and readers a valuable gift. This is because if you are Zambian/African who has lived in Zambia for an extended period during the last 59 years, the book will make you smile, laugh, but also think about our past and future lives both as individuals and as a nation. He alludes to the role of cadres and cadrerism in Zambian political party politics and government. The book also provides some powerful creative expression including some poetry on pages 19, 20 and 152. The book also has many examples of providing wisdom, unique insights, and observations in virtually all the 12 ruminations.
For example, discussing how the President and other top political leaders fill job positions, Lumbwe says: “Let’s get a bit personal and put you, the reader, in the president’s shoes: Be honest. Who would you trust to keep your skeletons firmly locked inside a steel cupboard?……And in any case, if you do not fill up some of those posts with your relatives, someone else will fill them up with their relative…..That’s just the way the logic runs, unless you have a true statesman in the State House.” Rumination 1, page 21.
In Rumination 6 under Theorem 10: Lumbwe says there are more men who are psychopaths than women, this is why our politics are so terrible, page 115; If you are interested in understanding how charts, graphs and mathematics are related to human politics, Rumination 10 with thrill you. In Rumination 12 Lumbwe asks why there are so many political parties in Zambia; Lastly in the Postlude Lumbwe asks, “Should we constantly blame other people for our collective stupidity?” p. 176. In the Postlude, Lumbwe discusses “18 things that do not make sense about the Zambian society specifically and the African society in general.” Pp. 216-244.
I would highly recommend Ruminations not just for the ordinary Zambian/African reader, but also for politicians, scholars of political philosophy, social studies teachers, lecturers, Zambian/African English literature, mathematicians, and professors of political science and satire in colleges and 17 Zambian universities including UNZA and other universities in Africa and abroad.
There is the mistaken impression and reputation that one can only learn from books published about Zambia and Africa by political science experts in London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo. The perspective and epistemology Lumbwe expresses is always regarded as illegitimate. Ruminations is a legitimate social perspective and epistemology by a Zambian about the challenges of the Zambian/African political systems and experiences that may be different from politics particularly in Europe or Western societies to whom we always compare ourselves.
The traditional Tumbuka cooking of Chigwada vegetable ndiyo, dende, relish or umunani involves many stages. These were followed when I cooked the Chigwada as “The Village Chef” at the Mwizenge Sustainable Model Village with the help of two Research Assistants; Mr. Robert Phiri and Ms. Jusi Nya Banda.
Two of some if the most important utensils in traditional Zambian cooking the; the mthiko cooking stick and the chihengo container.
Stages of Cooking Chigwada
You start with making chidulo, second collect fresh tender Chigwada or cassava leaves, third pound the leaves with a pestle and mortar, fourth pour the chidulo into a cooking pot and put the mashed-up leaves into a cooking pot and place it on the fire. Boil the Chigwada for half an hour and add nthendelo, nthwilo or raw fresh groundnut powder. Add salt and any tomatoes. Boil covered for half an hour. Stir every few minutes to avoid burning at the bottom. Add some water if the Chigwada seems to be thickening. After half an hour, stir the nthendelo in the chikwada. After cooking for two and half hours, the Chigwada is ready to serve and eat with sima or nshima. I will critique my cooking of the Chigwada and the taste compared to how my grandmother and my mother used to cook it.
1. Chidulo is made from a choice of many dry leaves of a farm field crop. The chidulo can be made from dry maize stalks, from vitondozo vya skaba or stalks of dry groundnut leaves, dry banana leaves, dry groundnut shells, dry bean plant leaves and shells, dry visokoto from maize. In this case I decided to use the dry stalks of the maize which was about to be harvested. We set a pile of the stalks on fire and collected the cool ashes.
Putting the cassava leaves in a mortar.
Pounding the leaves with a pestle
2. The ashes were put in chichezo container which had holes made at the bottom. The ashes were placed in the container and cold water was poured into the ashes. Soon, a dark golden brown liquid began to drip out at the bottom which was collecting in a container at the bottom.
3. We collected about 2 lbs or 1 Kg of fresh soft or tender Chigwada leaves from the trees. Put them in a mortar and pound the leaves until they are a wet moist mash.
The cassava leaves are pounded into a mash.
4. We pounded raw peanuts with a pestle and mortar and made about 6 cups of fresh peanut or groundnut powder.
5. We poured 5 cups of the chidulo liquid into the cooking pot and added the mashed Chigwada leaves and began to boil the Chigwada for 30 minutes.
The maize stalks are burnt into ashes.
Kucheza or the making of chidulo
6. I poured 4 cups of the raw groundnut or peanut powder on top of the Chigwada. DO NOT stir yet. Add one teaspoon of salt. You can add tomatoes but this is optional. Boil covered for 30 minutes.
7. I stirred the Chigwada vigorously and let it simmer and added water if necessary if the Chigwada is drying up. Stir every few minutes to prevent the Chigwada from burning at the bottom. Lower the heat.
Chidulo liquid
8. After two and half hours, stir the Chigwada and remove it from the fire as it is ready to be served with nshima.
Critiquing the Cooked Chigwada
I ate and enjoyed the nshima with the cooked Chigwada. But the taste was nowhere close to how my grandmother and mother used to cook it. Fist I need to determine which crop stalk has the strongest chidulo. Is the chidulo from the dry groundnut leaves, banana leaves, bean leaves or maize visokoto or vigamu and any other, the strongest? I could not find a flat stable surface for the sensitive scale I was using. This might sound simple. I could not find a small foldable table in Lusaka after going to so many shops.
Cooking the cassava leaves with raw fresh nthendelo or peanut powder
My grandmother and my mother used a clay pot for cooking. This may make a difference. I think the Chigwada needs very slow deep cooking. Metal pots are not always the best way to cook all foods. Adding more water when cooking the Chigwada dilutes the chidulo which needs to have a sharp acidic taste at its best. Chidulo is not just a flavoring to the Chigwada but it is a central ingredient that tremendously defines the characteristic taste. It is a uniquely Zambian taste embedded in traditional cooking among the Tumbuka.
Nshima served with chigwada and kapenta fish.
What was best about the cooking experiment is that we had all the basic tools. When we repeat or replicate the cooking, my team and I will only improve and get better. This is the central feature of any scientific approach.
For 19 million Zambians in Southern Africa, nshima and what it stands for is the very basis of life. Nshima is the staple food eaten by not only Zambians but Malawians and many other African neighbors. Almost all 72 tribes and indigenous African languages in Zambia probably call nshima by a different name according to the specific area language and dialect variation. The Chewa, Tumbuka, and Ngoni of Eastern Zambia and Malawi call it sima or nsima, the Bemba of Northern Zambia call it ubwali, the Tonga of Southern Zambia call it insima and Lozi of Western Zambia call it buhobe.
This is the most commom nshima cooked from maize white refined breakfast mealie meal. There are other types of less common nshima from sorghum, cassava flour, and finger millet.
There is a saying that Eskimos who live in the frozen north pole may have many different definitions of snow. This reality of having so many definitions may be true for people who live in the desert and how they define sand or people who live on sea islands and how they may define types of fish, for example. This reality is true for nshima in Zambian culture.
In traditional villages in rural Zambia, nshima has many types and states. There is nshima that is cooked from cassava meal (sima ya chikhau or chinangwa), sorghum meal (sima ya mapila or chidomba), finger millet meal (sima ya kambala), and sima of rice or mpunga. Potentially nshima can be cooked from any grain and tubers that can be ground into meal or flour. There is nshima that has lumps in it (sima ya mambontho). This nshima is often the result of hasty cooking and only young inexperienced girls, men, and novices are expected to make this mistake.
There is nshima yopola. This is nshima that has gotten lukewarm or cold because either it was cooked too early or eaters, guests, or diners delayed getting to the table. This nshima is rather hard and might even crumble as the eater tries to get a lump. There is nshima ya cimbala. This is nshima left over from the previous night. It is usually stone cold and wet from steam condensation overnight. Children are the only ones expected to eat this type of nshima sometimes for breakfast. Adult men are not advised to eat nshima ya cimbala as it is believed to cause weakness in the elbow joints and also likely to usurp a man’s sexual energy.
Nshima yibisi means raw nshima. This is the nshima that was badly and hastily cooked perhaps with a very weak flame due to inadequate firewood or impatience on the part of the woman or the cook. One extreme way of testing if the nshima is yibisi or not well cooked is to push one’s forefinger deep into the just cooked nshima on a plate like one would push a dipstick when determining oil level in an automobile engine. If the nshima is well cooked, the finger will hardly penetrate, as it will be too hot for the tester. But if the nshima is undercooked, the finger will penetrate all the way and the individual tester will hardly feel any discomfort.
There is nshima ya mugayiwa. This is nshima that is cooked from corn or maize that is not hand processed. It is corn meal ground directly from corn using a hammer mill. This type of nshima is darker and very coarse or rough. Many Zambians will only eat this as a sign of hardship, in an emergency, or if they are living in institutions like the boarding school, armed forces, or prison.
In extreme cases it might cause diarrhea because of too much roughage for those not accustomed to eating it.
There is nshima ya kambandila which is cooked from maize or corn meal that is made from corn that has hardly dried in the fields just before harvest. This is also often done in desperation as the family might have run out of corn or maize from the previous season’s harvest or vingoms va chomba.
Nshima cooked from yellow maize mealie meal.
Nshima yosoza refers to eating the nshima without the second dish; the relish. This again is an extremely tremendous sign of suffering if individuals have to resort to eating nshima without relish. This extreme case is rare as in most cases individuals who eat nshima yo soza are said to be careless. There is a learned skill in eating a large plate of nshima matched with often a smaller portion or serving of relish. One has to learn to match the rate of eating the nshima with the specific served portion of the relish. Going to the relish pot for some more is usually unacceptable or impractical. So, in the unfortunate situation of mismatching the rate of eating nshima and the relish, the individual might end up eating nshima yo soza
Nshima features very prominently in many other cultural aspects of the community. For example, a traditional healer or nga’nga will often prescribe that a patient gets the herb soaked from roots of a certain tree and use it for cooking nshima. The patient has to eat this type of nshima for two to three weeks to a month. This is true for a child who is being treated for childhood epilepsy or seizures for example. This type of nshima is known among the Tumbuka people as kasima ka mnkhwala or a tinny nshima cooked for medicinal purposes.
