With Love, From Lusaka, Zambia

Friend

Zambia has given me so much perspective in my short stay here. I am writing to you from the Taj, overlooking a blue pool surrounded by palm trees with that Magagula bird singing in the background.

At the Kabwata Arts Centre, I learnt that the Lozi people sound very similar to the Sotho people. It was crazy because I could hear and respond with my shady Sotho, I am sure Fifi would have done a better job. The Ngoni people from the Eastern Province are real Zulu’s, they have Zulu names and surnames and maybe 20% of the words are common like Gogo and Malume. We played a game at the office and learnt that Swahili doesn’t have the same commonalities as these Ngoni languages. There is also the Bemba who are said to be related to the Baluba of Katanga.

^{A Visit to Kabwata Village, Lusaka , Zambia}

Zambia has 72 languages, Kenya 42, but now on my side I feel like Africa needs a language indaba because we might find that are less languages that we think, just variations based on accent, region, inter-marrying, and the various people migrations.

The Chitenge, is a piece of cloth given to a young lady to keep once she starts getting her period. It’s kept in a lady’s bag in case she bloats, and I think that’s so sweet. The fabric is a little lighter than Lihiya lemaSwati but it is worn everyday by the women in the villages to cover up when doing chore’s , cooking , tending to the yard and you have fancier one’s for bigger occasions. Its also used as a doek when one needs to be respectful, and each design can have a different cultural & personal significance.

Friend, today I met so many Zambian farmers who are leading the local supply of food within Zambia & it was impressive to see a range of old black, fit Gogo’s draped in their gorgeous Chitenge’s learning about farming technology, how to improve their irrigation, seed variations, managing pests. Agriculture is so important the President himself rides in a tractor annually to remind his fellow countrymen that they can leverage technology to improve their yields.

The Zambian people are a lot softer, kind of like Zimbabweans, and they fear the violence in South Africa deeply. An old Zambian said to me “South Africans are still deeply colonized, and it’s the self-hatred that makes them capable of being so vile. They are suppressing 600 years of actively taught self-hatred and it will take a lot more years for you lot to recover.” That statement is the very reason we built ngunitribe , to address the fact that we have 5 generations of knowledge about our ancestry that’s riddled with shame & hatred instead of being leveraged for our well-being.

The climate, plants, and shops & services available here are similar to those found South Africa and because the country is a former British colony, they speak in English mostly. Mosi is the local drink of choice, especially at Granddaddy’s. The airport has been recently upgraded, the roads and infrastructure are good. You can get by very easily; the currency is very similar to the rand. There is no uber service, but there is an equivalent if you download the their apps.

I only left the Lusaka province twice, to the Chisamba area and I would love to see the Living Stone side of the great Zambezi River, which originates from Zambia.