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A 4-part blog series about the drought in Zambia, by John T. Njovu  Chatting with Nyalugwe HQ village’s relatives Photo by Ngosa Banda @JTN 2024 Part 1. The wrath of the ancestral spirits and natureThe four goats slowly headed toward the gazebo. The old woman, moving just as slowly, started to stand up in her gazebo. Her gazebo served as a kitchen as well as the meeting and eating place. She held her traditional wrapper, the chitenge, with both hands tightly around her neck and chest. The chitenge was faded and earthen coloured. It would have long been torn or rotten if it had been woven of cotton; it had withstood multiple usage. Bare footed she stepped out to meet them. It was a bony left limb that had lifted up the chitenge and displayed ribs devoid of much flesh. Her flesh was wrinkled much more around her tummy. The tummy was almost touching her spine. The skin was tight around her head and the deep lobs around her mouth gave her a perpetual unhappy look. Her unplaited crinkly and kinky hair was wholly white. No comb seemed to have touched the hair for a long while. She had not worn the traditional head-ker-chief. Two of the adult goats leaped away. The two kids mehed at her as they lazily eyed the skeleton in front of them. She shouted at them, and they leaped off to join their parents. After shooing them, she went back into her gazebo. She tightened the thin chitenge covering her body as she sat down on the bare cold floor. She then looked forlornly at the thick dark porridge in her small aluminum pot and boiled pumpkin leaves on her small plastic plate. They were leftovers from her meal yesterday. The national staple food is maize - gaga. The thick porridge cooked using maize flour was called nshima. The dried pumpkin leaves were usually cooked in times of scarcity of relish. The ancient ones used to dry foods in times of plenty. However, not many people do this anymore. The dry pumpkin leaves are usually cooked with a seasoning of salt and additional ingredients of tomatoes, onions and cooking oil. Apart from coarse salt, she had no additional ingredients. She faced the goats and waved threateningly at them. The nearby chickens and sparrows instinctively jumped and screeched away. However, the goats eyeing her pots with hungry eyes remained motionless. When there was no grass in the bush around the village, livestock were usually fed on by-products of maize milling and left overs from meals. In times of abundance, gaga was fed to livestock. However, it was their gaga that she had used to cook the nshima. She muttered as she looked around on the earthen floor for something to throw at them. The centre of the gazebo where the cold ashes were had no stones. She had no energy to fetch firewood from the forest. She had no child or dependent to help her fetch water from the river and free forest products from the forest. The villagers had to circumvent for many kilometres the nearby foreign owned safari camps to be able to have access to free forest products. She sighed as she held her wrapper tightly around her willow body. The sun was lazy that morning. She called out a name. There was no response. She picked up the utensils and walked over to a rondavel. She again called out a name. A male voice boomed angrily behind the door. “Food! Here is food for you my son,” she quietly responded. A lanky man came around the door. He held his belt less pair of trousers by its front and eyed her blankly. A tattered shirt covered his bony upper. She greeted and proffered the pot to him. He grabbed the pot without a word and quickly sat down.  Image created by John T. Njovu using CoPilot AI @JTN 2024 The doorway showed that no broom had ever touched the floor of the building. The grey clay was peeling off the hut. Reeds weaved around the wooden poles were being attacked by termites and moths. in some parts. He forked the nshima with his dirty hands and shoved it into his bearded mouth. Earth and body oil had turned his hair and beard into dry mats. They had coated his body thickly. Water was a stranger to his body. “You shall choke! Eat slowly. And there is relish here,” she said quietly to him as she placed the plastic plate in front of him. He looked at it with disdain. Snorted deeply, picked up the plate and threw it away. The goats scrambled for the vegie. The old woman covered her face and u-turned. The goats got closer to her son. Some rubbed themselves on the rondavel’s wall while keeping an eye on the eating man. “Hmmm, she has a job. He has finished her pots and cups,” said a bystander to no one in particular. Her son was renowned for breaking utensil in rage when he was not happy with his mother’s provisions. The old woman glanced at the speaker and thrust her chin up and her tightened lips putted up. She muttered as she heard the thump of a drum in the distance. It competed with the blare of gospel music from the speakers of the newly opened church. “Psalm seven verses to nine says…” Instantly a small aluminium pot came flying in the air and he ducked. It narrowly missed him, but he continued speaking. “Hmmm, it’s early in the morning and they have started dancing and drinking,” the bystander remarked to no one in particular. The old woman walked over from the gazebo and picked up the pot. She muttered as she looked up at the man facing her son’s door. As she walked back, she looked towards the local gin distillery as the throbbing of a bass drum rose up. Her voice was low but filled with anger as she spoke to no one in particular, “No, no, no, no! You cannot play such sacred music at a drinking hut. That is mocking the ancestral spirits! How can they stop being angry with us if we continue behaving badly. I swear upon the graves of my children, this world is going to end one day badly!”  Commercial nyau (secret male society) dance Photo by Ngosa Banda @JTN 2024 Another drum joined the first drum. Her heart started thumping when the lead drum sounded. Its throbbing soprano vibration made even her son come out of his hut and look towards the bush. She recognised the beat of the call to ancestral spirits. She hurriedly sat down. There was a baboon’s bark and sounds of rattles. The usher merged from the bush followed by dancers of the male secret society, nyau. The society was banned in colonial times as its rituals and dances were considered demonic by Christian missionaries. In the days when traditions were adhered to, they only appeared from the graveyard when there was a fool moon. They would enter the village for the masquerade dance celebrating life. “We shall all die of hunger this year,” sung the lead nyau. Cycles of drought Such scenes are not unusual in the unfolding adverse impacts of climate change in rural Zambia. The drought had worsened food scarcity and poverty. Many of the villagers talked of past droughts in the decade cycles of drought. They consider the last rainy season as the worst in history. I visited Nyalugwe HQ, Kautukilo, Nyamwalika, Mvuwa, Tiopa Mukamwa and Kacholola’s Elina villages in the Nyalugwe chiefdom and Tangulani village in chief Ndake’s chiefdom. Both are chiefdoms of the Nsenga ethnic group of Nyimba district. It is one of the rural areas in Zambia dependent on farming and mostly adversely affected by drought. The wondered how they will survive until the next harvest in March-April 2025. They requested for urgent help from the government, urban relatives, and well-wishers. They may not have been aware that the government had already declared the 2023/24 farming season a disaster and was making efforts to supply relief food to vulnerable communities. Though the residents of Kautukilo also had a poor farming season, they had a bumper harvest of indigenous rice. It is grown in small quantities along the Chilinga stream north of their village. Elephants and other herbivories seem no longer to reach the villagers’ gardens. The chiefdom does not have chigayo (milling equipment) to mill rice. It has several for maize milling. It’s the Portuguese that had brought maize to the chiefdom. The indigenous people found maize easier to grow than their indigenous rice, rye, sorghum and millet. Some of the villagers argued that if they had continued growing sorghum and millet, they would have a better yield even during the drought. They also explained that they used to survive on usala and usika (white roots that are carrot like), wild vegetables and wild fruits in time of a drought. The masau berry grows widely along the Luangwa River. It is loved by humans and herbivores. The masau trees are fruiting and their fruits will ripen in June-July. The villagers hope to gather and sell them in urban areas. Read Part 2. Broken down family ties
Gratitude on data collection assistance on climate change in the Luangwa valley
There is not much data on the effects of climate change and economics of climate change in Zambia or the rest of Africa. I have been using my own resources to start studying and filming the effects of climate change in the Luangwa basin. I am grateful to receive a pledge of support from EvalIndigenous to support my efforts. This has been made possible through its receipt of a 2024 grant from the Ford Foundation.
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