Village values influence societal structure
THE way Zambian society is structured is simple. It is divided into rural and urban centres. In theory, every Zambian has a village and a chief. But this is not correct. 
Many Zambians born in urban centres have never stepped a foot in a village and have no interest in knowing their chiefs or villages. As far as they are concerned a village is another tourist attraction.
A chief has no democratic credentials. But in rural areas, a chief is an important person. A chief constitutes the pulse of all chiefdoms. Chiefdoms are marked by a motley of villages dotted around them.
These villages are led by headpersons, more commonly known as “headmen”.
The ascension to the throne of a chief or headperson is hereditary. This means that anybody with ‘royal blood’ could ascend to the throne. This means that an illiterate or an irascible character could become in charge of their subjects. At times this results in a leadership vacuum in some villages. Poor leadership is largely responsible for the backward nature of most of the rural areas. There are many villagers who wake up in the morning and do not have any plans for the whole day. They have so much time on their hands that they do not know what to do with it.
The only cure for boredom that they can think of is beer.With such wastage of human resources, life in rural areas is not moving forward. Instead it is mired into the mud of stagnation. Apart from the intervention of slavery and colonialism, this type of life has been going on for centuries. The myths and legends that have been passed on from one generation to the other have survived. Some of these beliefs have been exported to urban centres and clashed with Western imports.
Therefore, a village is a wrong place to search for greatness. There are no heroic achievers in rural areas although during the struggle for independence or liberation wars of Zambia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and South Africa and other countries, there were many villagers who sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom. One reason for absence of heroic achievers in villages is due to lack of the need for excellence. Success and excellence is viewed suspiciously in villages.
Any successful person is a candidate for accusations of witchcraft. Success in farming, animal husbandry or hunting is often attributed to possession of powerful charms. This fear of being labelled a wizard or witch discourages many villagers from exploiting their full human potential.
Lack of written records has also contributed to the absence of historical heroic achievers in villages. Apart from rubble rousers like Shaka, most of our past heroes are unknown. Missionaries and colonial officers wrote most of the accounts of the traditional practices and values of the last 100 years. Some of these accounts were mere embellishments for the benefit of their Western audience. They left out issues that were not in their favour or would not advance the twin causes of “civilising the savages”, empire building and mineral exploitation.
I was born in Siamoono’s village in Chief Sipatunyana’s area in Kalomo. This village is about 40 km on the eastern side of Kalomo, off Mapatizya Mine Road. This village could also be accessed from Zimba, off Livingstone Road.
In the 1950s Siamoono’s village was a big village concentrated in one area. A big road cut through the centre of the village. Our home was on the western side of the village. The houses of each household were so near that if the neighbours were cooking meat with an occasional onion, the sweet aroma from the boiling pot would pervade the air. If the neighbour was scolding his wife for being a poor cook, the rants would be broadcast across the whole village. The broadcast would be louder if there was an altercation between neighbours.
The cause of bad blood between them could be a dog feasting on a neighbour’s newly hatched chicks or a neighbour not “looking properly” at someoneís wife. However, for kids like me, a big village like that was a sports arena. One could disappear for the whole day playing and return home only after the pangs of hunger had started to bite. I was one of those children who always returned home to eat no matter how far I had drifted to. Like many other children, I was drilled at a tender age never to eat food from other homes or accept gifts of food from strangers. Though at that time I did not know the reason, I later discovered that it was a precaution against food poisoning.
Late in the 1960s, this practice put me in an embarrassing position. I was returning to a boarding school in Zimba with a friend, when it started to rain heavily. We sought shelter at a home in a neighbouring village, about 10 kilometres from our village. We found the family having their lunch. They were eating nshima and sour milk with their bare hands. We were invited to join them. My friend accepted while I declined. That annoyed the head of the family. He insulted me and accused me of being proud and bigheaded. He said that I had refused their food because I regarded them as dirty and stinking. It was so embarrassing that we quit their shelter while it was still raining and ran to another home. At that other home, we found an elderly couple quarrelling. We ran out of their home immediately after realising what was going on.
Another food poisoning precaution that I learnt at an early age was to observe the behaviour of the person giving food. The acceptable practice was that if a woman wants to give a child or another person sweet beer, she must take a sip from the same container before handing it over. If the food being offered to the visitor was nshima, then the host must take a few lumps before surrendering.
There are no recorded historical origins of Siamoono’s village but at the time of my birth, the founder of the village was a blind old man of about 70 years. His roots lay in Zimbabwe. He was even fluent in Ndebele. I suspect that he crossed the Zambezi River during the slave trade wars and settled in Zambia. His son with a fanciful name of Siakwibisa was the headman. He was commonly called Sheleni.
On moonlit nights, the road passing through the village provided a stadium for playing all sorts of games such as hide and seek and tandabale.
In the period 1960-1961, the location of Siamoono’s village shifted from the position described above. Families moved in different directions. It is not clear the trigger for the breaking up of the village at that time. But I suspect that it had something to do with the rising tide for independence and the changes in the economic activities of the community.
Many villagers started to grow cash crops like tobacco and maize. Such people needed more space for their farming activities.
My family moved southwards. When my father and his sons were looking for a suitable place, I followed them and listened to their discussions. The most important considerations in the selection of a new place were proximity to the water source and an ideal place for siting the kraal. The place selected was ideal for both. It was bounded by Nkolongozya River on the eastern side and a plain on the western side. Water was drawn from the ponds in the plain during the rainy season or from the river. Nobody bothered much about the quality of the water. What was important was access to it.
Proximity to the river provided another attraction. There was a small waterfall nearby that made noise whenever the river was flooded. During the day, the cool spray from the cascading water provided a lot of fun to us children. In addition it was exciting to spot breams attempting to jump over some rocks and swim upstream.
One day when there was a heavy downpour I caught some fish in our courtyard. That fuelled the speculation that fish drops from heaven. It was many years later when I learnt that in their search for breeding places, different type of fish swim upstream. Sometimes such fishes ended up in the streams that drained into people’s fields or homesteads or got stranded when the water level receded.
The kraal for the cattle was not only suitable to us but to the hyenas as well. Nearly every week hyenas snatched a calf or a weak or sick cow. The way the hyenas used to manage to open the pen for calves often fired everybody’s imagination. They would pull out or break the sticks used to close the pen, grab a calf and run away with it. Sometimes a wounded calf would be rescued from the searing jaws of the hyena.
On a night when most of the village men were drunk, the calf would be lost. Such successes of the hyenas were attributed to witchcraft. It was widely believed that the hyenas were actually human beings who often turned themselves into animals. That was a recurring theme in many stories that I heard about the exploits of the hyenas. Although I saw many calves that survived hyena attacks, I never saw a person who could turn oneself into a beast.
Witchcraft and ghosts were twin beliefs that were on everybody’s lips all the time. Sometimes if we were seated around a fire and a meteorite lit up the dark sky, witchcraft was suspected. If we were seated around a fire and an owl hooted or a bush-baby cried in the dark, witchcraft was blamed and the narration of folk tales was abandoned.
In all years that I lived in the village, I witnessed several alleged incidents of witchcraft. One of them happened in1961. One night, we were all awakened by an ear-piercing scream from our neighbour, on the eastern side of the homestead. We all rushed to her home. We found her screaming and pointing at her paraffin lamp. The glass for the burning lamp was stained with blood. She kept on saying that the blood had dropped from the grass-thatched roof. I do not know whether the blood was from her nose or whether it was of animal origin. But the dry red stains of blood were visible enough for everybody to see.
On another day, we all rushed to the headman’s home after hearing that a chicken had laid a strange egg. The strange object that indeed looked like an egg was enclosed in an envelope of tissue that looked like an intestine. Again I’m not sure whether anybody was playing games at all. But the discovery of that strange object triggered off fears of witchcraft in the village. The headman invited a witchdoctor to cleanse his homestead and fortify him against evil forces.
The juiciest incident of witchcraft happened at one of the neighbouring villages.A cyclist found the headman of a village called Siasikubwela bathing at the crack of dawn in a plain. His bath water was brimming with roots and entrails of wild animals. The encounter was so sudden that the headman had no time to react and hide his nakedness. This incident spread like an oil fire in the neighbouring villages. Nobody was surprised when a famous witchfinder from Choma called Chiholyonga nabbed Siasikubwela as a wizard.
Another alleged wizard netted was actually a distant uncle of mine, from my father’s side. His name was Buluwayo. He was a rich man with a big herd of cattle and goats. At one time he treated me when I had a swollen body. I do not know whether my body was swelling due to malnutrition or something else. But after prescribing a special bath of roots and leaves that I bathed in every morning, the swelling of my body subsided.
Uncle Buluwayo was nabbed by Chiholyonga, fined a large number of animals and taken prisoner. He was accused of having four hunting traps. The four-spring types of traps were pointing in different directions. If the one pointing to the east flipped out, a male adult was trapped. If the one pointing to west went off, the victim was a female. The north one netted a child while the south one meant missing the target.
It was also alleged that the roof of his grandiose house was falling in because that was where he shared human flesh with other wizards and witches. Another rich man nabbed was accused of having hidden his heart in the sun. He could not die unless somebody had more powerful charms to neutralise his.
Apart from fining, the wizards captured were shipped to the witchdoctor’s farm for hard labour. When my uncle returned from serving his extra-judicial term, he was no longer the same. Though I never met him physically after that, I heard that one or two nuts in his head had gone missing.
Apart from witchcraft, the issue of ghosts was a popular village topic. I was told that after death, people turn into ghosts. Also I was told that wizards keep ghosts for their nefarious activities. Although I never saw a ghost, I encountered certain incidents that were attributed to ghosts. The first one occurred on one dark night. I was seated around a fire with my sisters and other children when suddenly there was a sharp hiss. The hiss was like the type made by a tree frog. We all scampered to our huts and shivered in bed with fear. The second one happened when we woke up one morning and found that rats had gnawed one of my sister’s feet at night. Ghosts were blamed for the mischief.
Another ghost incident involved a neighbour, called Siamunyo. One night after returning from a drinking spree he decided to castigate his wife. He roared and yelled for the whole night. Then from nowhere, a ghost told him to shut up. From that night his sanity was no longer the same.
[Times of Zambia]
