Zambia

There’s something magical to me about the countries starting with “Z.” (Oh, and that’s “Z” pronounced Zed and not Zee. That’s important to me…) I don’t know why—it’s irrational. Or is it? The music of certain words is of central importance in my life. That’s why I post poems at the end of these explanations. Zambia. Independent from the UK on this day in 1964.

Zambia. Surrounded by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, by Tanzania and Malawi, by Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. Capital: Lusaka.

Zambia—it’s been inhabited for thousands of years. During the Bantu expansion the Tonga people came to Zambia, followed by the Nkoya people. Then the Nsokolo people and the Ngoni people. More magical sounds. The name Zambia comes from the Zambezi river. Before that the British called it Northern Rhodesia. The British arrived in the late nineteenth-century, claiming the area as a British protectorate.

Zambia and copper. The Copperbelt lies in the northwest, and the economy has been dominated by copper mining, though recently the government has been trying to diversify.

Zambia and independence: enter the one-party state under Kenneth Kuanda. Multi-party elections arrived in 1991. In 1997, a coup d’etat. Other problems—HIV/AIDS, sadly not a surprise.

Zambia and poetry. I looked, and what I found comes from a tradition of oral poetry—from an article by J K Rennie. “Cattle, Conflict, and Court Cases: The Praise Poetry of Ila Leadership” from Research in African Literature, the Winter 1984 issue.

Shikaumbu at the Battle of Isanvu

Move over, let me through, I am the lion who kills 
     by day!
You don’t speak of Isanvu, where Kalubi built; we
     churned blood in the mud, they never retreated,
     Mulangu Nalukanko;
This, this, this is war, Moonga!

—from “Cattle, Conflict and Court Cases: The Praise Poetry of Ila Leadership,” by J K Rennie. Reseach in African Literature.