SWAMPY TALES

ABA- UNGA NEVER DIE! Yes, you read right. Ungas never die! They only transform. To know what I mean, read on. I lived in a village at the northern end of Bwalya Mponda chiefdom. The next, known as Maishike was north-east. There was my grandfather’s desolate village of Matolongo , otherwise known up to now as Chibolya, somewhere in between. Most of the evenings, we could see some huge bright torch light further down Chibolya and occasionally some sound of gunfire.   One day, I asked my mother where the bright torch- light was coming from: “It’s Musanika (Torchbearer). He’s a dead person walking by the shores of Chibolya.” “You mean a ghost? What about the gunfire?” “Oh, I never told you,” she said, with a gentle love tap on my shoulder. “The gunfire is real and it’s coming from another dead man called Sande Puwa.” “Who is Sande Puwa and why does he fire guns and at what?” I asked out of typical child curiosity. “Sande Puwa was a skillful hunter. Durin...

UKULEYAPO: BU- UNGA WAY OF SHARING Any Unga who has ever lived in the vicinity of our swamps is familiar with these unwritten Unga statutes : Ukuleyapo and Ukuleshako . In Cibemba language, Ukulesha means stopping or preventing someone from doing something. But in our Lunga, the same word means voluntary giving a portion of what you have whenever you meet someone, known or stranger; specially to do with fish or meat. Ukuleyapo means unrestricted way of taking your pick out of someone’s catch. In ukuleshako, the fisherman or the hunter chooses what to give you. You don’t choose for yourself. There are parts of the animal, known as “ Ifilewa ” that you can pick freely without the owner frowning at all.   Some of these are liver, heart, intestines, abdomen, spleen, kidneys, etc. Other parts of the meat can only be given to you by the hunter. With fish, it will depend on your relationship with the fisherman. You can choose any size if you know each other. Otherwise, ...

THE LUNGA WE WANT Two years ago, I grew a breed of small groundnuts we locally call Solontoni. So the yield could have been better that we had difficulties with what to do with them apart from pounding and using them in vegetables, kusashila . They were in a small sack, less than twenty-five kilos of shelled nuts. My wife hesitated to use all that fo r kusashila and asked me what else we could do with them. “As a salesman, where do you think we can sell this to realize what we spent, even if it’s just to break even?” she asked. It got me thinking. As a salesperson, she expected me to find a market. Who would buy them at a price that would give us some return on our investment? “What if we roasted them, packaged them in small plastics, drop them at taverns so patrons can get them for some snacks?” I said. My partner was thinking of doing the same but selling by the roadside. My idea was that if we sold them by the roadside, we would price our product less, ...