KAKABALIKA! SOMEDAY, THE SUN WILL SHINE IN BANGWEULU SWAMPS

It was in the 80s. I was going to catch some fledglings with my cousin from one of the bird sanctuaries in the Bangweulu swamps. Fledglings made excellent relish because of their tender meat and great taste. You had nothing to throw away! It was “normal” for fishermen from nearby fishing camps to capture small birds from their nests from time to time to have some nutritional variety, as long as the “fools” from Department of National Parks and Wildlife were still asleep. Many times, we got away with hundreds of fledglings of different species for our own consumption and for sale to villagers when we returned to the village.

Victims of flash floods wading through water  in Lunga. Pic by LDA

On this particular eventful trip, on our way, a bird dropped its guano (pooped) on me. I exclaimed in disgust at the mess as I washed away the poop and wiped my face. To my surprise, my cousin who was twice older than me, advised me not to clean it up as that was a “sign of blessings or I was very lucky.”

Looking back, I now appreciate what a blessing it really was which we were both busy messing up! Of course, not in the spiritual sense, the karma interpretation that my cousin believed, but in a totally different sense.

Let me explain it by way of a fable I learnt from elders at the same fishing camp:

“One day, a man had a dream. One of his ancestors asked him to travel to some place and collect the treasure they had hidden for his generation. The man narrated the dream to elders of the village who later tasked him and two others to follow through the dream and go fetch the treasure.

“The team left as per instructions from the ancestor. After walking a very long distance, the team leader, the dreamer, was struck by a mysterious disease (conjunctivitis) that terribly affected his sight. Soon, eye discharge covered his eyes and so could not see. The other men in trying to help him, not knowing that the malady was contagious, got the disease too. They were all blinded like biblical Saul. They sat and lamented on this misfortune and wondered why their ancestor could lead them that far just to strike them with such a strange illness.

“Before they were blinded, they had seen some place that had what looked like mango trees in the distance, not very far from where they stood. They decided to grope in that direction. It was getting late in the evening and they needed to find where to sleep. Tired and hopeless, each of them found a place in some shade to sleep. As they cleared the area, the dreamer kept hitting and breaking something that produced some sharp sound. He picked up a broken piece and examined it carefully.  He realized it was from a clay pot. He stopped hitting it.  As he stretched his foot while sleeping, he bumped into another pot. He told his colleagues that they would never leave that place till they healed or they would die there.

“Five days passed, their ready-made food had run out and they feared they would starve to death. However, elders from the village, realizing that something might have gone wrong with the team for they expected them back in two days, sent a brave young man to follow them with more ration to last another two days.

“The young man tracked their footprints till he found the hopeless, messy sick men. He pounded a concoction of leaves, put it in a gourd full of water and later dropped the solution in their eyes. The continuous flow of eye discharge stopped and the men began to see. They saw that the clay pot on which the dreamer was sitting had something glittering around. Next to it was another pot. When they dug them out, they discovered diamond in one and gold in the other. So, they found the treasure left for them by their ancestors. Thanks to the brave young man.”

Indeed, like my cousin “prophesied,” it was and still is a blessing to have been born in this area and to have so much wildlife in the Bangweulu Swamps; Four Hundred and Forty Two (442) bird species, Eighty (80) plus fish species, Thousands of Black Lechwe and other animals, elephants, hippos, fresh water plus a marvelous scenery.

But, Like the blind men in the fable, while we had so much wealth discovered by our ancestors, we did not see the gold and diamond on which we sat. Instead, we were busy fidgeting and breaking the pots that contained wealth for several generations. We indiscriminately hunted the birds and animals at every opportunity. We hated those who protected them for us. We called them names!

Whenever we saw white tourists come and take pictures of birds and animals, we got amazed at the way these crazy people “wasted their time” taking useless pictures instead of catching live birds. We thought they were actually very stupid. (They have made fortunes out of these photographs in terms of catalogues, Websites, trophies and books while our eyes were still stapled by thick eye discharge.)

Today, like the brave young man in the story, more and more of our young people are getting educated. They are getting the ointment to our blindness ready. Soon we will have indigenous Unga / Bisa fisheries officers, ornithologists, environmentalists, conservationists, and related professionals. This is no longer a mere dream as we have seen the zeal of natives to get involved in taking charge of their own affairs. Teachers are going back home to teach. Development will no longer be an affair of one or two political officers.

Scenes of a government official  parking his executive car at the banks of Luapula river, 90 kilometers away, sees Bangweulu Swamps through a Chinese made Binoculars and issue instructions to his officers so the people can either abandon the flooding islands or ban fishing for years, or even stop slaughtering animals. We will have our own new generation doing what is right and  best for their area.  Someday, they will manage the parks, and protect what they can and benefit to the fullest.

As I write this, I am beaming with confidence that someday, the sun will shine in Bangweulu Swamps.

 Kakabalika bawesu!