Rural Zambian Hospitality

Some people go to amusement parks and pay hard-earned money for rides like this. Strapped securely into our pickup, we jarred and jostled along the cratered clay-dirt road. Literally miles before, we’d turned off the main (and only paved) road, at the sign for the two small schools.

No street signs or postings of any kind marked the way to the home of my colleague Richard’s sister, Miss Mumba, just occasional forks in the dusty path. (Even Richard has trouble with her first name!) At these decisive branches he’d query clusters of school children seen ambling along in the heat of the day. They chattered among themselves before deciding which way to point us. After stopping several times and veering to other bumpier and narrower, less traveled strips of scraped earth, we finally came to the place. People immediately sprung up to greet us. It was easier to imagine I was gripping the strong, sandpapery palm of a salty bosun than that of this slight woman in her sixties. Miss Mumba subsists by farming a small plot and keeping a couple pigs and a handful of chickens. The chickens bed in a laddered, elevated pen to keep them safe from hungry dogs and foxes.

Richard informed me later that he hadn’t seen Miss Mumba in five years, and that she wasn’t really his sister, but his cousin. That Richard would refer to and visit a cousin as one would a sister sheds some light on the place accorded relationships in Zambia.

As is customary, Miss Mumba asked Richard what I would like to eat. Earlier, when we were rocking and rolling along the pockmarked Italian- and Chinese-made macadam, I happened to casually mention to Richard how much I enjoy Zambian “ground nuts” (essentially peanuts). He divulged that a “sister” of his cultivates them; we would visit her and she would give me some. Back at Miss Mumba's, a few yards away a woman hovered over a smoky fire roasting ground nuts for me, stirring them with a naked corn cob.

As I sat with others in the shade of a thatch gazebo-like dome, Richard handed me a white bowl of the raw legumes. A cat and dog dozed lazily beside each other, not exactly a lion and a lamb, but that image crossed my mind. Less peaceful was the squawking “village chicken” I noticed struggling to escape the steely grip holding it by the neck and bottom; Miss Mumba’s.

Someone asked if I ate nshima, the porridge-like maize-based Zambian staple. It suddenly dawned on me that Miss Mumba was about to kill one of her few chickens to offer us some Zambian hospitality. Richard prevailed in his protest that we needed to get back on the road to arrive at our destination before dark. It is difficult to describe how humbling it is to receive such a genuine and selfless offer of hospitality. She and her small group of friends giggled giddily when the saw the digital image of themselves.