Mwabonwa! (Welcome!)

Mwabuka buti! After a short hiatus, welcome to the – no doubt eagerly anticipated – Zambian installment of Live Below the Line. I’m into the fourth week of my trip and returned to Livingstone today from Nakazuka village in Kasungula District, where I’ll be spending the majority of my time between now and the end of June.

Meet the family

Titus, Sylvia and their five children – Melvin, Steven, Veronica, Alfred and Leonard (aka Dembo) – live on a smallholding in Nakazuka village, along with 25 goats, 10 cows, 7 dogs, a couple of cats, a handful of chickens and one (now sadly deceased) puff adder.

Titus

Sylvia

 

Melvin

Steven

Vero

Alfred

Dembo

Titus is a small-scale farmer, growing a variety of crops for both consumption and sale, and as rural Zambians go, the family are food secure and have a relatively stable income from the sale of livestock and crops, particularly maize. 

 

For those of you aware of my (virtually) lifelong aspirations towards miniature zoo-keeping, Nakazuka is a haven for tiny animals:

                            

Food for thought

Maize is the staple crop of almost all Zambian smallholders, and the mainstay of the Zambian diet. Most commonly, it is ground to produce mealie meal (used for nsima and mealie porridge), although it is also eaten boiled or roasted on the cob, as samp (removed from the cob and boiled until soft), as popcorn or even brewed into the local bukoko (sweet beer). I have yet to ascertain whether this is, in fact, alcoholic, although I am inclined to think otherwise, given that three-year-old Leonard drinks about ten cups a day of the stuff:

maize beer

Nothing is wasted - the stalks are composted and the leaves used as fuel. Alfred has even found a novel use for the cobs as oxen for his miniature cart:

 

Aside from maize, Titus also grows rape (a type of green vegetable, similar to kale), spring onions, aubergines, impwas (a local variety of baby aubergines), pumpkins, cowpeas (green beans), velvet beans (broad beans), groundnuts (peanuts), sweet potatoes and sunflowers at various times of the year, and there is a roaring local trade in fruit, particularly oranges.

harvesting oranges

A typical day’s menu

Breakfast: sweet potatoes and a cup of sweet tea

 

Lunch: nsima and tomato and spring onion sauce with omelette, fried cabbage or fried aubergine

Dinner: nsima and tomato and spring onion sauce with boiled rape or mustard spinach, omelette or kapinta (tiny dried fish)

nsima, omlette, tomato and spring onion sauce

nsima and kapinta

nsima, omlette, fried aubergine and tomato and spring onion sauce

 Snacks: baobab pods, bobola nuts (chickpeas), bananas, oranges, guava, roasted groundnuts, boiled pumpkins, local cucumbers

baobab fruit

Regrettably, I had a somewhat extreme birthday foray into the world of e-numbers, additives and artificial flavours:

Anyway, that’s all for now – I should be back in a fortnight or so with a second installment. Until then, twalumba!

PS: A massive thankyou to everyone who's donated already - anyone who hasn't and would like to, please visit my Live Below the Line for Restless Development page at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/pipcrockett