Zambia is the country of the Victoria Falls, which it shares with Zimbabwe. It is the ideal and almost unknown destination for adventurous safaris, in contact with the wildest and most authentic nature in the whole of Africa, but it is also home to a mosaic of cultures, a kaleidoscope of some 70 peoples, each with their own traditions, characterised by a multitude of ancestral ceremonies that are among the most colourful and fascinating in Southern Africa.
There are many ceremonies and initiations that are perpetuated among the colourful Zambian population. While the country’s official religion today is Christianity, each region, each people, each community, have remained deeply attached to their ancestral, animist traditions.
A multitude of festivals, ceremonies and festivities related mainly to the cyclical nature of the seasons, harvesting or fishing, and the initiations of the new generations, of which the oldest and most fascinating, renowned throughout the country for their collective involvement, are four: the Mutomboko ceremony of the Lunda-Kazembe Dynasty, the Shimunenga ceremony of the Ba-Ila people, and the two not-to-be-missed Kuomboka of the Lozi people and the Likumbi Lya Mize of the Luvale people.
The Kuomboka ceremony is by far the most famous and most heartfelt in Zambia and takes place every year between March and April, when the King of the Lozi people, the Litunga, in Barotseland, leaves his winter palace and the flood plains now inundated by the waters of the Zambezi, with his retinue and his people, to reach the summer palace some 15 km away on the safe lands of the highlands. The journey lasts the whole day and takes place in a procession of traditional boats, inaugurated by the richly decorated King’s boat.
An electrifying ceremonial involving the entire Lozi population, in a seasonal transhumance that originated some 300 years ago and is still in use today. It is the King himself who decrees the exact date of the collective migration, based on the level reached by the Zambezi, which will take them from the village of Leauli on the plain, to the village of Limulunga, sheltered from the floods. A moment of great emotion and euphoria, amid drum rolls, a jubilation of mokoro canoes, hypnotic songs and dances, which festively follow the King’s boat, the Nalikwanda, propelled by a multitude of rowers and topped by a monumental sculpture of an elephant, and that of the Queen (Moyo). A truly impressive and enthralling spectacle.
In the far west of Zambia, near the town of Zambesi, the historic ceremony of the Likumbi Lya Mize of the Luvale people is perpetuated in August. It is the concluding part of the complex Mukanda initiation rite, a three-month training course to adult life, of young adolescents who are also circumcised. The ceremony is accompanied by the coming out of a multitude of Makishi masks with their dances, declared Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2008.
Mize is the name of the village that hosts the traditional Luvale court, not far from the town of Zambezi. The Makishi dancers and their beautiful, large masks impersonate the spirits of the ancestors who accompany each initiate in his or her training. At the beginning of the Mukanda, the young people are escorted by the masks and the women towards the river, symbolising the passage to the Hereafter, since they will die as children and resurrect after their training in a secret and isolated place, returning to the world of the living as adults, on the day of the Likumbi Lya Mize. The ceremony thus celebrates a kind of collective resurrection, in which hundreds of different Makishi masks/spirits accompany the young initiates towards the town of Zambezi and the court of Mize, shouting and making incomprehensible sounds, amidst dances and songs, colours and dazzling rhythms, welcomed by the community and festive mothers.
