If you ask a Zambian what they’d like for lunch, or dinner, they are most likely to say ‘nshima’. I have tried nshima and I just can’t stomach it. We were Invited out for dinner one evening and, wanting to please my generous hosts, I forced down a few forkfuls of the dense, sticky white paste. I exchanged a furtive glance of desperation with my Husband. I knew he was waiting to see what I would do - gagging at the dinner table is not a great look. My handbag was slung over the back of my chair and for a moment, I was tempted.

One Christmas, sitting at the dinner table when I was about seven years old, I’d watched with silent astonishment as my alcoholic grandmother discreetly picked up her black patent leather handbag from the floor. Momentarily resting it on her lap, she unfastened the gold clasps, and with the accuracy of a cocktail waiter vomited into it. She then delicately replaced the bag at her feet. No one flinched. A silent beat hung over our collectively held breaths, broken by my mother offering more sprouts. My father enthusiastically pulled a cracker with my sister. I sat frozen in my chair, picturing the contents of her bag swimming in sick - her crocodile-skin purse and Dior lipstick, the silver fold-away mirror, the white laced handkerchief she frequently used to dab at my face…

I wondered if I could pull off that stunt in my handbag now? I weighed up the potential discretion of the nine-year old boy seated opposite me. Nope, he’d call me out, without a doubt. I would have to be honest and leave the nshima.

Nshima is made from maize or, as I knew it growing up, sweetcorn. The maize corns are separated from the husks and ground into a flour, which is then boiled in water until it forms a thick white doughy paste. Nshima is served with ‘relish’, which is a saucy mixture of mouse or insects, or in more affluent households, chicken or fish. Or it can be a vegetable-based relish using spinach or rape or any other pulverised vegetable. The correct way to eat nshima is to take a blob in your fingers, scoop a generous dab of relish into it, and then roll it into a mouth-sized ball. It’s incredibly filling (so I’m told) and its nutritional value is limited. Diet and lifestyle-related diseases are rising in Zambia, and here in Mfuwe is no different.

*Nshima ready to serve (Photo credit: Emmanuel Njobvu)*

Last year I spent some time with a Western Doctor who’d developed a local education programme to tackle the growing problem of obesity and heart disease. I was fortunate enough to be invited to sit in on a discussion with local community workers, whom he was asking to spread his message. All good so far. However, the central tenet of his message was ‘Be Less Zambian’. By this, he meant for them to eat less nshima and to eat a more varied diet. Over and over, he implored a roomful of Zambians to ‘Be Less Zambian.’

I was struck by the politics of this statement. In one sense, he was absolutely correct – eating nshima is wrapped up in the Zambian cultural identity. Almost everyone, rich and poor and everything in-between, eats it every day. It’s unthinkable that a celebration or a community gathering would take place without a serving of nshima for everyone present. I’m told that a Zambian doesn’t feel like he/she has eaten unless they’ve had nshima. Asking people to turn away from Nshima is like asking them to turn away from their Zambian identity, to Be Less Zambian. But as I tried to read the room, I considered how I would feel if a Zambian Doctor instructed me to Be Less British? ‘Drink less tea, and Be Less British.’ How would that go down at a community meeting in Manchester, I wondered? As a strategy for persuading Zambians to adopt a healthier diet, I was curious to see whether it would fly.

Not long afterwards, I spent some time with Timothy Phiri, whose NGO Mizu Eco-Care works to educate Zambians about sustainable farming. Timothy explained to me that nshima has only been a staple part of the Zambian diet since the 1950’s. Before then, many different varieties of maize and other crops such as cassava, millet and sorghum were grown across the country. These other crops are much less susceptible to drought and provide a more nutritionally rounded diet. At the present time, 35% of Zambian children are malnourished enough to suffer from stunted growth. The pernicious effect on cognitive development is surely devastating. Nshima is evidently not providing the population with what it needs, so why is it embraced with such unequivocal enthusiasm? What happened in the 1950’s?

Copper Mining, that’s what happened.

Maize is a new world crop that arrived in Africa from Brazil, and was later adopted by the slave traders. It was a calorific food that stored well on long voyages. In the mid 19th Century, as Europeans developed the copper industry in Zambia, they needed a reliable, cheap food source for the newly industrialised population. Europeans secured a monopoly on the maize farms and introduced modern farming techniques, including the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Exports of maize provided useful foreign exchange resources. Through a number of policy decisions and interventions, including the Maize Control Boards (MCBs), maize farming was sold to the Zambian people as the way to a modern, money-based economy. Over time, the Zambian population adapted to growing, and eating more and more maize.

*Weeding and planting is manual. Fertilisers and pesticides are hand-sprayed.*

However, the dominance of maize led to the abandonment of other, more drought-resistant, crops such as millet, sorghum and cassava. The maize seeds cultivated and distributed were of one particular type, leading over time to the exclusion of other varieties. The indoctrination of the Zambian people into this way of thinking, only a few generations ago, was so complete that, to this day, a farmer who grows maize using fertilisers and pesticides is considered a ‘good farmer’. The stigma of being a ‘bad farmer’ – growing without chemicals and harvesting seeds for the next year, remains stubbornly regarded as a ‘backward’ practice. Meanwhile, Europe has realised what a disaster chemicals can be; by 2021 over 15.6 million hectares of agricultural land had been certified as organic and the numbers continue to grow each year as consumer demand for organic food rises.

In 1950 my Grandfather, Ian MacDonald Lawther, boarded the Bloemfontein Castle for its maiden voyage, bound for Port Elizabeth in South Africa, with his wife and three children. They were to begin a new life in what was then Northern Rhodesia, leaving behind everything and everyone they knew. My grandfather was an experienced mining engineer and took up a senior position in the Rhokana Mining Corporation, based in Kitwe.

I don’t remember my Granddad Lawther, as he died when I was very young. From what I know of him, he was very much a man of his time and background - educated at Mill Hill in London and an enthusiastic rugby player and cricketer (a member of the MCC) - in many ways the epitome of a colonial man in Africa. I wish I could have a conversation with him now, to find out what role he played - if any - in the development of maize as a mono-crop to feed the mineworkers. It’s hard to deny that, for their own profit and convenience, an industry led by white Europeans changed the food culture of an entire nation. And now Zambia is paying the price, with a drought-vulnerable staple food that does not adequately nourish its population. Traditional farming methods that are kind to the planet, that support biodiversity and soil health, providing nutritious varied diets, are shunned as ‘backwards’ because - possibly - my ancestors told them so. My grandfather and many others like him, brought skills, experience and investment into Zambia, establishing an industry that today represents about 12% of the country’s GDP. But the legacy of those days is multi-layered; Zambia, like so many other parts of Africa has a complicated inheritance of colonialism.

People like my friend Timothy Phiri are making the case for change, but it’s slow and painstaking work, project-by-project, field-by-field, re-introducing forgotten seeds and ways of farming in harmony with nature. I wonder if the Doctor’s message of Being Less Zambian would be more effective if it was changed to ‘Be Less Colonial’ or Be More Zambian’. Be true to your ancestor’s real knowledge. Go back beyond the influence of profit-driven mining companies and re-discover what your great, great grandparents knew.

I’m proud of my heritage, but I hope I have the honesty and courage to acknowledge that my grandparents likely did things that, while acceptable in their time, would now make my fingers curl with outrage. They are no longer here to explain or defend themselves. I don’t carry this knowledge as a burden—that would be pointlessly self-destructive—but as a lens through which I can better understand myself, Zambia, and its people. Viewing life here from this perspective makes me grateful for the chance to be a good ancestor, to look forward as well as back, and to leave a different kind of mark on this beautiful land

*A hippo’s mark on the land - I hope to tread lightly here.*

References: Nicholas Sitko for his paper titled: Maize, Food Insecurity, and the Field of Performance in Southern Zambia, 2008.

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Potholes and Passages