Kulamba, Nyau and Juju

At the end of August there is a festival called Kulamba held in Katete, my home town. It’s one of the biggest cultural festivals in Zambia and is often attended by the Presidents of Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique.



I’ll start by saying that I don’t actually know anything. I went and asked questions and took a lot of pictures, but what I’m going to tell you is just what I gathered from asking friends and observing, so there’s a good chance that a lot isn’t true. That being said, it would be interesting to see how far off I am, since Zambians are very reluctant to say “I don’t know” and prefer to offer their best guess, I could be WAY off!

Every year for a few hundred years chiefs from all over the Chewa fiefdom would bring some of their harvests and reports of the year to the Paramount Chief, Kalonga Gawa Uni ( something Divider of Land) a retired engineer for the government run electricity company. They would tell the paramount chief about all of their troubles and if some areas had small harvests he would redistribute from other areas. I don’t think this really happens anymore because instead of harvest being brought, money, coffee tables and LG washing machines were brought. Then after their reports comes the Nyau, traditional dancers, representing religious spirits. It’s technically against the law to say that they are people dressed as animals, they are animals. I thought they were just regular people who would come and dance on special occasions, but they are full time Nyau, some taken from as young as seven years old! They live separately and don’t have jobs and apparently, if you go to where they train, they will either kill you or make you become a Nyau for the rest of your life. They sleep in graveyards and have something to do with witchcraft, leading to missionaries enforcing a total ban of the Kulamba festival from the 1930’s to 1984, until it was restarted by the current Chief Gawa Uni. There are no women Nyau, just men.

The Nyau dancing was pretty cool. Rarely always coordinated as a group or rehearsed, they come onto the stage and dance for about 5 minutes to drums and then they’re off. There are people who lead them as they walk and dance, I didn’t know why until I saw how small eye holes were in masks, if they even had eye slits! Some would just come and dance, some climbed tall poles and danced on the poles, balancing on their bellies on top! Some were full animals, goats, cattle and unknown things. Then the real highlight for me was when one Nyau climbed a pole and got on a metal wire tied between the pole and a nearby tree. He sat on the wire, straddling it between each legs, making me and about 4,000 other people really cringe as he flossed. Then another Nyau got on the other side of the wire and that’s when it really got interesting! They both lay down on the wire facing each other, then slid towards the middle until they were face to face where they paused. This is where I thought it would end. Much to my surprise, one animal smoothly slipped underneath the wire and then they continued moving, climbing over, past and through (?) each other until they had switched sides on a 3mm metal wire!! Pretty incredible to see!



There was one more excitement before the end of the festival. Zambians are afraid of snakes, REALLY afraid, and for good reason, Steph has seen lots of people lose limbs to snake bites, but it’s more than that to Zambians. They are also associated with evil spirits. Well all of the sudden a snake appeared somewhere in the crowd of several thousand people and all hell broke loose! Everyone stood up meaning no one could see anything and everyone starting shouting “SNAKE!!!” and trying to move, but of course you couldn’t because we were all packed like sardines in the arena. Nobody around me knew what was going on, and I guessed that a wild snake had accidentally found it’s way into the ceremony. It turned out it wasn’t one snake but three, and they were all part of the dance with the Nyau.



Chief Kalonga Gawa Undi entered in a massive procession to his “throne” (Lazyboy Recliner) at his “Royal Palace” (fairly modest house). He was dressed all white in the middle of a massive procession, followed by about 5 large ivory elephant tusks. He remained in his throne, mostly inactive until the end of the ceremony, at which point he got up and left, with his procession, marking the end of Kulamba, what a day!!

I walked out with a good friend. I had previously told him before that I didn’t believe in Juju, witchcraft, witchdoctors or any of that other stuff. He turned to me and said “See Benson, after seeing those Nyau, can’t you believe in magic now?”