Some 200km from Solwezi is the rather pleasant, peaceful town of Kasempa. Unlike most Zambian towns it has refrained from developing in a linear fashion, and there is a degree of planning that means it does not suffer from the haphazard and disorganised chaos that afflicts many Zambian towns. It is also fortunate to have a landmark in the form of Kamusongolwa Hill, a peak of roughly a few hundred metres. It is nothing astounding, but it is welcome sight after endless miles of gently undulating bush that spans the north-western lands of Zambia.
We went there to hand out questionnaires to house owners in order to get reliable information on land ownership and planning permission. Record keeping systems in the office where I am working are not great (ideally, this information should be recorded adequately from the office as well as getting information from other government departments). The most simple of tasks seem to be difficult here sometimes.
Upon arrival, our first job was to call in at the district council offices. There is a department that manages the opening up of residential areas and handles payments for rates and the like. We requested assistance and we were given the affable Mr Mutoka, who could well be Mr Kasempa if there was such a prize. He seemed to know everyone in town. He would prove to be very useful in helping to escort us around the areas where we had earmarked for survey.
Mr Mutoka wore a body warmer every day in 30 plus degree heat. It made me uncomfortable just looking at him. For a country of men and women that used to go hunting in cloth to cover private parts, I am endlessly amazed at how much Zambians like to wear layers of clothes. Iesu Grist, this is a country where homes do not require central heating!
Nzubo (home)
So with Mr Mutoka in tow and my colleague, Vincent, we went from house to house. It was an interesting experience and provided an insight into Zambian home life.
The majority of homes we visited had someone home even as it was the working day, and there was always someone doing some gardening, some crop work, some food preparation. The front of the house is generally unused and redundant – the back is where life occurs. You rarely see people coming through the front door when they leave or enter. Even in Solwezi my neighbours use the back door and I use the front. Someone can do an anthropological study on that one.
The maids prepare food (and clean) all morning, and most of the time the smell of nshima (maize meal cooked with boiling water) drifts through the air. Kitchens are used but most people prefer to prepare food outside under their kinzana (an open rotund structure supported by wooden poles with a thatched roof made of local plants) with a brazier and some pots. It shows that despite the influence of Western houses with inclusive kitchens, Zambians still tend to enjoy having a kinzanza in the garden. They will sometimes still cook outside using braziers even if electricity is available.
Another noticeable characteristic of Zambian homes, especially in areas where the houses are quite close together, is the garden life. Gardens tend be an assembly of plants, crops, mud, and rubbish – which is randomly strewn everywhere by the wind. As there is no collection by the council people bury rubbish in a ditch in their back garden and then burn it once in a while. You also get animals walking around – chickens, dogs (always barking – no one seems to walk their dogs), goats... It’s anyone’s guess who owns the animals. We even saw a magnificent turkey at one house. I asked the boy we were talking to if he was getting it ready for Christmas and he just looked at me like I was a can of Ronseal.
The greetings
Kasempa is a Kaonde town so Kikaonde is predominantly spoken. Greeting one another in Zambia is an important part of the day. Here you shake hands every day when you first meet. A ‘hello’ followed by a ‘how are you?’ is standard if one is speaking English. It’s almost as if ‘how are you?’ is unnecessary. You just automatically reply that you are fine. You’re not going to stop and tell someone you don’t know you have haemorrhoids or something, are you?*
As we went round the houses it was interesting to see how I was greeted. Most people would address my colleagues in Kikaonde and then address me in English with ‘How are you, sir?’ There were times, though, when I was addressed in Kikaonde, and luckily life in Solwezi has equipped me for such questions. Here are three select classics:
Byepi, mwan? (How are you?)
Bulongo tu, mwane (I am fine)
Mwane sank you, mwane (Your welcome)
Interestingly the Kaondes adopted ‘thank you’ as a ‘you’re welcome’ gesture, but for native Kikaonde speakers pronouncing the ‘th’ like in thank you is difficult, so it became ‘sank you’. I do find it strange how they adopted this into the language. Mwane is an honorific particle and is widely used in the languages of North Western Province.
I like to watch people greet in the street, at the market, etc. For those greeting without being in contact, the process involves crouching slightly and slowly clapping the hands together then gently opening and closing several times. The right arm is also drawn across the chest and patted slightly on the left breast. There is also a slight crouch, almost like a curtsy, which is chiefly used by women. And as for greetings by hand, well, there are several different handshakes that would take up a whole new blog post...
Plots and plots of issues
The trip to Kasempa gave me a visual understanding of the many problems that occur in urban areas. I want to now discuss this riveting topic so get ready for a rip-roaring ride of entertainment.
The districts councils and the government (Ministry of Lands) set out areas for development. Once an area of land has been chosen for development, it is then the responsibility of our department to do a plan for the proposed area – demarcating plots, etc. Once this has been done, it is sent to Lands for numbering (I don’t know why this is done – it would be far easier if our department did it). The survey department then do their stuff, e.g. implementing beacons to show the boundaries of the plots. As it takes a long time for the plots to get numbered, the public are entitled to buy up the plots and apply for permission to build.
Now this is where the problems start. Firstly, people own plots and are building on plots that don’t actually have a plot number. Secondly, the areas that the local authority open up should be ready before people are allowed to move in and build. When I say ready, I mean roads and utilities being put in place. The latter doesn’t seem to be a problem, but the road implementation is. The local authorities should be tarring the roads that are set out in the plan. In Kasempa, all the new areas that have been opened up for development have no roads, just mud tracks.
So when you don’t have a plot number or a tarred road, you don’t have an address. This is not a problem in post delivering terms as the post office has hundreds of post office boxes that you can rent. Nonetheless, even when the plot numbers are known, there is never any visual notification on the house or at the entrance to a house. So without named tarred roads and plot numbers it is very difficult to get an understanding of an area.
It is also difficult to get a sense of where one plot starts and ends. The map we were working from was different to what was on the ground in many cases. For example, plot owners had nibbled away and taken a bit of land here, a bit of land there. The beacons that had been originally implemented by the surveyors were buried in most cases. Sometimes you’d see a beacon within a property, proving that the owner had taken over land, be it from another plot or some amenity land or a road. So what you find is the majority of homes have merged into each other without any clear physical indication of the boundaries between plots. Fencing is rarely used so people are free to walk around in and amongst houses. Security does not seem to be an issue in a small town like Kasempa.
Houses
Generally, houses in Kasempa, and across North Western Province, are built in a bungalow style. These are all modelled on the houses that were built by the British in colonial times. Building over two stories is just unnecessary when land is cheap and plentiful, and because of the extra cost. The bungalow influence is all over Zambia. It is a shame as I have not yet seen any high-cost homes in urban areas that incorporate traditional styles of construction and design. It is only those who have limited funds that will build traditional styles in urban areas.
The traditional Zambian home involves several separate structures; for example, one structure for the bedroom, one for the cooking area (the kinzanza as mentioned above), one for the toilet, and so on. Using burnt brick and thatched roofs, the houses are very simple and straightforward to construct. But obviously the materials and construction methods do not allow for solid homes that last decades. So when the Western style bungalow was introduced, it was seen as the way forward. The bungalow, then, is a symbol of progress in Zambia – the machine playing its part.
People don’t want to live in separate buildings like people still do in the villages. Give a human being a better tool to make life easier and nine times out of ten they will take it up. This is the case with the bungalow over the brick huts and straw roofs. But like most things that we take to be better and make our lives easier there are drawbacks. In this case there is the gradual loss of traditional forms of housing as the country becomes more urbanised; the loss of character and identity; the greater impact on the environment from using Western styled houses; homogenous residential suburbs; the dulling of the senses. So for the ever-growing Zambian middle-class, the dream is to have a nice bungalow.
Construction
When a plot of land is purchased (in Kasempa a plot goes for roughly K 2 million – about £250) the first thing is to construct a small caretaker’s building or servant’s building so that some people can live on site. Once you have your land you can’t afford to leave it vacant or the council will just sell it on it someone else through corruption or bad management. Getting title deeds here is also hard work because of the bureaucratic and slow government departments.
People build houses themselves enlisting a foreman and some helpers as there are no construction firms or large house builders in Kasempa. On the whole, these people are not qualified builders and most will not have taken any formal education in construction. Knowledge is passed down from job to job. It is only in the large towns like Kitwe, Ndola, and Lusaka, that you will find construction firms. The dearth of qualified builders is a problem in these parts. You come across many instances of bad workmanship and botched jobs. Even on our field work we came across some foundations that had skewed angles and oblique lines that were so easily visible to the naked eye. There was one house that was built to a decent standard but the owner had decided to construct an extension himself, by using his bare eyes it seemed. It was a shocking sight, and the original building looked sad having this sham adjoining it. The naked eye: it’s good, but not that good.
We went there to hand out questionnaires to house owners in order to get reliable information on land ownership and planning permission. Record keeping systems in the office where I am working are not great (ideally, this information should be recorded adequately from the office as well as getting information from other government departments). The most simple of tasks seem to be difficult here sometimes.
Upon arrival, our first job was to call in at the district council offices. There is a department that manages the opening up of residential areas and handles payments for rates and the like. We requested assistance and we were given the affable Mr Mutoka, who could well be Mr Kasempa if there was such a prize. He seemed to know everyone in town. He would prove to be very useful in helping to escort us around the areas where we had earmarked for survey.
Mr Mutoka wore a body warmer every day in 30 plus degree heat. It made me uncomfortable just looking at him. For a country of men and women that used to go hunting in cloth to cover private parts, I am endlessly amazed at how much Zambians like to wear layers of clothes. Iesu Grist, this is a country where homes do not require central heating!
Nzubo (home)
So with Mr Mutoka in tow and my colleague, Vincent, we went from house to house. It was an interesting experience and provided an insight into Zambian home life.
The majority of homes we visited had someone home even as it was the working day, and there was always someone doing some gardening, some crop work, some food preparation. The front of the house is generally unused and redundant – the back is where life occurs. You rarely see people coming through the front door when they leave or enter. Even in Solwezi my neighbours use the back door and I use the front. Someone can do an anthropological study on that one.
The maids prepare food (and clean) all morning, and most of the time the smell of nshima (maize meal cooked with boiling water) drifts through the air. Kitchens are used but most people prefer to prepare food outside under their kinzana (an open rotund structure supported by wooden poles with a thatched roof made of local plants) with a brazier and some pots. It shows that despite the influence of Western houses with inclusive kitchens, Zambians still tend to enjoy having a kinzanza in the garden. They will sometimes still cook outside using braziers even if electricity is available.
Another noticeable characteristic of Zambian homes, especially in areas where the houses are quite close together, is the garden life. Gardens tend be an assembly of plants, crops, mud, and rubbish – which is randomly strewn everywhere by the wind. As there is no collection by the council people bury rubbish in a ditch in their back garden and then burn it once in a while. You also get animals walking around – chickens, dogs (always barking – no one seems to walk their dogs), goats... It’s anyone’s guess who owns the animals. We even saw a magnificent turkey at one house. I asked the boy we were talking to if he was getting it ready for Christmas and he just looked at me like I was a can of Ronseal.
The greetings
Kasempa is a Kaonde town so Kikaonde is predominantly spoken. Greeting one another in Zambia is an important part of the day. Here you shake hands every day when you first meet. A ‘hello’ followed by a ‘how are you?’ is standard if one is speaking English. It’s almost as if ‘how are you?’ is unnecessary. You just automatically reply that you are fine. You’re not going to stop and tell someone you don’t know you have haemorrhoids or something, are you?*
As we went round the houses it was interesting to see how I was greeted. Most people would address my colleagues in Kikaonde and then address me in English with ‘How are you, sir?’ There were times, though, when I was addressed in Kikaonde, and luckily life in Solwezi has equipped me for such questions. Here are three select classics:
Byepi, mwan? (How are you?)
Bulongo tu, mwane (I am fine)
Mwane sank you, mwane (Your welcome)
Interestingly the Kaondes adopted ‘thank you’ as a ‘you’re welcome’ gesture, but for native Kikaonde speakers pronouncing the ‘th’ like in thank you is difficult, so it became ‘sank you’. I do find it strange how they adopted this into the language. Mwane is an honorific particle and is widely used in the languages of North Western Province.
I like to watch people greet in the street, at the market, etc. For those greeting without being in contact, the process involves crouching slightly and slowly clapping the hands together then gently opening and closing several times. The right arm is also drawn across the chest and patted slightly on the left breast. There is also a slight crouch, almost like a curtsy, which is chiefly used by women. And as for greetings by hand, well, there are several different handshakes that would take up a whole new blog post...
Plots and plots of issues
The trip to Kasempa gave me a visual understanding of the many problems that occur in urban areas. I want to now discuss this riveting topic so get ready for a rip-roaring ride of entertainment.
The districts councils and the government (Ministry of Lands) set out areas for development. Once an area of land has been chosen for development, it is then the responsibility of our department to do a plan for the proposed area – demarcating plots, etc. Once this has been done, it is sent to Lands for numbering (I don’t know why this is done – it would be far easier if our department did it). The survey department then do their stuff, e.g. implementing beacons to show the boundaries of the plots. As it takes a long time for the plots to get numbered, the public are entitled to buy up the plots and apply for permission to build.
Now this is where the problems start. Firstly, people own plots and are building on plots that don’t actually have a plot number. Secondly, the areas that the local authority open up should be ready before people are allowed to move in and build. When I say ready, I mean roads and utilities being put in place. The latter doesn’t seem to be a problem, but the road implementation is. The local authorities should be tarring the roads that are set out in the plan. In Kasempa, all the new areas that have been opened up for development have no roads, just mud tracks.
So when you don’t have a plot number or a tarred road, you don’t have an address. This is not a problem in post delivering terms as the post office has hundreds of post office boxes that you can rent. Nonetheless, even when the plot numbers are known, there is never any visual notification on the house or at the entrance to a house. So without named tarred roads and plot numbers it is very difficult to get an understanding of an area.
It is also difficult to get a sense of where one plot starts and ends. The map we were working from was different to what was on the ground in many cases. For example, plot owners had nibbled away and taken a bit of land here, a bit of land there. The beacons that had been originally implemented by the surveyors were buried in most cases. Sometimes you’d see a beacon within a property, proving that the owner had taken over land, be it from another plot or some amenity land or a road. So what you find is the majority of homes have merged into each other without any clear physical indication of the boundaries between plots. Fencing is rarely used so people are free to walk around in and amongst houses. Security does not seem to be an issue in a small town like Kasempa.
Houses
Generally, houses in Kasempa, and across North Western Province, are built in a bungalow style. These are all modelled on the houses that were built by the British in colonial times. Building over two stories is just unnecessary when land is cheap and plentiful, and because of the extra cost. The bungalow influence is all over Zambia. It is a shame as I have not yet seen any high-cost homes in urban areas that incorporate traditional styles of construction and design. It is only those who have limited funds that will build traditional styles in urban areas.
The traditional Zambian home involves several separate structures; for example, one structure for the bedroom, one for the cooking area (the kinzanza as mentioned above), one for the toilet, and so on. Using burnt brick and thatched roofs, the houses are very simple and straightforward to construct. But obviously the materials and construction methods do not allow for solid homes that last decades. So when the Western style bungalow was introduced, it was seen as the way forward. The bungalow, then, is a symbol of progress in Zambia – the machine playing its part.
People don’t want to live in separate buildings like people still do in the villages. Give a human being a better tool to make life easier and nine times out of ten they will take it up. This is the case with the bungalow over the brick huts and straw roofs. But like most things that we take to be better and make our lives easier there are drawbacks. In this case there is the gradual loss of traditional forms of housing as the country becomes more urbanised; the loss of character and identity; the greater impact on the environment from using Western styled houses; homogenous residential suburbs; the dulling of the senses. So for the ever-growing Zambian middle-class, the dream is to have a nice bungalow.
Construction
When a plot of land is purchased (in Kasempa a plot goes for roughly K 2 million – about £250) the first thing is to construct a small caretaker’s building or servant’s building so that some people can live on site. Once you have your land you can’t afford to leave it vacant or the council will just sell it on it someone else through corruption or bad management. Getting title deeds here is also hard work because of the bureaucratic and slow government departments.
People build houses themselves enlisting a foreman and some helpers as there are no construction firms or large house builders in Kasempa. On the whole, these people are not qualified builders and most will not have taken any formal education in construction. Knowledge is passed down from job to job. It is only in the large towns like Kitwe, Ndola, and Lusaka, that you will find construction firms. The dearth of qualified builders is a problem in these parts. You come across many instances of bad workmanship and botched jobs. Even on our field work we came across some foundations that had skewed angles and oblique lines that were so easily visible to the naked eye. There was one house that was built to a decent standard but the owner had decided to construct an extension himself, by using his bare eyes it seemed. It was a shocking sight, and the original building looked sad having this sham adjoining it. The naked eye: it’s good, but not that good.
You come across a lot of houses that are unfinished or remain on the verge of breaking point. The paint work chipped and faded; the drainage pipes half broke; the plaster breaking; doors falling off hinges. You see a lot of houses like this in Zambia. Put it down to a lack of capital and different priorities, or just a lack of interest in caring for your home. Like living a hand-to-mouth existence, many Zambians will get the foundations up first and then move in; the rest of the house will be finished when the money comes in.
Heritage
On our travels we came across the oldest houses in the urban area of Kasempa. The British built them when they first settled in Kasempa to house the civil servants. Some of these houses were sited on a bank overlooking a vast plain offering good views for miles. I have come to notice this in other parts of North Western Province where colonial housing was built. It is then that you see the European influence of siting houses to maximise a vantage point.
When the British started to leave in the 1960s, following independence, the locals began to move in. From going house to house, some of them had not seen a touch of maintenance; you could see the original paintwork completely faded and the roof completely battered. It was a sad sight to see, and it was a struggle to imagine them brand new. These were historical houses with heritage value, but in Zambia there exists no process whereby you can protect a building like in the UK. But it is more likely than no one really cares about historic buildings. There are more pressing matters – the priorities are different. Soon, in the not too distant future, the homes will crumble, slowly eradicating the built history of the British in Kasempa. But fear not, the legacy of the colonial style bungalow will live on instead!
* I asked a man I barely knew how he was, and he told me he had haemorrhoids.
