Confusedly tribal…

You see I am not as enthusiastic about these tribal things. I would hardly muster enough excitement within myself, for instance, to travel all the way to Hora Mzimba to attend some cultural function such as Umtheto. Not that I blame or judge those who are deep into these things, No. It’s just that I have decided that they really aint for me. And I have my reasons.  

If I heard my paternal grandfather well, his ancestors were Karangas from Zimbabwe. They were uprooted from there by their Nguni conquerors and forced to trek to Tanganyika before finally finding themselves in northern Malawi. The Ngunis, so the story is told, had a policy of assimilation so that those that they took under fold, mostly be conquest, became ngunis by association, it at all there is such a thing. Am not sure about the ethnicity of the women that my paternal great-grandfathers married, though am sure they were from diverse ethnic backgrounds. What am sure of, however, is that my paternal grandfather, a polygamous man, married two women from different ethnic backgrounds. Am not sure whether my grandfather’s first wife, fondly called Ago Tembo was a tumbuka or ngoni by ethnicity but what am sure of is that my Mdala’s second wife, Ago Phiri, was a daughter of a yao man and a chewa woman.  My father was Ago Phiri’s eldest son from her marriage to the M’dala. Ago Phiri being from a matrilineal background could easily have pointed her children to Lilongwe, from where her mother came from as being their home. As it were, however, my father was raised to call Ekwendeni Mzimba, where his father had settled, as his home. I similarly call it home as well. My mother on the other hand is from Mzimba. Her father’s ancestors are said to have trekked from the area along the northern shores of Lake Malawi. For all I know, these ancestors could have been tongas. They later found themselves at Embangweni in Mzimba and settled there. Am not sure though about the ancestry of her mother. She could be Ngoni. She could be something else. Alright this is a little bit confusing, isn’t  it? Exactly my point. What am I by ethnicity?

Like I have said, if what I was told is correct, my father could only have laid claim to have been a ngoni by association save perhaps to the extent that some of his maternal ancestors could have been ngonis? What however is the ethnicity of a progeny of an inter-ethnic marriage?

Take the Umtheto festival, for instance. Didn’t you find it curious that a ngoni function was celebrated in tumbuka language? Wasn’t it even stranger that the chairperson for the Mzimba Heritage Association asked for tumbuka and not Ngoni, or Zulu as DD Phiri would rather we call it, to be included in the country’s school syllabus? This may sound rather petty but let’s face it; a language is central to any ethnic identity. Not that you can claim to be English simply because you speak the language, No. But a proud Englishman who wasn’t able to speak English would be an oddity. The same can be said about the Maseko Ngonis who call Chichewa their mother tongue.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that there is a cultural homogeny in this country. Far from it. There are distinct practices, attitudes, values etc that we can all identity with particular ethnic groups. It’s just that the heterogeneousness of our ethnicity and culture is disproportionately highlighted in Malawi.

Historically, what we call Malawi has been a melting pot of diverse peoples. Some came from central Africa while others trekked from the southern tip of the continent to settle in diverse places that were later to be called Malawi. History also tells us that inter-marriages and cultural assimilation was rampant during these mass migratory periods. That is why the Ngunis who settled in the plains of central Malawi soon forgot their language and adopted Chichiwa as their lingua. The same can be said about most other ethnic groups. So really, we don’t have pure ethnic groups in Malawi. And certainly no untainted cultures. What we have are alloyed cultures. Alloyed ethnic groups. Alloyed languages. Why then do we find it so necessary to exaggerate our ethnic distinctiveness when we are anything but such in reality?...Stay with me…my thoughts are still evolving.