On Gratitude
Mubanga Kalimamukwento | Editor-in-chief
*Image by Nkandu Chabala
As a girl, one of my aunts, the frequent host of family gatherings, always started the event with a proverb about gratitude, comparing the ungrateful to witches. Before we could begin, she had to thank everybody for showing up. She mentioned accomplishments in our family–who had just excelled in an examination, a new baby, an upcoming wedding, and a promotion. The adults chuckled, and we, the children, echoed them, not yet understanding the importance of this thanksgiving ritual. My aunt is long gone, and the frequency of those reunions has petered out, but something about hearing her say it so frequently stayed with me, and any opening feels incomplete without even the slight infusion of gratitude. At times, like now, when the world is drenched in injustice and oppression, gratitude can be difficult. Amid this global turmoil, I am grateful for the storytellers who force us to contend with our own ugliness while reminding us of everything honest and beautiful within us.
When Ubwali opened for submissions for the first time in March, I had no idea what to expect or, indeed, if I should even be expecting anything at all. To my surprise, we were flooded with work from Zambians in Africa and abroad, from writers in Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Lesotho, Nigeria, Kenya, Algeria, Cameroon, and Gabon, so much so that we had to close our submission window early. Of the artists who sent us their work, we could only select sixteen. I will shine a light on these sixteen soon, but first, I want to thank the writers whose work didn’t make the final selection. Thank you for writing, for being brave enough to share it with my team, and for trusting us. We count it an honour that you considered us and hope you will return.
The fiction section opens with Mutinta Nanchengwa’s “How It Should Be,” a quiet love story imbued with hope and nostalgia. It eases into “While the World Slept” by Nigerian Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi, which exposes a child’s innocence to the horrors of war. Gerald’s story converses so closely with “Let Us Cross To the Other Side” by Zambian author Muzhinga Kankinda that one would think the two stories exist on the same exact timeline. Next comes the breathtaking setting of “Beneath the Riverbed,” where Mosotho writer Matseliso Motsoane negotiates two kinds of spirituality in a story about longing for home. The section ends with “The Dhakir of the Village” by Algerian author Saliha Haddad who renders a poignant story oozing with a wisdom that felt apt for the closing to this beautiful section.
The creative nonfiction section is woven together by three slim pieces, each one, mesmerising in its confidence and unforgettable in voice. “The beacons. The bearers of our light.” by Kenyan writer Naomi Nduta Waweru, pries open the devastating wounds of silence in the face of gendered injustice. Zambian writer Deborah Natwange Ngwira’s “Startled” probes an emotionally distant lover while Musembi Wanza’s “Vignette of Mum’s Ever Changing Emotional Complexion” attempts to re-know a mother.
“Siren Song” by Zambia’s Vuma Phiri, which honours the Black body, is the perfect opener to our poetry section because “Kasala (for a first-born twin), COFFEE & BLOOD ORANGE Orange” by Sihle Ntuli from South Africa honours the wealth of Africa’s languages, just before Chiwenite Onyekwelu’s “Names & Origin, & What I Know About Hope” shapeshifts origin stories. In “A Ladder of Grief, Alzheimer, & Cycling Emotions” by Choolwe Lubaya (Zambia), the poet is concerned with endings, whereas Cameroon’s Ruddy Fualefeh Morfaw Azanu and Zambia’s Anna Zgambo focus on beginnings. Echoing Matseliso’s story, “Perhaps I am the Devil & Other poems” consider spiritualities in the physical.
For the first time, we have also published photography by Zambian photographer Nkandu Chabala. His portfolio, depicting the everyday in Lusaka with a focus on market and street life, is the perfect anchor to this issue which comes to you on Africa Day. This year’s Africa Day theme is A Borderless Africa for All Africans. Although Ubwali did not prescribe a theme, the poems, essays, photographs and stories, epitomise the Borderless Africa for All Africans.
I understand the spirit of my aunt’s sentiment now, the importance of gratitude because few great things are achieved in solitude, even in the small things, we need help. Like the first issue of Ubwali, so many people have shown up to keep the magazine alive––from my prodigious editorial team, Fiske Nyirongo, Mbozi Mbozi Haimbe, Namukolo Siyumbwa and Akal Mohan, who boldly laugh in the face of ZESCO power cuts and wavering WiFi to read, edit, and support our writers to publication and beyond, to the screeners who volunteered their time and helped us sift through the work, our generous donors who made it possible for us to pay every contributor in this issue, and last but never least, our readers, who keep Ubwali necessary––Thank you.
Till next time, happy reading.
