As the sun slipped towards the edge of the Barotse Floodplain, everything began to glow in the dying light: the blushing lilies that bloomed in drifts across the watery expanse; the birds in their shimmering plumage; the scarlet caps worn by the Lozi people as they punted their way through the quivering papyrus.
It was April, and I’d travelled to western Zambia at the tail-end of the wet season when the Zambezi, Kabompo and Lungwebungu rivers spill across the landscape and turn the ground into a mirror of the sky. Zambia’s Lozi — an identity formed of 25 to 40 ethnic groups brought together in the 19th century — call their ancestral territory “Barotseland”, or “Bulozi” in the local language.
In modern political nomenclature, it’s known as Zambia’s Western Province. The region is also home to Liuwa Plain National Park, a protected area forming a 1,300sq mile swath of wetland habitat that runs up towards the border with Angola.
I’d come for the Kuomboka, which means “to get out of the water”. A celebration of the annual flood and annual movement of cattle and other livestock it necessitates, this April ritual marks the transfer of the litunga (the traditional title of the Lozi king) from his palace at Lealui to his second residence, which sits on higher ground a day’s paddle away at Limulunga. (The reverse journey is marked by a smaller ceremony in August.) The royal household travels in a flotilla of flamboyant barges across the floodplain. The king’s boat, or Nalikwanda, is topped with a giant cloth elephant, the queen’s barge with a grey crowned crane.
The dates of the Kuomboka are traditionally determined at short notice, according to water levels and phases of the moon. These days, extreme climate swings can also complicate the timing. In 2019, the Kuomboka was cancelled because of drought, and in 2023, because of the death of a senior Lozi chief. The fact that it is not always guaranteed only adds to the excitement around the event, and this year also marked Lubosi Imwiko II’s silver jubilee — 25 years since his coronation as the litunga.
With news of a confirmed date, I made a last-minute dash from London, followed by a 10-hour drive west from Lusaka airport along Zambia’s arrow-straight M9 highway. After a pit-stop at a gas station bustling with festival-goers, I stopped for a second time at Mongu, western Zambia’s provincial capital, for fried chicken and chips. A party atmosphere prevailed: women in satin misisi dresses and matching blouses, children with dripping ice creams, men in red mashushu berets. Every hotel in town was full.
I was booked into Liuwa Camp, an eight-tent lodge, new last year, located a two-hour drive from Mongu, inside Liuwa Plain National Park. Given the high waters, it turned out to be the only park accommodation open this year for the Kuomboka (sometimes lower flood levels mean that the park’s campsites and other lodges can open as early as March).
Instead of going straight to the camp, I made a beeline for the opening drum ceremony at Lealui, about 10 miles from Mongu. I drew up beside the palace, which from the outside appeared a relatively humble single-storey building — the oldest part dates from 1886, the latest from 1910 — fronted by a sandy clearing.
To comply with protocol, I wrapped myself in a sitenge, or tie-around skirt, and headed for a bonfire under a line of palms. As the embers crackled and spat, men wound strips of softened bark around paddles cut from blonde wood, which they then charred over the fire. Once the exposed wood had blackened, they uncurled the twists of bark to reveal a black-and-white stripe down each paddle’s length. There were some 300 of them to get through, which would be used on the royal barges in the main procession.
The conversation hummed. The young knelt to greet their elders with three handclaps. I got talking with Munalula Lisimba, an induna or king’s adviser and a retired supreme court judge in Lusaka. A member of the royal family by marriage, he said he was glad I’d come from far away: “We feel well recognised.” He explained how the Kuomboka had economic potential, as a way of driving tourism. “This year, we gave 30 days’ notice for the festival, which is better for foreign visitors. But before? No notice would be given.”
In the gathering crowd, I got talking to a man wearing a pale shirt and brightly printed siziba (not unlike a long kilt) that fell to his shins. He introduced himself as Prince Notulu Akashambatwa Yeta, a nephew of the current litunga. We talked about the uniform the king would be wearing for the main pageant, and how the original version — gold-braided epaulettes, a plumed hat — had been gifted to King Lubosi Lewanika by the British to wear at Edward VII’s 1902 coronation.
These days, Yeta told me, new uniforms in a similar design were made for each new litunga. I asked if the outfit’s colonial style raised any negative feelings about the country’s history. Yeta shook his head. “We like the British royal family,” he said. “[The Lozi] don’t see a monarchy as colonial but as a traditional structure.”
As if on cue, a cavalcade arrived, flanked by security in black uniforms inscribed with the royal elephant insignia. Everyone knelt. When the litunga took a seat in front of the palace, he was flanked by men dressed in white — the grave-keepers, or li ng’omboti, tasked with looking after the burial sites of past kings. The crowd squeezed in tighter, but only men were allowed close, and some of the litunga’s female family members. More visitors arrived. The drinking picked up pace. It wasn’t until after 9pm that the drumming started, on instruments that dated back to King Lewanika’s reign, by which time I’d finally peeled off for the drive to camp. I was craving sleep.
The water levels turned out to be higher than park staff had warned — a reality that would turn every journey I made to and from the festival site into a kind of Top Gear battle between mud, flood and our 4×4. After a 20-hour day, the sinkings and the spinning wheels were punishing. At 11pm, we got stuck. But as we waited for the park tractor to come and pull us out, I also had a chance to absorb where I was.
The syrupy darkness, pricked with stars. A plain full of animals I sensed but couldn’t see. Hooting bird calls that rolled hauntingly across the watery emptiness. “To other people, the flood is a catastrophe, but to Lozi people, the flood is a blessing,” said Sepo Mubonda, our Lozi driver and senior guide at Liuwa Camp. Yes, a bloody catastrophe, I thought, as we waited for news of our tractor rescue to come down the radio. And then Mubonda began to talk.
“The Lozi hold land in high regard,” he said; “the name ‘litunga’ means ‘guardian of the land’. To us, ‘land’ means sand, birds, fish, minerals.” Mubonda explained how Lozi culture is completely integrated with the natural world, and how their litunga was responsible for upholding a series of customs pre-dating modern conservation laws, including rules about hunting (no one is allowed to touch an eland), and taboos around fishing certain pans to protect breeding stock.
Mubonda’s stories unravelled the complex cultural threads that stitch the region together, including how young people advocated change to the traditional garb worn at the Kuomboka. Cheetah skins donned by the king’s paddlers have been swapped for synthetic alternatives. The Lozi wear plastic bracelets instead of ivory bangles. Rather than slaughtering a hippo for the pre-Kuomboka feast, they now kill a cow.
It was conversations like these that turned the journeys to and from camp into a very different kind of African adventure. The following day, I watched the next event in the festival line-up; a regatta from Lealui to Mongu using wooden mikolo, or canoes, piloted by teams of men or women who paddled standing up. Among the spectators, I met a royal drummer; for generations he said his forbearers had the same role, using music to tell Lozi history. “There are songs that depict when the colonisation took place. Dances which signify victory. Drums which speak of glorification. Music tells our Lozi story — the past, present and the future,” royal adviser Lishandu Maswabi later explained to me.
On the third day — the peak of the celebrations when the litunga would make his ceremonial journey — we set off from camp before dawn. At Lealui, drones buzzed overhead. A helicopter arrived. There were SUVs with blackened windows — visiting bigwigs, including politicians and foreign ambassadors. Cars were rammed nose-to-tail on the only slick of tarmacked road running between Mongu and Lealui.
“It’s a beautiful day. We come together, dance, share food and celebrate. We feel part of something bigger,” said one of the women I’d squeezed in next to on the riverbank. “It’s like…
