Step in the name of Lupanda

It is Friday afternoon here at Namuthakoni Village, Traditional Authority (T/A) Mpama in Chiradzulu District. Assembled a few metres from an earth road are journalists from different media houses in the country. They are here courtesy of World Vision Malawi.

Their mission is to see how the villagers prepare nutritious food using locally found ingredients such as nkhwani, cham’mwamba, kholowa and others.

After touring different activities in the village, it is time to go back. However, just before departure, cracking sounds of drums sound from a distance. The rhythmic beating of drums and other instruments mingle with jubilant singing.

However, the group is not aware of the presence of visitors in the village. The small group of dancers push forward on the road, stopping occasionally to dance. Suddenly, the group halts. Today the village has unusual visitors. After some deliberations, the group decides to continue.

Then, the dancers go to a house a few metres from the road. Here they perform several dances. There is an initiate from this house who is in simba. So these dancers of lupanda initiation ceremony are going from house to house—dancing and soliciting money.

“Lupanda partially resembles Jando,” explains one of the dancers, Jonas Mitengo. “When the initiates are in the bush, we go around the villages performing dances whose intention is to solicit money, food and other materials for the initiates to use in the bush,” he says.

This kind of initiation ceremony is practiced among the Lhomwe people. It is a rite of passage for their young children. The boys are initiated into lupanda while the girls are initiated into msondo or chiputu (just like the Yao).

“This time being school holiday, the Lhomwe seize the opportunity to initiate their children into rites of passage,” says the owner of this house, Enelesi Major. Her son is an initiate. He will come out of simbanext week, just a week before the new academic year opens on September 18 2017.

There is a frenzy of dancing now. Boys and girls, with wild abandon, shake their tender bodies to the admiration of the spectators. The girls are in a class of their own. They do not want to be outclassed by their male counterparts.

The way they gyrate is like they want to stimulate passion from men of lechery. Oh no, they want to achieve recognition, perhaps from some of the visitors who are here.

“Saphika chakudya. Angokhalira kuyenda-yenda,” the song goes as the cacophony of drums pierces the charged atmosphere. This song is a rebuke to newly married women who spend most of their time gallivanting the village instead of taking time to prepare food for their husbands.

According to tradition, women are housekeepers. It is unacceptable for a woman to spend much of her time away from her house. This song, therefore, is intended to remind the women of their duties.

The dancing reaches a climax when some journalists give the dancers money. Overjoyed with the prospect of making more money from some of the visitors, the dancers trample the ground beneath with vigour.

Their expectations of raising such amount of money might have been exceeded. What a lucky day to go out dancing! Unmindful of the burning sun staring at them from above, the dancers show the visitors how to make merry in the village.

But before long there are sounds from engines of cars—the drivers have started the engines to remind the journalists that they have overstayed their welcome in Namuthakoni Village.

Reluctantly, the visitors leave the dancers. Cameras and recorders in their hands, they run towards the land-cruisers. They are going back to where they came from, perhaps to report on how they enjoyed themselves watching lupanda. n