The Delicious Delights of Being Wrong

Mubanga Kalimamukwento | Editor-in-Chief

Cikaipa usataye.

When it is bad, do not throw it away.

Chewa Proverb.

* Image by Shally Imagery on Pexels

Dear Ubwali reader,

I have been retelling a story from my childhood recently, the details expand each time I revisit it, or my memory locates something new. It is about my academic introduction to storytelling as something I, too, could do. It happened in grade four at Buteko Primary School in Luanshya, where my teachers allowed us, for a small portion of the day, to deviate from their strict “ONLY ENGLISH” rule, to speak our mother tongues, and use that freedom to tell stories. In this rendering of the story, I see this act of weaving storytelling into our learning as beautiful and full of promise. That beauty notwithstanding, I lament the fact that storytelling was restricted to the oral, and none of the texts we read were written by Zambian writers, which inadvertently communicated that Zambians were not writing.

With each open submission window, there is a nagging voice, I suppose as old as little me in that classroom, planting a terror that the submissions will be too few, founded on the unfortunate, erroneous belief that Zambians are not writing. In the instructing proverb, the speaker cautions against haste in discarding things considered useless. Here, I am reminded once again why the existence of this magazine was a relentless haunting, even when I had been taught so earnestly that I would have little or nothing to put in it. What a delicious delight, to be wrong once again. We were spoilt for choice and struggled to select which pieces to include in this issue, a wonderful problem to have as a magazine, and one that gives me the great honour of introducing our biggest October issue yet!

Thank you for reading and supporting our work.

Ubwali ISSUE 5 is served!

Mubanga