This is a village just outside the Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia. We visited while on canoe safri. As we drove into the village we were greeted with glowing smiles from everyone. The kids were all excited to see us and came running up. We were introduced to the lady in the red headscarf who is the wife of the village Headman. When asked how old she is she didn’t know and when she informed us that she was in fact the Headman’s only wife she beamed a big smile. The lady with her back to the camera is one of her eight daughters and all of the children in the photo were her grandchildren. The place was full of kids and it turned out they were all her grandchildren! We asked how many grandchildren she had. She had to think for a while and said about thirty.
Here, they are demonstrating one of the steps involved in producing nshima – a maize dish that looks like mashed potatoes. They’re using a giant mortar and pestle to remove the husks from the grain. Maize and water go into the large wooden pestle on the ground. Then, they take a big wooden mortar each (you can see one lent against the hut in the background) and they take turns lifting their pole and dropping it back down. They did this at a great pace.
