By Nathan Meleki
For anyone who has grown up in Zambia, nshima is not simply food but memory, identity, comfort, family and, in many ways, a measure of whether life is going well.
Prepared from maize meal and cooked into a thick, firm porridge, nshima occupies a place at the centre of Zambian life that few other foods can rival.
It is also known as nsima in some parts of the region and ubwali in several Zambian languages. Whatever name it is given, its meaning extends far beyond the plate.
To a Zambian who has grown up eating it, a meal without nshima can sometimes feel incomplete.
One may eat rice, potatoes, pasta, bread or other foods and still hear the familiar question, “But where is nshima?” This is not merely a question about hunger.
It reflects a cultural understanding of what constitutes a proper meal because nshima in Zambia has become synonymous with food itself.
The preparation of nshima is deceptively simple; mealie meal is gradually added to boiling water and stirred until it thickens into the familiar consistency.
It is then served with relish, which may consist of vegetables, beans, kapenta, fish, chicken, beef, goat meat or other available foods.
The nshima itself has a relatively mild taste,almost tasteless but its beauty lies in its ability to complement whatever relish is placed beside it.
For generations, nshima has been at the heart of the Zambian household because it is the food that welcomes a child home from school, sustains a farmer after a day in the field and brings families together at the end of a long day.
It is the food served to visitors as a gesture of hospitality and the meal that relatives prepare when families gather for important occasions.
There is something deeply communal about eating nshima with people traditionally sitting together around a shared plate, washing their hands before doling out nshima and using them to scoop up relish.
The practice is more than a way of eating since it creates a space for conversation, laughter, storytelling and reconciliation.
Around a plate of nshima, generations meet. Children listen to adults, siblings exchange stories and families discuss the affairs of the day.
Nshima also accompanies some of the most important events in a Zambian’s life such as funerals where mourners are fed and those who gather to comfort the bereaved families.
At weddings and traditional marital ceremonies such as cilanga mulilo and matebeto, it becomes part of the hospitality extended to guests.
At family gatherings, it is often impossible to imagine the occasion without a large pot of nshima surrounded by an array of relishes.
Its significance begins long before it reaches the table because behind every plate of nshima is the farmer who plants maize, tends the crop and waits for the harvest.
There are traders, millers, transporters and shopkeepers who help move maize from the field to the household. Nshima therefore connects the Zambian family to the country’s agricultural economy and to the livelihoods of millions of people.
This connection also explains why maize is political in Zambia. A shortage of maize or mealie meal is not simply an agricultural problem.
It can become a social and political crisis because when mealie meal becomes scarce or its price rises beyond the reach of ordinary households, anxiety spreads quickly because the commodity involved is not a luxury.
The politics of nshima therefore begins with the politics of maize production, food security and affordability with governments being judged partly by whether citizens can afford to put nshima on the table or not.
When people struggle to buy mealie meal, the frustration can quickly turn anger as attested by history when food shortages and rising food prices have led to social unrest.
This is perhaps why Zambians pay such close attention to the price of a 25 kilogram or 10 kilogram bag of mealie meal. A change in its price is felt immediately in the household budget.
It can determine whether a family eats nshima twice a day, once a day or has to find alternatives. For poorer households, the availability and affordability of mealie meal can be a question of dignity as much as nutrition.
Nshima’s importance is also visible in schools where the newly-introduced school feeding programmes has seen children being given nshima with relishes such as beans or soya chunks, providing them with energy to concentrate on their studies.
One Grade 12 pupil at Valley View School in Riverside, Kitwe, described having nshima with soya chunks before beginning evening study sessions.
Nshima can even become part of family discipline because a parent may threaten to withhold it from a child who has misbehaved, precisely because everyone understands how important it is.
It is this powerful legacy that Zambian diasporan writer Mubanga Kalimamukwento has invoked by naming her literary journal Ubwali.
The choice is significant because Ubwali is not merely another name for nshima but carries the weight of home, memory and cultural belonging.
For a writer living away from Zambia, the word becomes a literary bridge between the homeland and the diaspora.
By naming a literary journal Ubwali, Kalimamukwento evokes something that most Zambians immediately understand. The word summons images of home kitchens, family meals, rural fields, grinding mills, mealie meal bags, shared plates and conversations around the dinner table.
It speaks of something ordinary that is nevertheless profoundly meaningful.
Ubwali is therefore an apt metaphor for literature itself.
Like nshima, literature can bring different people together around a common table of ideas and experiences.
It can nourish the mind, preserve memory and connect generations. Just as nshima carries the flavour of the relish with which it is served, literature carries the histories, languages, struggles and dreams of the people who produce it.
For Zambians in the diaspora, such symbolism can be particularly powerful. Distance may separate people from the physical landscape of home, but certain tastes, words and memories remain difficult to leave behind. A mention of ubwali especially for diasporans can instantly evoke the feeling of being home.
Ultimately, nshima is a simple food with an extraordinary cultural footprint. It is agriculture, economics, family, hospitality, childhood, ceremony and politics gathered into one meal. It feeds the body, but its significance also feeds memory and identity.
For anyone who has grown up in Zambia, nshima is more than something placed on a plate but part of who we are. And when a writer chooses the word Ubwali for a literary journal, she reminds us that sometimes the simplest things carry the deepest stories.
