Na wabulela seRotse( Do you speak Silozi)?" I asked her the first time they landed with their metal birds and she shocked me with a sly ninitwisisi (l don't understand)!". Nizwa kwa Ngilandi( l am from England) she said as she mesmerized me with a soft handshake with her milky hand and l blindly and warmly told her, ki buitumela kuzibana(pleased to meet you) as if l had known her for ages with my chocolate grip! Who was she? What where they looking for? Were they possibly lost? What type of giant bird carried people? Did it eat them and excrete them when they arrived in their intended destinations? What was going on? I asked myself all these questions in a split second but only the noise of the helicopter engine replied me with a loud sound! One by one the missionaries came to greet me and my chiefs but none of them bowed down or observed the custom of "u R"! You see in Lozi kingdom, no one spoke or saw the king if they didn't know how to draw, play and "u R"! It was a form of traditional art and game where the stone was called ugwini representing the king's castle and power! There was one rule to the game, precision! Every player had to steadily push ugwini using their foot as a golf stick whilst the other foot was off the ground in order to make it hard and intense as possible. With every push of ugwini through the diverse drawn boxes, the player got closer and closer to attain the right to see the king and those that failed practised until they could master it.
So the eunuchs came and led them to the camp fire as the chiefs and l followed behind. However there was a penalty for speaking to the king directly without being interceded for even for foreigners regardless if they knew or not. It was called the "rhumba", a dance that was done as punishment for speaking to the king without permission. The performer had to wind their hips as if emulating the side way movement of a desert viper and mix it up with a few kicks and flicks to keep it entertaining but as easy as this was, the trap of the punishment was simply, time! You see, we would let you rhumba and applaud for you for a few mins and if you were that good we would even offer you water whilst you were still conscious and able to have fun and so we made sure to prolong every opportunity of it to the limits. The punished would rhumba until they fell down with exhaustion and even then you still had to rhumba on the floor! Ntombenhle and her crew rhumbaed until the messenger came to report that the visitors were changing color and that is when we ordered them to stop because all of them were a deep shade of red as if their bodies were about to explode anytime! The missionaries passed out and slept near the campfire and they all snored with exhaustion much to the amusement of everyone who enjoyed a little laughter!
Lumela ; U zuhile cwang'? (Good morning), l woke up my sleeping beauty! It was as if l was possessed and needed my questions answered pronto! U zuhile cwang? (How are you) she replied as she rubbed her eyes and sat up. In a few mins everyone was awake and we offered them our best fish and food and they impressively ate it like we do, hardcore! After they were full and had regained their strength, l asked them all the questions that everyone wanted to know. They began their response with a word of prayer, something we had never had before! You see these missionaries were good! They understood their capabilities and studied their target areas for months and years before they even began their ministry. So when we asked these questions, we were asking things they had answered everyday for 365 days before they even came here! We were playing a delayed game that they had mastered years ago. All of our questions had good answers and all of our doubts had satisfying calculated responses. We asked about everything until it got to a point that we ran out of questions and began to endorse the idea of unity, globalization and Jesus Christ as they said with their white collared black shirts and big books! They made us believe the same thing they hated Tshaka Zulu for, land! You see Tshaka Zulu is one of the few African rulers who understood that the Canaan that the white settlers spoke of was a lie. That's why when he asked them how his people and the white settlers would live in one area as neighbors in peace and harmony; they called him a barbarian and the African Hitler!
However l wasn't Tshaka, nor had l an empire full of gold and appealing entics! But what l had were two river gods and a myth that the world couldn't help but seek to find out. So Jasmine and her crew were the first wave, the preachers, the softeners and yes, the spies! With time my people called the missionaries kezeli (literally meaning brothers or sisters) and l called Ntombenhle, monde(my love) as she called me mubita (her love)! The trickery was so good that the kingdom was split between worshiping Yahweh and our local river gods! This displeased Nyaminyami and Chitapo greatly although funny enough they had never revealed themselves even to me ever since the missionaries had came! I tried day and night to appease them to come out so that the white settlers could capture some pictures of them for record keeping as they said but nothing came out of the water. I even tried some farfectched rituals that were alien to our kingdom but it was as if the river gods had disappeared and frightening enough, the fish supply had stopped as well! We were giving foreigners a five star treatment with depleting reserves whilst they barter traded that with hats and things that we had hand made for them as gifts! We were stupid ain't we? But trust me; the person who said knowledge is power wasn't lying because we learnt the hard way!
Maybe you expected a love story, full of affection and romance in this chapter but l am sorry to disappoint you. At least you are shattered by the reality that you are reading, l was dismantled by a culture that didn't allow me to marry or touch an outsider. So if you thought l was going to tell you sweet nothings and tinkle you about how me and Ntombenhle gave Romeo and Juliet some interracial love notes, then l am sorry about un-Shakespearing your whole experience! I didn't even hug her! Our relationship was simply logical and mental telepathy! We shared words, ideas and fused what made sense into one and called it "ours". What a fool l was! By the time the missionaries began to flood our shores with the excuse of just being tourist and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, my kingdom was already more than 60% Christian! They blew us fake holy kisses and poured oil on our heads as if anointing us for something greater than we already was but nothing changed except that they kept coming and coming! Eventually some of my people and the settlers mocked the river gods and termed those that still believed in them religious and rural illiterates! And so they enticed some powerful houses to sway my attention and put me in a corner to agree to the actual thing they wanted the most, electricity!