The common story in modern day Zimbabwe and Zambia amongst the new Lozi and BaTonga people still leaving near the Kariba basin is that Italians came with a plan to build a dam wall in the Zambezi river but the river gods would not approve. They so it as a means of trapping them and seperating them apart hence Nyaminyami destroyed the dam wall in 1957 and twice in 1958,drowning eleven Italians in the process whose bodies were never found and assumed to be have remained within the concrete walls. But all this is a lie! You see the river gods l speak about and used to convene with predate Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Witwatersrand as people know them. We used to throw stones from Africa to test velocity and distance and Americans would catch them mid air before they touched the ground because continental separations and boundaries wherein an natural disaster as of yet. This is how ancient and raw these events where. Whatever they saw in 1957 was probably a bedtime story that our great grand kids told the modern age in order to conceal the true nature and depth of what really happened. Some say when you are hell bent on revenge or focuses on hunting something, make sure to dig to graves because there is a possibility that the prey may be also hunting you !
Listen closely! The first white settlers to see the river gods were not Italian but it was Bartolomeu Dias.He was a Portuguese mariner and explorer and the first European navigator to round the southern tip of Africa and Sub Saharan Africa to demonstrate that the most effective southward route for ships layed in the open ocean, well to the west,south and east of the African coast. His discoveries effectively established the sea route between Europe, Africa and Asia. Bartholomeu was our captor, but also an advisor and under study to Vasco Da Gama the 1st Count of Vidigueira, an Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea via the Cape of Good Hope. He understood that the task of capturing two shapeshifting river gods wasn't going to be easy so he released the caged "Ninki Nanka" that Vasco Da Gama had gave him as a present when his voyage showcased that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans flowed into each other. The Ninki Nanka was a legendary creature. It had reptilian,dragon-like features that were similar to the prehistoric tanystropheus, an archosauromorph that had a crocodile-like body with a long neck and it lived in swamps and water. It was so big and dangerous that children who got too cocky and disobeyed their parents were sent to swamps, where the shear breath of the Ninki Nanka was enough to skin a human being alive from 50 metres away! Mr Dias like most explorers in the world at the time, was a also a relic hunter! If there someone you could bet your money on to capture any dragon, sea creature or myth, Vasco Da Gama and Bartholomeu Dias would top the list. All the shite settlers who had arrived before as missionaries and tourists were agents and surveyors of Batholomeu Dias. They collected each and every detail there was about us to the dot to a point that the mercenaries that arrived with Sir Dias were navigating our land as if they are the ones who mapped it out!
Sir Dias knew that a wounded titan versus an angry, caged and fully charged Ninki Nanka was a guaranteed victory. So his idea was to let it loose onto the river so that it would instinctively and naturally search for any threats around the area and hence speeding up its collision course with the two river gods in their weeaker form! Nyaminyami and Chitapo would be forced to flee out of the water and then the white settlers would capture them both using nets and pentobarbital, a seizure medication. In large doses, it quickly renders a beast unconscious. It shuts down their heart and brain functions within two minutes. So it began, the Ninki Nanka was let loose and as the day passed, land rumbles could be felt and heard allover the valley and water vibrations caused spiraling water quakes that hit the riverbank with violent waves. Everyone was scared but the white settlers were ready and steady! They knew that this meant that the Ninki Nanka had found the two river gods and it was a matter of time before they ran for their lives. However, the fight was far from over! You see mermaids have power and can monopolize a win out of a seemingly futile situation! Chitapo and Nyaminyami could shapeshift between mermaid and human form whilst controlling the river temperature , weather and water(this is known as hydrokinesis. It is the ability to manipulate liquid water.) They could also sing a song to enchant and lure people and other beasts into a trance or to their deaths and they could also speak to other creatures and gods. So this meant that the creature they sent to hunt the relics they wanted was lured into the depths of the waters and magically reprogrammed to attack its former masters by the river gods! By scratching lines into the earth, we could define time using an 'hours' system that began coun by the passing of daylight hours for the very first time thus becoming a sundial, a time finder. So at exactly midnight , the Ninki Nanka came out of the water infuriated and charging at everything that stood in its way! Many lost their lives and the whites settlers had no option but to kill it! So then began to flank it and push it to the Zambuko (bridge) of Kariwa!
The Zambuko of Kariwa was one of the first bridges ever constructed in the world using cement! Concrete was mixed with lime and volcanic rock and the end product was cement. So this bridge was the ideal place to trap a titan like the Ninki Nanka because it would have no where to run or hide. However there was one problem! No one knew if the bridge would be strong enough to protect and shield the Tonga tribes of the Gwembe Valley and ourselves if the Ninki Nanka was to charge at it in an attempt to escape the heavy artillery against it! Unfortunately it crumbled down and killed many of the white settlers including the Ninki Nanka itself! So in memory of this event, Sir Bartholomeu Dias called the big rock that surived from the bridge's structure, "Kariwa" which means "trap", in remembrance of what happened that day and this is where the name Kariba was derived from. This was the first time a bridge had been levelled down by a titan and because the cost, damage and loss was just to much even for Sir Dias. The white settlers withdrew from the place, carrying their dead and cursing to never come back to this God forsaken place. We all cried tears of joy when we saw them pass the horizon as they journeyed away from us. At that moment it didn't matter who you were or what you were. We were all Africans and bound by the spirit of the motherland! They reinstated me as the ruler again of this new complex and diverse empire! We could never be the Lozi again, so we unified with the Bergdams, Koranna ,Mundari and Wagadu that had survived so far into the kingdom of Nluu and formed the most complicated dialect that foreigners could bleed from by biting their gums and tongues off when they tried to decipher and learn it! But everything comes at a cost and even when people are cheerful and merry, disappointment is never afar off especially near the water as the river gods were watching us celebrate a temporary peace!