By DAVE CHIBESA –
IN a low density plush home in Lusaka, three siblings giggled whilst huddled before a plasma television screen watching a Western video.
They were seated on a three-seater lounge suite.
But their amusement was not about what was showing on the broad screen; it was about their father’s penchant for caterpillar, locally known as ‘ifinkubala’ or ‘ifishimu’ in Bemba, known in Nyanja as ‘vinkubala’ relish as he swallowed hard because he found it delicious in the dining room.
One female sibling whispered to the other, “Dad enjoys eating insects!” and more giggling followed as a male child replied, “I am told the whole family was exposed to these insects!”
It was no surprise though that the children were reacting to the phenomenon of ‘insect eating’ because their father noticed that each time menu offered caterpillar for dinner, there seemed to be some kind of protest or boycott.
Each one of the children would claim that they were full and would prefer some tea and bread instead.
It took time for their father to discover that caterpillar was being forced down the throats of his family and made amends.
That when caterpillar time arrived, everyone else would have something else, like the commonplace meat and vegetables.
The scenario enumerated in the preceding text points to intricacies of the cultural generation gap which also affects other socio-economic links.
There are various arrays of cultural interpretation such as a typical Wikipedia version: that, culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behaviour; that is, the totality of a person’s learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behaviour through social learning.
It says a culture is a way of life of a group of people – the behaviours, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
In urban centres of Zambia, like Lusaka, Ndola or Kitwe, too much water has evidently passed under the proverbial bridge since the last century when warming stale Nshima for breakfast was handy.
Today, school going children, for instance, have been exposed to foods like macaroni, including the celebrated ‘Sharwama,’ which in recent times has become extolled in a song.
These are hum-like pieces of spiced meat spiked to some spindle which are finally sliced off by a knife to form a package.
Lyrics of the composition portray a spontaneous relationship in which a young man ‘misdirects’ money meant for ‘business’ in a quest to entertain a girl by buying her a ‘sharwama’ meal.
Informal counsultation defines a sharwama as a Lebanese cuisine consisting of chicken or meat shredded pieces which appear flat.
When the girl shows signs of retreating from the man’s advances, the latter bitterly complains and reminds her that in fact, he used to buy the ‘sharwama’ with money meant for a business transaction that he was supposed to carry out on his mother’s behalf!
In this light, there can be nothing for nothing and there was no way he could just lose out like that, the lamentation in the song rambles on.
In this context, the man decided that the girl should pay back in kind by spending a night with him because he was the insistent kind and hailed from the famous Chawama Township in Lusaka.
By inference, this seemed to imply the practice was common in areas like Chawama.
Reverting to culture, eating habits have largely changed over time in keeping with levels of civilization. In the process, social values have followed suit as can be seen at a typical dinner table in a conventional middleclass family.
When the table is set, relish is served from a large bowl and the norms of selecting pieces, especially for the father, has been discarded.
In the past, the woman of the house usually set aside pieces, like – in the case of a chicken – the gizzard, for the husband.
Over generations, this muscular bird’s digestion part – the gizzard – was a source of conflict.
When it missed either at lunch or supper, the woman was usually taken to task by the husband.
It was believed that the part was sacrosanct and was a special preserve of the male.
If it was not given to the man of the house, then he would assume the spouse gave it to another male in the shadows, which was interpreted to mean ‘infidelity’ and deserved the convening of a household traditional court to resolve.
In present society, however, this norm has lost its significance with the passage of time.
Anyone can pick up this chicken part in the home without any qualms.
Modernisation has also led to the discarding of certain practices, like the curing of malaria.
In the olden days, one would pluck shrubs of a particular plant, boil this cleavage in a large clay pot.
When the concoction was steaming hot, the patient, together with the pot placed carefully to prevent any mishap, would be covered with a blanket to prevent the steam from escaping.
With the clay pot lid removed, the patient would be engulfed in steamy sweat.
In the process, the malaria patient would inhale some of the steam while external heat would induce further sweating.
After this treatment, patients usually healed without taking any pills or capsules.
Sometimes it was the sexually transmitted infections (STls) that sent some people digging up paw-paw roots and soaking them into discarded soft drink bottles to drink.
As the practice gradually receded over generations, problems such as toxicity that these concoctions bore were scientifically analysed.
Toxicity, as generally defined, is the degree to which a substance can damage an organism.
Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium or plant.
So the bush treatment plan lacked diagnosis and went straight into curing the patient without considering factors like allergy.
An allergy therefore is the reaction of the body’s immune system to a foreign substance.
On impact of technology on culture, the overriding misnomer had been pornography, where a liberal viewing culture leaves children to their own devices.
It is evident that culture and advancing technology have reached their optimum.
But it remains to be seen how society would reverse the impact should reversing become necessary that is.