“One, the owl singing into the night. Two, the smell of soil the next morning. Three, the way my mother hadn’t looked at me when I greeted her. Four, my friends and I giggling at the back of the hall while we listened to stories of Christmas mornings. Five, playing a round of country game. Six, Bo Ndate Chimuka, mawe!” This is a haunting paragraph in the first chapter of The Mourning Bird and the place where the life of the narrator changes forever. The refreshing debut novel by Mubanga Kalimamukwento takes the nostalgic route in unfolding this tale.
Winner of the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, Mubanga, shows through this novel the devastating effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1990s and how it ripped through families in its wake. The story is told through the eyes of Chimuka, whose childhood naiveté and rebellious nature are brimming throughout the pages. For example, “Wenfula isa-isa, twangale na mainsa…. After the rain came the flying termites. Fatty, delicious and free. At night, they exposed themselves, fatally drawn to the flickering lightbulbs on the veranda.” The reader is taken on the journey that Chimuka must navigate to survive the perilous times.
Mubanga’s talent shines in the way she paces the novel with the right dose of action and descriptive storytelling that draws the reader into her collage of characters and places. Every Zambian, can spot a friend, brother, cousin, aunt or neighbour who is close to the characters. The dialogue is equally interspersed with Lozi, Nyanja, and Tonga with the occasional humour.
The Mourning Bird is a story that many people in Zambia are familiar with, it encompasses family dynamics, grief, abuse and an individual’s resilience to live regardless of life’s boulders along the way. Despite this being a story that is not outside the breadth and length of what is known of HIV/AIDS and the lives affected by it, the way in which Mubanga captures its facets makes this book enjoyable to read. The author is one to watch if The Mourning Bird is the yardstick we should use.
The Mourning Bird by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
200 pages
Publisher: Jacana Media