Depending on the season, rivers whirl and eddy in a variety of colours, shrinking and swelling with the rains on a never-ending journey from source to sea. Shades of brackish brown, pea green and milky grey are all common, but if the waters ever stain red, Zambia’s Tonga people raise an alarm.
According to ancient local legends, a fiery flow is a trail left by river god Nyami Nyami, a humongous serpent-like creature who lives in Lake Kariba. His last show of strength was a mighty one: angered by the construction of a dam on the Zambezi River in the 1950s, Nyami Nyami is said to have summoned a series of unprecedented natural disasters. Storms and flash floods raised rivers over the rooftops of villages, causing a level of devastation rarely seen in the Zambezi Valley. If superstitious locals feared this was Nyami Nyami’s revenge for separating him from his wife, Kitapo, upstream, it didn’t impede the infrastructure project — the dam was restarted and finally completed in 1958. Some say the leviathan has been tamed by this feat of hydroelectric engineering, but still, as I paddle through the calm waters of the Inkalange Channel, a gently meandering offshoot of the mighty Zambezi River, I can’t help but scan the waters for the signature scarlet bloom of his wake.
The captain of my canoe is Hastings Muhonga. Growing up in a community close by, the safari guide has witnessed the ebb and flow of fortunes in the Lower Zambezi National Park, one of Zambia’s most important wildlife sanctuaries. Despite being several hundred miles away, the dam reshaped the landscape we’re enjoying
