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74 Bulumba: Tonga hole-in-the-nose A TALL, slim, frail old lady puffs benignly at her pipe. Young women mill around selling dried fish, mostly tiger and bream. Despite their polished, tried and tested sales gimmicks, they can’t lure me. They only manage to remind me of the Maasai women I met in Kenya. The lady of the pipe has captured my heart. Wait, I am not given to polygamous tendencies. I take a quick glance at the lady. Yes indeed, there is something below her nose that raises intense curiosity in me. She parts her lips and reveals she has no front teeth on her upper jaw. I realise there is a language barrier between us preventing conversation. I give her a final parting gaze so as to retain in my mind the image of the well decorated stick stuck through her nose. The lady is said to be a common sight at Siachilaba in Binga district. No sooner do I get to Binga than I look for Duncan Sinampande and Mailos Mugande to enlighten me on what I had seen. “See, I also have got the hole through my nose”, chuckles Sinampande, as he tilts his head to expose the otherwise concealed hole. “It’s all part of beautifying oneself,” he says, with a broad smile which bares his milky white teeth. The hole is called bulumba. The piece of reed or smooth stick that is pushed through the hole is called kasita. My curiosity is excited. I enquire more into the custom. Both sexes used to have their bulumba made by specialist women who used sharp thorns from a moombenge or mukoka tree to make the hole. Once the sharp thorn was pushed through, the sharp end was broken. Healing took place with the thorn in place. Warm water was used to clean the septic wounds that almost always developed afterwards. As the healing progressed the thorn became loose. A short reed or smooth stick was then inserted into the hole to make it even bigger. With the healing completed, a permanent and longer piece of reed or smooth stick was pushed through. Its two ends were decorated with colourful beads. The reed could be removed if need be, and was usually put on during ngoma, a kind of Tonga orchestral ensemble where horns are blown and drums beaten. Mailos Mugande, being younger than Sinampande, does not have a hole through his nose. The practice fell into disuse, particularly during the 1950s when the Tonga were moved from the Zambezi River ahead of the construction of the Kariba Dam. 75 Down in the Zambezi Valley there were no schools. Schools were only built when the Tonga moved further inland. For example, in 1959, Manjolo, Sinampande and Samende schools were built by the Methodists. Siabuwa School, upland, was in existence much earlier. The Methodists established a school there in 1948. Moving upland also brought the Tonga into contact with the people of other ethnic groups who worked on the roads and in the offices. The move to the interior destroyed many Tonga customary practices. Next I look at Sinampande’s ears. Each ear lobe has a hole that was made when Sinampande was very young. Generally, says Sinampande, ear lobe piercing was carried out at a more tender age than the piercing of the nose. For earrings, some Tonga men and women used pieces of soft copper wire. Usually the wires were decorated by coiling silver wire around them. With each ear festooned with lots of these metallic devices, one’s beauty was considerably enhanced. Sinampande goes on to show me marks on his body that he says were also part of beautification. In the area just above his eyebrows is a crescent moon made by incisions. On each cheek there is what he calls a star - consisting of four equally spaced incisions that nearly meet at the centre. Mr Mugande is pleasantly surprised to see the celestial incisions. Yes, he was aware of Mr Sinampande’s hole in the nose, but had never seen his moon and stars. I have also met Sinampande on several occasions, but never noticed these heavenly bodies lightly etched on his dark face. Incision making is taken to a higher plane among the women. Intricate designs are to be found on their chests and extend to the abdomen. More are to be found on the upper arms. You get an impression of several stars concentrated into patterned lines - the earthly...

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