Chibale Zambia: individuality and conformity
Proverb 31Example from the proverb book Amano mambulwa.2Photo 133 and Photo 134.
Nawe, kwenu takwali bakulu!
Tawafundwapo?
Kwaliba intambi isha seka ku mitundu yonse kwati pakupokelela icintu ku bakulu kupoka na maboko yabili, nomba iwe wabomfya fye ukuboko kumo! Nomba epa kumwebati nawe twafundwa pantu konse bwaka abakulu eko baba.
As for you, there were no elders in your village!
Didn’t they teach you at home?
There are certain manners common to all regions like receiving a gift from an older person by using both hands. Now, if you use only one hand… That is when they will say: you must have grown up in a village without elders. While elders who could have taught you are everywhere else.
Rules of life
Chibale Zambia: individuality and conformity. The theme finds expression in the great number of rules (mushila) stipulating conventional behaviour for almost every circumstance. People say that they were followed in the past. They still play a role, certainly in the spirit possession cults and, in a changed form, for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. See the article Rules of life in an expanding world.
It also finds expression in the ways people deal with conspicuous individuality and individual success. Some groupings explain success and possible consequential conspicuous individuality as the result of hard working. Others see it as the result of malicious intention. Or as ishuko, the good fortune resulting from a good relation with the mpanga (spirit world).
Seur3Seur (1992: 206). reports something similar.
Although I am hesitant to make a clear-cut division, I found that younger people and successful farmers, in particular, tended to explain the economic differentiation among farmers as resulting from the qualities and actions of individuals. Poorer farmers on the other hand, especially those belonging to the older generation, were often less convinced that their actions could alter the course of events. These farmers often considered economic differentiation as an unjust phenomenon and tended to describe success or failure in farming as being determined by factors lying outside the control of the individual, such as fate, chance or sorcery.
Finding leeway
Chibale Zambia: individuality and conformity. In Chibale much attention goes to all kinds of rules of conformity. But at the same time it is up to the individual to find the ‘performance leeway’ within this. The ways in which the performers found leeway within the structural characteristics/requirements of music or dance were an important factor in the evaluation of singers and especially dancers in the 1980s but not so much in the 2000s.
Continue to the article about the theme Independence and interdependence.
Footnotes
- 1Example from the proverb book Amano mambulwa.
- 2Photo 133 and Photo 134.
- 3Seur (1992: 206).