Penny Dale

LUSAKA, Apr 8 (IPS) - - Despite this year's poor rains in the southern African country, Zambia's Lozi people have taken to their boats in the annual Kuomboka ceremony to mark the migration of their traditional ruler from Zambezi flood plain to dry ground.

The highly regimented ceremony, which has been held for centuries, is the colourful transfer by boat of the Lozi's leader - known as the Litunga - from his summer palace in the middle of the Zambezi flood plain in Zambia's Western Province to the higher ground of the winter palace.

In a blaze of colour, some 100 male canoers, dressed in animal skins and red berets, paddle the king in his black and white royal barge, known as the Nalikwanda. They complete with a model elephant on top, through a series of canals dug out of the floodplain to the winter palace, or Limulunga.

At the palace, thousands of Lozi people await to celebrate the safe passage of the king, who steps out on to the higher ground, having changed during the journey into the full regalia of a Victorian British ambassador's uniform.

The uniform was integrated into the ceremony after king Lewanika was presented with the uniform as a present by Britain's Edward VII during the early 1900s. Britain, the former colonial power, now presents each king with his own uniform, and a new royal barge is built for each Lozi leader.

Women are not allowed on the white royal barge and the king's wife is carried on a separate smaller barge, and accompanied by a flotilla of smaller canoes.

The journey, made to the pulsating sound of war drums and xylophones, this year took several hours longer than normal.

It is thought that part of the delay is due to the very low level of water and there are unconfirmed rumours that the white royal barge even ran aground, a rumour hotly denied by some of the paddlers.

In a year of normal rainfall, the Zambezi plain begins to flood from about middle of December.

But this year, the rains have failed through many parts of Zambia -- devastating maize crops and exposing close to two million Zambians to severe hunger.

This year what becomes a vast lake by March or April is an irregular patchwork of water and prisoners were brought in to strengthen the banks of the canal ahead of the ceremony.

Nevertheless the king, Lubosi Imwiko II who has been in position for two years, pressed ahead with the Kuomboka, which in the local Lozi language means to get out of water on to a dry ground.

Kuomboka, the journey across lush greenery, is Zambia's most famous and picturesque ceremonies, which in recent years are enjoying a revival in a rapidly modernising and urbanising country.

The ceremony is a fundamental part of the Lozi identity, attracting thousands of Lozi people who live throughout the country back to the normally sleepy fishing town of Mongu in Western province.

''This year I decided it was about time that I understood what it means to be Lozi and so I decided to attend Kuomboka,'' 30-year-old Mola Mutti, a police officer working in the capital Lusaka told IPS at the Mar 28 ceremony.

''It's been wonderful to experience the Kuomboka,'' he says. ''It makes me proud of my heritage, proud to belong to a people who are united behind one man, the Litunga.''

The history of Western province, also known as Barotseland, is unique in Zambia.

The Lozi developed a highly sophisticated labour-intensive economic and political system to exploit the Zambezi flood plain, which involved building villages on mounds, constructing canals and ensuring every part of the Kingdom.

The kingdom once stretched across much of the upper Zambezi basin in the west of the country to Victoria Falls in the south of Zambia and the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia, specialised in their goods, such as leather products.

Following the signing of an agreement in 1900 between king Lewanika and Cecil Rhodes of the British South Africa Company, which had bought up huge swathes of southern Africa, the kingdom of Barotseland was given a semblance of independence within the British colony Northern Rhodesia.

At Zambia's independence in 1964 under the then President Kenneth Kaunda, Barotseland was integrated into the rest of the country, although calls for secession are sometimes still heard.(END/2002)