A FEW weeks ago, I was invited to attend to a cleansing ceremony in Masala Township in Ndola.
This was the second such ceremony I have ever attended in my life, the first being in Lusaka some months back.
The Lusaka cleansing ceremony involved my cousin who hails from Eastern Province who had lost a wife and the Ndola ceremony involved my brother-in-marriage who comes from Luapula Province who also lost his dear wife in Solwezi a couple of months ago.
Although I have witnessed such ceremonies two times in my life, I have been reading about them in African writers series novels and watching them on movies, especially Nigerian and Ghanaian movies and they were no different from the ones I physically attended and I have come to know that African traditions and cultures are the same.
According to what I learnt, cleansing ceremonies were performed to rid the spirits of the deceased from the bereaved wives or husbands to enable them remarry if they wanted after mourning their departed loved ones. It was some kind of exorcism.
When I was informed about this ceremony a few days earlier, I was told the event would start at about 09:00 hours on Saturday and I was asked to be at the venue earlier being one of the closet brothers-in-marriage to the man who had lost the wife.
On arrival at the house where the event was to take place, I found that two other brothers-in-marriage had already arrived.
But the man who was to be cleansed had not yet arrived since he was coming from a  distant place in Kalulushi.
Normally, this man should have arrived a day earlier because such ceremonies take place early in the morning.
By 10:00 hours, the man had still not arrived and it was because of the long wait that my two brothers-in-marriage suggested that we take a walk around.
I knew what they meant when they suggested that: It was to go to a bar to while up some time instead of staying home waiting for hours for someone who was not showing up.
We got at one of the bars which was not far from the place were the ceremony was to take place and I was surprised that many people, especially the teenagers, were already drunk and were dancing wildly to the Zambian music which was blaring from the juke box.
In the bar, one of my brothers-in-marriage asked us what drinks we would take.
I don’t usually drink beer in the morning and I said I would take a coca cola while my other brother-in-marriage said he would take a packet of opaque shake-shake.
The man bought a big bottle of Castle Lager and a packet of shake-shake and omitted coca cola.
He looked at me and advised me to take a beer and not coca cola.
As you may by now know, I enjoy either Windhoek or Castle, depending on what was available. But these brands were more expensive than what the sponsor was taking and to be fair, I decided to take a Castle Lager.
“Walileka ukunwa Windhoek,” (you stopped drinking Windhoek?) the one who was taking shake-shake asked me.
Before I could answer, the sponsor bought a Windhoek Lager for me.
We had taken one too many when the man who was sponsoring our drinks turned at our brother who was taking shake-shake and said to him that he should not embarrass him like the way he did in Lusaka a few months back.
He should not embarrass him like the way he did in Lusaka! What could the man have done? My eavesdropping ears wanted to know.
The man who was being talked to retorted: “Akushitafye ubwalwa iwe,” (you just continue buying beer).
“What you did in Lusaka was very foolish and I don’t want a repeat of that,” the sponsor said as he walked to the counter and bought two packets of shake-shake, a big bottle of Castle Lager and two bottles of Windhoek Lager.
Soon, the man who was taking shake-shake got to his feet and joined the teenagers who were dancing.
“Watampa. (You have started). Soon, you will be asking for brown chibuku here like you did at the golf club in Lusaka,” our sponsor brother said.
“Tawakwata amano iwe. Elyashi wingaleta kuno ilyo?” (You have no brains. Is that the topic you can bring here), protested our brother.
What was the story? I wondered. But the sponsor who seemed to be sozzled by now went on to scold his friend.
What happened was that these brothers-in-marriage are brick-layers. The one who was buying the beer had won a tender to construct a house in Lusaka for one of his uncles who had married his mother’s young sister.
Since his brother-in-marriage was also a brick-layer, he invited him, together with other three men to go to Lusaka with him so that they could work together.
Each time they knocked off, the man whose house was being built would take them to one of the golf clubs in Lusaka and buy them a lot of beers. But each time they were at the club, the other brother-in-marriage would sneak out to the nearest township to have opaque brown chibuku. He would come back to the golf club very late and completely drunk.
His brother-in-marriage was not pleased with this attitude and he always complained about it.
One day, his uncle, who was a boss at some company in Lusaka and was a member at the golf club, asked his nephew why his friend was always not around and only came back late.
He suggested that they should be together all the time because he had money enough to buy beers for all of them.
So, the following day, the man told his friend that his uncle had complained about his movements and he wanted them to be together all the time.
“After I told him this, he complained that he did not like the beers that were found at the golf club. He said his brand was opaque chibuku brown and not lagers or spirits and that was why he was sneaking out to a nearby township where that beer was found,” our brother explained to me.
At this revelation, I remembered how we missed this brother in Solwezi when we went for the funeral. While we were drinking in the bar, the man would sneak out and when he came back, he was very drunk. I now understood why.
When he explained this to his uncle, the man arranged that someone goes to the township to get five liters of chibuku brown which was sneaked into the golf club.
When his friends were taking lagers and spirits, our brother was the only one enjoying chibuku brown at the golf club.
Drinking chibuku at the golf club! The rules were totally broken! I thought.
However, our brother continued explaining and said while his friend was pouring chibuku in a glass, one of the club members, a white man for that matter, asked to have a sip of the staff and he was given a glassful.
After taking the glass of chibuku, the white man exclaimed that the drink was good and it was food.
“After that day, my uncle was buying 10 liters of chibuku which not only this man was drinking, but others including my uncle and the white man. I was very embarrassed,” complained our brother.
It was then that the man who was being accused replied that  his brother-in-marriage’s uncle and the white man were very much in favor of chibuku and that was the reason why he was buying 10 liters.
“I could not finish 10 liters of brown chibuku alone. Your uncle and the white man enjoyed chibuku more than lagers and spirits,” explained our brother.
It was when the argument was almost culminating into a fight when my cell phone rang and when I answered, I was told our brother from Kalulushi who was to be cleansed had arrived. We finished our drinks and left the bar while my two brothers were quarreling bitterly all the way to the house of the cleansing ceremony.
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