Another Malawian poet, K. L. Lapukeni, uses a creature of the flora and fauna, the Chameleon, in his poem of the same name to an equally great effect:

Basically, he started lean
And weak. Moths’ facelifted
Him. Up one branch,
His first, he swallowed them up
Segment by segment, then thoraces,
Heads and antennae,
Stronger

He heaved himself along
A sturdier branch,
Foxing into birds’ nests. He
Swallowed fledglings: beaks
Feathers and all.
Heavier,

He took a branchlet, along
Which his eyes discovered more insects
Centipedes and hoppers,
It snapped, and he fell to the ground,
His belly open as a book,
Released the young, mid-aged
And Machipisa alive

We gaze at him now, breathing
Relief, seeing no reason
Why we interested him.

But we live,
Old, he is dying.

This is an interesting allegory of a Chameleon that ate one insect too many.
Both Chimombo and Lapukeni are products of a similar political land scape during the terror of the notorious Ngwazi of Malawi, aka Dr Kamuzu Banda.
The poet’s personal experiences might have been different but both were confined to a singular time-period in Malawi’s political history.
The image of a chameleon that starts weak and gawky in its early life but grows fatter and more confident on its way up the tree of life is an interesting picture.
One notable feature about the chameleon’s development is that its way up had the support of moths around, the sort of sycophants that props dictators the world over. Steadily, though, it garners up courage and eats and swallows by itself.
Thankfully, however, for this one spectacle there is a snapping branch that brings its weight down, distilling its entrails. It is then and only then that we know that out of its open belly a prisoner of 27 years, Machipisa Mnthali is set free.
Like Nelson Mandela of South Africa under apartheid,Machipisa equally languished in prison under Banda’s regime all that long.
But, for what use is this release because the man is old and dying although there is the hope that others with the same tenacity are alive to keep the flame alight.
But there is more to the death of a chameleon, as Chimombo writes again in ‘Past Hero-Bearing Age’ part 5, when the chameleon comes down with the snapped branch to the ground bursting open its treacherous belly:

It is an ancient cemetery, this heroes’ acre,
It has seen many an old body and bone,
It has enjoyed numerous zikumbutso or sadaka,
Yet the earth never grows big in fecundity,
Thirty years of overfeeding crocodiles have not
Impregnated the drought-stricken land.

The Earth Mother is now famine-ridden,
Not juices secrete from her dugs,
Look how her emaciated breasts
Hang pendulously like sausage fruit.

Now that she has brought home her children,
Let us not ask the usual pertinent question:
What did these heroes die for, or for?
Or the corollary: Did they have to die?

The paradox of life is that there is an ear-marked special piece of land for the exiled-now-returnees called, the heroes’ acre, to re-bury the previouslyburied dead.
There is a further paradox about the significance of this act long after the chameleon is dead and interred, so who pays the price for the dead now that the chameleon is dead? Isn’t this, then only a therapy of troubled consciences for the living?
The impotent living that cannot even seek to know the reason heroes’death or at least pose the rhetorical question: did they have to die?
Meanwhile, Mother Earth, the indefatigable source and sanctum of all that are gone, are going and will go, whether by will of man or through the bared teeth of crocodiles receives and covers their bones at heroes’ acre.
In tyrannical regimes what matters most is speech which apparently is intentionally thwarted. Another Malawian poet, Edison Mpina, in his ‘Silent Speech’ puts it slyly:

I raise my voice, hello, hello
Still no voice comes.

I don’t know who is on the other
Side,

Yet there is someone out there, who
Dialed

My number but, has his freedom
To speak to me,

Or mine to listen to him
On check. This is not silent pride;

He or she needs to express
Something.

We’re waiting for a chance
When we’ll be free to express
Ourselves.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe
Much later. But as
We wait, we’re sure that what we can’t say
Says a lot.

The language and expressive forms writers employ to express ideas in times of despondence and painful incarceration of the conscious assume many variations.
The idea is to communicate as much they can and keep themselves alive. Whether or not their communication is effective to the reader is another matter, owing to personalized and private innuendos.
The examples we have examined this week are a good illustration ofthis phenomenon.
However, the political land scape in Malawi has since changed for the better and the writing that has come after the despotic rule of Kamuzu Banda speaks for itself and we will look at some of the poetry that has characterized the period after the darkest hour of that despotic rule in that country.
For now, I leave it to the reader to enjoy the discussed poetry and learn the many forms used by poets to express their ideas.
One of the challenges Zambian writers, poets in particular, face is one of not taking time to thoroughly think of, not only what ought to be said but also how what ought to be said will have to be said; in a sense it is the question of the matter and the manner of expressive communication.
The latter is as important as the former. Take a look and reflect on Chimombo’s beggar woman and the associated fights with her head and body lice, for instance, and then examine closely with a writer’s mind Lapukeni’s chameleon of odds.
Consider also the details of each poem, the elements of similes used and the overall allegorical motifs employed to flesh out their cryptic themes under an intense authoritarianAfrican regime then.
Comments–ofpoetspoems@gmail.com