Lusaka

Lusaka takes its name from Lusaaka, a Lenje headman whose village stood near the site when the railway from the south was pushed north through the plateau in the first years of the twentieth century. A siding opened in 1905, and a small settlement of European farmers and traders grew around it, serving the maize farms of the surrounding district.

Its promotion was an act of planning rather than growth. Northern Rhodesia's capital had been Livingstone, on the Zambezi in the far south, and in 1929 the administration decided to move it to a more central point on the line of rail. The new capital was laid out with a garden-city plan drawn up under Professor Stanley Adshead, and the transfer took effect in 1935. Cairo Road, the wide central avenue, took its name from the Cape-to-Cairo route, and separate townships were built for African workers away from the European suburbs.

Lusaka became the centre of nationalist politics in the 1950s and 1960s, and the seat of independent Zambia from October 1964. Under Kenneth Kaunda it also sheltered exiled activists from the liberation movements of southern Africa, and has been described as the centre of anti-colonial resistance for the region. The city has grown far faster than its services: the planned suburbs are now ringed by large unplanned compounds, and the population has multiplied many times over since independence, making Lusaka one of the fastest-developing cities in southern Africa.

Lusaka is the one place in Zambia where all the country's peoples mix. Nyanja, the language of the east, has become the common street speech, and English the language of work, school and signage, with Bemba, Tonga and Lozi all heard in the markets. That mixture has made the capital the centre of a national popular culture rather than a regional one.

Music runs through the city. The Zamrock bands of the 1970s played the township halls; today Zambian hip-hop, kalindula and gospel come out of studios in the inner suburbs and fill minibus radios and bars. Churches are a central institution, from cathedrals in the government quarter to enormous Pentecostal halls in the compounds, and Sunday is quiet until services end. Football is followed closely, and international matches at the National Heroes Stadium empty the streets.

Craft and visual art have an established base here: the Kabwata Cultural Village brings carvers and weavers from several provinces into one compound, and a small gallery scene shows contemporary Zambian painting and sculpture. Manners are formal by regional standards — elders are greeted first, titles are used, and patience and courtesy carry more weight in a transaction than directness.

More than two million people live in the city and its surrounding district, drawn from every province, and the population is young: a large share is under twenty-five. About 70 per cent of residents lived in unplanned settlements in 2015, on the western, southern and northern fringes, where water, drainage and electricity connections lag well behind the building.

The economy is government, trade and services rather than industry: ministries and parastatals, banks and mobile-money agents, wholesalers, transport firms and a growing retail sector built around the malls on Great East Road. Small-scale trading employs an enormous number of people, from market stalls to vendors working the traffic queues. Farms on the outskirts supply maize, vegetables and flowers, some of the last flown to Europe.

The day starts early. Minibuses fill before dawn, markets are trading by seven, and offices work through to late afternoon. Conversation turns on the price of mealie meal and fuel, on the kwacha, and on load-shedding: when drought lowers the levels at the hydroelectric dams, power cuts run for long stretches of the day and businesses fall back on generators. Water supply and sanitation in the crowded settlements remain serious public health concerns.

Nshima is the fixed point of the Lusaka table, as it is everywhere in Zambia — a stiff white maize porridge rolled into a ball by hand and dipped in relish. The relishes reflect the eastern and central provinces that feed the capital: chibwabwa (pumpkin leaves), kalembula (sweet potato leaves) and delele (okra), often cooked with pounded groundnuts, alongside beans, dried kapenta from the lakes, and village chicken, which is prized over broiler birds.

Street and market food is substantial. Vitumbuwa, small fried dough balls, are sold from basins in the morning; roasted maize cobs, boiled groundnuts and sugarcane are hawked at junctions; and grilled beef or goat from a charcoal braai, cut up and shared from a common plate, is the standard evening meal out. Chikanda, the savoury loaf of wild orchid tubers and peanuts sometimes called African polony, has moved from the countryside onto restaurant menus in town. Seasonal foods punctuate the year: wild mushrooms and caterpillars in the rains, inswa — fried flying termites — after the first heavy storms.

Lusaka's long-settled Gujarati-speaking Indian community has given the city curry houses and samosa stalls, and the malls add pizza, burgers and South African chains. The drinks are Mosi lager, brewed in the country, thick Chibuku sorghum beer sold by the carton, munkoyo, a lightly fermented root and maize drink, and very sweet tea.