Kariba

The Zambezi gorge at Kariba — the name comes from a Tonga word meaning trap, after a rock jutting from the gorge where the wall was to be built — was chosen in the early 1950s as the site of a dam for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The work was carried out between 1955 and 1959 by the Italian firm Cogefar-Impresit, producing a double-curvature concrete arch wall 128 metres tall, with the power station cut into rock on the southern bank. Around 86 workers died during the construction, and floods in 1957 and again the following rainy season washed away much of the partly built works. The town grew from the construction camps: offices and senior housing on the cool hills above, labour compounds and the harbour below.

The lake that filled behind the wall drowned the valley floor and forced the relocation of about 57,000 Tonga people from both banks, moved to drier land away from the river, a displacement still remembered as a grievance in the valley. Nyaminyami, the Zambezi river spirit of Tonga belief, is said in local accounts to have been angered by the dam and separated from his consort by it. As the water rose, Operation Noah rescued thousands of animals stranded on shrinking islands and released them on the new shores.

After independence the town settled into three roles: generating power, fishing, and tourism built on houseboats and the parks. Kapenta, a small fish introduced from Lake Tanganyika, became a major industry with rigs working the lake at night. Kariba's fortunes now track the water level: prolonged drought in the region has repeatedly cut the lake low enough to reduce generation sharply, contributing to the power cuts felt across Zimbabwe and Zambia, and rehabilitation of the plunge pool and the spillway gates has been under way at the wall since 2017.

Kariba is a made town with a mixed population — Tonga families from the valley, Shona-speaking workers who came for the dam and the power station, fishing crews and lodge staff — and its culture is closer to a frontier settlement than to the older towns of the plateau. Most people are connected in some way to water: to the lake's fish, to the boats, or to the turbines inside the gorge.

Nyaminyami is the figure the town is best known for. In Tonga tradition the Zambezi river spirit, often shown with a fish's body and a snake's head, guarded the valley and its people; the floods of the construction years were widely read as his anger, and carved Nyaminyami walking sticks and pendants are the standard craft sold on the lakeshore. The Catholic church of St Barbara at Kariba Heights, raised with the other monuments of the early 1960s once the dam was finished, is the other emblem of that era, standing beside the Operation Noah memorial above the water.

Fishing shapes the social calendar: competitive tigerfish angling has a long tradition on the lake and draws teams from around the country, and the kapenta rigs go out at dusk with their lights, which is one of the sights of a Kariba evening. Life is otherwise informal and slow in the heat, with early starts, long middays indoors and evenings outside. Churches are well attended, funerals are major community occasions, and visitors are expected to greet properly before asking for anything.

About 27,600 people lived in Kariba at the 2022 census, most of them in the townships of Mahombekombe and Nyamhunga rather than in the hillside areas built for dam staff. The town's employers are the power station, the kapenta fishing companies, the national parks service, the border post and the lodges and houseboat operators, and between them they account for much of the formal work in this part of the valley.

The rhythm of the day is set by heat and water. Work starts early, the middle of the day is quiet, and activity returns in the late afternoon when boats go out and the lake cools. Kapenta rigs leave at dusk and fish through the night under lamps, returning at dawn to dry the catch on racks in the sun. Domestic water, supplies and fuel all have to come down the escarpment road from Makuti, so shortages are felt quickly, and the lake's level is followed closely because it governs both generation at the station and the fishing.

Wildlife is part of ordinary life rather than an excursion. Elephants cross roads in town, hippos graze on verges at night, crocodiles patrol the shoreline, and householders and lodges plan around them. The town also serves the Zambian side: the road over the dam wall links to Siavonga, and cross-border trade and family ties run both ways. Tourism, power and fish are the three things Kariba's prosperity depends on, and all three have been unsettled by drought.

Fish is the first thing to eat here. Bream from the lake — tilapia species, usually grilled over coals or fried whole — is the local speciality, served with sadza, the thick maize porridge that is the national staple, and a relish of greens or tomato and onion. Tigerfish, prized by anglers for the fight rather than the plate, is bonier and eaten less often. Fresh fish is sold at the harbour and at the township markets in the morning.

Kapenta, the small fish that made the lake's fishing industry, is the everyday protein: netted at night, dried on racks in the sun, then fried hard with onion and tomato and eaten with sadza. Sacks of dried kapenta leave Kariba for markets across the country, and it is one of the few Zimbabwean staple foods that is identified with a single place.

Beyond the fish, the food is standard Zimbabwean: sadza with beef or goat stew or with muriwo, greens cooked with tomato and often peanut butter; bota, a thinner maize porridge, at breakfast; roasted maize and maputi, puffed maize, sold at roadsides. Meat grilled over coals is the food of weekends. Chibuku, the opaque sorghum-and-maize beer sold in cartons, and maheu, a non-alcoholic fermented maize drink, are drunk alongside bottled lager, and cold drinks matter more here than almost anywhere else in the country.