Livingstone, Victoria Falls & the West

The Tonga, long settled on the Southern Province plateau and in the Gwembe Valley, are among the oldest communities of the region. Near the Zambezi at Ingombe Ilede, burials of around the sixteenth century contained gold, copper crosses, glass beads and cloth, evidence that the valley was linked into trade with the Indian Ocean coast.

In the west, the Lozi built a kingdom on the Barotse floodplain, organised around the annual flood. In the 1830s it was conquered by the Makololo, invaders from the south under Sebitwane, before the Lozi regained power in 1864. It was on a journey with Kololo companions that David Livingstone reached the Falls in 1855. The Lozi king Lewanika signed concessions with the British South Africa Company from 1889, and Barotseland kept a distinct status under British rule. The Barotseland Agreement of 1964, which folded it into independent Zambia, was later abrogated, and some Lozi still campaign for its restoration.

Livingstone town was laid out near the Falls in 1905, when the railway bridge opened, and served as the capital of Northern Rhodesia until 1935. The Kariba Dam, completed in 1959, flooded much of the Gwembe Valley and displaced tens of thousands of Tonga people from both banks. Since the 2000s the North-Western Province has become a major copper producer, with large mines around Solwezi.

The region holds three distinct cultural worlds. The Tonga of the south are cattle people, and bride payments, cattle wealth and the plateau's maize farms define the rural economy; the Lwiindi rain ceremonies are held by Tonga chiefs. The Lozi of the west have Zambia's best-known monarchy: in the Kuomboka, the Litunga is paddled in the great barge Nalikwanda from his dry-season palace at Lealui to higher ground at Limulunga, with royal drums, paddlers in regalia and crowds along the water.

In the North-West, the Luvale, Chokwe, Luchazi and Mbunda peoples perform the Makishi masquerade, whose masked dancers mark the end of boys' initiation; UNESCO lists it as intangible heritage. The Luvale Likumbi Lya Mize festival near the town of Zambezi is one of its main public stages.

Silozi is the common language across Western Province, Tonga in the south, and Luvale, Lunda and Kaonde in the North-West, with English in the towns. Basketry is a regional craft: Lozi and Tonga baskets are woven from palm and grasses, and Livingstone's markets sell carvings and textiles made across the country.

Livingstone is the south's tourism town, and Choma, the provincial capital, and Mazabuka, surrounded by sugar estates, are the other main centres of Southern Province. Mongu is the capital of Western Province, perched on the edge of the floodplain, and Solwezi, the capital of the North-West, has grown quickly with the copper mines.

The Southern Province plateau is one of Zambia's main farming areas, with maize, cattle and commercial sugar, and the Kariba shore lives by kapenta fishing and hydropower. Western Province is poorer, depending on floodplain farming, cattle, fishing and timber, and families move with the water, farming the plain in the dry season and retreating to the edges in the flood. Mining has transformed the North-West, bringing jobs, traffic and rapid growth to Solwezi and new mine towns.

Recent droughts have hit the south hard, shrinking harvests and lowering Lake Kariba, which cut electricity output across the country.

Nshima is the staple, made from maize in the south and often from cassava in the west and North-West. In Tonga and Lozi homes it is eaten with mabisi, thick sour milk, or with fish: bream and catfish from the Zambezi and its floodplain, and kapenta from Lake Kariba, dried and fried with tomato and onion. Beef is more common here than in the north, reflecting the region's cattle wealth.

The Barotse floodplain around Mongu is Zambia's main rice-growing area, and beekeepers around Mwinilunga in the North-West produce honey for export. Pumpkin leaves, beans and groundnuts are everyday relishes, and roasted maize and sweet potatoes are sold on roadsides at harvest time.

Munkoyo, the fermented drink, is popular in the west, alongside Chibuku sorghum beer. Mosi lager, named after Mosi-oa-Tunya, the local name for the Falls, is the national beer.

Victoria Falls from the Zambian side is closer and more physical than from the opposite bank. Paths in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park lead along the Eastern Cataract, across the Knife-Edge Bridge through the spray and down to the Boiling Pot, and at low water guided trips go to Livingstone Island and Devil's Pool on the lip of the falls. Livingstone town, a few kilometres away, has the Livingstone Museum, river cruises above the Falls and the game area of Mosi-oa-Tunya, where guided walks visit white rhino.

Downstream, the northern shore of Lake Kariba is best seen from Siavonga, near the dam wall, or Sinazongwe, where kapenta rigs set out at dusk. Inland, Lochinvar National Park protects Kafue lechwe on the Kafue Flats, and Kafue National Park, Zambia's largest, spreads its woodland, rivers and Lake Itezhi-Tezhi across several provinces, with lions and the seasonally flooded Busanga Plains in the far north-west.

Further west lies the Barotse floodplain around Mongu, best experienced at the Kuomboka or by boat in the flood. Liuwa Plain National Park, beyond Kalabo, has its wildebeest migration and hyena clans, and the Ngonye Falls interrupt the Zambezi near Sioma. In the far North-West, the source of the Zambezi rises in a patch of forest near Mwinilunga, a marshy dambo that grows into one of Africa's greatest rivers.