Zambwe, the African Monsoon rain, poured. My two older sisters and I remained imprisoned in our hut. The hut’s wall of wooden poles and anthill-clay plaster protected us from the slanting rain arrows, but its porous grass roof leaked like a shower. Huddled on our reed mats we trembled as the rumblings of the clouds announced more, and more rain. Unable to do anything else, we huddled closer and looked at each other as if to say, “What’s next?” Floods did not enter our thoughts.

I knew Lupamazi as a fast-flowing but seasonal river. April to October Lupamazi River was just a white line of dry river sand. Come January, the river awoke, delivering its annual quota of water to the bigger Lwangwa River.

Our family lived on the banks of the Lupamazi. We accepted its seasonal see-sawing because elders said, Ni chiuta we panga – “God made it that way.”

That was then.

In February 1945, it rained cats and dogs. For a full week we saw no sunlight but dark gray moist clouds endlessly dripping water. It was as if someone up there broke a dam wall and let the water tumble down all at once.

Ni zambwe – “It’s the African monsoon rain,” my father said. “Stay inside the hut and stock up on sweat potatoes and groundnuts. Your mother won’t cook with that soggy fire wood!”

The flood wasn’t totally unexpected. Kabulunganya, who lived in a neighboring village, was said to know things nobody else knew about. She said, matter-of-factly, “I dream the river is boiling…! A mountain of water is cascading downhill sweeping everything in its way: huts, huge fig trees, dogs, cats…I see floods!”

“Oh, don’t mind her,” a respected village elder advised. “She acts crazy at this time of year.”

Kabulu, as she was popularly known, wasn’t crazy although she looked it. She always dressed in a black calico loin cloth worn like a baby diaper, revealing an enlarged belly button the size of an orange on her bare stomach. Her big full breasts sat on her chest like anthills; and an apple-size goiter on her neck caused her eyes to barge. But she wasn’t crazy.

“The river is boiling!” She warned.

Nobody listened!

One morning before sunrise, my two sisters and I woke up to a booming thunder and noises like boulders crushing down a steep slope. The mud floor we slept on vibrated. We fidgeted, cuddled tight, but dared not leave the hut; “Weren’t we warned?”

It felt like months before a weak sun peered through the misty clouds, its rays flickering like candle light in a dark cave. The flood hurried towards our hut like an avalanche, its noise deafening, and its force ferocious: destroying everything that stood in its way. Women wailed and men gathered in knots counting their losses. More rain poured!

The dim skies were deserted except for green pigeons and white stork flying round and round with no place to land.

As dusk fell, vultures landed on the river’s banks to feast on rotting carcasses of drowned buffalo, zebra, dogs, cats…, the angry water cast ashore. Thick stench stung our nostrils.

Ni zamba, “it’s floods, ” my father said, “didn’t Kabulu tell you?”