Written piece
The Thread of The Crocodile River
Stanley Chanda
Zambia
About this piece
This poem explores my ancestral thread as a Bemba from Northern Zambia. Inspired by the Chambeshi River, Bemba oral traditions, and the enduring connection between generations, it reflects on how language, stories, memory, and music become forms of inheritance.
The Thread of the Crocodile River
I was born to a line older than my name.
Before I learned to speak, the voices of my ancestors were already moving through the forests and rivers of Northern Zambia, carried by the wind that bends the tall grass and the waters of Chambeshi that never cease their journey.
I am Bemba.
My inheritance is not written in gold or sealed within documents.
It lives in stories.
Stories spoken beneath the evening sky, where elders stitched wisdom into words and children listened as if the stars themselves were teaching.
I inherited a language that carries the laughter of my people, their grief, their courage, their prayers.
I inherited the drum, whose heartbeat reminds us that no one walks alone.
I inherited the memory of migration, of kingdoms built and defended, of the Chitimukulu, whose throne stands not merely as power, but as a living thread connecting generations.
I inherited rivers.
The Chambeshi, which begins its journey in our homeland before finding its way toward distant waters.
Like that river, our lives travel far, yet never forget their source.
Today I stand between worlds.
Part of me walks the modern road, yet another part still hears ancient footsteps echoing through the forests of my ancestors.
I hear them when I write poetry.
I hear them when breath enters my flute and becomes something more than music.
Each note feels like a conversation between the living and the remembered.
My thread is woven from many strands: Bemba and Swahili, village and city, memory and dream, ancestor and descendant.
I did not begin this line.
I am a traveller within it.
And one day, when my own voice joins the silence of those before me, I hope my poems, my music, and my footsteps will become another thread for those still to come.