Women’s History Museum Zambia
This sacred mask is engraved with the symbol of Sona, a sophisticated and now rarely used lighting system.
The wooden hunter toolbox, carved with Zambian ancient writing system, is making waves on social media.
“Africans were raised to be told they didn’t know how to read and write,” says Samba Yonga, one of the founders of Zambia’s Virtual Museum of Women’s History.
“But we had our own way of writing and sending knowledge that has been completely lined up and overlooked,” she tells the BBC.
This was one of the artefacts that launched an online campaign to highlight the role of women in pre-colonial communities and revive cultural heritage that was largely erased by colonialism.
Another interesting object is an intricately decorated leather cloak that has not been seen in Zambia for over 100 years.
“Artifacts mean important history and little known history,” says Yonga.
“Our relationship with cultural heritage has been confused and obscure by colonial experiences.
“It’s also shocking that the female role has been intentionally removed.”
Women’s History Museum Zambia
Samba Yonga holds a wooden hunter toolbox in one of the beautifully photo-taped images posted on social media for the frame project
Yonga, however, “there is a revival, a need, a hunger that connects with our cultural heritage, and we can regain who we are through fashion, music and academic research.”
“We had our own language of love, beauty,” she says. “We had a way of caring for our health and the environment. We had prosperity, union, respect, intelligence.”
A total of 50 objects have been posted on social media. With information about the importance and purpose that women often show that they are at the heart of social belief systems and understanding of nature.
The image of the object is displayed in a frame – surround plays based on the idea that it can affect how you are looking and how you perceive the picture. Just as British colonialism distorted Zambian history – through systematic silencing and destruction of local wisdom and practice.
The Frame Project uses social media to oppose the still-common idea that African society does not have its own system of knowledge.
This object was collected primarily during the colonial era and kept in museums around the world, including Sweden – this current journey of social media projects began in 2019.
Yonga was visiting the capital, Stockholm, and a friend suggested meeting Michael Barrett, one of the curators of the Swedish National Museum of World Culture.
She did – and when he asked where she came from, Yonga was surprised to hear that there are many Zambian crafts in the museum.
“It really blew my mind away, so I asked: “Did a country that had no colonial past in Zambia have many crafts from Zambia in its collection?”
Swedish explorers, ethnographicists and botanists from the 19th and early 20th centuries paid to travel to Cape Town by British ship, proceeding inland by rail and foot.
The museum features nearly 650 Zambian cultural objects, collected over the century and contains around 300 historical photographs.
Women’s History Museum Zambia
Mulenga Kapwepwe sees one of 20 untouched leather cloaks in Swedish archives collected during expeditions from 1911 to 1912
When Yonga and her virtual museum co-founder Murenga Kapuwepuye explored the archives, they were surprised to find that Swedish collectors had travelled far or wide.
The collection includes lead fishing baskets, ceremonial masks, pots, cow shell waist belts, and pristine leather cloaks collected during the 1911-1912 expedition.
They are made from the skin of the Reshwean Telope by Batova men and are worn by women or used by women to protect the baby from the elements.
The outer fur is “geometric patterns, meticulous, delicate and beautifully designed,” says Yonga.
There is a photograph of a woman wearing a cloak and a 300-page notebook written by Eric van Rosen, an ethnographer who brought the cloak to Sweden.
He also illustrated how the cloak was designed and photographed women wearing the cloak in a variety of ways.
“He felt a great pain to show the cloak that was designed, all the angles and tools used, [the] Geography and where did it come from? ”
The Swedish Museum did not conduct research on cloaks – and the National Museum Committee of Zambia had no idea that they existed.
So Yonga and Kapuwepwe went to learn more from the Benur region community, located in the northeastern part of the country where the cloak came.
“I don’t remember that,” says Yonga. “Everyone who had the knowledge to create that particular textile – that leather cape – or the history was understood that there was no longer there.
“So this Swedish museum only existed during this frozen time.”
Women’s History Museum Zambia
The Swedish collection includes 300 historical photographs including one of the women wearing a leather cloak
One of Yonga’s personal favorites in the Frame Project is the Sona or Tusona, an ancient, refined, and now rarely used lighting system.
It comes from the people of Chokwe, Luchaj and Rubar, who live in the border area of Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the northwestern region of Zambia in Yonga.
Geometric patterns were made on sand, cloth, and human bodies. Or wooden masks used in ancestor masquerades engraved on furniture, and wooden boxes used to store tools when people are hunting.
Patterns and symbols include mathematical principles, references to the universe, messages about nature and the environment, and instructions about community life.
Sona’s original custodians and teachers were women – and the elders of the community who remember how it works are still alive.
They are a great source of knowledge to support the ongoing research of Yonga carried out at SONA by scholars like Marcus Matos and Paulus Geldes.
“Sona was one of the most popular social media posts. People are expressing their surprise and great excitement, yelling, “How, what? What is this?” ”
The Queen of Code: Women’s Power Post symbol includes photos of women from the Tonga community in southern Zambia.
She has a diet grinder, a stone used to grind grain.
National Museum of World Culture
Photos from this archive show the crushed stones used by Tongan women as gravestones
Researchers at Zambia’s Women’s History Museum discovered during field trips that crushed stone is more than just a kitchen tool.
It belonged only to the women who used it – it was not passed down to her daughter. Instead, the woman was placed in her grave as a gravestone in honor of her contributions to the food security of her community.
“What may look like crushed stone is actually a symbol of feminine power,” says Yonga.
Zambia’s Women’s History Museum was established in 2016 to document and archive women’s history and indigenous knowledge.
We conduct research in the community and create online archives of items retrieved from Zambia.
“We’re trying to put together our jigsawpas so we don’t have all the pieces yet — we’re hunting for treasure.”
Yonga’s life-changing treasure hunt – in the way she hopes that frame social media projects will also bring to other people.
“Having my sense of community and understanding the context of who I am historically, politically, socially and emotionally, that has changed the way I interact with the world.”
Pennydale is a freelance journalist, podcast and documentary maker.
More BBC Stories in Zambia:
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