N E W B OOK loading: Bemba funeral rites and rituals Happy to share upcoming book on Bemba funeral rites and rituals. A few years ago, my son asked me why mourners were being rubbed with “white stuff” on their faces —I mumbled a made-up response. Years back, I wrote an article on the Bemba naming culture—arguing that there are no surnames in the bemba culture. The responses were disturbing. Very little of our culture is known even by older generations. By far, Colonialism’s most profound success was epistemicide: the deliberate destruction of African knowledge systems. But what the colonizer did not even foresee was how deeply the colonized would internalize this mission, passing it on through generations like inherited DNA. Earlier this month, I visited an Ethiopian friend who has recently been widowed, I noticed that she had cut her long silky beautiful hair. “You cut your hair? I asked. “Yes, she responded, “In my culture we cut our hair when a spouse dies.” I was surprised and taken aback. I told her that we once did the same, but we have stopped. Rituals hold deep meaning, arrived at through observation of social phenomena. Some rituals are scientific others practical. For instance, bereaved families once wore imipango, a specific way of tying a head-wrap that signaled their loss. It was a cultural cue, a signal to the community to extend courtesies, sympathies, privileges and support. Today, imipango have been upgraded to weaves; 16 inches, no less. The irony is that some of the weaves are hairs cut-off during cleansing rituals of other cultures including from widows, to dispel misfortune, bad luck, diseases and other infirmities. I am usually thrown random questions all things Bemba, most of which I don’t know myself. Like the poignant question by Moon Base, asking if the Chitimukulu who did not attend his wife’s burial ceremony yesterday, will also never visit her gravesite. What is the meaning of this tradition? It is from these unanswered, urgent questions, that this book was born. It is meant as a guide and a reference. I apologize that my focus is specifically on Bemba culture. I write from lived experience and inherited knowledge, and I encourage others to do the same for their own traditions. Our undoing as Africans has been our ignorance of ourselves and our wholesale assimilation of other cultures, specifically western cultures. If we must reject our traditions, let us, at minimum, know what we are rejecting. The book will published at end of 2026.