The Sunday Mail
Gilbert Munetsi recently in Kariba
The 86-year-old Odmero Dickson Ngwarai (a.k.a Sekuru Kapiripiri) is one of about just a handful of surviving members of the team that built the Kariba Dam wall which currently benefits both the people who may know where it is located or may never have been to the site at any one instance in their lives.
And yet in one way or another, the arch-shaped barrier has for decades been a very critical structure to the multitudes of the Zimbabwean populace mainly because it is here that hydroelectric power is generated for domestic, industrial, agricultural and many other everyday uses.
Add to that, the massive water body’s provision of a variety of dietary provisions from its aqua-life, the sporting and leisurely activities that beckon for people from all backgrounds, and you have at least every citizen of this country having benefited in one way or another from the existence of this awesome attraction.
Until recently, Ngwarai’s rich history of Kariba – from a first-hand perspective – was almost going to be lost because nobody ever bothered to tap into it.
But thanks to a recent decision by a local travel and tour company, multitudes of domestic and foreign tourists to the resort, situated 376km north of Harare, are now left to marvel as the once forgotten aged resident of Nyamhunga Township chronicles the origins of the dam, the dam wall and how Kariba was born in an era during which three nations were under one federal administration.
These were the then Southern and Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi).
Groups of pupils on educational tours, religious delegations on church outings, families, foreign tourists and people on business conferences travelling to the northerly resort now have a new form of edutainment on their packages – Sekuru Kapiripiri (as Ngwarai is affectionately known).
The old man is a captivating story-teller who leaves his listeners spell-bound by his narratives of how the mighty Zambezi River was converted into this massive multi-beneficial water facility, and what has made him added to his unique tour guidance is the fact that his knowledge is not drawn from a text book.
He was there and contributed to the very existence of Kariba Dam, the wall and even its surrounding suburbs that include Nyamhunga, Mahombekombe, the game reserve and other attractions that people make the trek to visit. The originators of the idea (to have Sekuru Kapiripiri on the tourism menu) are upbeat about this human dimension to tourism in Kariba.
“There is no doubt that Sekuru Kapiripiri is a reservoir of knowledge about this place and he can tell you anything you wish to know even in his sleep.
“Such is the uniqueness of his knowledge that he knows when the first shovelful of cement was put onto the dam wall right up to the touching moment the hydro-electric power project was commissioned that now brings you light in the home when you flick the switch from any part of the country.
“It is very rare that you have such living knowledge and the fact that people need to have it from the horse’s mouth compelled us to contract and put him on our package.
“We have not been disappointed by the decision as the old man has proven to be a draw-card, especially for children who come out here on educational trips,” says Kuda Magezi, the managing director of Monkey Safaris.
At the end of a tour and session, for instance, pupils and teachers from Shabanie Primary School could not help but individually contribute money to the excess of $100 as a “thank you” gesture for the knowledge they derived from Old Ngwarai’s real life story-telling.
They embraced him, with some even kissing him for the knowledge from a trip that will live in their memories for a long time to come.
The old man, in an interview in the Tea Room at Mohombekombe, said his building skills were identified when he built the late Ian Smith’s offices at Compensation House in the then Salisbury (now Harare) along Central Avenue.
“In August 1955, the then Federal Government of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) invited tenders for the construction of the (Kariba) dam wall and a power station which was won by an Italian consortium called Impresit in July of 1956. But the man who designed the dam was of French origin, a gentleman by the name of Coyne whom we were told had done tens of similar dams across the world,” says Sekuru Kapiripiri from the tips of his fingers.
“So ours was mainly to do the manual work while we left the technical stuff to the white leaders. There were hundreds, if not thousands of us, some of whom came from Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.
“But what is important to note is that this was sacred land with wild animals. Even when we set out to begin work, we had to observe traditional rites that included buying black and white cloths (machira eretso) for the mermaids which resided in the waters.
“Takatotanga taomberera kuti tipihwe mvumo, asi zvakadaro pakafiwa nevanhu vazhinji,” he said indicating the graves in which fallen workmates were buried during the four-year construction phase of the dam wall.
Ngwarai says the famed Nyaminyami is not a snake as believed in the present day, but a mermaid that resided in the waters which at some time rose and caused a massive earthquake that shook the entire environs from time to time.
It is estimated that over a million cubic metres of concrete was poured into the 36,6 metre-high wall of Kariba Dam with a thickness of over 24 metres to sustain the pressure of the nearly 10 million litres of water passing through the spillway each second.
The Zambezi River, which feeds into the dam, rises in north western Zambia and its catchment area covers 1 352 000 square kilometres and eight countries – namely Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe – flowing some 2 650km from where it originates into the Indian Ocean at Quelimane in Mozambique.
Though he is originally comes from Chiweshe, he has stayed in Kariba since the completion of the daunting construction task and is now looked after by his six grand-children in the high density suburb of Nyamhunga.
Sekuru Kapiripiri has had no pension for the historical job he and the few other surviving souls did, though he takes solace in the fact that he is exempted from paying for electricity by the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company that gives him monthly tokens of $100.
His main wish is to have an occasional dare (meeting) with other survivors who may be scattered across the country so that together they may reminisce on the gone days of old.
