Grace Chuma-Pupe, In Conversation with Dr Yonah Matemba

Grace Chuma-Pupe (who also goes by the pseudonym of Chengo Mulala) joins Dr Yonah Matemba to discuss the stories from her book, Katobol Village Folklore and Livingstone’s Epic Journey.

In 1873, an entourage of African porters carried Dr David Livingstone’s embalmed body more than 1000 kilometres from Chitambo to Dar-es-Salaam where it was to be transported home to the United Kingdom. Despite this extraordinary feat, Livingstone’s porters were barely given barely any recognition by the British Government and continue to languish in obscurity to this day.

Grace, a granddaughter of one of Livingstone’s porters, seeks to change this, bringing the much-neglected story into the public eye.

On Saturday 16t October 2021, Grace joins Dr Yonah Matemba at David Livingstone Birthplace to relate the heroic tale of Livingstone’s porters, plus stories, fables and myths from Katobole Village.

Grace Chuma-Pupe spent her childhood in Katobole village, North East Zambia. The village was headed by Grace’s grandfather, Mr Ngosa Shompolo Mulutala who told her stories about his service to white colonial explorers. Grace held a senior secretarial position in the Zambian Government, before emigrating to join her husband in London where she worked for the Zambian High Commission in London. After leaving the secretarial field, Grace worked as a social worker in the UK, before becoming an author. She now supports dementia awareness in ethnic minorities and also co-ordinates “Care 4 People in Rural Areas” with the Anglican Council of Zambia.

Dr Yonah Matemba is a senior lecturer in a Social Sciences Education at the University of the West of Scotland. He currently serves as a trustee of the Dr David Livingstone Trust. His current research interests are on decolonisation efforts and failures in education, and recently co-guest edited a Special Issue on decolonising Religious Education in which he also published a paper. He is currently working on research that attempts to re-centre the narratives of African men in Dr David Livingstone’s historiography. He is particularly interested in highlighting the further marginalisation of Jacob Wainwright, one of the four prominent African men of Livingstone (together with Abdullah Susi, James Chuma and Matthew Wellington), whose stories at least can be traced in the historiography.