Shining Lights: Magic Lanterns and the Missionary Movement, 1839—1868

"Regaled our friends"

The Barotse floodplain represented a transitional zone between Kololo and Lunda territory. As the Lozi homeland, the people whom Livingstone met in Gonye, Naliele, Quando, Libonta, Nyamoana were linguistically and culturally closer to the Lunda, their northern neighbors, than to the Kololo conquerors from the south. As Livingstone traveled from Linyanti and Kabompo, he had to rely more heavily on the African members of his party to serve as translators. They not only mediated the tenets of Christianity to Lozi audiences on his behalf, but they also leveraged the conviviality of the lantern show to communicate good will to their subjects. In this endeavor, Livingstone became an accessory, so much so that he describes his lantern shows in terms of communal storytelling and entertainment. The floodplain posed political and physical challenges for the expedition party, for many became sick with malarial fever.

Livingstone’s encounter with the Lozi porters at the Falls at Gonye set a jovial tone for the lantern shows to follow. In both his diary and in Missionary Travels, Livingstone characterizes the Lozi there as “a merry set of mortals” who were quick to tell a joke and even more eager to laugh.[1] Throughout this region, Livingstone’s diaries repeatedly emphasize how the Lozi were “greatly delighted” by the lantern show.[2] Though Livingstone always adds a caveat about the lantern’s value as an educational tool, the light-hearted tone of his accounts remediates the ways in which his African audience saw the lantern show as entertainment. The joyful reception of the expedition culminated in family reunions at Nyamoana at the northernmost edge of the floodplain. Livingstone writes that

The Barotse of our party, meeting with relatives and friends among the Barotse of Masiko, had many old tales to tell; and, after pleasant hungry converse by day, we regaled our friends with the magic lantern by night, and, in order to make the thing of use to all, we removed our camp up to the village of Nyamoana. This is a good means of arresting the attention, and conveying important facts to the minds of these people.[3]

In this passage, the lantern show gives Livingstone the opportunity to participate in this exchange of storytelling. To an audience hungry for old stories, the projected pictures served as a sumptuous visual feast. Livingstone played the part of Kololo nduna with such relish that this moment of mutual storytelling enables him to align himself with his audience, particularly their delight. “Regaled” reflects a carnivalesque atmosphere rather than more serious instructional setting. Through this event, the friends of his party becomes “our” friends—in effect, his friends. This slippage is made all the more remarkable by the fact that it appears in print. The sharp turn toward the educational value of the lantern in the passage’s final sentence registers as an assurance to a more skeptical reader that the lantern show was not merely an entertainment. Livingstone adds the final sentence distance himself from the familial and familiar bonds created through the lantern show. “Our friends” who enjoyed the projected pictures transform into “these people.”

Lantern shows seemed particularly joyful in this region, but tensions between the Kololo members of the expedition and the Lozi who inhabited this region still ran high. Livingstone describes one encounter with Lozi men who remember life before the Kololo conquest:

There are some very old Barotse living here who were the companions of the old chief Santuru. These men, protected by their age, were very free in their comments on the “upstart” Makololo. One of them, for instance, interrupted my conversation one day with some MaKololo gentlemen with the advice “not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;” and it was taken in quite a good-natured way.[4]

Lozi efforts to undermine the credibility of Livingstone’s Kololo companions posed a serious threat. If taken seriously, these allegations could ultimately compromise the Kololo’s efforts to use Livingstone as leverage in their ongoing trade negotiations with other ethnic groups. Instead of taking these comments into consideration, Livingstone remediates the unplussed response of his Kololo counterparts.

His dismissal of the Lozis’ warnings may have been due in part to the fact that Livingstone spoke little siLozi. At the falls of Gonyé, he writes that “it will be necessary to learn Serotse, for the most of the people have but a slender idea of what is said unless the subject be one of the most common.”[5] Livingstone would have been privy to the content of conversations only via his translators. Lozi interpreters would play an even more significant role when Livingstone reached the edge of Lunda territory. “At service this morning,” Livingstone writes in a town further north, “little was done for the Balonda, as Kolimbota was very sick, and he can speak their language best.”[6] The passive voice of this passage masks his linguistic limitations by not naming who spoke at the service, even though it was almost certainly Livingstone. Kolimbota would became a key figure in the Lunda-Kololo trade negotiations. As a sign of goodwill, the Ishinde whom Livingstone met in Kabompo arranged a marriage between Kolimbota and a Lunda woman. As Eric Flint notes, this political marriage was made all the more poignant by the fact that many the Lunda believed that Kolimbota had been a leader of a recent cattle raid.[7]

Livingstone’s passing reference to Kolimbota indicates that the party faced physical challenges as well as political ones. Many in the expedition party, Kolimbota and Livingstone included, contracted malaria and were suffering from raging fevers. Livingstone was so ill that he had to postpone his lantern shows despite the lure of a large audience. In Libonta, Livingstone writes that “often many have come great distances to see but have returned disappointed in consequence of my illness.”[8] The physical effects of the fever affected Livingstone’s ability to mediate his surroundings in writing, for his journal entries and letters in Lozi and Lunda territory are far shorter than their published counterparts. Despite his fever, Livingstone recorded more lantern shows in his field-authored writings than in print. Like his lantern shows in Linyanti and Sesheke, he limits their appearance in Missionary Travels to two shows that are emblematic of Lozi audiences’ delight in the projected pictures.
[1] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, Isaac Scapera, ed., Chatto & Windus, 1963, pp. 7-8.
[2] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, pp. 9, 16.
[3] Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; Including a Sketch of Sixteen Years’ Residence in the Interior of Africa, and a Journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Loanda on the West Coast; Thence across the Continent, down the River Zambesi, to the Eastern Ocean, John Murray, 1857, p. 278.
[4] Missionary Travels, p. 271.
[5] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, pp. 7-8.
[6] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, p. 50.
[7] It is unclear if Kolimbota was ethnically Kololo or Lozi. The fact that he spoke Chilunda suggests that he was from the northern part of the floodplain, making him ethnically Lozi. Despite his background, he quickly became a rising star in Kololo politics by leading a raid on their behalf and helping to secure the trade deal with the Lunda through marriage.
[8] Livingstone’s African Journal 1853-1856, p. 18.

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