Chefo ponders establishing cultural museum
The Chewa Heritage Foundation (Chefo) has embarked on fundraising activities to establish a cultural museum to preserve Chewa history.
Chefo chairperson Stanley Khaira said this during a fundraising event at Civo stadium in Lilongwe on Saturday.
Khaira said cultural events are meant to remind one another the values and beliefs of a particular culture but these come once a year so there is need to have a place where people can go and access historical information or exhibits.
“If we do this, our culture will never die because we will preserve the most precious aspect of our tradition. We can even use the same to generate funds because there are many people from all over the world who would want to come and learn more about the Chewa people,” he said.
On his part, Senior Chief Lukwa said losing cultural history is like losing the whole generation because culture is the ultimate identity of people, as such, there is need to preserve it in a way that generations will have references in future.
“We are today able to practise what our forefathers did many years ago because they had their own way of preserving the information for us. Now, we are living in a different world where we need a different type of preserving the same information for future generations,” he said.
Lukwa said the museum could contain literature about the history of the Chewa people, the tools which Chewa people use, the types of food they like and even their native clothes.
“We can have these well preserved and exhibited in the museum for reference purposes, we know how our parents used to preserve vegetables, meat and tubers [mfutso]. We can improve on the preservation to give them more shelf life and put them in the museum,” he said.
Minister of Local Government Unity and Culture Richard Chimwendo Banda said culture represents the beauty of an ethnic group and the entire country, therefore, it is important to respect and preserve it.
“Every tribe or nation is identified by its culture that is why despite belonging to different tribes, we are all recognised as Malawians and it is important to maintain that identity,” said Chimwendo Banda.
Khaira said apart from the cultural museum, Chefo is also planning to invest in other establishments such as landed properties for revenue generation and enriching the Chewa contributions to the Malawi nation.
The fundraising event, which was patronised by representatives from other cultural tribes, was spiced up with traditional dances headlined by gule wamkulu.
Chimwendo Banda, who represented President Lazarus Chakwera as guest of honour, Malawi Congress Party secretary general Eisenhower Mkaka and other delegates were accorded the luxury of riding on a gule wamkulu pulled Ox-cart.
Other items on display included Chewa traditional food types, Chewa ancient clothes made from tree barks (Nyanda), and rare gule wamkulu masks which rarely come out such as elephant, Ostrich and the Ox-cart.
