Stories, Essays, &
Magazine Work.
My attempts to make sense of the world.
On a cold July day in Zambia, a roadside breakdown leads Nyamwezi to an unexpected realisation about love. As she reflects on her own intense relationship and the absence of her late father, she begins to notice familiar signs of affection unfolding between her widowed mother and a mysterious stranger. In that quiet moment, Nyamwezi learns that love—simple, obsessive, and deeply human, exists across generations, even in the silences no one dares to name.
Living together after loss, divorce, and return, a daughter reflects on the quiet, unspoken love she shares with her mother. Through memories of childhood, marriage, grief, and survival, she comes to understand love not as something declared, but as something lived, steady, practical, and enduring. As both women relearn how to exist beyond the roles that once defined them, the story becomes an intimate meditation on motherhood, inheritance, silence, and the gentle ways love saves us, even when it is never said.
Mukandi Siame is a distinguished Zambian writer, brand strategist and regular contributor to Nkwazi Magazine, where her thoughtful articles enrich conversations on culture, identity and everyday life. Through essays and features published in Nkwazi, Mukandi brings a nuanced voice to topics ranging from art and heritage to language and personal reflection, grounding each piece in keen observation and cultural insight.
by Myaambo Writers Co-operative (Author), Bwalya S. Kondwani (Author), Maurice Siamuzwe (Author)…
M’zimu Wachikondi is the third anthology from the Myaambo Writers Cooperative, showcasing the soul of Zambia through powerful fiction. Inspired by a national competition themed “The Heart of Zambia: Uncovering the Soul of Zambia through Fiction,” this collection brings together voices from across the country, each offering a unique lens on the nation’s past, present, and future.
by Mukandi Siame
“In the Eyes of the Beholder” is an intimate, reflective essay written as a letter from the present self to a younger version navigating Zambia as a teen. Blending memoir, cultural critique, and social commentary, the piece captures the emotional and political terrain of growing up in Lusaka—grappling with family, identity, womanhood, and the contradictions of a resource-rich but disempowered nation. Through vivid personal recollections and lyrical prose, the essay charts a coming-of-age that mirrors Zambia’s own complex path through liberalisation, memory, and modernity. It is both a love letter to youth and a meditation on value—what we hold, what we lose, and what we come to know in time.
