By Esther Kowa
My sister had a stand in City Market where she sold shoes and I have witnessed the era of organised markets and the genesis of street vending.
I was once a street vendor and I belonged to the street vendors association of Zambia. We even had cards which we collected from Lusaka City Council.
I had a Salaula stand at Kulima tower near the bank.
I rarely saw people visiting public toilets because they said they would be wasting K2 just to urinate. “Before day ikalibe kusila ninshi nataya zingati? Awe mukwai.”
“distance yoenda ku toilet invesana ulesi.” They said.
So the men shamelessly would pee in water or juice bottles or even shake shake packs and throw them in the drainage.
Others would even use the shake shake packs to offload whatever their body ate on that particular day.
No wonder I laugh when I see witchcraft accusations videos or stories of people finding poop on their shop frontage or under their tables in these markets.
It was probably a street vendor or street kid who did that. Others slept in these streets as a side hustle by guarding the tables and Salaula bales that were being kept “ku depo.”
So where do you think these “night guards” were peeing and pooping?
Some women would use the small boom buckets to pee and discard the urine during knocking off time.
The bucket would have some soapy water in-order to mask off the smell of urine. Others discarded in drainages, others on the tarmac.
The level of filth I witnessed in less than a year amongst majority of street vendors would make any pro-hygiene citizen pissed.
I had a front row seat because I was a vendor too. A few of us would use the designated pubic toilets and pay the K2’s but the majority saw it as a waste of money.
To see a man who can finally walk the talk is such a breath of fresh air. Mr [Chitambala ] Mwewa should be supported in his campaign in bringing sanity and order in Lusaka.
There’s no one that can convince me that these illegal shacks benefit government systems or structures. Oh please, the money went straight into the cadres coffers.
A childhood friend of mine even left her marriage for a cadre. She was in charge of collecting monies from street vendors starting from Lumumba Bus station all the way up to the vendors before the COMESA market robots.
The sensible thing she did was buy land and build houses. She is a landlord and has one or two flats she put on rent. I haven’t seen her or heard from her since I left the streets. But I am sure she is doing fine, she always had a strong business sense.
Anyway back to the filth. We need to implement penalising filth because some people are hell bent on frustrating the progress and efforts that the council has/will make.
Kalemba November 12, 2026
