10/05/2026
The Nkhumbi Roadblock: A Journey That Tested Your Nerves
By Alexander Mofya
In the 1970s and 1980s, traveling Zambia’s Great North Road was more than a trip. It was a test of composure. And for anyone approaching the Nkumbi College turn, that test had a name: the Nkhumbi Roadblock.
This was not an ordinary checkpoint. It was a production. Soldiers on one side, police on the other, faces stern enough to make even the innocent recall crimes they never committed.
The rules were never stated, yet everyone knew them. Without an NRC, you had a problem. If you looked nervous, you had a bigger one. If you looked too confident, you were suspicious. Either way, you had a problem.
Officers seemed to read every detail. The way you stood, the way you answered, even the way you breathed felt like it required clearance.
Then there were the stories. The kind that sound too wild to be true, but somehow everyone knows someone who was there.
One tale has endured for decades. A woman stopped along the road for a moment’s rest. While changing her baby’s nappy, a chameleon slipped into her bag without notice.
At the roadblock, the bag was searched. The chameleon appeared. Silence followed.
Confusion broke out. Accusations flew. And then came the part that travelers whispered with wide eyes: that she was forced to eat it.
Whether that actually happened, or whether the story grew legs over time as Zambian stories often do, no one can say for certain. What is certain is that Nkhumbi was never just a roadblock. It was an experience.
You did not simply pass through it. You survived it. _Nga mwapita, nemitima yaikala._
Nakonde promoters
