Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
CLOVIS — Kasama, meet Clovis.
That’s the idea next week as Clovis hosts a delegation from its “sister city” in Zambia, as announced in a news release Friday.
It’s not the first time some representatives from the landlocked country in southern Africa have visited eastern New Mexico. In 2012, the sister city designation took effect and a larger delegation including Kasama’s mayor came to visit. At the Clovis Ethnic Fair that summer the prominent Zambian singer Maureen Lilanda performed, said Clovis’ Cultural and Ethnic Affairs Committee Chairman Selmus Price.
Some years later the city of Clovis donated a retired ambulance to Kasama, Clovis’ Assistant City Manager Claire Burroughes told The News.
On Tuesday, the Kasama delegation will start its day by touring Southwest Cheese, followed by lunch with Eastern New Mexico University’s president, an afternoon meeting with Clovis city commissioners, a tour of a local dairy and an evening reception at the Rock N Roll museum, Burroughes said.
“It’s something that we’ve been looking forward to, getting to know more about the Zambian people and Kasama,” Price said. “In other words, it’s important to share the different cultures. That’s a means of understanding their culture and them understanding ours.”
At its most recent commission meeting, the city of Clovis introduced an ordinance modifying its Cultural and Ethnic affairs committee. If passed, it would adjust the committee’s format “to include work on the sister city program,” Burroughes said, providing for “a good exchange of information between the two, where the children can be pen pals.”
Representatives from Clovis have not yet visited Kasama, Burroughes added, but the city has “a warm invitation to go” and anticipates sending a delegation eventually.
Among those in the seven-person delegation will be His Majesty King Chitimukulu Sosala Kanyanta Manga II of the Bemba people, Zambia’s largest ethnic group, Burroughes said.
The visitors will also have a meal catered from a local restaurant.
“We’re going to have some Southwest fare,” Burroughes said. “I don’t know whether his majesty will like enchiladas. Hopefully he will.”
