Moto Moto Museum

Moto Moto grew out of the collection assembled from the 1940s by Jean-Jacques Corbeil, a Canadian missionary priest who spent decades in the north recording Bemba material culture, and it holds one of the larger ethnographic collections in Zambia: musical instruments, initiation objects, iron working, pottery, and material on the chieftaincies of the region. The name was the local nickname of Joseph Dupont, the French bishop who founded the White Fathers' mission in northern Zambia, after the pipe he was always smoking - moto means hot. The museum opened in 1974 in a former carpentry and bricklaying workshop given by the Diocese of Mbala.

The main sights

• The Bemba collection - decades of material culture recorded by Corbeil.
• The musical instruments - drums and other instruments from across the north.
• The initiation material - objects from the chisungu and related ceremonies.
• The regional history - displays on the chieftaincies of northern Zambia.

When to go

Open year round on standard museum hours. An hour or two covers the collection. Mbala is cooler than most of the country.

Things to know

The museum is in Mbala in the far north of the country, within reach of Kalambo Falls and Lake Tanganyika.

Nearby

Kalambo Falls is northwest, and Niamkolo Church is at Mpulungu.

Key facts