Mlowoka, 'the one who crossed over', is the appellation of Kakalala Musawira Gondwe, the legendary ivory trader who, in Tumbuka oral tradition, crossed Lake Malawi from the east around the late eighteenth century and settled in the Nkhamanga plain. Through wealth in ivory, cloth and imported goods, and through marriage alliances with indigenous clan heads, he became the apical ancestor of the Chikulamayembe paramountcy. He belongs to legendary-historical rather than divine tradition, but stands as the founding heroic ancestor of the Tumbuka royal line and is remembered in dynastic ritual and oral history.