Conversations with Blessing

Once again we are on the bus. Blessing, my Malawian visitor from Scotland bought only bus passes for her 5 day stay in London. I didn’t mind avoiding the train for a change. Up the stairs, we passed a pair of prams by their young mother drivers. Sat on the upper deck of the bus, it was as if we were flying among the oak trees of South London.

Blessings Friends

‘But don’t you have any friends?’ I asked, trying to pry out of her some sort of picture of her life in Scotland. ‘Any friends from your Quantity Surveying School?’

‘No’ was her curt response, tucked in a mouth that hardly opens wide enough to let the words out.

‘No friends at all?’ I asked again.

‘Yes, I do have some friends’ she said finally.

‘Well, what are they like? Are they Malawian’s like you?’ Across the isle from us, a young teen sat under a black hood and cell phone connected to his ears by headphones with music so loud we could hear it.

‘No. One, shiz Italian. The others are from Zimbabwe and Botswana’ she said. ‘The Italian, shiz always asking me to go with her places. She doesn’t have a boyfriend but she doesn’t like being alone. That’s why she make me go with hah to the cinema some times, but I don’t mind’ she went on.

‘And the other two, the Zimbabwean and the Botswanan? Do they have boyfriends?’ I asked, fishing for drama. I have to keep prodding her with questions to keep the conversation on the move. But somehow, it is not as bother some as I might otherwise think.

‘Yes they have a boyfriend. Well, the boyfriend of the Zimbabwean is now with the Botswanan’ she said, preceding the sentence with a nervous laugh, as Blessing often does.

‘What?’ I said, glad to have finally found some intrigue in Blessing’s background. ‘Doesn’t the Zimbabwean mind losing a boyfriend to her friend?’

‘Yah, but shiz funneh‘ said Blessing.

‘Funny? What do you mean she is funny?’ Just then a tubby boy sat in front of us chomping on a greasy pack of chips. As his thick fingers dived into the tomato sauce oily pack, I wondered if his choice of food for the evening has anything to do with his obesity.

‘Well she behaves funneh‘ was all Blessing said. I had to repeat and try the question from different angles before I got some sort of an answer when Blessing said ‘I work with hah. At work she can be funneh. Like if you are toking something she will go teow the boss.’

‘You mean if you are talking about the boss she will turn around and go tell him’ I suggested.

‘Yah’ she replied.

‘Yes that is very funny indeed’ I agreed.

‘She is pregnant’ said Blessing.

‘Who is?’ I asked, getting a little alarmed. ‘The Malawian’ she said. ‘The one who is pregnant?’. ‘Yes’ she said.

Blessing told me that her two friends, wh0 live in the same house, dated the same man. The man is from Lesothu. She says most people find the Zimbabwean friend ‘funneh‘. Another funny thing about the Zimbabwean, I was told, was that she looked down upon and was disgusted at girls who got pregnant. She said it showed what they were doing. When the Zimbabweans own pregnancy began to show, Blessing said the girl said she did not know how it happened.

Blessing went on and said ‘So he did not want to be married to her because of the way she behevz. He said when she has the chaud, he can just give the beby to himu and he wew giv to hiz mother to look-u after the chaud at home. He doesn’t want to marry hah‘

‘And all the while he is with the Botswana girl? I asked and Blessing answered in the affirmative.

‘But she didn’t tell anyone she was together with himu. I just knew because the other house mates tod me’ Blessing added. ‘Even up to now, she doesn’t know that I know. She is funneh.’

I was puzzled. I inquired for clarity ‘So these two girls live together and share this man? How do they know him’

‘They are staying in hiz house’ she said.

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘And do they pay any rent?’

‘No’

‘Then is suddenly makes a lot of sense to me’