Paucity Squared

“Why don’t you work in Zambia?” My sister asked, to which I replied “Because I have to be careful about who I want to hate.” I think, however, it is too late for that. I am starting to hate my Zambian counterparts already. They, the Zambian counterparts, the old classmates, the ones I used to play basketball with, the ones I admired at school, the ones I drank with at University, and crucially, the ones who have decided, one way or another, to live in Zambia, are the ones. Indeed, they put up a good performance of being happy to see me again. They go further in fact. They say they want me back. “Come work in Zambia” they say. “Zambia is changing. There is money to be made here now.” That is what they say. They make it sound like some sort of continuation of school. As if the boundaries of school have extended to include the whole town, maybe even the whole country.  As if we will continue to look out for each other like we did at school, like we used to for exams, like we did to dodge authority and violence.

No doubt I would have to start all over again. Finding a job, and with some success in that I would then have to find a place to stay. Maybe then the counterparts will come into play and I will move in with one of them in some place close to town. But all this will essentially be to place myself better to get with a woman. But which woman? Perhaps it would be some old flirt from school. Some loose end that never realised into anything. This is what I was thinking when I bumped into Koki in the Supermarket. She was wearing a colourful print dress with neat hair plaits. “You look good” she said to me. I told her she looked fantastic. I met her that night at a night club. Times it is called. There, nearly all the counterparts can be found on any given Friday, and on that Friday they were all around drinking and congratulating themselves. “Call me” she said, the voice coming from above her wonderful cleavage. After exchanging numbers she squeezed my hand.

The counterparts let me down. New years eve is always an evening that suffers from way too much hype and yet I continue to expect adventure from it. Always I end up in a crowded place too loud and with not quite the right people. To avoid such a night I imagined drinks or a braai at one of the counterparts new abodes. Something chilled, I imagined. Something where a small collection of counterparts and I can catch-up, maybe flirt, say what is wrong and dream about how we could make things better. So I phoned around and asked what was up. They were working. They were not sure. Their phones were off. They were instead asking me for a plan, as if I had not just been back in the country for three weeks only. One was worried there would be more people his flat could cater for. Instead, I had dinner with my parents and sister. We watched the fireworks from a car park, surrounded by a mob of over excited flirting teenagers. I did get an invite as late as 9pm for drinks but I ignored it. Disgusted at the thought of being an after thought.

So I called her on the 1^stof January. I had been home all day in dirty clothes listening to my parents talk. I was also working on a document with them. I needed to get out the house and be free of home for a bit. She told me she was out with a couple of counterparts having coffee. “Why don’t you come join us” she said. So I jumped into a cold shower, threw on some marginally clean clothes and drove there. “Meet Flex” she said. “He is from Nigeria.” “Nice to meet you” I said. He was tall, dark, wore an over sized t-shirt with colourful print, a baseball cap skew and a shy smile revealing large teeth and dark gums. “So what you guys do for New Years?” I asked. The counterparts rattled off a story about dinner and dancing and how I should have been there though they never thought to call me. Koki said she was at the P squared concert. “Who?” I asked. “You never heard of them? They are really good. The concert was great.” Something uncomfortable was in the air that I could not quite place. Then we were off to Flex’s hotel. In the car park I noticed Flex put an arm around Koki. Then I began to understand some things. Flex is a member of P Squared. At the hotel we met the rest of P Squared. Tall Nigerian young men, also in over sized t-shirts and skew baseball caps, only some added sunglasses (in the hotel at night) and large sneakers. Koki was not only personally entertaining Flex, but also showing the whole crew (which included camera man and manager) the night life of Lusaka. This I understood in the lobby of the hotel, as I was sat on a couch, while the rest of them took photos of each other with their phones. Only, I could not understand what I was doing there. Why did she call me if she was with this Flex guy? So I went home to listen to my parents talk.

 I realise now that I have been gone a long time and have been forgotten. Not gone for eternity, but long enough for these counterparts to have lived in my absence. They have had trials and they have overcome them. They have studied, done internships, been fired, been promoted and some of them have even had children. They have grown cocoons and hatched from them several times over. However, they seem terribly complacent about it all. I don’t see much to be proud of here. No doubt they have struggled for their material independence. Apart from their successes, in this country, nearly one women dies for every hundred child births. Workers strikes are illegal. Foreign investors have tax holidays that last years and mining companies pay laughable royalties. Last week, Electricity chargers went up by 27% for domestic consumers and only 1.5% for commercial. Yet instead, these counterparts are smug about being among the tiny group of middle class. I do not want to be part of this avaricious bunch of chicken scratching louts.