Fur and Submission

A boundary wall with peeling paint and a rusty metal gate guarding the stoep and wood front door. The keys fit into their slots and turn easy enough and I enter. Inside, a flip of a switch reveals a dim lit wide corridor and two pairs of anxious eyes. I sense that I have interrupted something. Were they sleeping or were they playing I wonder. They sit still and quiet as I close the door behind me. Their eyes have not yet learned to beg from me. Instead they regard me with indifferent intrigue.

But that smell! That unbearable smell. Uncomfortable and stuffy. The odour in the house chokes you at the nose. I pace the house to inspect and their eyes follow me and my loud boot steps on the wood floor. How could an empty house smell this awful. I open a window to let in a different air. Through it comes the noise of hurried foot steps and idle chatter, as people hurry from the train station. The smell in the house is undoubtedly from these animals. Their fur is every where. It is on the floor, on the bear wood furniture and can be seen in clumps in the corners along the skirting boards. Surely it floats in the air too, miniscule strands of it wafting into your nasal cavities. An animal miasma. The kitchen smells no better. And what do you know? a pile of dirty dishes. That won’t help the smell either. Nor will the cockroaches running for cover, exposed by the kitchen light. Not just the medium size cockroaches but also the little platoons dashing for cover under kitchen appliances.

Perhaps this arrangement is not so clever after all. Why did I agree to this? It seemed so sensible at the time, when I needed to escape my sister’s house, and her children’s toys and music. I didn’t mind cooking some of the meals, sharing the minute bathroom (which it turns out, dwarfs the one here) or being a substitute role model for the kids. I could even bear the skateboards and bicycles conveniently left in doorways and the unabated sock theft. However, a quiet spot to read and the exact locality of my books and newspapers was a privilege I was criminally short of and no longer prepared to sacrifice.

On reflection, I think something else was slowly eating away at me. While I never doubted that my elder sister would love her children dearly over me, it was too uncomfortable to experience. Our conversations were ever interrupted by an incessant cry “mummy, mummy” as we competed for her attention. I was always her baby brother, but I am not sure I ever upgraded to her children’s uncle. I tried once, with little success, to settle a stand off between my niece and nephew over dish washing obligations. In the ensuing battle of denials and false accusations, my sister intervened in irritation, just when the tempers and insults were at their zenith, and commanded “my brother, you are making noise.” I took to working late at the office. There is nothing liking problems at home to keep you in the office.

So again a refuge, for that is what this house near the sea is. After all, my sister’s place was only meant to be a landing pad after my departure from London. London was a refuge from Geneva and Geneva a refuge from here. Given my tendencies of flight and freight, and my humble income from maths tuition at the university, it was a ray of light on a wet winter’s morning when the professor offered his place for six months. “I am on sabbatical next semester and Jane and I really need somebody to look after our place. We’re going to the states on holiday. You would be perfect” he chimed in his American accent through his messy beard and hair. Of course I always knew he was some sort of hippy. Not a happy-clappy one with a guitar, but still a person who views pervasive commodity culture with suspicion and actively pursues an alternative lifestyle. The wife’s uncut hair, his long beard and their droopy clothes must have something to do with that.

A house to keep, pets to feed and an electricity meter that cuts out should it run out of digits. But there are other responsibilities I must attend to such as theater, movies, parties and a girlfriend, all of which are a long way off and clustered around the heart of the city and that bigger mountain. I am cut off at night, as are all those dependent on public transport. That leaves me isolated, in a way, in a thinly spread suburbia hugging the bay and mountains. I cannot do this alone.

Love by Consent

There is something repugnant about a man who pays for a wife from a far away place. I mean a hard working honest man in a scenario and country that affords him the wealth for such a purchase, having never met or known the woman before.

Now, with that in mind, lets refine the sense of disgust a little. I don’t mean to allude to some of the more sinister turns such a trade can take. Indeed there are sex slave syndicates, that not so much purchase, but more like traffic women under all manner of deceit and coercion, from one part of the world to the other. Apart from the threats used to dissuade these women to return, there is also the shame and community induced disgrace involved that compels the chattels of this trade to not return home. This is a despicable business, and I don’t mean to take this discussion down these lines.

Also, I don’t mean to wrestle with how cultural power manifests across the sex divide. I think there is a lot to be said about how a man, coupled with institutional and material forms of wealth, feels entitled to do a human being some good in the world while at the same time validating and proving his perceived dominance of the better smelling sex. In contrast, I would be equally interested in this discussion if instead it be a woman purchasing a husband from some island or mountain place. However, the latter I don’t think is very accessible in many peoples imagination.

 But the actual purchase is essential to make for a smooth handover. This avoids the back and forth and jumps over what ever costly administrative mishaps there might be. It smooths over the advertising, the screening and the bribes necessary and condenses it into one single transfer of funds. Moreover, taking on such responsibilities might adversely compromise the pending marriage, for the hassle involved will be unforgettable and a distraction.

What intrigues me is how two people can commit themselves to a very fixed emotionally consuming and typically precarious relationship even before they have even met. No doubt, relationships always involve commitment at some level. But when do you bring in the commitment? Who would be so foolish to say, in the twilight of the first date, “I will never see anybody else but you”? Such words would surely, in most cases scare off the emotionally tenuous opposite.

Indeed the scenario I have brought to attention is not the meeting of equals. When you see the rather short and pudgy yet successful IT geek with the tall slim lady from benighted provinces, you can’t help guessing in your mind that they met over the Internet and she is begging him to fly over her mother and brother too. Fine, she might find short pudgy IT geeks attractive, but there is a sense in which, in some respects, two people cannot be said to be equal. Surely it is with the mismatch of perceived qualities that the one party, in a pairing of partners, might feel the need to hesitate. “I hate the way he dances”, “she has no idea about contemporary literature”, “I go to gym three times a week to look like this and he is happy to flaunt his paunch about” and so on.

There is always some reason or other to hold back. Even if it is not about mismatches. It could be to do with painful past experiences or maybe incompatible families and friends. So how can they do it? How do you stand there at the airport, anxiously waiting to meet the person you have made irreversible commitments to, knowing very well that you might resent her (or him) from the very beginning?

Worse still, what of the anxiety of knowing that there is no turning back. As he loads her only suitcase into the boot, noticing its ridiculous gaudy colors, he might foresee already the arguments over the apartments wall paper in the years to come. While he had hoped to explain the interesting history of the city and its developments as he drives her home for the first time, she might have a wonderful talent for instead warning him to watch-out for on coming traffic and pedestrians.

In the preceding months, when his insecurity about the absurd transaction was at its height and when he was wholly consumed by the fear that within a few months, as soon as she got her papers (so the horror stories at the local drinking hall went) she will run away, never to be seen again. But to his surprise, she quickly settles into his apartment and makes his home her own. So much so in fact, he feels a little estranged in his own house and its durables. It is she who has programmed the DVD recorder in ways he never dreamed. She has rewired and improved the alarm system and persuaded the cat to eat its food. She is quickly running a successful stall at the market outside the mall, is a popular new entry to the local personalities and it is she who introduces him to the interesting neighbours who have moved in next door.

He cannot share his doubts about his relationship with her. She has come so far to be with him and she is now a central part of his coterie of friends. Sitting outside in early winter, avoiding her but ostensibly reading the newspaper, he will wonder how she can so quickly play the role of the perfect partner, without ever going through the antagonistic stages that precede it. It is surreal and he has a sneaky suspicion that it is inauthentic. Some preliminary stages must be missing. The sex has lost its lustre. As before, he is lonely, only now he has lost his freedoms. Just as he had planned for months in isolation, on how to get a wife, he must start planning, all over again, on how to get rid of one.

This City

The taxi is quicker but I prefer the train. Instead of squeezing into a cramped Mitsubishi tin-can, with its glib woman harassing conductor and audacious traffic (in)sensibility, I prefer the train and its train station. Setting out from the air-conditioned bank to make a rare cash deposit, I walked through the leafy narrow streets to the Rondebosch train station.

The stationed is two huge slabs of concrete, isolated in a sea of maple and oak trees, hemmed in by suburban bungalows, cul-de-sacs and apartment buildings and linked to other islands by a single pair of rail-tracks. These tracks, connecting the hinterland behind the mountain to the inner city of cape town, transformed the string of old Dutch farms into demarcated plots for Victorian design housing for urban white workers. Now the rail tracks are dominated, a century later, above and below with bridges and subways, by cars and trucks with their asphalt roads. The trains now, for the most part, only bring in and take out the domestic workers, the security guards, the artisans, street hawkers and the petty thieves, from the distant squalor and crime reserves of the flats yonder, well away from the mountain.

My ticket is for third class, that class that is not first class. That class that does not sit pensive individuals, struggling to avoid each others attention. Instead it is the class that holds the wide double doors open when the train is in motion. That class where limbs dangle from overcrowding. A collection of carriages abound with preachers, confectioners, singers and petty thieves. Sometimes the carriages sing and dance, when they are full with large women in song and banging on the walls. The bouncing rail car, when in such a full throttle choir mode will hold the same gospel tune from one to terminal to the other, while replacing its singers many times over.

For me, these colorful surrounds with the slight perception of insecurity are a light thrill that I wear with feigned ambivalence while reading a book, as if unconcerned with the surrounds I have deliberately courted. Esoteric as I appear, the subalterns that ride with me return my signals with equal and deliberate nonchalance. Either that or they genuinely don’t see me. In among this throng of performances a dirge is sung to the tune of a guitar that ripples throughout the carriage, coating me with goose bumps with each wave. I can’t make out, beyond the dusty sweaty bodies, from whom the song originates but it is a man’s voice and his wail is guttural and plaintive. At the final destination in the city bowl, the carriage quickly empties, leaving behind a blind man sat with a guitar and black sunglasses clutching a small aluminium case for donations.

I stormed out the train, as I always do to speed past the boogie men and petty theives, through the connecting shopping centre of greasy foods and hair products to cross a sun soaked busy street of cars and street hawkers. I walked up a paved pedestrian street past cafes and curios in the shade of trees and colonial era city buildings that are clad with wood window shutters and gargoyles. I walked past the cobbled tourist market square, up the street towards the mountain, walking past car guards, design houses, dormant night clubs and expensive inner city apartments. Up the incline, until the ocean and the harbour was in view behind me. Up further still, past the restaurants and hotels, until I met Nadja, as scheduled for a breakfast of fresh juice and omelet with a view of the city bowl and all its transport terminals.

Nadja, my attractive Germain hero of Switzerland, who took me in when I was stranded with no place to stay, is now the stranger. It is she who is venturing into a country with potentially limited prospects to escape a life that has all the hallmarks of being successful and dull. I found it strange to speak to her on equal terms, where, for the first time, we were in a country that spoke my language (among others) where I knew the geography and I could pronounce on the history and the politics. But she has her reservations about the crime and her new boyfriends white masculine attributes of drink and braai(barbecue). I tried to tell her that her acute perception of crime, came from quarters least qualified to comment and most sheltered on/from crime. I failed to tell her that her insecurity came more from her new lover and his history than from anything else. That crime in this country is horrendous is a stumbling block for such an explanation. I had been beaten to it, ideologically speaking. Furthermore, my narrative is far too convoluted and nuanced in apportioning blame and placing accountability to counter what many see as just plain obvious.

Those That Stand

An old friend. He picked us up from Oliver Tambo International Airport. Six years it had been since I saw him last. Then, as now, I was only in town for a night. This time, however, I am with my sister and her two kids. Will this be a burden on him? Unlike me (who is still a student) Mwape, my old friend, has moved on. Now, with him, is a wife (an old high school sweet heart), a car (“man look at your Citroen 5, you guys are rich” I said to him in the car park), a house financed by the bank and newly self employed. Some sort of event organizing business. Corporate training, though not quite. Event organizing, though but you cannot call it that. Big venues and expensive tickets. Lots of experts come to speak for the day. Workshops on areas he proudly announces he knows nothing about. My sister is perplexed. She asks a thousand questions. The answers are full of pride and business terminology. The wife, Mwansa, does the same but instead working for a big company owned by one man more or less. A billionaire. “He is big. He owns a football club in England.” And there you are. Your worth measured by what you own.

But of course we are glad, my sister and I. A fast car with air conditioning. The city a silhouette on the horizon, beyond the highways, in the afternoon sun. A gated community. 92 plots behind 10ft walls and barbed wire. Within in the compound are further wall fences 7ft high dividing the plots. A five bedroom house. The born again pastor of a mother blessed the house with olive oil before they moved in. We chat about their line of work in the garden while the children, ours and theirs, swim in the pool. Mwape and I buy groceries and booze. My sister and I try and cook the food while Mwape and his family watch Manchester United play New Castle (6 – 0). The knives are blunt, only one bulb out of 8 12 sockets works in the living room and the oven doesn’t work.

As we guzzle the beers, Mwape tells me about the tough times. About living up the road from a township. About him and Mwansa sleeping on a floor without a mattress. About working a job studying at the same time. About the people they shared accommodation with. Now they let relatives share with them. As I hear this I put on a mournful face and sip my beer. I was told the trials of finding documentation to work in South Africa. About the countless wasted money on untruthful middle men. Wasted hopes, year after year, while the police continue to harass immigrants randomly. Finally, he tells me, while dragging on yet another cigarette, that the most expensive way was the only way. R18,000 for each of them. “It took a long time but it was worth it.” South African ID documents. Stamps and everything. Done. This is how it works it seems. Mwape knows. He showed us. My sister is intrigued, envious even. She, on the other hand, must instead continually renew her work permit every so often and with every new job.

They are married now. They went to Zambia for their wedding. 800 guests they had. My sister screams at the number in aghast. There are photos to prove it, though the elaborate wedding cake, from its apparent size, could only feed a couple of families, surely. They paid for the whole thing. They saved for months and paid for it all. The drinks, the food, the suits for the best men, the dresses for the brides maids. Anecdotes about the line up and all its rehearsals, the most crucial ceremonies in the Zambian wedding. The best man who showed up drunk for none but the last of rehearsals. The born again, courtesy of the mum, who gave a 2 hours sermon before he wed them, with lots of advice about how the women should please the man and be obedient.

In the morning we drive the length of Jan Smuts drive and are dropped off at Park Station terminus where we board our train for Cape Town.   

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.

Dinner for Old Times

I knocked. Wearing a t-shirt, a black loose plaid skirt and bare foot, bearing her thin pale legs and knobbly knees, Angela opened the door. Her bony feet, one angular foot upon the other, fidgeting with each other. After all these years her nervous habits persist. Smeared onto her face is her big shiny shy smile, revealing all her teeth. Next to me is Paul, who at first pauses before he gives off a condescending giggle. Angela giggles back, letting her smile swell even further. Finally she says Well aren’t you going to come in? I say nothing and Paul laughs. A loud, strong hearty laugh, like he has always had. Large like his hands, like his frame.

Years it has been since the three of us were together. Paul and Angela recently got back from their studies in Russia. Now, for the moment, we are in the same place again. Relaxed and casual as if it was only last month we sat in class together. Why don’t you come in or else I will just let you stand outside all night she threatens finally. The living room is tidy, austere even, with ochre colored walls, two pieces of furniture, a fridge and a small coffee table. None of the usual 5 piece furniture set blocking all the entrances with their puffy bulk and covered in the original plastic covering with doilies, as is typical of working class Zambians. Intead. there is space for the computer, printer and half an empty bookshelf.

Paul sprawls himself across one of the two seater couches and chirps so, where is the supper Angie? Angela squeals in response and puts up an act of being aghast at the audacity of the suggestion, that she should cook for us on her own. She even throws on a scowl for a moment before breaking into a giggle. I thought you cooked Paul says, playing the fool some more. Angela opens the fridge and produces the five pieces of raw t-bone steak. And the bottle? Paul demands. Angela produces, from the top of the fridge, a bottle of brandy. Then she puts one hand on her hip, shifts her waist and says Will there be anything elsein a sardonic voice. Paul says, YES, you can cook the supper! To which he gets the reply Ah, Paul, be serious. The two of them seem to enjoy jibing at each other with these taunts. Their chemistry has not changed in 8 years. I suppose it isn’t surprising since they did go to Russia together. I on the otherhand don’t know where to fit in to the little vocal dance of feigned argument, though at one point I used to play a central role. Indeed, it almost seemed to me once that their friendship only functioned to support my relationship with Angela. Now that it is long gone, their friendship of incessant teasing and rebuke seems healthier than ever.

To produce the supper of fried t-bone steak, greasy fried potato chips and salad we step into the tiny kitchen. What I call a bum rubbingkitchen. Angela laughed at the joke. She laughs with her eyes closed, shoulders bunched up and all her teeth showing. A laugh relished like it might be her last, just the way she used to laugh, before she had so much to cry about. We all cook the supper and chat about times gone by and their student lives lived in Russia. Well actually, Paul and Angela cook while I stand in the outside doorway and listen. Soon Paul teases her about her exboyfriend, the one who lost his mind. Paul don’t say that! she protests. Instead I beg Paul to continue. Paul, if you say anything else I am going to use this knife on youshe said while bringing the tip of her chef’s knife level with her eyes and pointing at Paul. Doing this she lets slip an evil giggle and Cheshire cat smile.

I guess this is how I should spend my few weeks here in Lusaka. At a friends houses for dinner every now and then. I will just go from friend to friend, mopping up and feeding off feel good nostalgia as I go. Hell I might as well. Since they all so independent now, with their new professions. A doctor, an architect, a human rights lawyer, a business man.  I suppose Angela does alright for her self, with her well kitted out little flat. She bought the steaks and brandy without a fuss, without demanding a portioning of costs as my London friends are liable to do. In true Zambian timing, Sunga showed up shortly before the food was served. Instead, Sunga studied in Zambia and is qualified as an architect. Recently he has found steady employment and a way with women, that has made him quite cocky. Previously, Sunga had been the runt of the pack, at what ever school we were at, and had always been the butt of most jokes. Still, Sunga loves a good joke and always out to make one or be the first to laugh at some witty observation. The trouble is, Sunga too quickly breaks into laughter before the joke is told.

Now things have turned around. Instead I am increasingly on the butt end of jokes. That I had let Angela slip away was the recurrent theme. References to the new husband were embedded in Paul’s every second sentence. However, Angela was also victim to this and stood accused of over preparing for my visit (since Paul never got brandy on his other visits) and even going as far as making a special visit to the hair salon on my account. Or otherwise I was the odd thing in the room that must be fixed, or at least reflected upon until I am thought to be suitably ashamed of myself. Why don’t you just work in Zambia man, there is money to be made here now? - are the sort of questions I was getting from Paul. Only he could still use the word “man” in such a way and still keep a straight face. Sunga evinced a little theory about getting jobs in Zambia which means knowing the right connections  and knowing the right people. Paul continually returned to the theme I feel behind as it is, when I look at the cars my friends are driving. And then I look at you and you want to go BACK to study? Angela would frown at me now and then and sneer with her shut wrinkly eyes and say Why don’t you just go teach at the university?

But still, we were merry that night. Paul, having recently taken to the bottle and shed his childish innocence, poured our drinks and insisted on us knocking them back with a certain militant and Russian gusto. Why, before the steaks were cold on our plates, we were well into regaling harrowing stories of assault in foreign lands. Paul told of being beaten by gang of white supremacist Russian nationalists on a late night metro train in Moscow. Paul told it with such animation and re-enactment he made it out to be as if he were the hero of the day, even though him and his friend took flight through every carriage until the last for protection with the driver. I too told of my London mugging story. Then came the toilet humour, in the form of the graffiti we could recall in the squalor of our putrid boarding school toilets (mu lenya the? [your shitting aren't you?] scribbled on the back of one of the cubicle doors). At the peak of things, Sunga jumped in and told a story we could only half follow and killed the laughter. Later, Angela saw us to the gate (which is a long way off in the Zambian residential front yard) and I drove Paul and Sunga home. On the way, Sunga refined his theory on job hunting in Zambia and expanded into all other aspects of life. Then I returned to my parents home, where my suitcases lay unpacked and my life in a somewhat intransigent state. I found dad fast asleep in front of SKY news in his arm chair, with his whisky still in hand.

Outside Looking In

I have lived on the bus. I have to admit it. I have. I have lived a little too on the underground and the overland train, but on the bus there has been more to experience. At the bus stop I am entertained by the school girls in their flared uniform skirts, squealing and shouting as they gossip and snack on sweets at the corner ship. On the bus I am flung about, holding on to the railings as the bus swerves through dense city traffic. It is on the bus I confront the hoodie teenagers, those hyenas, with their pugnacious electronic gadgets. Is it not the night bus that delivers me from the cold and drunkenness at Trafalgar Square after a night at the club? Have I not fallen madly in love with my bus roots, my eyes and heart lifting when I see my bus number saunter up to my bus stop? Why even, when I watch a television news report (price of butter up 30p), I don’t hear or see what the reporter says but instead watch the traffic in the footage in case my bus goes by. 73 I will exclaim, that’s my bus! Thats the bus I take to work, from Victoria after the train.

And there have been other moments too. Friendships begun or ended. Deep truths admitted (Laurence, I can’t do this. I can’t work here. It doesn’t feel right) on the upper deck of a night bus in the small hours of the morning. On a number 12 bus I told her I was going home. I said I was going home for Christmas. I also said I was not coming back. I didn’t mean to admit this, but she had asked. I hadn’t the words at that moment, as we rocked side to side. She seemed genuinely disappointed. I was never sure if there was anything between us. So this is the end of your London dream then? she asked. Again, I was at a loss of lies.

I have never got to know a woman so passively before. She phoned me. I did not have to give her my number, my mother did, all the way back in Zambia. I did not have to invent things we have in common, we already had a common past. We toddled together she would tell people she introduced me to. We used to crawl around together when we were small like this (putty her palm down to her knees). Our parents are old friends. I did not have to invent things for us to do. Instead she told me where to be and when. There is a book launch at Foyles at six. We are going to my parents house in Oxford next weekend. There is a seminar on African peace keeping and Foreign Aid. Lets have dinner at my place this Sunday. Since she is an events organizer to a regional society, I guess it comes easily to her. But the down side of all this was that I was always among a large host of other guests. If anything, I was no more than a spare hand to hold her wine while she networked about the notable event organizing personalities.

But I am in debt to her. She showed me that other world. The world of creative students, amateur artists, naive dreamers and political idealists. Older students and younger professionals who think themselves about to change the world for the better with the right combination of poetry sessions, post conflict debate seminars and conscientious green and sustainable investment literature. Them, those over educated mixed race upstarts, spending their youth and skill about this over heated old city, are the ones I seek to impress. A chortle from them, after a witty remark from me, makes me warm inside. For them I performed. For them, I recited every thing I knew from Foucault and Fanon, only twisted to make me sound as gallant as Oscar Wilde. I made sure, with the right spacing of snobby big words and a bbc accent, I sounded as clever as them, one of them even. Hell, I even made a toast at a dinner party, through my wine induced sense of humor, and was a hilarious success. A cute self deprecating joke about my obscure data analysis job with an Indian restaurant company, and they thought me equal to their social science degrees and promising internships.

I think she is attractive, except for some latent acne. I was worried, however, when she phoned me first. A phone call from a strange pretty voice usually means confronting a disarmingly ugly person. But instead, when I saw her (since our early toddling of 24 years ago), as she confidently walked through our living room, I saw a tall colored girl, with high boots, long slender legs and a pretty bush of curly brown hair. For her, this city still holds many secrets. To her it is a large vessel of unexplored opportunities, of notable authors not yet introduced to, hobbies not yet fully developed and possible relationships not yet failed. She has many more bus routes to master and perhaps a borough or two more to live in. I live in peckham I commanded, when she asked me where I live. Now she has moved just up the road from me in what might have been the geographical prerequisite of a strong and meaningful relationship (I will be just one bus ride away from your place she exclaimed just 2 months ago). At her bus stop, she gave me the now perfunctory embrace and dry kiss to the lips. Her and a worldly dream of possibilities stepped off the bus into the dark and leafy city blocks. My bus ride is soon to come to an end.

Fade to Back

London Bridge, Southwark Tavern

Zombe looks gaunt. His cheek bones appear sharp and his lips dry until they sip the beer. He tells me he is doing construction work. I shudder. It has come to that. How can it be? My old school mate, working with his hands and knees when we went to the best school in the country for the use of our brain. But what is wrong with construction work, I ask myself as I listen to Zombe’s tales. He is still the chatter box he was at school, his bright mouth of teeth and tongue, chomping away at words. Your laughter roared through the dorms halls every term. Zombe tells me of his work mates who are English. They are have common names like John Smith or some such to avoid the authorities. They steal what they can get away with. Cell phones, scrap metal. Their salary spent on drug debts. Zombe splits his salary between paying off his sisters loan and his tuition fees. The loan was for earlier tuition. For the work he does not attend class. He has schemes for the internet business he means to hatch. It is raining outside and the trains thunder above us.

In his town they call him Zola instead. This shakes off the banal zombi jokes. It is his town, Eastgrinstead. A little stop over on a highway outside Gatwick airport. It has two high streets. Zola lives on one of them above a pub. It is his town. Everyone knows him. I was there and saw it for my self. Every second car pulls over to greet him. He raps in a band. We got drunk after his performance. It rained when I was there. We partied in his flat. Loud music, beer cans and two 19 year old girls. Two of his groupies. They were dreadfully unattractive. One fat, one thin. One dumb, the other ceaselessly talkative.

Peckham, my back yard.

A wild place. Not large enough for boys cricket but large enough to have live game. Long grass and wild cats in pursuit of furry and agile herbivores, the squirrels. Patrolled by foxes in the night. Slugs as large as small anacondas. Spiders big enough to be seen from in doors. I must battle cob webs to get to the shed. The spiders have invaded the house. They net the windows and every corner with their webs. The front door is now a tunnel. Eric is squeamish about slugs. The hair on my back stands up at the sight of a spider. The bigger they are the louder I scream. They have tiger stripes. They get bigger and bigger. What do they eat? There isn’t anything but other spiders in the house. I cycle to the shops for groceries. At top speed ahead of a bus I notice a cob web about my handle bars, complete with an eight legged predator. It takes me a while to realize that I can stop the bike and get off. I have such fears!

Peckham Rye Common

For exercise I run around the common. It is big. No sound is heard from one end to the other. Open fields. Rugby goal posts yet all the men practice soccer. Most of them are from west Africa. The ones with big bellies play too. In the common are the gardens. It has a wrought iron fence. Flower beds, picket fences, roses, more fields (with soccer goal posts) and a Japanese garden. Families leisure here. Successful old women bond with their wise educated daughters. Young couples push perambulators by the duck pond. Toddlers try in vain to kill birds. Single people read the Guardian newspaper on the benches. A stone bridge crosses a stream in dense foliage. It was here that you cried. So many tears. I tried to catch them all but I made use of none.

London Bridge, Southwark Tavern…again

Fortune orders a coke. I feel shy and order a beer anyway. I did say lets have a drink. Fortune is buying the dinner. He offered. I only ever say no once. He works for a bank. It has been ten years since I saw him last. Most likely at our last school exam. He has been to the university at home and then to South East Asia with the bank. He still has a gap between his teeth. He still attends church regularly. The mole on his nose has grown. I had forgotten about the mole. Now I can’t stop looking at it. We shared a desk at school. It took effort to have a desk at school. You had to find it. Fight for it. Carry it. Keep it. The usual questions. What did you study? Where did you work? Are you not married? Where do you live? The answers leave something missing. Conversation dries up. It is raining outside. The trains roar overhead. The buses splash water. We got back to the station and make false promises.

On Prophanities

I remember a hot afternoon at boarding school in my final year. It was a surreal time for final year pupils, as we were beyond the rules and bearers of all the schools expectations in the national examinations. Indeed, our every class lesson, test and exam up until then was only preparation for this final challenge. There was no continuous assessment or accumulative grading, it all came down to one month of examinations that numbered over a dozen. Prefects no longer hounded us, teachers stopped berating us and refrained from dreaming up punishments for invented offenses. We got the top soup in the dinning halls and larger portions of food. Missing class was ignored and drinking sprees overlooked. In truth, by the final term we had all paid our examination fees and dismissal would not stop us from writing our final exam. Our school was only a holding pen and a selection mechanism for possible university students. The brightest expected, and mostly did go on to the University of Zambia. We were the chosen ones and beyond reproach.

Though it was a time of relative freedom, it was not without stress. Exam stress no less. Pupils who had moderate averages, now studied nights and days to up their week spots. Other pupils who had always had near flawless grades went further to cement their mastery of the subjects and leave no room for a slip at the last moment, for even though you could be top of you class all year, there still remained the risk of not performing on the day and losing all the glory. Others, who had long given up on the approach of knowing every bit of the syllabus for each subject, instead studied the past examination papers to grasp patterns and conjecture questions likely to be repeated or imitated. Some worked in groups, while others opted to study in secrecy to give the impression that they were beyond stress and moderate expectations.

And yet still, the resentment for authority remained. We were no longer hounded out of our dorms in the morning by the head teacher Mr Hamwinger, with his whipping stick. We were no longer made to do the manual work of the school of slashing grass and shifting soil. We no longer ate the worst food. But still, most felt that the cat and mouse chase, between teacher and pupil, class and truancy, punishment and escape, that lasted near three years had been deliberate and malicious. It didn’t have to be that way.

This combination of exam stress and relative freedom beyond the school rules released often amusing behavior changes among the grade twelves. Some boys suddenly took to heavy drinking and regularly disappeared in the night over the weekend to the nearby townships to return in a drunken stupor. I grew an Afro and finally developed the ability to flirt with the younger girls of the school, the grade tens. New relationships and friendships sprung up, old foes became soul mates, some loathed teachers became back slapping buddies (and often accompanied to the shabeens of the township) while others were hounded by insults all the way to their homes. New passions for music were discovered, with soulful R&B love songs replaced by belligerent rap music.

The afternoon I am thinking of was on a Saturday I think. A hot afternoon, when the indoors and shade was a sanctuary. At the end of our dusty corridor, among our haphazard beds, was a bunch of pupils who were not of my crowd. They were boys not from the capital but from small towns I could not place on the map most times. Boys for whom English was an awkward object in their mouth and who kept a low profile and wanted no trouble, with prefect or teacher. Only on this afternoon they were huddled around a small cassette player, illegally connected to the mains by a naked wire, listening to their new discovery, Tupac Shakur.

Within a few short weeks, these boys were garrulous with the anger and insults that were spat out of Tupac’s music and regurgitated by them. The misogyny and the anger, the contempt for the law and the celebration survival under duress, expounded by Tupac, must have connected with them, given all our trials after two and a half years in boarding school. What I remember this afternoon was the bunch of them rapping along, on this hot and otherwise quiet desultory afternoon, to one of Tupac’s most pugnacious rap songs, hit’um up. Except they didn’t just sing along or rap along. They changed the lyrics to suit them. In this song, after Tupac and his fellow support rap artists make a detailed and insulting account of why they think they are better than their rival east coast competitors, Tupac quite simply says “Fuck you too” to a long list of people. As they rapped along, the boys replaced the names with their own characters. For example, some of the rap song explodes

fuck Mobb Deep,
fuck Biggie,
fuck Bad Boy as a staff, record label, and as a mother fuckin crew.
And if you want to be down with Bad Boy,
Then fuck you too.
Chino XL, fuck you too.
All you mother fuckers,
fuck you too.

Our school was called David Kaunda Secondary School, and our boarding house Mweru House. Their version of the song went something like

fuck Mweru,
fuck Hamwinga,
fuck David Kaunda as a staff, school, and as a mother fuckin crew.
And if you want to be down with Hamwinga,
Then fuck you too.
Chemistry, fuck you too.
All you mother fuckers,
fuck you too.

Now I knock about London, with a dreadfully dull job that leads me into avenues of memory I thought I had long forgotten. I run the city race by chasing after buses, trains and tubes. I have drinks with friends in a hurry, lest I miss my last train home. Some of the friends I meet are from David Kaunda as well, but never include the bunch from the back of the dorm who rapped to Tupac that afternoon. I am not sure we ever talked about what it would be like after David Kaunda, though we always looked forward to our last exam. I guess we all thought we would be at the university of Zambia, or at some hang out point in the middle of Lusaka after that. Instead we are scattered and our memories of school are like our hopes for a successful life in Zambia, just another fading dream.

fuck my job,
fuck London,
fuck Employment as an income, culture, and as a mother fuckin career.
And if you want to be down with London
Then fuck you too.
Dreams, fuck you too.
All you mother fuckers,
fuck you too.

Brother Man

We were an assembly of people put together by Thiloshnee as her birthday guests as well as premier visitors to her new flat in Baker street. Among this group is myself, Laurence, Yambazi and Ravi.

Thiloshnee is an over achieving employee a big city firm, Ivy leauge graduate, former competitive athlete and weekend mountain climbing extraordinaire. She also sees herself as some sort of social engineer, organizing theater nights and other such outings. Though employed by the city firm since her graduation, it was over a year before she moved out of her humble university provided lodgings and into a studio apartment in Baker st. It was to this central location that we her ‘close’ friends were invited to for desserts and drinks before the nights adventure to the night life of the west end.

Laurence is another helpless over achiever. Another London School of Economics graduate (indeed it is through him I got to know Thiloshnee), University of Cape Town graduate and current employee of an economics consultancy group. A white boy from Cape Town whose bookish pursuits and dilection for South Africans of color make him not just a passionate believer in South Africa’s post apartheid future, but also someone well aware of his countries struggles and past.

Yambazi is a Zambian I consider to be of my own making. He too has studied hard sciences and worked through pages long calculations for nights on end. He too has been to that boarding school in Lusaka that claims many of the countries best school achievers. He too is a sort or rebel, taking every day as a platform to act against social expectations. He is a dreaded, tall, thin, dark, bearded, guitar playing particle physics PhD student at Oxford on scholarship from Zambia. He has hosted Laurence and I on a couple of Oxford booze up social outings, and this weekend was a chance for Laurence and I too try and even the score.

Ravi, is Thiloshnee’s friend, we assume she knows through Harvard. More than once before, on hitherto unsuccessful outings attempted by Thiloshnee, we have failed to meet her “CNN” friend. Indeed up to this point, we were unaware that he had any venerable traits apart from his choice of work and employer.

Soho

After a couple of wrong turns in the rain, refusing to call and admit the need for further directions, Laurence, Yambazi stepped up to Thiloshnee’s flat. When she opened the door, Priyanks greeted us with a short black dress and pair legs that near blew the eye brows off our faces. Inside her square living room/bedroom was a collection of young, mostly Indian men, spread about the sparse furniture, whose cussioned and over educated lives was revealed in their chubby faces. Also present was Thiloshnee’s elder sister, not wearing as a nice a dress or showing jaw dropping legs. Laurence had warned that Thiloshnee’s crowd was not likely to contain many women. His prophecy, it turned out was all too true. At one point, after returning from a trip to the ablutions, I brought the room to a stand still by saying “eish, this room smells sweaty crotches and unwashed socks” in a blatant reference to the predominance of men. Laurence tried to cut the ice by quipping “trust Jumani to bring things to a stand still with a comment like that.” Whenever I was overwhelmed by my counterparts pre and post university achievements, I mentioned Yambazi and his particle physics studies at Oxford.

Cake and wine was consumed before we pushed on the bus and black cab busy streets, in the rain, to make for the underground to the night club for the night.

Soho is a collection of streets in the center of west London that is skew on all fronts. The roads are skew and never meet at right angles. The morals are skew, as proved by the numerous sex shops, brothels and naked legs waving out door ways. The sexuality is skew, as evinced by the buff men that sometimes walk its streets wearing nothing but gold bum pants and twirling a wand.

Thiloshnee and her sister, Laurence, Yamabazi and I as well as the assembly of over achieving chubby faced Harvard graduates, crept out of the underground at Piccadilly circus into the crowds and the rain. The night club of Thiloshnee’s choice would not let us in before 11pm (where upon Yambazi and I guessed that the ubiquitous racism of clubs door bouncers was at play) and so we were forced to wander the streets of Soho for a short term alternative. At this point Ravi, our man from CNN, knew just the place to go – a little place called The French House on Dean st. The French house only sells half pints of beer, has walls covered with black and white photos of good times of old and sells an obscure selection of books behind the bar. The clientele was curiously well acquainted with the bar staff and some of them were older than the photos on the wall.

Our crew snuggled up into a corner of the pub and had a round of drinks next to a middle aged man with over sized spectacles, wiry thin black moustache and communist style hat in a red t-shirt. Initially, Yambazi and I were not engaged in conversation with the man. Laurence, who was engaged from the start, who seemed enthralled, had mentioned with enthusiasm, that the man was from Joberg. Our coterie jostled and shifted in the hustle and bustle of this crowded busy little tavern. Phones rang, text messages sms’d and directions yelled for further friends of Thiloshnee to come. Through all this, Laurence took a call and had to meet his lady friend at the nearest tube station. Vacating his position next to the man, Laurence said to me “talk to the man” and I took Laurence’s position.

“English is the language of the oppressor. It is the language of business power” preached the man in the red t-shirt. And he was preaching. He had put on his orating tone of voice. Pryanka and Ravi buffeted the man on each side. They both had a solemn look on their face as if both suffering from reverence and guilt.

“Brother man” said the man addressing Yambazi “where are you from?” When Yambazi said he was from Zambia he then asked “and what do you speak at home?” Yambazi replied “Well, we speak our language, but we all speak English also…” and then Yambazi was cut short “you see!” exalted the Joberg man. Yambazi tried to explain that there was a wide variety of indigenous languages in Zambia making English “the most sensible alternative” but the Joberg man was dismissive.

Thiloshnee too tried to explain the comfort of her country, India, to the use of English as the medium of business and governance. But the Jorberg man insisted that “you are oppressed by the very language you use.” Thiloshnee was exasperated and left the tavern to shout directions into her phone for soon to come members of the party.

I was sympathetic to the notions that of lingering oppression maintained through language. I pointed out the current South African minister of education’s, (Naledi Pandore) trials in opening up the ‘bantu languages’ conundrum, which was labelled by some critics, Pandora’s box. However, the Joberg man did not latch on to this example, but went on to talk in abstract terms.

Then the Joberg man went onto claim he was a man on the battle front in South Africa, with Mandella. That he “knew Thabo well” in London. That he was an exile. That he was disappointed with the South African president “putting the economy before peoples lives”. Through this I asked him if he had been back to South Africa since democracy, to which he replied “just briefly” in another dismissive tone.

Then came a long story of being arrested for not having a pass book in apartheid South Africa. “I ran home from school and changed quickly out of my school uniform. Then my mother sent me to buy bread, but I had forgotten my pass in my trouser pocket.” Then he told of being arrested by a typically unsympathetic Afrikaaner police officer. Of being taken around his township at the back of a van picking up other similar offenders. “when I got home, I found my mother had been so worried, looking for me all over the place, not sure if I had been stabbed by gangsters.”

At this point, I interjected in jest hoping to relax the tone a little. I said “but you still brought home the bread right? I mean you went through all that and you still brought home the bread. That is to be commended.” To this we all laughed, even the Joberg man. But then the Joberg man turned and said “but how can you make such a joke. How can you make such a joke about my mother?” It was a rhetorical question I did not answer. And then he continued “you are a half-caste aren’t you?” I replied “yes, well it shows” while raising the skin of my wrist into view. But the Joberg man did not take this wager for peace and continued “yah, you are not just half-caste in the skin, you are half-caste in the mind. That is Afrikanaar thinking what you said. You have Afrikanaar in the mind” The air had been turned foul quite quickly. I said to Yambazi “eish, this barley is flat” and chuckled a little, even though the insults thrown at me suddenly were quite caustic in my opinion.

It was any how, time to meet some Thiloshnee’s other friends the designated club for night, it being after 11pm then. There we met Laurence again and regailed to him the dramatic turns of conversation with man we had by now christened ‘brother man’. Laurence said, quite amused, “I knew he was talking shit, that is why I wanted you to talk to him” which surprised me. “I had thought otherwise” I said to Laurence. “I thought you were quite taken by him” I said but Laurence replied “No! I knew you would upset him soon enough. That is why I asked you to talk to him.”