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.”

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’

Rokia

The Barbican is a concrete jungle in the heart of the centre of London. A wide reaching forest of concrete walkways and interconnected city blocks that secretly conceal tube stations, museums and and the Barbican centre. In the belly of this labyrinth of stair cases, sign posts and old Roman city ruins, Rokia Traore was to perform a Mozart influenced live performance.

Loveness was not at the Burger King at London Bridge, as agreed. On the phone she said she was told that there was no Burger King at London Bridge (incorrectly). I swallowed my frustration and met her at her unilaterally chosen meeting place, outside in front of the HSBC bank.
We took a bus to the Barbican.

Lovenss has lived all her life in northern Malawi, except for one short visit to Lundazi, in eastern Zambia when she was five. Two years ago she went to Glasgow to study Quantity Surveying. She is small, neat, shy and speaks with a strong Tumbuka accent.

‘Rokia is an African like us. She is from Mali. She makes black peoples music. Tonight, she is taking white peoples favorite classical music, and making it black’ I preached. I find my self talking to her like she is a child for her quietness. She is 22 though.

‘But there will be plenty of white people there who like black peoples music’ I continued as we skipped over the Thames river on the upper deck of the double decker bus. I pointed out the south bank and St Pauls Cethedral.

Loveness smiled and said nothing.

Indeed there were lots of white people at the Barbican that night that like black peoples music. I could tell because many of them wore printed shirts. Very educated women in their forties donned shawls and kaftan’s and printed head cloths. Caucasian men had sandles and cotton pants. Mixed race couples were present too.

I mean black peoples music like the kind that is sung in native languages and with traditional instruments. Not the over produced chart bashing rhythms forced onto high streets and MTV. It is called African World Music.

Loveness and I had a drink outside and sat on the steps by the fountains. The evening was warm and the soft dusk sunlight dappled the creepers hanging over concrete balconies yonder and all around and above us.

In the auditorium, the lights went out, the convivial crowd died down and two shadowy forms walked on to stage. It was Rokia and a curly haired guitarist. On the screen behind them a short story was told through screen shots of bustling Bamako in black and white and a voice over narrative, in french and english with subtitles. It told of time breaking down and contemporary artists such as Amadou & Mariam, Bjork and Billie Holiday arriving at a banquet to perform at the crowning ceremony of Soundiata Kieta, the first 13th century emperor of the Mande kingdom in Medieval Mali.

The first song was a tentative and calm dirge. Rokia’s throat deep wails augmented by the languid plucks of an acoustic guitar.

Rokia wore loose cotton pants and a chinese style cotton shirt with long sleeves that drooped well past here hands. The cut across her torso was high to reveal some of her taught stomach. She is lean, short and small with a powerful neck, short hair and an eager countenance. Dark skinned and liable to charge with passion at the drop of a dime.

The songs that followed were lacklustre but powerful, with the familiar charges of her singing and chanting. Four violins and a chelo on one familiar number from one of her recorded albums. If you love Rokia’s music then you would of loved this, with classic instruments to back her up.

After three or four such numbers, her usual band took up the remainder of the instruments behind her. They were all men but her back up singer, a more voluptuous specimen whose back bone was not as flexible as Rokia’s to the pounding rythyms.

As the performance went on so did the tempo. The all man band got more assertive. Rokia and her back up singer danced more to their mildly choreographed routines. All this was inter-spliced with more screen shots of Mali and voice over doing a fantasy of the empire of Soundiata Kieta and his journey to be emperor.

Loveness was quiet next to me but not motionless in the gloom. I bopped my head as I saw fit and clapped lots.

The second to last song was ten minutes long and really rocked the house. One of the guitars looked like a wood padel, with strings strung across. The drums smashed and the electric guitarists face contorted with passion. Rokia danced and smiled like she was drugged. Just when you thought the song could not get any more hectic it went up to a higher tempo. When the song finally concluded, with a triumphant bash from the drummer, the applause was almost as long as the song.

Of course there was an encore. Rokia charged back on to the stage with her whole band of African men and back up singer. She demanded every body get up and dance. That included the white males in the front rows with white hair and bold patches. She demanded and, coaxed and cajoled until we were all on our feet, though Loveness and I didn’t need much convincing.

The final song was for all to dance. Loveness danced like she talked, quietly and in a smile way. No loud gestures and not much movement.

Rokia got a standing ovation. I was glad I came. I didn’t notice much Mozart in her performances. There were some classical instruments which worked really well on her ballads to accompany her passionate and indignant wails. But I don’t know Mozart. I do know, however, that I like everything that comes out of Mali when it comes to music.

They say Rokia came back from the western world of her fathers diplomatic circles to learn traditional Griot music and fuse it with modern influences. I love her music. I wish I could do the same with literature as she has done with music. She inspires me.

‘Did you like it?’ I asked Loveness.

‘yeah’ she said with her usual nervous laugh. I doubted the sincerity of this reply but I don’t think she was bored.

We followed the signs posts to the bus station and took two buses home.

Over the Thames river again on the bus, I saw to the east the full moon a strong orange just emerged from the horizon in the twilight. It was ochre yellow and framed squarely by the tower bridge under the moon rose over the river beyond the bright city lights.