Quills of Desire
Part One
A future and a hope
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Chapter 1
T
HEY were on the veranda sitting before a fading fire in a brazier. Solemnly, the father said:
"My son, life is like a queue. With patience your turn always comes. When that time comes
you are free to pick what pleases you. They say look after your neck; the beads to wear
around it are as easy to find as the droppings of a chicken. "
The homestead was swallowed in total darkness. It was a depressing January night: wet and cold as
ice. They were alone on the veranda. The rest of the family was fast asleep. A dull yellowish flame
from a kerosene lamp placed on an empty gallon drum lit the veranda, but so dimly that not much
was visible.
The words the father had spoken were not new to Wiza. This was the third time his father had
uttered them to him. The first time had been four years ago, on the eve of Wiza's departure to
secondary school to start form one at Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School, hundreds of kilometres
away, in Chinsali District.
The second time was when Wiza was in form three. It had been the night before Wiza left the
homestead for the third term of that academic year. During the previous term, he had nearly been
expelled following an unpleasant incident involving a government official who had visited the
school, and himself. Without pressure from the deputy headmaster, the headmaster would have
terminated Wiza's schooling for what he insisted on calling "Wiza's unwholesome behaviour
towards the Honourable Minister of State".
Back home, during the holiday, Wiza had kept silent to his father about the incident; but
Chambuleni as his father was called, had come to learn about it from Mr Mpongwe, the head
teacher at Polo Primary School, two streams and a ridge east of the homestead. Mr Mpongwe had
heard the story, in favour of Wiza, from his son Alick who had then been in his first year at
Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School. Chambuleni had kept quiet about the story throughout the
holiday until that last night before Wiza went back to school. That was when, after he had
questioned Wiza about it and Wiza had finished his explanation, he had broken into advice and
injunctions, the main thrust of which was the admonishing song that politics was a dangerous thing
one should do everything to avoid.
"Those who say politics is a dirty game know what they are talking about. Politics, my son, is death.
It is the grave of every man who seeks to dance with it", he had said. "If you are a child with ears
that can hear, stay away from anything that smells of politics ...”
The monologue had begun and Chambuleni had turned to the song about life: "My son, life is like a
queue ...”
That time, too, they had been sitting on the veranda at night, with the rest of the family away in
their beds and asleep.
On the first two occasions, Wiza had not received the words very seriously, seeing nothing special
in them. But now, on this third occasion, the words had a special ring to them, emphasized not so
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much by his father’s manner as by his own sensitivity and conscience which time, age and four
years of secondary school life at KK, had brought to him.
Tomorrow he would be leaving the homestead for KK, to begin the first term of his final secondary
school year. Looking at how tumultuous and precarious his last four years at KK had been, owing
to flaws in his own character and to his bad relationship with the headmaster, the prospect gave him
feelings of both pleasure and fear. How challenging his father's words were in relation to his dream,
his character and his reputation.
Wiza's dream was to have a good education. A first-class engineering degree reinforced by a
colourful chain of postgraduate professional qualifications and followed by an illustrious industrial
career. The dream was old, deep-rooted and ever-growing. As a little boy of eight, Wiza had prayed
to the gods to let him go as far as standard six. Halfway through primary school, Wiza had started
appealing to the gods and the ancestral spirits to let him go to secondary school.
On the day before the beginning of the final primary school leaving examinations he had bravely
gone alone to the home of Kuzuke, the god of prosperity and the future. Kuzuke existed in the
shape of a large python whose home was a scary undergrowth of creepers, south of the homestead.
There, the little boy Wiza had knelt on the ground, a little distance from the undergrowth. With his
head in a bowed position and hands resting on his thighs, he praised the god Kuzuke for his
kindness.
Then, humbly, he requested the god to light his way and let him pass the coming examinations well
enough to get a place at secondary school. He also informed the god that for placement, his first
choice was Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School in Chinsali.
That night he slept facing the roof. It was important to sleep like that because the ancestral spirits
might want to tell him something about tomorrow's examination while he was asleep. The spirits
would not communicate if one was sleeping on one's side or belly.
In the morning Wiza was up before sunrise, ready to start the usual three-kilometre journey through
the bush to Polo Primary School. He rubbed his face and arms with a watery concoction his mother
had supplied the previous evening. The concoction was to make his eyes and brains sharper during
the examination. Then he slid a pair of dry mbulwe sticks and one unused matchstick in his hair,
just above the forehead, making sure the sticks were so hidden in his hair that no one could see
them. That was medicine for correct answers. Thus he left the homestead.
There was not a soul at Polo Primary School when Wiza arrived. He was too early. The
examination he was to write that day, Special Paper One, had obsessed him so much that he had not
noticed that daytime was still far away. He went to the block for the senior classes, peeped through
the window of the head teacher's office and gazed at the wall clock. The time was only three a.m.
Frightened, he went into the examination room and slept on one of the benches at the back of the
room. He was woken up shortly after six o'clock by old Mr Mpongwe, the head teacher of Polo
Primary School, a lean but energetic, time-honoured teacher, who, suffering from his own
examination fever, had himself woken up before any sign of the sun’s rising. He was taking a walk
around the school as if on a hunt for possible witches wishing to discredit him when he was only
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half a decade away from retiring, by using their witchcraft to force an overall poor final-year
examination performance by his pupils that year.
"Why are you here so early, Wiza Chambuleni?", the old man asked perplexedly. "And I can see
you came a long time ago."
"The moon deceived me."
"You are a determined and courageous child, Wiza Chambuleni.”
The head teacher took him to his home and ate breakfast with him. Thus, Wiza went to his first
examination from the head teacher's house and in the company of Mr Mpongwe himself.
When the results came out, Wiza's were the best, and he was one of only three pupils who had
qualified to go to secondary school, and he had been awarded a place at the respected Kenneth
Kaunda Secondary School, his first choice.
During that time, Wiza had won himself a solid reputation based on an impressive year-to-year
academic performance. He was now a boy of seventeen, already in possession of a first division,
junior secondary school leaving certificate, and was due to embark upon his final secondary school
year-form five. Wiza's dream had grown during his time at KK. Now he was itching to go to
university. He wanted to get a first-class engineering degree. Preferably, he would go to an overseas
university as his immediate elder brother, Kocha, had done. Kocha was presently studying in
England–Kocha whom he loved so much, and who was the source of his encouragement in
determining Wiza's resolve to become a dedicated scholar.
After his first degree, he would get a job with a large, reputable company like Robert's Construction
Limited. He would work for two or so years while doing a short professional course, contributing
articles to engineering journals and carrying out his own research. After this he would go back to
university for his MSc and finally, his PhD. Only after he had become Dr Wiza Otoni Chambuleni
would he breathe freely and rest.
His older brother, Kocha, had blazed the trail. Wiza would follow that trail to Kocha's heightsperhaps beyond.
Wiza's character, however, was a threat to his dream. Although he was a likeable person oh the
whole, his fiery temper and controversial mind made him vulnerable to fights and other troubles.
To most students and teachers he was seen as an intelligent, hard-working student. His weaknesses
were viewed by them as those also found in other youths. On the other hand, to the headmaster and
some of. the teachers and prefects, he was a social misfit whose good performance on the academic
side was barely enough to compensate for his delinquency. In one of his overblown articulations,
the headmaster, Mr Dasgupta, had once accused Wiza's defenders among the teachers of exploiting
the educational system of the nation to rear sophisticated criminals who would only use the
chemistry they passed with flying colours to ruin the country, instead of moulding future leaders.
Hence Wiza's stay and progression at Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School were as good and
respected as they were bad and detested.
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Chambuleni had always feared for his son. He feared and hated failure.
He dreamed of a respectable life for his children when they grew up to have their own homes. Of
his eight children, Wiza, his third born, had given him the worst headache.
Of his older children, Kocha, the first born, Leya, the second born and Chakonta, the fourth born,
had all been straight, without giving him any problems from the time they had been mere 'puppies'
to the present. Kocha was even about to complete his university studies overseas without a single
stain on his name. Leya and Chakonta had failed to make it to secondary school but it was obvious
that they would be successful in life in general. They were both upright.
Wiza was the odd one out. He was the most intelligent of his children, but also the most
unpredictable. Chambuleni wished him to go as far as Kocha had gone with school-to give the
family a more solid pillar of two well-educated sons-but he was always daunted by the fear of what
might become of Wiza in defiance of his precious dreams for him, for Wiza was unpredictable.
As soon as Wiza had gone to school, Chambuleni had begun handling problems he had never
experienced in the school life of Kocha and Leya. Every now and then, parents would storm into his
homestead with their children, Wiza's schoolmates, whom they would say Wiza had injured or
beaten, or whose clothes or school objects, like a satchel, he had tom or broken out of malice. They
would bring all the evidence with them. The parents would leave the homestead saying that had it
not been for Chambuleni, they would have done something very bad.
For the love of his son, Chambuleni would do everything possible to defend Wiza, but often the
case against Wiza would be so straightforward and glaring that Chambuleni would not have any
other option but to confess that his son was in the wrong and promise that he would deal with him.
And Chambuleni did deal with his erring children. His love for his children was coupled with belief
in severe discipline. He would beat and admonish, and his beatings were unforgettable. They were
rare, well- explained, and severe.
Kocha had never received any beatings, and Leya and Chakonta only one each. But Wiza had his
own record. Not only had he received a lot of beatings, he had afterwards shaken the whole family
with his strange behaviour. Sometimes he would refuse to eat or he would go missing from home
for several days until his temper cooled down. That was why in Subsequent years, Chambuleni had
resorted to admonishing him in preference to taking a whip to him. He feared his own son as much
as he loved him and wanted him disciplined.
Later, teachers started to complain too. Chambuleni would plead with them to continue being
tolerant and to help him to change Wiza into a better child. The teachers, flattered, would in turn
praise Wiza's intelligence and performance in school and say that, for Chambuleni, they would see
what they could do about Wiza's character. One day, when Wiza was in standard one, the head
teacher brought a report that Wiza had written a letter to his daughter and because his daughter
hadn't responded favourably to it, Wiza was harassing her every day, threatening to beat her up.
"I have not decided what to do yet", the head teacher said, staring at Chambuleni. "I wanted to tell
you about it first."
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They were standing in front of Chambuleni's main house where Mr Mpongwe had found
Chambuleni sewing a bag for beans.
"I thank you for that, Mr Mpongwe", Chambuleni said. "Very few head teachers would have been
so patient."
"I have the letter with me here; you may want to read it."
"No. I only want to thank you for your patience. I will deal with the boy."
"It is because of you that I haven't taken action, Mr Chambuleni.
You are an enlightened parent; you are not like most of these other parents who don't understand
the problems of a teacher and who defend their children blindly. I exercise patience because I know
your son is the way he is out of his own nature and not because of bad influence from his parents.
Your other children who came to Polo Primary School have been excellent-Kocha especially. We
still talk about him even now, so many years after he left the school. It is a great honour to me as
head teacher of Polo Primary School to have a product of my school get a place at a secondary
school as respected as Munali, in the capital city."
"I really do not know what to do about Wiza."
"We must find a solution. That is why we are here. Personally, I promise never to throw him out of
school. He is a very intelligent boy and to me that is more important than anything else. It is better
for me to keep him in school than to keep a well-behaved pupil who gets zeroes in class. At the end
of the day we primary school head teachers are judged by how many pupils we send to secondary
school."
"You are right."
It had ended there, with Chambuleni and Mr Mpongwe pledging to work together to correct Wiza.
However, Wiza had continued causing trouble after trouble while maintaining a most impressive
performance in school.
It was the same when Wiza went to secondary school. But last year, just when Chambuleni's spirits
had sunk to their lowest after Wiza had nearly been expelled while doing form three-following his
clash with the government official-Wiza had suddenly shown signs of change. The whole of last
year had passed without a problem, and as far as Chambuleni had been able to detect, when Wiza
had come home for holidays, his temperament and attitude had been exceptionally good, like those
of a troublesome soul in the process of coming down to earth and growing wise and conscious of
fate.
It was with a reflective mind, gloating over that recent past, that Chambuleni had uttered his
allegory for the third time. Now, observing a completely new effect of the allegory on his son-more
penetrating and positive than the first and second time he had used it on him-he felt encouraged.
Gazing at Wiza, in the dim light on the small, shabby veranda, he talked on, with more emotion in
his voice.
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When they parted and resolved to go and sleep, Wiza spent some time gazing into the darkness,
savouring his father's allegory. For the first time in his life he felt he loved and respected his father
more than he feared him and dreaded his outrage. He thought about school and wondered how the
year he was about to start-his final year-would pass. The thought gripped him with a sense of
pleasure mixed with fear, so feverish that it was almost a feeling of premonition.
In the morning, Chakonta escorted him to the bus stop at Senga Hill, seven kilometres from the
homestead, on the main Mbala-Kasama Road. He took the Lusaka bus which would drop him at
Mpika so that he could proceed to Chinsali, on another bus, along the Great North Road.
*
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Chapter 2
A
T Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School Wiza soon fell into a new routine. One Friday
afternoon in the month of March, over a month after the beginning of the academic year,
Wiza received a message that Humphrey wanted to see him urgently, before supper time.
He would find him in the sick-bay.
Humphrey was Wiza's best friend at KK. He was the student-in-charge of the sick-bay, for which he
was nicknamed 'Doctor'. He had won this prestigious post when he was in form three on account of
his notable performance in the first aid activities of the Boy Scout movement.
Humphrey was a naturally dedicated and meticulous person.
His work in any field ended up a perfect accomplishment. His notes, for instance, were the best of
any student, being detailed, accurate and as neat as print. Soon after he had taken over the sickbay,
everybody accepted that things had changed for the better. There was more order and efficiency.
In form four he had bought himself a white dust coat which he started wearing while on duty in the
sick-bay. That was when everybody in the school had begun calling him 'Doctor'. Indeed,
Humphrey had the dignity and integrity of a medical doctor. Everyone in the school respected him.
His status (he was also a prefect) and his reputation in the school had in many ways acted as a
shield of protection against trouble for his friend Wiza.
Arriving at the sick-bay from the dormitories where the message had been delivered to him, Wiza
found Humphrey busy writing prescriptions for his clientele while his assistants, two third-year
students, also scouts, gave out the medicines and dressed the wounds.
"A minute", Humphrey said when he saw him at the door. Wiza went and stood a few metres away
from the sick-bay. After a moment, Humphrey came out, looking unsettled.
"Let's stand there", he said, pointing at the deserted open space between the office of the bursar and
the staff room. Wiza, anxious, followed the neat stocky figure of his friend which, as usual, was
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garbed in the spotlessly white dust coat. Humphrey sighed uneasily and said: "Where were you
yesterday evening between five and six o'clock?"
"You mean out of school grounds?"
"Yes."
"I was with Teddy, taking a walk; we went to the cook's compound and the football ground."
"You didn't go to the school farm?"
'Wiza hesitated. "We did", he then said, staring at his friend with the question "What's up?" in his
eyes.
He now half-understood what the matter was. He could guess it had to do with the crime of students
sneaking into the maize field, eating the maize stalks and throwing away the cobs. Sure of his
innocence of the crime, Wiza quickly said: "But we didn't go into the main field. We only took a
stalk of maize each from the free zone and left."
The 'free zone' was a portion of the field where the crop was bad, on the eastern fringe of the field,
parallel to the football ground. The school authorities allowed the students to enter that part of the
field and eat stalks from there, but some of the students deliberately strayed into the main field and
ate stalks that had good maize cobs on them. The headmaster was very upset about it, and recently,
he had warned that any culprit who was reported to him would be severely dealt with.
Humphrey scratched his forehead lightly, looking something between worried and relieved.
"What is it?" Wiza queried.
"After lessons I passed by the prefects' room before going to the sick-bay", his friend explained.
"While there, I heard from the other prefects that the head boy is today, after supper, going to give
the headmaster a list of names of students who have been spoiling maize on the school farm. You
know the headmaster gave a directive that students found in the main maize field, beyond the free
zone, must be reported to him. As usual he instructed Yona to write down the names of the culprits
and hand the list to the head boy every Friday afternoon; the head boy is then to give him the list
the same day. Now, I heard from one of the prefects that Yona met you in the maize field yesterday,
sometime between five and six o'clock in the evening."
Wiza suddenly felt tense–not because he was guilty, but because of the mention of the name Yona
in what his friend had just said. Yona was his enemy number one at KK and he was a deadly
prefect. He and the headmaster were in total agreement when it came to matters of a disciplinary
nature. The headmaster would rather listen to Yona than to Patrick Sambo, the head boy, or Edwin
Zuze, the deputy head boy, and worse, the headmaster and Yona were united in their dislike of
Wiza. Of all the teachers at KK, his biggest enemy was the headmaster himself; and out of all the
prefects, it was Yona Sumbukeni.
"Is it true that Yona met you there?" Humphrey addressed his friend as if desperate to bring him
back from the haunted world he seemed to have entered, forgetting about the real world before him.
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"He did."
"But you are sure you were in the free zone and not in the main field when he saw you?"
"Very sure."
"That's all right then", Humphrey said. "I just got worried when I heard your name mentioned. I
feared Yona might have met you in the wrong place. You know Yona, especially with you; he
would not even bother with the fact that you are a fifth former."
"He can't have made a mistake", Wiza put in reassuringly, reminding himself, as he often did, of
how, in the past four years, his friend had tirelessly struggled to save him from different kinds of
trouble, and of how he still seemed prepared to suffer any calamity with him, and was willing to
come to his rescue. "We met him just as we were entering the free zone, from the football ground."
"He was leaving the field?"
"Yes–carrying cobs of maize in his hands."
"Exhibits."
"Chief Detective Yona Sumbukeni!"
"You can't be sure with people like him", said Humphrey. "I will still see Patrick Sambo at supper
or immediately after supper just to make sure. He is likely to take the list to the headmaster's house
during prep."
Humphrey consulted his wristwatch, announced that supper was thirty-five minutes away and said
he was going back to wind up his work at the sick-bay.
"You will find me at the dorm", Wiza told him, and they parted. On his way to the dormitory, Wiza
stopped at the prefects' room to peep in and see if Patrick Sambo, the head boy, or Edwin Zuze, the
deputy head boy, was there. If Patrick Sambo was, he would tell him that Humphrey wanted to
speak to him. If he wasn't and Edwin Zuze was instead, he would tell Edwin to tell Patrick when he
met him, that Humphrey was looking for him. Patrick Sambo and Edwin Zuze were good friends
and were together most of the time. The prefects' room, however, was empty save for one prefect
who seemed to be busy writing.
Wiza moved on. At the dormitory he slumped down on his bed and, in a lying position, he
continued reading Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather from where he had left off before he
had rushed to the sick-bay to see Humphrey.
Though he was not a prefect, Wiza slept in a cubicle belonging to Humphrey who was a senior
prefect. In reality, the cubicle was Wiza's, for Humphrey had another bed and locker in the sickbay, and more often than not, he slept there. Wiza should have been a prefect himself. Many agreed
he was very well qualified to be such, but the headmaster had prevented it. The selection of new
prefects was done at the end of the second term each year. The candidates were mainly form four
students, and only in exceptional cases were form three students chosen. The new prefects assumed
duty at the beginning of the third term, to give the former prefects, who were in form five, time to
prepare for the final school certificate examinations. Wiza's intake had therefore been due for
selection in July the previous year. When the time had come, the old prefects had put Wiza among
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the first five names on the list of nominees. Some of the prefects had even suggested his name for
consideration for the post of deputy head boy. But when the list was presented to the headmaster
and a selected panel of teachers and prefects, the headmaster saw to it that Wiza's name was
dropped from the list.
Those of the teachers and prefects who felt strongly about Wiza's abilities argued that Wiza be
given a lesser position at least, such as that of student-in-charge of the film shows. This proposal
too had been fiercely challenged. The headmaster and his allies saw to it that all the smaller posts
were given to other pupils, and that nothing went to Wiza.
When the names of the new prefects were made public, the school was shocked that Wiza's was not
among them. The news was most shocking to the boys in the junior forms to whom Wiza was a
great celebrity, and highly regarded for his character and academic brilliance. He was the greatest
wizard in mathematics; he was one of the school's most logical and formidable polemicists in the
English language, and a respectable member of the debating society who often represented .the
school in debating competitions. He was the pillar of the science club. That same year he had
brought honour to the school by winning second prize in the senior physical science section of the
Provincial Science Fair–the first prize ever won by a student of KK in that competition. Presently
he was the club's secretary-general. He was a 'scientist', an 'intellectual' and a 'revolutionary'.
The teachers, the more mature students and Wiza himself were less shocked by the outcome; they
had more or less expected it. Opinion among them was unanimous that the vicious campaign of the
headmaster, and his allies, against Wiza's candidature had been nurtured to formidable levels by the
still fresh memories of last year's escapade involving Wiza and the government official who had
visited the school: the Minister of State from Lusaka. It had been argued that although Wiza had an
exemplary academic record and was active in extra-curricular activities and was, therefore,
outwardly suitable for a position of responsibility, he was not dependable.
The truth, however, was that Wiza had a mind which some teachers and prefects found to be too
independent and fearless. Indeed, by nature, Wiza did not like authority. His general attitude
towards teachers and prefects was principally a consequence of that dislike.
A few teachers, and Mr Stevenson the deputy headmaster, were able to see strength and good in his
attitude and associated it with intelligence, originality and creativity. But the others regarded his
lack of discipline as a threat to their sense of prestige, so that when Wiza's name was tabled for
discussion over the possibility of his becoming a prefect, their support of the headmaster, and his
negative stance against Wiza, was a firm and decided battle of self-preservation.
That Wiza's removal from the list of new prefects could not be accounted for through reasons to do
with his conduct was chiefly defended by Humphrey. As everybody must have noticed, he said,
from the time Wiza had almost been expelled after the incident involving the government official,
Wiza had conducted himself very well, and had not caused any trouble worth talking about. In
many ways Wiza had changed and, unless the headmaster and his allies had based their arguments
on incidents from his first and second years, there hadn't been anything in Wiza's conduct in the
past year to explain his disqualification from becoming a prefect. But was it fair, he questioned, to
remember the mistakes of junior days when considering a student of Wiza's standing for the
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position of prefect? Were not some students made prefects because of the very fact that they were
troublemakers?
Humphrey spoke sincerely. Wiza had changed. He had changed greatly and for the better. These
days he exercised a lot of restraint, and he was generally far less volatile than he had been during
form one and form two. The way Wiza was taking the injustice was just another testimony of how
much he had changed. If it had been those early days, KK would have been talking of something
else by now. But there he was, calm and accepting about everything.
Besides, Humphrey knew what he was talking about, for he knew his friend better than any other
person at KK.
*
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*
He and Wiza had met for the first time on their first day in form one and had remained close friends
since then. During that time, he had learned a great deal about Wiza.
His first shock at Wiza's character had come that same day. Their class, Form One Blue, in
attendance for the first time, had sat in silence, waiting for the teacher. When the teacher finally
came he split the class into five groups of five to eight students each. He gave each student a slasher
and showed the groups different places to work. Wiza and Humphrey were in the same group, a
group of six. They were shown a space between the library and the technical drawing and
woodwork workshops.
The place was well hidden, but known to the older students who were on hunting sprees for
'freshers' to bully. Wiza and the other boys had been visited and molested by four different gangs of
older students in about an hour, when three form two boys, slightly older than Humphrey and Wiza,
stormed by. They had appeared from nowhere, panting and singing obscenities, and began hitting
the lower lip of each boy in Wiza's group with their fingers so that the boys' lips made an awkward
'plopping' sound, to the pleasure and amusement of the trio.
By that time, Wiza and Humphrey had introduced themselves and, as is always the case when two
boys like each other in such strange circumstances, they had detached themselves away from the
other four boys in the group and were standing next to each other, taking a pause from slashing.
When one of the bullying boys reached them they realized what was going on, and were alert.
When the boy hit their lower lips, they did not make a sound. The bully fumed, and asked Wiza to
kiss his left shoe, and Humphrey the right one. When he saw that neither of the two moved, the boy
repeated his instruction more loudly. His two colleagues heard him and came and stood next to him
and commanded Wiza and Humphrey to do as they had been bid or 'face the music'. Humphrey
fidgeted and made to move, but Wiza held him back. The other form ones stood watching out of
frightened curiosity.
"You kiss the shoes by the time I count five or I kill you", threatened the first boy. "One-two-three". Humphrey kneeled down before the boy and kissed the boy's right shoe. Wiza remained standing.
"Four-five". The boy finished counting and glared at Wiza menacingly, but Wiza refused to budge.
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The boy moved nearer to Wiza and stretched his right arm to grab Wiza's shirt front. Suddenly the
boy was sprawled on the ground; Wiza had hit him with his head. The boy gritted his teeth
painfully and tried to stand up but dropped down again. On his second attempt, he could only
manage to sit up. Blood was oozing from his nostrils. His friends made no attempt to attack Wiza.
Apparently, he was their leader, and perhaps the strongest of them. They would not take the risk.
"Take him away and leave us to work", Wiza said, and the boys obeyed.
The boy who had been hit was crying and gritting his teeth as the others led him away, greatly
embarrassed.
Humphrey and the other freshers were frightened. The whole day they waited for a catastrophe to
befall them. But nothing happened-not that day, nor in the days that followed.
Thus began a lasting friendship–a friendship in which Humphrey had seen Wiza do strange things,
and get into trouble with the school authorities, but Humphrey was always there to save his friend
whenever it was possible.
Wiza, on his part, had lived to value that friendship, and always stood guard against any threat to
Humphrey. On a number of occasions he had been in such a mess that had it not been for
Humphrey he would have been in great trouble with the school authorities. Sometimes he would
miss lessons for as long as two weeks, not wanting to appear in public with swellings on his face
from a fight. The school authorities would insist on a note from the hospital before allowing him
back into school. Humphrey would obtain the requisite papers from the hospital, through his mother
who worked there, and Wiza would go back to school. He would give Wiza his own notes and
recordings of laboratory work for Wiza to copy or go through until he was up to date with his work
again.
*
*
*
The bell for supper suddenly rang out. "Gong, gong, gong..." Its characteristic metallic sound split
the March evening air. It had rung three times a day-at breakfast, lunch and supper time-during the
four years he had been at KK, starting from form one. The noise of students collecting their plates
and cutlery, and drifting to the dining-hall, came from all directions.
"Gong, gong, gong..." The bell rang again and then stopped, having concluded the first round of its
announcement. The second round-the last-would come five or so minutes later, after which the
dining-hall doors would be closed, and then be manned by the prefects on duty. After fifteen
minutes, the prefects would lock the doors and go to eat; anyone arriving after the doors had been
locked would not be allowed in and would lose their chance for the day's supper.
Wiza rose from his bed, and put When Rain Clouds Gather in his locker. He recalled his
discussion with Humphrey of some thirty minutes ago, and felt uneasy, but quickly shrugged off the
feeling. He picked up a comb and a looking-glass from the locker and began combing his hair,
gazing at himself appraisingly in the small, red-painted wood-framed glass. His hair was tawny
black, short and neat. His face was smooth, light in complexion and longish. It was the face of a
young, athletic man, and had about it an air of robust health and mild exhilaration that told of a
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childhood and boyhood passed in happy circumstances. It was the face of a youth whose native
vigour and temperament had assimilated much of the modern spirit during its teenage years so that,
superficially, it was not easy to place it in its true background: rural middle class. Only underneath
was that origin and background evident.
At KK there were students from many different backgrounds. At the very bottom you had the poor
rural peasants, and at the top you had the bourgeoisie who hailed from the capital city, and from the
Copperbelt. Between the two extremes was a whole spectrum of types in varying degrees of poverty
and wealth, with a myriad combinations of rural, urban and class characteristics and traits.
If your yardstick was someone's looks and mannerisms alone, then you were certain to place the
tallish, handsome student named Wiza Chambuleni where he did not belong. You would take the
teenage student for the son of a well-to-do family in Lusaka, or the Copperbelt, rather than the son
of a not so well-to-do resident of the countryside.
As Wiza was putting the comb and the looking-glass back in the locker, his friend Humphrey
arrived from the sick-bay. Again he remembered their earlier discussion, and felt unsettled, but
suppressed a further stirring of his emotions. Humphrey hurriedly took off his dust coat and started
combing his hair. Wiza finished arranging himself and waited for his friend to get ready. A couple
of minutes later, the supper bell rang out again.
"Through?"
"I'm through."
"Did you meet Patrick Sambo?"
"No."
"Let's go."
*
*
*
Chapter 3
M
ANY a student remembered the visit of the Minister of State with vividness and
anguish. Exactly one year had passed from the time of the visit to the time for the
selection of new prefects from Wiza's intake. The minister had come to KK to address
the school as part of his tour of Chinsali District and other districts in the province. The main
subject of his address had been youth and the philosophy of humanism.
He came to the school on a Thursday in the first week of July, just after the lunch break. The school
had gathered in the dining hall half-an-hour before he arrived. Mr Dasgupta, the headmaster of KK,
was not present; he was in Lusaka attending a seminar at Chalimbana Teachers' Training College,
and it was Mr Stevenson, the deputy headmaster, who chaired the meeting. Generally nervous and
taciturn, Mr Stevenson carried out the task in a manner beyond the students' expectations. His
welcoming speech was brief but succinct and impressive. Mere greeting and welcoming the
minister, he gave a brief report on the state of affairs at the school, invited the minister to deliver his
address, and sat down to a low rumble of clapping.
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The minister stood up with the confidence of an army general, cleared his throat and began to
speak. He was big, noisy and active. After a long preamble, interrupted by his own chanting of
slogans-an exercise in which he urged everybody to join whenever he took recourse to it-he
plunged into the flesh of his address. First he talked about what, "in the spirit of humanism", the
government had done, was doing and was planning to do. Then he went on to talk about the
philosophy of Zambian humanism, explaining and illustrating its principles in his own fashion.
Everything went well almost up to the end, despite the minister's airs. Then suddenly the minister
began a tirade against Zambian youth, whom, right at the beginning of his attack, he said were
"becoming a pain in the wrong place." Instead of being the disciplined, hard-working "future
leaders of the nation", the minister charged that Zambian youth was becoming more and more
unruly, wasting time on objectionable things.
"If we, your parents, had been delinquents during our youth, do you think we would have brought
Independence to this country?" he boomed.
The mood in the hall suddenly changed. There was a pronounced quiet among the students.
"Never!" the minister answered himself. "Never, never my friends... This country you now proudly
call Zambia would be called Northern Rhodesia to this day. It was because we were serious with
our lives, hardworking, disciplined and determined that when we grew up, we struggled and got
what we wanted for our nation: freedom – the freedom which you enjoy now in a reckless and filthy
manner. It is true what I say. What do we parents see in the so-called 'future leaders' of this rich and
beautiful nation? Total decay!"
The minister then narrowed his target of attack to youths in secondary schools. "Nowadays" he said
"secondary schools have become sad nests of drunkards, dagga smokers and womanisers. In the
past, school meant books, reading, writing and passing examinations. Nothing more. But today
school also means beer, dagga and love affairs".
There was a slight murmur of disapproval by the students. The minister by that time, completely
carried away by his own emotions, did not take any notice of the growing restlessness among both
the students and the teachers.
"You think we don't know anything about your ways, but we know everything", he said giving
examples of some of the mischievous things students did to illustrate his accusations. As if for
better effect, he used the students of Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School as his example.
"When you go to Chinsali Boma and you are in town", he said, "you buy yourself a bottle of Coca
Cola, drink three quarters of the coke and then refill the bottle with beer. When people see you
sipping from a Coca Cola bottle, they think it is a soft drink that you are drinking when in actual
fact it is lager..."
The students murmured in disapproval again.
"That is fiction!" one of them shouted from the extreme rear of the crowd.
"Who was that?"
There was a series of deliberate coughing from the back of the hall, followed by suppressed giggles
here and there.
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"Will the person who shouted stand up please", demanded the minister, his hands now resting on
the table before him as he scanned his audience from the stage.
The minister's aide, a fat man, stood up with a threatening air. "The voice came from that corner",
he said and pointed at the area he meant. "Please don't waste the minister's time; stand up whoever
said the words 'that is fiction' before you are pointed out."
Complete silence still.
Mr Stevenson rose to his feet and pleaded with the students to point out the culprit, but his efforts,
like those of the minister and his aide, were fruitless. The minister asked Mr Stevenson and his own
aide to sit down.
Addressing the students again, he said: "Boys, don't forget that this school is named after His
Excellency the President of the Republic of Zambia. From now on behave yourselves."
Three or so students in the crowd coughed. The minister went back to his speech but he had a
difficult time delivering the rest of it, for the students were no longer orderly. They kept on
whispering between themselves as the minister was talking. When the minister said something they
particularly did not like, they would whine disapprovingly or groan or grunt.
"Silence, everybody", the minister would demand, staring at his audience when the noise got out of
hand.
The students would reduce the volume of their talking but the noise would not stop completely. At
one point, when the minister likened the students to leeches who, after sucking the nation's blood
(resources they were using in schools), would merely drop off its body and start roaming about
without contributing anything to the nation's development, so much noise and disorder reigned that
it took some five minutes before the head boy (not the people on the stage) could bring back order
and calm to the meeting. At last the minister concluded his speech and it was time for questions.
The first hand to be chosen (the minister did the picking himself) was that of Paul, an older student,
tall of stature, with dark skin and thick hair.
"Your name and form?" asked the minister's aide as the student stood up.
"Paul Mwamba Katongo, form five."
The minister's aide wrote down the details.
"Question?"
"Honourable minister, sir, I would like to know your comparison of secondary schools here in rural
areas with those in urban areas in relation to the subject of juvenile delinquency in our country. I
have lived in Chinsali since I was born and have never been to the big towns."
The minister answered the question by saying that juvenile delinquency was juvenile delinquency
anywhere. "I don't see much sense in your question", he remarked, and closed the subject.
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A tense silence filled the hall. Paul braved the embarrassment and sat down quietly without an
attempt to expand on his question.
"You there", the minister picked a second hand.
"My name is Rogers Lubinda; I am in form three. Mine is not a question but a contribution related
to the last speaker's questions. Sir, my own observation is that compared to secondary schools in the
big towns, there isn't any juvenile delinquency in rural secondary schools as such. Most of us here
at KK for example, are saints by comparison."
"True...true...true!" – the other students endorsed his words. "The most important thing... "–Rogers
wanted to continue when there was silence again, but the minister's aide interrupted him.
"That is enough-we want questions and not lessons", he said. Rogers said he had wanted to make
just one more point, but the minister's aide ignored him and picked the next hand on behalf of the
minister.
The student stood up and introduced himself. He said his contribution was a short question but,
before he asked the question, he felt obliged to make a brief comment on the issue the two previous
speakers had raised, and he commented that if there were secondary schools in Zambia which had
become "jungles of incorrigible rascals", to use the minister's own words, those secondary schools
must be somewhere along the railway line, and not in the Northern Province. The teachers and
prefects, especially at schools like KK, Mungwi and St. Francis (Malole) were very strict and too
good to tolerate even a single "rotten egg' in their schools. The student who was speaking was a
prefect and had travelled to the secondary schools he had mentioned. He was speaking from
experience, and he could defend the schools. Lastly, in his opinion, the examples of juvenile
delinquency the minister had cited were about what occurred in Lusaka, and not about what went
on in Chinsali or the Northern Province.
"My question is", he then said almost in anger, "why is it that there are no sons and daughters of
ministers in rural secondary schools? Is it that all the ministers were perhaps born and brought up in
big towns, or abroad, so that rural life is so alien to their children that they could not cope with life
in rural secondary schools?"
Prolonged clapping and laughter followed.
"Silence!" Mr Stevenson shouted and banged the table several times.
The clapping and laughter had slowly faded away. The minister coughed as if to lubricate his vocal
cords. He looked like someone who was fighting with himself to sound calm or not to jump out of
his immaculate, well-fitting, light blue suit. Curtly, he said to his questioner:
"My friend, I must be frank with you; that was a silly question you asked, and I don't answer silly
questions."
The students groaned and grunted.
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"Silence please!" Mr Stevenson commanded again, visibly nervous, his long Scottish face
reddening. "Any more questions?" the minister inquired, after a pause, when the students had
refrained from their groaning and grunting.
Countless enthusiastic hands were thrust into the air. The next two questions were from a form one
and a form two. They were mild, naive questions to which the minister gave lengthy favourable
answers with apparent relief. He even made several jokes, though his attempts at clowning were a
failure.
Mr Stevenson, afraid of a possible more serious confrontation between the students and the
minister, stood up as soon as the minister had stopped speaking and said he was going to allow
three more questions only as time had run out and the minister had to leave.
To make sure the three questions would be safe, he quickly selected the students himself before
sitting down. He picked the head boy, the deputy head boy and his favourite form three student
Wiza Chambuleni.
"Last question" the minister said after he had answered the questions by the head boy and the
deputy head boy, both of which questions had been "safe" to the expectation of Mr Stevenson.
"My name is Wiza Chambuleni; I am in my third year".
"Cha - mbu - le - ni, is that right?" asked the minister's aide as he wrote down the name.
"Correct."
"Question?"
"Honourable minister sir; what are the consistencies and inconsistencies of beer drinking in relation
to the Zambian philosophy of humanism?"
Owing to the two derivatives of the word consistency, which sounded big in the circumstances,
many did not quite understand the question; but again because of the incisiveness and flavour with
which the question had been put, together with the pleasant disposition of its author, it generated a
lot of interest everywhere in the hall despite being the last question. So the minister was not alone
in requesting that Wiza repeat the question. "Can you come again?, were his words in the rag bag of
numerous appeals by others: teachers, students and members of the minister's entourage alike.
"Honourable minister, sir, what are the consistencies and inconsistencies of beer drinking in relation
to the Zambian philosophy of humanism?" repeated Wiza without a change in presentation.
A wave of whispering spread like a virus at the high table among both the teachers, and those in the
minister's company. Many of them were stunned at the substance and thematic direction of the
question as well as at the diction coming from a form three student.
The boy's question was the only one that had embraced the principal subject of the minister's
address: humanism. It was also the only one that had an academic and philosophical touch to it.
Due to the manner in which the minister had handled his speech and the debate, all the other
questions fired at him, understandably so, had been defensive and therefore limited to the issue of
juvenile delinquency at the level of what was observable. Wiza's question, however, had gone
beyond that and touched on the theoretical, abstract and universal.
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Mr Gervas Chimbukuma, the civics teacher, was so happy with the question that he leant his head
across his immediate neighbour on his right, and strained his neck for some time until he attracted
the attention of the governor for Chinsali district, and proudly told him that the boy was one of the
students he was teaching civics to that year, and that he had finished giving the lessons on
humanism only a week ago. The governor, in reply, told him that he could see he was doing a good
job.
Mr Stevenson was beaming with pleasure at Wiza's intellectual and linguistic prowess. Substance
aside, as Wiza's English language teacher Mr Stevenson was impressed with Wiza's use of the word
CONSISTENCY, which the boy had come across barely two weeks ago. This boy, he thought, was
potential material for Oxford University. At least here was a question that would give the minister
an opportunity to summarize his day's teachings on the philosophy of humanism. All along, the
main subject of his address had been obscured by the more sensitive subject of juvenile
delinquency.
The students on their part were visibly proud of the question, and looked challengingly expectant,
though one could guess a good number of them, and most likely some of the people on the stage
too, did not understand the exact meaning of the question.
"That word, is it co-exist?" muttered the minister's aide, unable to proceed with the writing down of
the question.
"Consistencies", several voices helped.
"Consistencies? How do you spell it?"
Mr Stevenson spelt it out: "C-O-N-S-I-S-T-E-N-C-I-E-S".
"Consistencies."
There was a long silence. The minister, it could be seen, was having difficulty in answering,
apparently dumbfounded by the question.
"Can you stand up again", he found something to say. "Mr Consistency. Where are you? Stand up."
When Wiza was up on his feet and gazing at him expectantly, the minister spoke on, in a sterner
voice.
"What is your name again?" "Wiza Chambuleni."
"Good. Wiza Chambuleni, I want you to be honest with yourself and tell me, frankly, if beer
drinking is good or bad? Once you have told me that, you will have answered your own question."
Mr Stevenson suppressed a frown. Many of the teachers and guests shifted in their seats. The
students sat glum and gazed, some at Wiza, and others at the minister.
"Talk, my friend", the minister challenged.
Wiza made a small guttural sound and began to speak. Equably and clearly, he explained to the
minister that it was not the concern of his question whether beer drinking was good or bad. He only
wanted the minister to advance his knowledge about the parallels between the philosophy of
humanism and the phenomenon of beer drinking. He actually used the terms "advance", "parallels"
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and "phenomenon." The manner in which the words were used and the trap-evading answer, taken
together, sent the students into fits of silent jubilation.
The minister planted his hands on the high table and said: "You are not answering the question. My
question is a very simple one. You don't need to waste so much of your breath on it. I just want you
to tell me whether beer drinking is good or bad."
"It depends-"
"Look my good friend don't try to be too political. You cannot be a student as well as a politician in
one breath. Do you understand me?"
"I do."
"Now, forget about your politics and just say yes or no. Is beer good?" A long spell of silence
followed. Mr Stevenson became red- faced again.
The students were a restless sea of irritable and tense listeners. "Is beer good?" repeated the
minister.
Wiza swallowed.
"Honourable minister, sir", he then said; "the answer is no and yes."
The students stirred and started talking excitedly amongst themselves. The teachers and the guests
in the company of the minister remained still and uneasy. The minister removed his hands from the
table and stood upright like a commissioned officer being shouted at by a corporal. With an
embarrassed look, he drew back and said: "You can sit down Mr Consistency."
"Mr Intellectual!" a student's voice at the extreme rear shouted in mock correction of the minister.
There was a wild volley of clapping, laughter and whistling in applause as Wiza sat down.
"Silence!" hushed the red-faced and confused Mr Stevenson, banging the high table with emotion.
The minister made several steps backwards and forwards in suppressed anger until there was
silence again. "Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I wish to say that I am glad that
within the short time of my stay here I have been able to see the true colours of this secondary
school. Only a dunderhead would want better proof of the sad state of affairs prevailing at this
school, that I have witnessed today."
He turned to Mr Stevenson.
"Mr Chairman, the deputy headmaster of Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School, sir", he said with
tinge of sarcasm, "I am not a man who talks behind other people's backs. I want to tell you here and
now that when I get back to Lusaka, my first assignment will be to meet His Excellency, the
President of the Republic of Zambia, and tell him that a school - a school named after him no less has students and teachers who support beer drinking and have allowed it to flourish unchecked at
their school. Thank you."
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Though a vote-of-thanks was given by the head boy, and the national anthem was sung, the meeting
ended unceremoniously.
The headmaster's decision when he came back and heard the story was that Wiza should be
expelled. It was two weeks before Mr Stevenson and Mr Chimbukuma, together with other
teachers, managed to persuade the headmaster to reverse his decision.
Mr Dasgupta had been so determined in his endeavour to expel Wiza that his failure to succeed
incensed him, leaving an eternally glowing ember of bitterness against Wiza. And so a year later,
when the name Wiza Chambuleni featured on the list of the proposed new prefects, he had seen to it
that he did not fail to frustrate Wiza's promotion.
*
*
*
Chapter 4
G
ONG, gong, gong ... the bell continued as Wiza and Humphrey, tidily dressed, filed out of
the dormitory. The dining-hall was already crowded when they entered. Nonde, the young
second-year boy who washed and kept their plates, cups and cutlery, was waiting for them
by the door at the southern end of the hall. Nonde handed them a plate, a cup, a spoon and a bread
knife each.
"Rice with milk; tea and bread", the boy informed them, was for supper, and he walked away to the
northern end of the dining hall carrying his own set of utensils. Nonde was charming, sharp and
bright. Wiza and Humphrey liked the boy very much. It was Wiza who had discovered him some
time during the early months of the previous year when Nonde had been a fresher. At that time the
mocking of freshers was 'legal', and rife. Nonde had been in trouble with a group of three big
second-year boys who claimed that he was rude and needed to be "properly panel-beaten" before
he, "the bloody new Datsun or whatever make of an automobile the bastard was", polluted KK with
his "vibrations and carbon monoxide".
Apparently, the boys were just jealous of Nonde's looks and clothes. They had been on him like lice
on a human skin for days on end. Then during one of his habitual solitary walks, deep in the bush,
Wiza had found Nonde suffering a terrible session of mockery by the boys.
The boys, each equipped with a fresh stick ready to use as a whip, surrounded Nonde in diabolical
ecstasy. They were singing, clapping and laughing, and Nonde, completely naked and sweating,
seething, and bleeding from the nose, was dancing for them with an imaginary girl around whose
fat waist his arms were tightly wrapped with visible strain. The imaginary girl was called Pamela
Mulule. The boys were singing a popular slow song: The Pain of Loving You by Dolly Parton and
Porter Wagoner. Busy with his intangible Pamela Mulule, kissing and fondling her lovingly, Nonde
was repeatedly saying:
Darling Pamela Mulule,
I dig you forever sweetheart.
Hold me tight sweetheart,
Oh, Pam - Mulu, Oh, Pam - Mulu!"
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After a brief moment of watching, in hiding, Wiza had stormed into the scene, stopped the drama
and lambasted the boys thoroughly, warning them never to touch Nonde again.
"This is the third time I have found you troubling the same boy. Don't you have enough guts to
molest people other than this small boy? You stupid rural idiots!"
He had walked away with Nonde, the latter now dressed, and weeping with pain and humiliation.
From that day Nonde became 'Wiza's boy' and subsequently 'Humphrey the doctor's boy' too. Some
referred to him as 'Wiza's son.' He was never touched by anybody again. Everyone knew the danger
of taking such a risk. Wiza was a feared fighter at KK. He had 'fought many ferociously in the
school, and had never lost.
Nonde, presently in his second year, was now a terror in the mockery business and in fighting
circles. He was leader of the 'killer brigade' of five 'tiny tots' known and feared by every fresher and
member of their age group for their no-nonsense spirit and 'punch work.' In the dining-hall, Wiza
and Humphrey proceeded to the stage. The stage covered the southern end of the hall, and was
where the prefects and a few other privileged students ate. They were the last two to be seated at
their table-for six people-in the western comer of the stage, and had arrived just before the prayer.
As they were settling down at the table, one of the prefects called: "Silence, silence! Let us pray".
There was silence. The prefect said the prayer:
Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts
which we are about to receive from thy bounty.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The students chorused "Amen" and the hall came alive with the bustle of food being served. Soon
the noise reduced to a low sound of a crowd in the process of eating-hearty eating. A supper of rice
with milk, and finished with tea with bread, was no ordinary supper. It was served once in a while
to kill the monotony of nshima with boiled beans, and nshima with cabbage. Nshima with meat, or
kapenta, or with dried fish was normally reserved for lunch. For breakfast, tea with buns or bread
alternated with porridge.
Outside, the prefects manning the doors began writing down the names of latecomers.
The tables for the rest of the students, below the stage, were arranged in two lines, both parallel to
the front and back walls, leaving a large empty space in the middle of the hall. Patrick Sambo, the
head boy, strode to the centre of the empty space and asked for attention. It was time for
announcements: from now onwards, 'lights out' would be an hour earlier than usual-at nine p.m.
instead of ten p.m.-until the school had received more diesel for the generator; there would not be a
film show that weekend due to some technical problems; and so on and so forth. The
announcements ended. Patrick Sambo returned to his table.
The celebrated 'mailman' Luka Talanti, a colourful, older student with a sharp wit, invaded the
arena in his usual crazy manner and started to bawl out the names of those who had received mail:
"Mista-a-a Goodfellow C.P. Nyimbili!" He would shout a name twice or thrice and pause, looking
around impatiently, as if he was so upset he was about to begin uttering curses, waiting for the
owner of the name to come forward and collect his mail. If no one came forward, he would throw
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the letter on the floor, carelessly, as if the particular letter had lost its usefulness. Then he would
quickly call out the next name. Often, he would shout a name only once and its owner or proxy
would appear before him in a blink of an eye. It was something special to receive a letter. The
occasion was greater than Christmas. Everyone was as attentive as possible whenever Luka Talanti
was giving out the mail. Luka was very proud of his responsibility. It had made him important in
his own way, and so whenever he was 'giving out awards' he executed his job with as much
ceremony as his creativity could afford him, and he was excellent.
The mail was plentiful, but because of Luka Talanti's usual efficient and dramatic way of carrying
out his task, the exercise seemed not to last long. Soon Luka Talanti was saying: "Last but one:
Nonde V Kazumba... Nonde V Kazumba... Nonde..."
The slim but sturdy figure of Non de presented itself before the mailman and received the 'award'.
Wiza and Humphrey saw their boy walk back to his table, passing no comment between them.
"The last one", called Luka Talanti, "the last fellow to go to heaven, gentlemen: Levison Shakalima
... Levison Shaka-Zulu ... sorry ... Shakalima ... Levison Shakalima!" After the owner of the name
had received his envelope, Luka Talanti swung round on his heels, picked up the uncollected mail
from the floor, and went back to his table, loudly muttering things to himself about some of these
letters whose senders he swore must be witches.
Just when the prefects manning the doors had closed them, and gone to eat at their respective tables,
someone knocked hard at the front door next to the stage-the door Wiza and Humphrey had used.
To see who was knocking, one of the prefects who had been on duty there opened it, and the prefect
Yona Sumbukeni entered the dining-hall. He was small, dark, and arrogantly erect; an uncomely
little peasant with a confident display of self-importance and authority. His protruding bony
forehead, and excessively large eye sockets, gave him an owlish appearance.
"He's come from the teacher's compound", someone whispered.
"Why did he go there?" "I don't know."
"State House visit?"
"Maybe. You know him and the headmaster."
Yona closed the door behind him and walked to Patrick Sambo, the head boy. He whispered
something to the latter and showed him a folded sheet of paper. The headboy nodded and continued
eating. Yona, his right hand still holding the sheet of paper, and the left one plunged deep in the
pocket of his trousers, strutted to the centre of the dining-hall and begged for attention. The hall
went quiet at once.
"A special announcement", Yona said in a voice of depth and dignity which did not match his
stature.
The announcement was that all those whose names he was going to call out were requested to see
the headmaster tom on-ow morning, Saturday, at ten o'clock. The matter had to do with the spoiling
of maize on the school farm. The listed persons had been caught on the farm doing what the
headmaster had clearly warned everybody against at the school assembly last Friday. After that
preamble, Yona gazed at his list and started calling out the names of the Culprits.
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The shock was sudden and shattering. Just what Wiza and Humphrey had feared, but hardly
expected, did happen: Wiza's name was called out. His name was tenth out of a total of fifteen
names. It was the only name on the list that belonged to a final-year student. The rest were names of
second-year and third-year pupils. There were no fourth-year or first-year students; and no Teddy,
the fifth-year student, with whom Wiza had been when Yona had seen him at the maize field.
The shock was contagious too, catching everybody in its grip. How could a form five pupil be
booked for such an offence even if it had been true and the person had been caught red-handed?
How could he be betrayed on a list that was packed only with names of juniors? How could anyone
think of submitting Wiza's name to the headmaster knowing very well the precarious relationship
between the two? To crown the matter, how daring, knowing what a dangerous character Wiza
Chambuleni was when provoked on a matter of such magnitude? Everyone in the hall went into
some kind of a trance, totally immersed in a cold silence, pregnant with speculation and fear. It was
as if everyone was waiting for a furious fight to break out there and then; to see Yona Sumbukeni
punished for his atrocity, tossed in the air and smashed on the floor by his long-time enemy whom
he had so humiliated, as well as having placed him in such a dangerous situation.
Wiza stopped eating immediately. Quietly, he stood up and walked out of the dining-hall. He was
the first person to leave the hall since supper had begun.
Humphrey did not leave the dining-hall after he had stopped eating. He waited for Yona to finish
eating and go out first. By the time Yona rose from the table and left, the hall was almost deserted.
Nonde had come to the stage and collected the plates, cups and cutlery, and the waiters had started
hauling the dishes, jugs and buckets in which the supper had been served back to the kitchen.
Yona was in the company of his giant-like friend Sailasi Mutono. Humphrey caught up with the
two a few metres away from the hall.
"Yona, it's you I was waiting for. I would like to talk to you."
"You are welcome, Doctor. We can talk as we walk; I am rushing to address a house meeting before
it's time for prep."
Yona was the house captain for Chambeshi hostel. For the last three weeks, Chambeshi had come
last in the house inspection-a routine inspection which was carried out by a team of teachers every
Saturday morning to ascertain the degree of cleanliness and orderliness at each hostel. Marks out of
a hundred were given. Tomorrow was Saturday. Yona had called a house meeting perhaps to say
something about the preparations for tomorrow's house inspection.
"I am also in a hurry to go and clear a few things at the sick- bay."
"All right. Doctor."
"It's Wiza I want to talk to you about, Yona."
"No problem."
"You are killing him, Yona."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't get bitter with me; I am talking to you as a friend, and I am telling you that you are killing
Wiza because you know very well the position of Wiza at this school–I mean the name he has with
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the headmaster. Apart from that, what are the teachers, and everybody else for that matter, going to
think of a form five student who has been caught spoiling maize on the farm?"
"What if that is what the form five student was guilty of? Am I supposed to ignore his offences and
deal only with those who are not form fives?"
"Wiza says he was in the free zone when you met him at the maize field, and that you didn't talk to
him. I mean you didn't tell him on the spot that you had caught him-"
"That is his side of the story."
"He also says that he was not alone; that he was with Teddy."
Yona halted. Sailasi Mutono, who had been walking a couple of steps ahead of the two prefects,
came and planted himself next to his friend like a bodyguard. His presence made both Yona and
Humphrey look like dwarfs though Humphrey was much taller and broader than Yona.
"Look Humphrey", Yona said sounding irritated, "if Teddy was with Wiza, that is fine, but I didn't
see him. Had I seen him, I would have written his name down. Simple. I have never feared anybody
in my life. Not even my father. I won't fear anybody at this school, form five or not, lion or
whatever. "
"Yona!",
"Who is Wiza that I should fear to–"
"Yona, listen!–"
"I only fear God, and to me, there is no one who is God at KK."
"Yona, listen to me properly I am not trying to–"
"Not even Wiza."
"Yona, are you going to listen to me or not?"
"I am listening. Talk."
Yona thrust both his hands in his trouser pockets, and with a defiant step he began to walk again.
"Yona, I am not blaming you for anything; I'm sorry if that's the way I sounded", pressed
Humphrey, walking next to Yona.
"I came to you to plead with you not to submit Wiza's name to the headmaster. We can sort out his
case between ourselves, the prefects. You know his position with the headmaster. You will be
killing him if you submit his name to the head. As it is, you have already punished him. You have
humiliated him. I beg you, Yona."
"No chance, Humphrey."
"I won't force you."
"That is fine."
They were between the seniors' ablution block and Luangwa hostel. Humphrey stopped walking
and said he was going back. Yona and Sailasi ignored him and walked on.
Yona Sumbukeni and Sailasi Mutono were childhood friends. They hailed from Mpika district and
from the same village. They had gone to the same primary school.
Yona's enmity with Wiza had begun when the two were in form one at KK. The source of this
hostility had to do with his performance in school. During the rust term of his first year at KK,
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Yona had been in the same class as Wiza: Form One Blue-the form for the best first-year students
which was, therefore, alternatively referred to as Form 1A. Whilst Wiza soon established himself as
one of the best students in the class, Yona failed to achieve any good results. In time, it became
clear that Yona's place was at the tip of the tail of the class. After the first term, he was transferred
to Form One Orange, which was the equivalent of Form lB. After the second term he was further
relegated to Form One Yellow- the equivalent of Form 1C.
What further ignited the friction was the playful talk on sensitive issues, such as academic
performance, with which the students spiced day-to-day school life. The talk took the form of
jocular observations about certain people who came to school when they were already old enough
to be parents; people who had spent centuries repeating the final primary school year before they
made it to secondary school; people who always demanded silence in class but were noisier than an
empty tin can outside the classroom; people who studied hard but always seemed to revise work
which never came up in examinations and tests, and were always stuck with poor results.
The talk was neither malicious nor directed at any specific person, but was part of the general
gossip and wealth of jokes that kept the business of schooling more livelily. However, some
students took it to heart and believed certain remarks were directed at them. Yona Sumbukeni was
one of these students and, for some reason; his anger was directed at Wiza.
Yona believed that Wiza was the principal character in the group of those who were responsible for
the talk about students who looked too old to be in the junior forms, and who did badly in class. He
hated him for that. On his part, Wiza, failing to understand why Yona should pick on him out of so
many others, returned Yona's dislike of him. With time, their enmity was worsened by other
controversies and incidents in their interaction.
When Sailasi Mutono came to KK to start form one, the first thing he learnt from Yona Sumbukeni
was not to tolerate any nonsense from the boys who thought they were everything, and acted like
icings. In his illustration of what he had in mind, Yona had placed Wiza Chambuleni on the top of
his list. Within a short time, Sailasi Mutono developed ill feelings against Wiza Chambuleni. His
resentment of Wiza was made stronger by the molestation he suffered during the 'legalized'
mockery time, at the hands of Wiza and his friends: a group that called itself 'the commandos.' On
three different occasions 'the commandos', under Wiza's supervision, had cornered Sailasi alone, in
the absence of Yona Sumbukeni his 'protector'. After a long period of teasing and bullying him they
had punched him till he bled and wept.
In many ways, Sailasi Mutono was different from his friend Yona Sumbukeni. He was cleverer,
more sociable and adventurous, and he was not as rigid in character as Yona. His performance in
school was also far better than his friend's. Yona's junior secondary school leaving certificate was
so frail he would not have found his way to senior secondary school had it not been for Mr
Dasgupta, the headmaster, who had propped him up on account of his disciplinary record and
valuable participation in the school's sporting activities, particularly in football.
Sailasi Mutono, on the other hand, had sailed through on merit. He had a fairly strong division-two,
junior secondary school leaving certificate, and boasted enough potential for a full Cambridge
school certificate. Physically, Sailasi Mutono was much more attractive, and he was stronger than
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his friend somewhat similar to Wiza. He was stubborn, rough, and aggressive. In the area of
fighting, he was considered so dangerous and successful that it was unclear to some people who
was the better Sailasi Mutono or Wiza Chambuleni.
It was a very common utterance at KK that 'Giant' Mutono was Yona Surnbukeni's 'bodyguard'. It
followed that an attack on Yona Sumbukeni was an indirect attack on Giant, and therefore was a
risky business.
Giant was as tall as his nickname implied, and solid, dark and athletic. He was the big name in cross
country, in long jump, high jump, basketball, and in the 200 and 400 metre races.
Sailasi and Yona were as strange a pair as Wiza and Humphrey. Wiza was troublesome and liked to
fight whilst his friend Humphrey was cool, polite, and peaceful.
Although Yona was arrogant, like Humphrey he was not the fighting type. He was not physically
imposing, nor was he as powerful as Sailasi. He was very conscious of, and sensitive about, his
appearance-his forced air of superiority and his viciousness emanated, to a large extent, from an
inferiority complex rooted in that consciousness.
As Yona and Sailasi disappeared behind the Luangwa juniors' dormitory, Humphrey thumped his
left foot lightly and walked away towards the prefects' room. Patrick Sambo, the head boy, and
Edwin Zuze, his deputy, must be there. In the dining-hall, he had heard them say they would go to
the prefects' room after supper. He must go and talk to them about the possibility of Wiza's name
being withdrawn from Yona's list before it was taken to the headmaster. He must influence them to
tell Yona to reverse his decision even if Wiza's name had already been called out before the school.
An excuse for removing the name from the list would be found.
His immediate fear was that what had happened would lead to a fight between Wiza and Yona. The
fight would almost certainly involve Sailasi Mutono, himself too, and maybe even the young boy,
Nonde, and others. A fight, any kind of fight, would be most unfortunate, for it would result in
Wiza being expelled from the school. The other people who might take part in the fight would
receive some lesser punishment of course, after some false explanations, but Wiza would certainly
be expelled.
Humphrey's first consideration, therefore, was not to immediately frustrate Yona's endeavour to
report Wiza to the headmaster over the maize case, but to find something with which to check
Wiza's emotions– something in the shape of a measure of success, however small. Wiza needed
some kind of hope-a tranquillizer-to cling to for the time being while the mystery of Yona's action
unfolded. This action of Yona's was more of an expected showdown than a mystery, given Yona's
relationship with Wiza. If Humphrey did not act soon all hell might break loose, and Wiza would
become embroiled in a fight.
It would obviously be best if Yona's intention to submit Wiza's name to the headmaster were
thwarted. But even if that failed, it was safer for Wiza to stand accused before Mr Dasgupta for the
offence Yona had accused him of than for the offence of fighting.
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Before long, he, Humphrey, must find something tangible with which to soothe his friend: a
promise perhaps by the head boy to talk to Yona, or a pledge by Teddy to be a witness in Wiza's
defence or some other encouraging news. As he approached the prefects' room, he cursed. Taut with
disappointment, anger, pity for his friend, and with fear in his heart, he cursed Yona Sumbukeni; he
cursed Sailasi Mutono. He also cursed himself for having allowed himself to talk to Yona, and in
the presence of that other moron, knowing all too well that the chances of a good response from
Yona were next to nil.
Patrick Sambo and Edwin Zuze represented the highest authority in the school within the realms of
student power. They were sober characters, patient and wise. The two were on good speaking terms
with both Humphrey and Wiza–more so with Humphrey-being a fellow prefect. Humphrey pushed
open the door of the prefects' room and there they were, the head boy and his deputy, alone, each
behind a table, writing and conversing with each other.
"Evening", he said.
"Good evening. We've just been talking about you", replied Patrick Sambo, wiping his broad, light
brown forehead with his left hand as he spoke.
"Discussing the mess", chimed in Edwin Zuze, "concerning Yona and Wiza."
"It is a mess indeed", sighed Humphrey, closing the door behind him.
"A real mess, Humphrey."
Humphrey sighed again and sat down on one of the chairs that surrounded the big table in the
middle of the room, opposite Patrick Sambo and on the left of Edwin Zuze.
"You have been with Wiza?" Patrick Sambo said.
"No."
"Since he left the dining-hall?"
"Not since then."
"Try to be with him and keep an eye on him; he will work himself up and will look for Yona, and
start a fight with him, if he is left on his own."
"He gets more emotional in my presence. It is safer if he is left alone unless there is something
positive to soothe him with. Sympathy and surveillance, for the sake of it, usually just make him
more aggressive... and you know you can't stop him if he has made up his mind to fight".
"Man, this KK is full of goats", Edwin Zuze shook his head. "Yona is a true goat of a villager.
Messing up the name of a fellow form five student on a trivial thing like that!"
''It's terrible", Patrick Sambo shook his head.
"On the Copperbelt, gee boy! That fellow would have been scoured spotlessly clean a long time
ago."
"Here at KK he has just been lucky that people ignore him."
"That's what I mean."
Humphrey said he had been with Yona and Sailasi a while ago trying to convince Yona not to
submit Wiza's name to the headmaster after the humiliation he had already caused by calling out his
name in the dining- hall.
"What did he say?" asked Patrick Sambo.
"He just said, 'no chance Humphrey', and walked away.”
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"You should not have wasted your time; well, you didn't know, I don't blame you. Why do you
think I didn't call him here after that announcement of his? I would have been the first one to
approach him and ask him to remove Wiza's name from the list; but do you know what he did? He
gave me a copy of the list after he had already given one to the headmaster."
Humphrey drew in his breath. There was a defeated edge to his sibilance; a great feeling of
despondency fell upon him.
"Think of it", Patrick Sambo continued, evenly, "what are we here for then, Edwin and I, if things
are going to get into the hands of the headmaster without passing through us for endorsement?"
"Without the blessing of either the head boy or the deputy head boy", stressed Edwin Zuze.
"I tell you, I wish I had never accepted being head boy. You can go mad working with such
people."
"Goats."
"How does the headmaster allow such things?"
"He is a respecter of goats.”
When he spoke, Humphrey said he was on his way to the sickbay; he had only passed by. He stood
up and left, feeling sick at heart and deflated.
Eight to ten patients were waiting for him at the sick-bay. He attended to them first then went to the
seniors' ablution block to take a shower. The generator had roared into life and the school was
ablaze with electric light. He was still taking a shower when the whistle for prep blew. He quickly
finished washing; he dressed, and then returned to the sick-bay where he lay down on his bed to
rest. After something like a quarter of an hour, he rose and went out of the sick-bay. He headed for
the seniors' section of the classroom blocks. He was going to see Teddy.
There were two blocks in the seniors' section, facing each other. Arriving at the west block which
faced east, Humphrey knocked at the door labelled 'Form VB'. The prefect there, supervising the
prep, was Edwin Zuze, the deputy head boy. Humphrey heard his voice say: "Come in." He opened
the door and slid in quietly so as not to disturb the silent class. Edwin sat alone at the teacher's table
in front of the class. Yona was not there. He was out supervising one of the junior classes.
"I want to talk to Teddy outside", Humphrey whispered to Edwin.
"Go ahead. Have you seen Wiza?"
"Not yet. And you?"
"No."
When they went out of the class, Humphrey introduced the subject immediately. "It's about what
happened at the dining- hall during supper today. You were there I suppose?"
"I was, it's really bad what Yona has done."
"There is something I want to find out from you. It won't help much, though–Yona has already
submitted the names to the headmaster. "
"Including Wiza's name?" "Yes."
"That fellow- "
"Is it true, Teddy, that you were with Wiza when Yona found him in the maize field?"
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"It is true. We were together. In the free zone. There wasn't any maize cob thrown away anywhere
nearby-s-"
Humphrey cut in with the other issue he was anxious to know something about.
"The other thing I want to know is whether or not Yona saw you?"
"He definitely saw me."
"He says he didn't."
"He is lying."
Humphrey tried hard, but Teddy refused to stand as a witness in defence of Wiza. He said he would
have liked to have helped out, but he also had problems with the school authorities. Humphrey
thanked him and saw him back to the classroom. He bid Edwin Zuze good evening and went back
to the sick-bay and began copying notes from a biology text-book into his exercise book.
*
*
*
Chapter 5
W
IZA'S dream was stark and clear. It was about education-a good education coupled
with an illustrious professional career. An education in the shape of some first-class
engineering degree, obtained abroad, and a host of membership certificates of various
engineering bodies.
In today's world, education was everything. A good education meant integrity, employment,
dignity, and it meant material wealth. Without it one was nothing; one was as good as dead. So
Wiza would become highly educated. That meant he would climb the ladder of education to the
PhD level. Perhaps even a rung higher, but certainly not one below. He would marry late, most
probably at the age of about thirty-five. He did not want to disturb his academic and professional
development. It was careless and retrogressive to marry young.
When he was finally ripe to marry-educated, employed and professionally experienced, and with
wealth to speak of-he would see to it that he married a woman worthy of his name, academically
and otherwise. His wife would be modern, beautiful, elegant, sophisticated and, above all, a holder
of a BSc degree. She would speak good English and she would be able to look after his home and
children in a civilized way.
His wedding would be held in one of the big cities, in some reputable hotel like the Savoy Hotel in
Ndola or the Hotel Edinburgh in Kitwe. It would be a rich, colourful occasion, with various makes
of 'posh' cars in a long procession from the church to the reception. It would be a great wedding-far,
far better than the one his elder brother, Kocha, had taken him to when Kocha was working at
Rhokana mine. This wedding had taken place before Kocha had left for England, and it was the first
and only modern and affluent wedding Wiza had attended. It had left him so fascinated that now,
four years later, it was still etched in his mind to the last detail, like a freshly painted portrait.
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Kocha had been one of the groomsmen. He had been invited by his best friend, Daniel Thole, who
was the young brother of the bridegroom, Martin Thole. The five young groomsmen, and the two
page boys, wore double-breasted suits of a bright, light-blue material with small glittering, grainlike threads in it, frilled white shirts, red bow ties, black shoes and navy blue socks.
The bridesmaids and the two flower girls wore voluminous maroon dresses, even brighter than the
outfits of their mal~ counterparts. The matron-of-honour wore a long blue-and-white spotted dress.
The bride ... good Lord! She wore an ice-white wedding dress with a train so long it was gathered
up by the matron-of-honour as frantically as one would gather up a full fishing net. The
bridegroom, Martin Thole, slim and handsomely immaculate, was dressed in a cream doublebreasted suit, white shirt with a white and brown-edged frill, toney-red shoes and brown socks.
The reception room was large but full beyond capacity.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is the moment we have been waiting for... the bridal party has arrived...
the bridal party… ladies and gentlemen, the bridal party...". The master of ceremonies-a short,
energetic man-was pacing about in the large empty space before the high table, which comprised a
long line of tables placed one next to the other, covered with a spotlessly white cloth and laden with
plates, glasses, and serviettes. Flowers had been beautifully arranged in a series of copper bowls.
"Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, hold your beloved hearts before you faint at what is
coming... the bridal party, ladies and gentlemen. Bridal party... bp... Well, not Shell BP where I
work... but Martin Thole and Grace Mudenda's bp... It's a bp-bridal party that will cause you bpblood pressure because of its bp-beauty and perfection ... Mr DJ please!"
A song by The Temptations of the USA boomed from a huge radiogram. The people in the room
stood, and their eyes turned to the entrance where the bridal party was expected to enter. Slowly, in
a synchronized rhythmic step the party made their entrance to a cacophony of ululations and
clapping. On and on they floated towards the high table.
*
*
*
Today, Wiza saw everything so vividly-he could even feel and smell the atmosphere of the wedding
reception just as if those things were not simply a memory. As he gazed at the scene, he was
tempted to replace Martin Thole's bridal party with his own future team of groomsmen, matron-ofhonour, bridesmaids, page boys, and himself and his imaginary wife-to-be. His own wedding, he
assured himself, would be even better. The wedding he had attended in Kitwe was the wedding of a
mere technician; Wiza's own would be that of a PhD man: Dr. Otoni Wiza Chambuleni.
When Wiza had walked out of the dining-hall after Yona Surnbukeni's 'special announcement', it
was this, his dream, which occupied Wiza's thoughts, and not his anger against Yona. The bitterness
against Yona was still there-deep in his body and soul-but thoughts about his life's goals and his
future had checked his emotions with a cold feeling of fear for himself and of himself. Against all
these fires which raged at the precariousness of his present situation he was able to recoil. He had
seen his salvation in a deliberate retreat and decided to take refuge in his cubicle. There he could
nurse his wounds in complete solitude, away from anything that might disturb his emotional
balance and force him into starting a fight or doing some other stupid tiling, away from Yona
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Sumbukeni and Sailasi Mutono, away from everything and everybody, including Humphrey and
Nonde.
This was not a decision the old Wiza Chambuleni would have made-the Wiza of primary school
days or early secondary school years. The old Wiza Chambuleni would have caused big trouble the
very moment Yona had made his monstrous announcement, but the new Wiza whom he now knew
had come about through maturity at the age of eighteen, had flinched and decided to retreat and
hide. He experienced a feeling of fear-some kind of remote sense of fate.
When he reached his cubicle, he had blocked the entrance to it with one of the two lockers there
and, lying on his bed, continued reading Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather. Whilst the other
students attended prep, Wiza remained sealed away from the rest of the world in the quiet of his
cubicle, thinking and musing, between spells of strenuous reading-his thoughts and musings
continued to be of his family.
Kocha was his idol. By the standards of his home area, Kocha had done wonders in the educational
field. Wiza had vowed to emulate him. In two years' time, Kocha would receive his BSc degree in
metallurgy at York University in England. The mining company had sent him there after he had
worked for them for eighteen months.
At twenty-three, Kocha was as yet unmarried. Most young men of his age from his home area were
already married, and some of them already had as many as three children. Kocha would be twentyfive at the time of completing his studies and probably still unmarried.
Politi Mazimba Chambuleni, Wiza's father, had worked hard all his life and Wiza had always
appreciated his efforts and admired him. Despite the difficulties of his time, and his family
background of poverty, Chambuleni had managed to reach standard four. After standard four, he
had taken a two-year course in forestry at Mwekera Forestry College on the Copperbelt and had
then worked for the Forestry Department in Ndola for ten years. Kocha and Leya had been born
there.
It was after that stint on the Copperbelt that he had returned to his home village of Vyamba, and
settled at the homestead some three kilometres south of the main village. By local standards, the
homestead was large and modern. The main house had a roof of iron sheets and windows with glass
panes, and the walls were not of the usual mud and stakes but of burnt bricks. Its four rooms and the
veranda contained modem furniture. The homestead was surrounded by cultivated flowers and
trees.
Chambuleni dressed in modern clothing. He wore suits, hats, shirt with cuffs, and ties, and he had a
wristwatch. He could speak and write fairly good English, and was determined to have his children
educated. He had a vegetable garden, irrigated by a furrow, where he grew cabbages, green peppers,
carrots, egg plants, onions, lettuce, giant rape and Irish potatoes. These he sold in town at Mbala the
district headquarters, and Kasama the provincial headquarters.
Kocha and Chambuleni, when it came to hard work and determination were a most impressive pair.
Wiza was proud of them. His mother, too, was a source of great pride. Although she had only gone
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as far as standard one in terms of education, and had never worked in the towns, she had assimilated
much of Chambuleni's determined spirit.
It was only Leya, his immediate elder sister, and Chakonta his immediate younger brother who
seemed to have neither fire nor ambition in them. Leya had dropped out of schooling in form three.
She was already the mother of three young children, and was married to Tiza, a villager of
Viyarnba. He was an illiterate fellow who had forgotten how to spell his own name. Chakonta had
failed to go to secondary school and was already contemplating marriage.
On the whole, however, each member of the family was someone to be reckoned with, and each
contributed to the making of what in Wiza's opinion was an admirable peasant family. Wiza would,
through his education and professional career, do everything to elevate the name of his family.
The whistle blew announcing the end of prep and disturbed Wiza's thoughts. He stopped reading,
took off his clothes and covered himself with the blankets. He picked up his book again from where
he had put it on the floor, next to his bed, and continued reading. There was noise - students
returning from prep, students lounging on their beds, and talking. No one was knocking at the steel
locker, wanting to see him. He sensed the fears of everybody and knew no one would want to call
on him; especially not Humphrey who knew him only too well. Humphrey would not even come
back to sleep in the cubicle but would sleep at the sickbay, and probably check on him in the
morning. The lights flashed twice-a warning that the generator was about to be switched off. Wiza
completed reading a paragraph and closed the book, leaving a pencil between the pages to mark his
place. The lights went out. He slept.
In the middle of the night he woke, his mind recalling the events of the day. He wondered what
would have happened if he had bumped into Yona shortly after that monstrous announcement of
his. Rage and hatred welled up in him. He was innocent, he told himself... innocent... innocent...
innocent! He turned on his side and went to sleep again.
A loud banging against the locker he had used to block the entrance of the cubicle roused him just
before half-past six in the morning.
"Who is that?"
"Nonde ... trouble...Yona Sumbukeni and Sailasi Mutono are quarrelling with Humphrey. They
want to beat him."
Wiza sprang up like a cobra and threw on his clothes. He pushed the locker to one side, out of the
doorway, and hurried from the cubicle, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. Nonde was
standing outside the dormitory, by the door, waiting for him.
"Where?"
"Outside Chambeshi juniors' hostel."
They found things had already quietened when they arrived on the scene. The crowd that had been
watching was melting away. Yona and Sailasi were not in sight. They had gone into their
dormitory. Humphrey, in the company of Patrick Sambo and Edwin Zuze, was on his way from the
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scene of trouble to Mweru hostel. Wiza and Nonde met the three a few yards from Chambeshi
juniors' block.
"What is it?" Wiza stared at his friend, his eyes burning with fury.
"Let's go to our dormitory; I will tell you", Humphrey said nervously, walking on. Wiza and Nonde
turned and joined the trio.
"It's over", Patrick Sambo soothed. "Nothing serious."
"You know what? Yona is being influenced by Sailasi", Edwin Zuze said after a long silence.
"He is a prefect; he is not supposed to be influenced by a friend in this way. I will talk to him."
"You should, Patrick."
"Did you fight?" Wiza wanted to know.
"No, they didn't", replied Patrick Sambo.
"Patrick and I arrived quickly enough and stopped everything in time", Edwin added. "Yona is
becoming too much of a problem. He must be spoken to before someone breaks his teeth."
Nonde chuckled, and Edwin continued: "I tell you. It's because he's here at KK that he has survived.
If you think I am joking, you send that fellow to the Copperbelt for a week and see if he will come
back with all his teeth. Mr. Head boy, you talk to him as you suggested, and caution him."
Between the seniors' blocks of Mweru and Ituna, Patrick Sambo branched off to the right, toward
Ituna, his hostel, and Edwin Zuze went back to his: Luangwa.
Wiza and Humphrey, together with their boy Nonde, went to their cubicle. Wiza and Nonde sat
down on Wiza's bed. Humphrey sat down on his, adjacent to Wiza's. They were silent for some
time; and then Humphrey clapped his hands and began telling the story of what had transpired.
Humphrey had been on his way to the cubicle but had passed by Chambeshi juniors' dormitory to
leave the tablets a patient had forgotten at the sick-bay. As he was leaving the dormitory, Yona and
Sailasi came to him and said they had seen him talking to Teddy Simwanza at prep yesterday. They
asked him what he had been talking to Teddy about.
"I told them 'nothing'," said Humphrey.
Wiza asked him if it was true that he had talked to Teddy. Humphrey interrupted his story and told
him.
"After you said 'nothing', what did he say?"
"Yona said I was not telling the truth. I said I was. Sailasi said, what I was doing was not good.
'What am I doing?' I asked him. He just said: 'You know yourself.' I said I didn't. So Yona called
me a liar. I was annoyed but didn't show it. After that they both became angry, saying they knew I
was campaigning against them on your behalf-as if I had been there when Yona had found you on
the maize field, and a lot of other things. So the quarrel started. Yona and Sailasi were both coming
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at me, barking like wild dogs. A fight would have broken out had not Patrick and Edwin arrived and
intervened. "
"That was when I came and saw it was you, Doc. I rushed back to my locker and put on my boots,
then came and called the big man", Nonde added, looking down at his boots. "Excellent for kicking
one here ... ", and he tapped his fly, "or here", he held his left shin, "and you are down."
"Yona is silly", Humphrey shook his head.
"He's an idiot", Wiza said bitterly distorting his face. "Leave him, leave them, the time will come."
"It's good you were not there." "Let them get more stupid."
"The important thing is not to try anything now", Humphrey said.
"We have only two terms left. It wouldn't be good to mess up one's school at the last minute
because of those two fools."
"After exams."
"In April", Nonde said. "November", corrected Wiza.
"After the final exams", added Humphrey.
"That will be the time", Wiza said, pleased with himself, and surprised at his new sense of selfcontrol. He was also happy for his friend. He knew Humphrey must be pleased with his change in
temperament in the face of what had happened yesterday, and that morning.
Humphrey was the only person at KK who knew and understood him more than anyone else. He
was also the only person who had suffered greatly for him during his numerous times of trouble.
Humphrey was a most selfless and kind person, and Wiza liked and respected him very much.
Humphrey hailed from Chinsali. His mother, a widow, was a matron at the hospital in the town. His
life was mostly peaceful and smooth, trouble-free, and without tension compared to his own.
Perhaps it was the difference in their lives that created the bond between them.
The boy Nonde stood up and said he was going back to continue the preparations for the house
inspection.
"Oh yes", Humphrey said, remembering it was a Saturday morning. Nonde looked at Wiza, then at
Humphrey, and back at Wiza.
"See you", he said and walked out of the cubicle.
"What's the time?" Wiza asked.
"Quarter to seven."
"Time is passing."
"They have begun mopping the floor?"
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"I think so."
Humphrey went to the door and looked out, glancing to the right and to the left.
"They are just starting", he said, turning to his friend.
"Let me clean up this place."
"I'm going to check on the progress outside."
*
*
*
Chapter 6
S
ATURDAY mornings were lively and hectic at KK. The inhabitants of each hostel woke
up before sunrise and busied themselves cleaning and creating order inside and outside
their dormitories - preparations for the house inspection. The floors were mopped and
rubbed with polish till they shone, beds were made in uniform fashion, and lockers
arranged in neat order. Outside the plants were pruned, and the ground swept and sprinkled with
water.
The competition was tough. At the end of the year, the weekly results were totalled and the overall
winning hostel named and honoured accordingly. So it was that during the year, whenever the
Saturday preparations for the house inspection took place, the students of each hostel worked with
the greatest co-operation and dedication. The results of the particular day's inspection were pinned
on the notice board in the administration block by eleven o'clock the same day.
After Humphrey had left, Wiza picked up every item that was lying about in the cubicle and packed
everything neatly in the lockers. He put aside, on the reading table, a tablet of Rexona soap, a towel,
a tube of Pepsodent toothpaste, a toothbrush, a comb, a looking glass, a tin of Brylcream hair cream
and a bottle of Vaseline Blue Seal jelly. Next, he made the bed and swept the cubicle, leaving the
dust by the door, along the passage, to be swept away later by those who were sweeping the wings.
This was the normal practice of those who lived in cubicles; usually they were prefects and were,
therefore, not expected to do more than sweep their cubicles. Their duty after that was to supervise
the preparations.
The dusting, mopping and the rest-even in their own cubicles-was left to specialised task forces.
Though he was not a prefect, Wiza played the role of supervisor. No one in the house resisted his
authority. Both the prefects and the ordinary students appreciated that he was effective and
welcomed his initiative. In fact, with time, Wiza had extended the realm of his leadership to
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activities and issues outside the hostel, to matters affecting the school at large. His influence was
mostly brought to bear upon the rest of the school through his friend Humphrey.
Through with his work in the cubicle, Wiza wrapped the toilet articles in the towel and went out of
the dormitory, carrying them with him, together with Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather.
Outside, the level of activity was higher than in the dormitory and the atmosphere there more of a
racket.
It was clear and calm but a bit chilly, though the March sun was already up and shining brightly.
"Where is Humphrey?" he asked himself.
There was a big mupundu tree on the lawn to the left of the entrance of Mweru seniors' dormitory.
Humphrey was standing by the tree, giving instructions to Luka Talanti the mailman. Luka Talanti
was the monitor for Mweru seniors' dormitory. His noisy but friendly habits and his clowning had
won him the post; these qualities had proved to be a source of extraordinary effectiveness in his
supervisory duties. He was popularly known for threatening his subjects and opponents with
bloodshed if they let him down, or if they upset him, If and when his path was crossed, he would
hold his waist with both hands and say: "My friend, do you want to donate blood?"
"What?"
"I said: Do you want to decorate this place with your blood?"
Whereupon he would hasten to remind you that you were talking to 'Mr Bloodshed' himself. Then
he would leave, promising you 'a token of bloodshed' next time you 'played funny' again. His
departures were as dramatic as his confrontations. He would go away with a quick swinging step,
wringing his hands, shaking his head, whistling in shocked amazement at how you didn't know you
were playing with fire, and swearing upon his 'lame mother' that he would murder someone at KK
sooner or later. He would tell everybody about the matter afterwards. His threats often sounded real
and very frightening, but ever since he had come to KK, and he was now in form four, he had never
been involved in a fight, or assaulted anyone.
Luka Talanti was the self-appointed spokesperson for Mweru hostel. He openly claimed that he was
proud of its history and people. According to Luka it was the greatest hostel of the four at KK. He
had a lot of respect for its 'citizens', and he was prepared 'to die' for its cause. Whenever he was
thinking aloud about some issue related to the hostels, he would almost always end up with the
remark that one of these days Mweru would 'go to war' with a certain hostel and KK would be in
for real bloodshed.
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"That will be the time", he would say, "when everybody will learn what bloodshed is. Some Indian
field marshal will have no option but to close this school for a century. I tell you! That war will
make the Second World War look like a wedding ceremony."
But he had never revealed or hinted which hostel it was that he had in mind; and it was difficult for
anyone to guess.
Luka Talanti was fond of Wiza. He said Wiza Chambuleni was the greatest hero KK would ever
have. Wiza on his part liked Luka Talanti. He said Luka was open-minded and courageous. It was
Wiza, who had recommended Luka Talanti for the post of monitor to Humphrey and the other
prefects in Mweru hostel. When Luka Talanti had learnt of Wiza's commendation he had registered
his appreciation of the gesture with the rhetoric that people like Wiza must be consulted on every
important issue affecting Mweru, or else the house would go to the dogs.
"Where is Humphrey?" Wiza asked a second time.
This time, the question was audible and was heard by one of the students.
"He is there."
Wiza looked where the boy had pointed and saw his friend in the company of Luka Talanti. He
thanked the boy and went over to the pair. Humphrey was concluding his instructions to Luka.
"After that, they can wash and get ready for breakfast", he was saying. "What else?"
"Nothing."
"The flowers for putting on top of the lockers?"
"Zax is taking care of that.”
"Zaccaria and who else?"
"Besa, Sikazwe, Moonga and Garry; they have gone to Lubwa Mission to fetch flowers-different
ones to those around the school."
"That's good."
"I gave them directions to a place where I saw some very good roses last Sunday."
"What else?"
"Nothing, Doc."
Luka Talanti turned to Wiza seeing that Doctor was through with him.
"Oh, Wiza; good morning", he said cautiously, trying to gauge Wiza's mood.
"Morning."
"This world!" Luka Talanti said and shook his head like a lizard.
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"What is it?" Humphrey asked him. "Doc?"
He clapped his hands.
"You people. Doc, Wiza; I tell you one of these days I am going to storm into Chambeshi hostel
and cause the kind of havoc that no one has ever seen", he said in mock anger. His voice had
suddenly grown loud. It could now be heard from afar and it had acquired a harsh ring to it. "I
swear that black Hitler at that hostel is going too far. He must donate some blood."
Wiza and Humphrey grinned. They both knew that it was Yona Sumbukeni that Luka Talanti was
talking about.
"You think I am joking?” Luka Talanti went on "I am going to do just that. I am going to drop like a
bolt of thunder and tear every swanker in that house to pieces. Enough is enough. Let me hear the
smallest piece of rubbish from them and I will raise the dust of all dusts and paint that evil house
red with the blood of its own hounds. Leave everything to me. You are in form five and shouldn't
get mixed up in things that will disturb your schooling because of some stupid fools. The finals are
not far off. Some people know that they are going to fail, and that their names will appear in the
newspapers with a chain of Fs. So, they would like to disturb you, the big brains of KK, so that you
don't get division ones but something less. I tell you, they are tampering with the wrong people."
He clapped his hands again.
"God! They are wanting to deprive Mweru of good results by frustrating her intellectuals", he
continued. "What stinking Nazism! What rotten terrorism! Yesterday ... today ... who knows, even
tomorrow ... ah, same terrorists, same targets! What has Mweru done to Chambeshi? I say leave the
dogs to me. Upon my armless mother, Tente, the mother of all mushrooms on earth, Chambeshi
house has bloodshed coming upon it."
He swept a finger across his throat and pointed to the sky with it.
"Oh let us work", he said walking away.
Clapping his hands for attention, he went and planted himself in front of the juniors' block. "Boys ...
boys ... listen here, listen. Listen here everybody if you love your lives", he bawled.
The boys outside and inside the dormitory-mainly form one and form two pupils-stopped working
and became silent, looking at him as might young privates having been intruded upon by some
colourful commissioned officer.
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"I am not threatening you; I am just warning you. Do you hear me everybody?"
"Yeah!"
"Don't just say 'Yeah' like American cowboys. I am not Nigger Charley ... Fred Williamson. I am
Bloodshed Luka, son of Talanti the man who married ten wives."
There were suppressed giggles. "Do you hear me, everybody?" "Yeah!"
"I won't repeat my words, so listen carefully: If for any reason, genuine or not, we don't come out
first in today's inspection ... please ... please ... no one should make the mistake of coming back to
this hostel. You will have to find yourselves alternative accommodation in other hostels which are
prepared to be Second or Third World, or in the ablution blocks if you like, but not in Mweru. If we
lose the first position and I find you swaggering into this hostel in your torn shoes, 1 will come and
hang you naked."
More giggles. Luka Talanti now changed his tone to a low and more appealing one. He said, in
conclusion: "Sons and daughters of Mweru-by daughters I mean form ones with long hair-you have
heard about the history of this great hostel. Don't let yourselves down. Sweat blood now so that you
don't lose it through bleeding later. Yours sincerely, Luka, Mr Bloodshed Talanti."
There was general laughter and the boys continued working. Luka Talanti spat into his hands and,
rubbing his palms together energetically, went over to a group of three first-year pupils who were
weeding one of the flower beds nearby.
"Faster... faster ... faster boys. Work like soldiers."
He knelt before the flower bed and demonstrated, repeating the words "like this" as he worked.
Satisfied the boys had caught up with his tempo, he stood up and shouted for Nonde.
"I am here", the boy said from a window. He was holding a wet rag.
"You have started on the windows?"
"Not yet, but we have finished dusting the lockers."
"Make sure everything is done in time as usual."
"Of course."
"And keep an eye on these form ones here; watch they don't mess up the flowers."
"I will kill one of them if they do", Nonde said and disappeared from the window.
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Nonde was the assistant monitor in the juniors' block. He was second in command to Alick
Mpongwe a third-year student.
"You form ones, there", Luka Talanti addressed another group of first-years working on a different
flower bed. "Do you eat flowers where you come from?"
"No", one of the boys replied shyly, hiding his face to avoid being caught with traces of laughter on
his lips.
"Then why are you eyeing them instead of working? Don't try even a bite; those are poisonous",
Luka Talanti said and walked away back to the seniors' block. His words, and hurried departure,
elicited another explosion of laughter.
Wiza turned his attention from Luka Talanti and asked Humphrey for the key to the sick-bay.
"I want to go and stay there for a while."
Humphrey gave him the key. Without another word Wiza walked away, his friend's eyes following
him.
He passed by Ituna seniors' dormitory and told Patrick Sambo that he had been feeling unwell
yesterday evening, that was why he had missed the school prep session. Then he went to the
ablution block and took a shower, after which he proceeded to the sick-bay where he lay down on
Humphrey's bed to read. Suddenly, he could no longer concentrate on his book. His mind was
drawn to his meeting with the headmaster scheduled for later that morning. Anxiety gripped him.
He stopped reading and leafed aimlessly through the pages without searching his memory for
details of the story. What punishment was the headmaster going to prescribe? Was he going to
announce it to the whole group of fifteen together or was he going to talk to each student
separately? A feverish sensation coursed through his veins.
The bell rang a first and then a second time. He did not go to the dining-hall for breakfast.
Humphrey and Nonde brought him tea with milk in a jug, four slices of bread smeared with Stork
margarine, an egg and two bananas. He drank one cup of tea, ate two slices of bread and put away
the rest. Neither Humphrey nor the boy Nonde tried to encourage him to eat more.
Humphrey opened the sick-bay for duty. Nonde gave him and his two assistants a hand where he
could. Wiza lay on the bed reading. On Saturdays, most of the patients came for the standard
reference letter to take to the hospital at the boma. So Humphrey had a lot of writing, signing and
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stamping to do. The queue was long. He finished only after a whole hour. It was half-past nine by
then.
The school was quiet and deserted as was the case every Saturday. Soon after breakfast the whole
population melted away to the boma and other places, with only a few individuals remaining
behind-these were often the pupils on punishment, or who were sick, together with the prefects
responsible for supervising the punishment.
Humphrey and Nonde got ready for their own journey to the boma. Humphrey had received a note
from his mother during the week asking him to go home that weekend. Nonde was going to the post
office to present the 'advice of delivery of registered article' slip which he had received yesterday
when the mailman Luka Talanti had called his name in the dining-hall. To while away the thirty
minutes remaining before it was ten o'clock and time to see the headmaster, Wiza offered to see
them off.
Back at the school after escorting Humphrey and Nonde, Wiza found a group of ten of the fifteen
students whose names Yona Sumbukeni had called in the dining-hall yesterday standing outside the
headmaster's office. They told him that the punishment was caning of the buttocks: four for form
twos, six for form threes and perhaps ten or more for a form five student. The headmaster had come
to his office and commenced calling in those on the list five minutes before ten o'clock, the
stipulated time. Three boys had already been whipped. One of them, a small form two boy, and the
last one to have come out from the headmasters' office, was sprawled on a nearby lawn, writhing
and whimpering in pain. The other two had gone away, but had also cried, the remaining group,
grave with fear, explained. The fourth boy had just walked in.
Wiza sat down on the edge of the exterior corridor floor, away from the rest.
Suddenly, the whip hissed in the headmaster's office and hit its mark. The whip repeated its assault
the second and third time. A boy's voice cried in pain, as wildly as if his heart had been pierced
through with a spear. The whip landed the fourth time. The boy screamed louder. The door creaked
open, and the crying boy shot out of the office, twisting his body like a worm that had jumped out
of a hot pan. The fifth boy on the list walked in after his name was called.
Before the door closed behind the boy, Wiza caught a glimpse of the corpulent figure of the
headmaster and the little bony figure of Yon a Sumbukeni. Wiza hung his head and clenched his
teeth, suppressing his anger.
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When Wiza's turn came to enter the large, yellowish-white, rectangular office, the headmaster asked
Yona Sumbukeni to leave the room. After Yona had left and closed the door behind him, the
headmaster put the whip away and sat down in the swivel chair behind his mahogany table.
"Take a seat", the headmaster invited.
Wiza sat down on one of the three visitors' chairs which were arranged, opposite the headmaster, on
the other side of the table.
"So you are here again", sneered Mr Dasgupta in English heavy with an Indian accent. "I knew it.
What else are you the greatest at apart from trouble-making? Eh? Mr Trouble Chambuleni – Wiza
Chambuleni the Terrible!"
He stared at the list.
"The only form five pupil out of fifteen! What do you say to that, Mr Wiza Chambuleni? The rest
are from form one and form two. I expect problems from the younger boys, but this train you are
also boarding! You, a form five student. Cassius Clay, Muhammed Ali beating innocent people in
my school. Idi Amin harassing the good and respected government officials visiting my great
school. Now, Charles Manson, you are also ravaging innocent maize at the farm like a wild pig. In
my school! Are you not ashamed, sir?"
Wiza fidgeted, mute with bitterness, humiliation and embarrassment.
"You don't have to say anything", Mr Dasgupta said. "There is no need. I am not going to whip you
like the others. I just want to tell you that I have written a letter to your father. You will see it at the
end of the term when you go home. I have explained in the letter what you and your father should
do before I can accept you back to this school. No discussions. You can go."
Wiza stood up, like a robot, too lost in self-pity and dejection to hesitate or to try to say something
in mitigation.
"And let me not hear that you have harassed any of my prefects. You try it and you will..."
A strange feeling, hot and tingling, suddenly welled up in Wiza. He felt numb but also enraged. The
headmaster read the dangerous emotion in his eyes.
"I don't want to say any more", he said, raising a palm towards Wiza. "You just leave my office and
go and wait for the end of the term."
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Wiza made for the door, quietly, feeling confounded. As he walked out, Yona Sumbukeni stepped
aside to let him pass. Wiza bypassed him without looking in his direction but sensing every inch of
the little individual.
To drown the upsurge of the emotions of vexation, hatred and fear within him, he walked straight to
the notice board ahead of him, ostensibly to look at the results of the house inspection. His hostel,
Mweru, had come out first with 98 points out of 100. The second was Ituna with 96 points; then
Luangwa with 90 points and, lastly, Chambeshi with 87 points.
He then went to the dormitory and lay down on his bed, allowing a myriad of thoughts to crowd his
mind without restraint. After some time he realized he was trembling and weeping.
*
*
*
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Part Two
Welfare and Evil
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Chapter 7
I
T was a painful homecoming - the worst Wiza had experienced since he had begun his
secondary schooling. As soon as he arrived at the homestead, his father's mood changed. He
became pensive, and it was apparent that he was very annoyed with Wiza. He picked up an axe
and quietly left the yard without as much as greeting him.
"There is a letter which came from your school three weeks ago", Milika, his mother, told him after
he had settled down. "Since your father received that letter he has not been himself."
"What was in the letter?"
"Has he even told us? You ask as if you don't know your father. He has been like a lion."
She cupped her chin in her left hand and rested the other hand on her left shoulder. "My son, it is
difficult to find words to explain what has been happening here. He doesn't discuss anything with
any of us. When he is around, the small ones won't play or laugh. Our home is like a graveyard. It is
good you have come; maybe after he has heard your part of the story he will speak of what is in his
heart, and become himself again. Just be careful not to cross his path. Avoid him until he decides to
talk to you. Is there something very bad that you did at school? Do you have any idea what the
letter is about?"
"No."
Two whole weeks went by without Chambuleni talking to his son Wiza. He remained constantly
sullen. He worked in solitude, and he took his meals alone, after everybody else had eaten.
In the mornings, he would wake up and be off out of the yard before sunrise, muttering brief, barely
audible instructions to Milika before he left, about where she and the rest of the family should go
and work and what they should do.
"I will inform the children", was all Milika would say, and Chambuleni would collect his tools and
leave to attend to an assignment of his choice, without announcing to his wife exactly where he was
bound. He would next be seen in the evening. The family would already be eating supper.
The days were generally dry and bright at this time of the year, but being April, the last month of
serious rain, sometimes it was cloudy and the heavens poured torrents of grey rain upon the earth.
The rain gone, the Chambuleni homestead would slumber quietly beneath a coverlet of mist, wet
and gloom. Then a bright resolute sun would return to the sky. The clouds would pass away, and
the world would be bright again.
Wiza was getting restless. Days for him became a confusion of fear and grief. At first he had
suffered a sense of guilt and shame, for although he felt innocent about what had happened at
school, he had, nevertheless, entered his father's heart and shared his feelings of disappointment and
annoyance. But now, his anxiety to know what was contained in the headmaster's letter and to learn
his father's position on the matter, had culminated in self-pity at the injustice of his father's
protracted silence and indifference.
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He wanted to know all the facts, so that he could ascertain his chances of getting back to school.
This was what his father was denying him. Had his father decided to stop his schooling? Wasn't the
time in which to take remedial steps in response to the headmaster's letter running out? How many
days-twelve-were left before the second term began? These questions left him helpless with grief.
In his mind hope was fading.
Milika noticed his tension. Knowing him so well, she could not help but feel anxious. Chakonta and
the girls sensed what was going on, too. They were also alarmed.
At the field, Wiza worked silently and always at a distance from the others. The little ones would
edge themselves closer to where he was working and try to wheedle him into telling them stories
about secondary school life, but in vain.
"Leave your brother to work", their mother would shout at them, but she would fix Wiza with a
long painful gaze.
After work, Wiza would head straight home and spend the whole of his free time sitting alone in the
itanda, reading and writing until Chakonta would join him shortly before supper. Chakonta, who,
after leaving the fields would usually go out in the bush with the dogs, knew better than to ask for
his brother's company to go hunting or inspecting animal traps.
Everything changed one evening after Wiza's school report came. Soon after Chambuleni had read
the report, he summoned Wiza to the veranda of the main house. Before the rest of the family, he
handed the report to him and said he could go through it. Wiza read the following:
SUBJECT
Geography
Mathematics
Biology
Physical Science
English Literature
English Language
Bemba
RESULT
94%
80%
81%
87%
72%
68%
90%
POSITION IN CLASS
2
1
4
1
3
2
3
REMARKS
Very good
Excellent
Can do even better
As expected
Very good
Hard working
Very good
TOTAL AVERAGE: 82%
OVERALL POSITION IN CLASS: 2
COMMENTS BY FORM-MASTER: Wiza Chambuleni participates actively in class discussions
and is a leading member of the science club. He is intelligent and hard-working. Moody at times.
COMMENTS BY HOUSEMASTER: He represents the house in inter-house debating
competitions. Brilliant and co-operative, though sometimes too original. Must check his temper.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT BY HEADMASTER: Wastes time on useless activities.
Every important detail registered in his head, Wiza handed the report back.
"This is a good report", his father said, folding the document. "A very good report", he said again.
"I have no words to say to you. To the gods and the ancestral spirits I kneel down and pray for the
sun to continue rising and shining. I have words and questions in my heart, but they are not for you
my son. They are for your headmaster. "
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Relief descended upon the family.
"I had plans to talk to you. The school report held me back; I was waiting for it to arrive first. After
reading it I have changed my mind. I must go and talk to your headmaster instead. I don't
understand him. He wrote a letter to me demanding that both you and I write to him before he can
decide whether or not to accept you back at his school. He says you are not serious about your
schooling-you don't do homework, you miss lessons regularly, and other things. Your school report
has told a different story. The only bad words in it are in his comment. We are not going to write to
him. I am going to see him and talk to him in person. Chinsali is far from here, but I will travel
there with you when the school opens."
"Ee", supported Milika. She sat on the floor with her legs crossed, and stretched in front of her.
Chambuleni addressed her: "He came second in his class. All the other teachers have praised him:
the class teachers, the form-master and the housemaster. The headmaster, alone, says he wastes
time on useless activities."
"He must be a mad one."
"That is what I want to go and see."
"Ee."
"I must go and face him, and find out why he alone condemns Wiza", Chambuleni said
emphasizing his readiness to fight for the welfare of his son.
"When I read the letter he wrote to me, I thought: the child doesn't do a thing at school! Maybe he
spends his time in bars or something like that, and I said to myself: now my son has gone insane
and become the most worthless thing on earth. What ill luck, gods and ancestral spirits! My own
son to become so rotten just when he is a stone's throw from the end of his secondary schooling?"
"He must be a devil of a headmaster", put in Milika.
"The gods will see him for what he is."
"True", Milika replied, her normally low-toned voice rising. "Whatever it is that he wants, let the
gods throw the evil back to him, for he does not know where I buried my son's umbilical cord."
"The ancestral spirits are there."
That day, after supper, the family gathered once more on the veranda around the old rusty brazier,
chatting till late on the moonless April night.
The rest of the holiday passed happily. On the Friday, two days before schools re-opened,
Chambuleni and Wiza packed their things.
"We will go with the Mpulungu-Lusaka bus as far as Mpika tomorrow, and travel to Chinsali on
Sunday. We will spend a night somewhere in Chinsali boma and be at the school first thing on
Monday", Chambuleni told Wiza. "The route using the pontoon on the Chambeshi River is shorter
but unreliable. If we use it we might be stranded."
"In Chinsali boma, we can sleep at the home of my friend's mother", said Wiza.
"Humphrey?"
"Yes, the one I have often talked about."
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The family retired early to sleep.
Before seven the following morning, father and son walked through the thick bush along the
indistinct path from the homestead to Senga Hill bus stop. The bus arrived from Mpulungu, via
Mbala, at ten o'clock, but it was full of schoolchildren. Everyone at the bus stop, save for one boy,
was left behind.
Wiza and his father returned home.
The next day the bus was again full and they waited for a lift. On Sundays the traffic was minimal,
and they waited a long time-until the sun was about to set. Then, just after the bus stop was
deserted-even the most tenacious market women having left-a big Mercedes Benz truck, its engine
backfiring noisily, stopped for them.
"Where to?" growled the driver of the truck, a fat middle-aged man with a dirty, oily face.
"Kasama. Help us. Your brother here is late for school. I am his father and I am-"
"Senga Hill to Kasama. How much?"
"We will pay anything."
"Jump in the back."
Wiza climbed into the truck first. His father passed him the luggage and then climbed after him. In
Kasama they slept at the bus station along with many other travellers coming and going from the
other districts in the province. On Monday morning, they managed to board a bus that passed-via
the pontoon-through Chinsali on its way to Mpika and Kitwe.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they knocked at the headmaster's door, after they arrived
from the bus stop at Lubwa Mission.
"Come in", the headmaster answered in his loud, husky voice. Father and son went in looking worn
out and grave.
"Can I call someone to come and interpret our discussions?"
Mr Dasgupta said condescendingly after an uneasy time of greetings and introductions.
"No."
"Feel free Mr Chambuleni, I can find someone."
"I don't see the need for that, I consider myself adequate.”
“I see."
Chambuleni carefully brought up the matter of the letter, the contents of which had so alarmed him,
he said, that instead of responding to it in writing as the headmaster had requested, he had come to
discuss the matter with him in person.
The English he used sounded amazingly good to the ears of the headmaster, but Mr Dasgupta
adjusted his spectacles and launched his offensive. His decision to have Wiza's schooling
terminated, he said, was final; particularly as he had not received a written reply to his letter before
the beginning of the term. Above all, he felt sufficient time had been spent discussing Wiza and his
terrible conduct...
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A long exchange of statements, questions and explanation between the two men followed. After
twenty minutes, the headmaster, agitated, was saying: "Finish! Finish! He is your son ... not my son.
He is a criminal and I don't harbour criminals in my school. You can go and give him school
certificates at your home. Finito!"
"Never Mr. Headmaster."
"What never?"
"Nothing is going to finish in this office, or this school until you have told me of a specific offence
which my son committed recently, serious enough to justify your decision to dismiss him."
"That... to me you are telling?... Eh?"
"Mr Headmaster, let us not quarrel, please."
"What? Let us not quarrel... Eh?... Enough, I have already told –”
"Mr Dasgupta, we are both parents.'
"Mr Chambuleni, when I say something I mean it. Just stop making a noise and leave my office,
peacefully, with your son-if you are not deaf."
Chambuleni, outraged, leaned forward and banged the headmaster's table in a fit of wild, frustrated
anger.
"Do not abuse me, Mr Headmaster", he hissed, trembling, but keeping his flaming eyes
courageously on Mr Dasgupta. He was an alarming sight, burning with rage like a fire. The
headmaster was chastened and frightened; eventually he sat back, shaking his head dis believingly.
Wiza hung his head, whilst his father banged the table again, and repeated: "Do not abuse me."
The headmaster was speechless. Chambuleni drew back and, after a brief pause, in a more
controlled voice, he said: "I pray to your God, let us conclude this matter like men with human
souls. If you explain to me and I see that my son is in the wrong and not worthy of staying in your
school I will go away with him now. But do not ask me to go away with him until you have told me
the truth. I will not go. He is my blood. Even his faeces I am prepared to carry in my hand, because
he is my own seed. I have a right to be told the truth about my son's behaviour.
"Put yourself in my place. How would you feel and what would you do if you were told that your
son was expelled from school, just a week or two after you received a school report showing that
your son had passed so well that he was in second position in his class? He received favourable
comments from all his teachers, except from the headmaster?
"Think of it! You had not received any warning letter in four years, and this son of yours was now
in his final secondary school year. Would you sit down and believe that your son was not serious
with his schooling. Would you enjoy hearing people calling a drop of your own blood a criminal
not worth a hearing? The maize story does not sound sufficient to me and even if it were, I have a
feeling my son has been made a victim of some malicious intention. He has told me the prefect who
reported him to you has been after him for a long time. Did you give my son a hearing? No. How
do I swallow that as a parent?"
"Mr Chambuleni- "
"It is not fair."
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"I am sorry Mr Chambuleni."
The headmaster sat upright. I am really sorry Mr Chambuleni", he continued in a reconciliatory
voice; "I didn't mean to go that far. It is your son who is to blame. I don't blame you. It is difficult
for you to understand my position also. Your son has caused me a great deal of embarrassment and
has put this school into disrepute. The year before last he caused a government minister to believe
that my school supports beer-drinking and drug-taking. We are still fighting to correct the image;
God knows when we are going to succeed. I would have expelled him then but I was not here when
the incident occurred, and the stories I heard when 1 came back were so varied that I couldn't
enforce any decision... This time, there isn't anything to hold against him apart from the maize
issue. But, remembering his past I wondered whether he would do something worse before he went
away. It's fine now for you, and only for you, Mr Chambuleni, I will give him a chance."
They talked for a few more minutes, then bade each other goodbye. Once outside the headmaster's
office Chambuleni hurried off to the boma to try and secure a room at the council rest house. Wiza
headed for the dormitories, thinking all the while of the courageous support his father had given
him in the face of the headmaster's hostile attitude. He felt very grateful for the trouble his father
had taken in travelling with him to school and in securing the continuation of his education at KK.
Humphrey and Nonde came over to Wiza as he approached the laboratories block, carrying his
black trunk on his shoulder and his small brown travelling bag in his right hand. Wiza put the
luggage down on the ground and greeted his friends.
Nonde beckoned two form one students who were passing to come over and carry Wiza's luggage
to the cubicle. When the two freshers arrived, he went to the one who was short, solid and pimply
and asked him whether his chest was petrol or diesel powered. The boy grinned confusedly like an
idiot.
"What's wrong with you?" Nonde said; "You mean you don't know the fuel your engine uses? How
do you choose what to drink?"
"It's petrol", the student replied, trying to save his face.
"You just guessed", Nonde returned, dismissing the answer. Using his right fist, he hit the student
hard on the chest three times. After each blow he put his ear close to the boy's chest and listened.
"It's diesel", he concluded. "You carry the trunk. The other horse will carry the bag. You are horse
number one; your friend is horse number two. Where are you, horse number two?"
"Here."
"Benzene or paraffin?"
"Benzene."
"Good. Carry this bag and, within a second, drop it at Mweru Senior, then come back and give
horse number one a hand before his head bursts open under the trunk. You know which cubicle,
don't you? Well, you are animals, you can sniff your way there. On your heels ... get set... one- twothree ... go! No resting on the way. I will come and burst your buttocks open with my boot if I see
you resting. "
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The horses took off. Nonde, Wiza and Humphrey followed not far behind them, chatting and
jesting.
*
*
*
Chapter 8
H
E first two weeks of the term passed in feverish excitement. Then everything returned to
normal, and life glided on at the usual leisurely tempo. There were club meetings, house
matters and school itself. School, school, school! The guarantee to a future of erudition
and paradise. The perfect test of road worthiness on the journey of life.
The term was not destined to be an ordinary one though. The science club or JETS (Junior
Engineers, Technicians and Scientists) Club had a unique event in store for the school.
At the club's first meeting that term, held in the physics laboratory one Thursday evening, it was
announced by the club master, Mr Wijnbergen, who was also the physical science teacher, that the
parent body of JETS in Lusaka had confirmed in writing that the Provincial Science Fair for that
year, in the Northern Province, was to be held at Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School.
"The dates are not given, but it will be during the second week of July - about two months from
now."
"What about the National Fair, sir?"
"As usual- University of Zambia, September."
"Okay."
"A very big task for you boys. Projects, good projects are needed, and every project must be
complete by the end of June. No jokes, no stories. I want to see a lot of your exhibits pulling
through the provincial competition to the national. You must get down to your projects right away
and seriously. Furthermore, the school competition itself, from which we will select those who will
represent us at the provincial fair, will be judged very seriously. I will be keeping the keys to all the
three laboratories-biology, chemistry and physics. You are free to ask for them, through your
secretary-general, any time you wish.
"Organisation-that is another serious responsibility you have to take care of as diligently as you can.
We members of staff wi1l play our part also, but a lot will depend on you.
"The organising committee? I have decided that it should be your nODTI.al executive committee,
unless you have objections to this. I also feel that Reuben Lewanika and Wiza Chambuleni, the
chairman and secretary-general of the executive committee respectively, who are supposed to
relinquish their positions next month to give them more time to concentrate on their studies, being
form fives, should stay on until the fair is over to ensure continuity in the running of the affairs of
the club. We will need an experienced executive. Any objections?"
"No."
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"That's fine."
The great news spread like wildfire in the school. To the members of the JETS Club, the Provincial
Science Fair being held at KK meant a do- or-die chance to try to bring the coveted trophy to the
school for the first time. To the rest of the school, generally, it meant the first interschool gathering
of magnitude to be held at KK, and one that was going to bring girls to KK for the first time in
many years. Everyone said it was very good news.
Wiza was on his best behaviour. He attended every lesson and laboratory session, and every
optional recapitulation and school prep session. He participated in all class debates of topical
interest and did a lot of exercises, with others, especially in mathematics and physical science.
Outside the normal school programme, he was busy seventy per cent of the time with the activities
of the science club, working on the project he was to exhibit at the provincial fair, or doing
administration work for the science club.
The administration work usually meant issuing equipment and other requisites to the club members
from the storerooms of the laboratories, and monitoring the attendance and punctuality of the
members, and the progress on their projects.
Each member would report to him in the physics laboratory where he worked on his own project.
He would record the member's name and his time of arrival in the attendance register, and would
enquire about the project the individual, or group, was working on.
"Water purification project. What's the progress? Is the water coming from the tap?"
"No."
"What's the problem?"
"The pressure is too low. I'm looking for a longer pipe to increase the distance between the
reservoir and the treatment tank. "
"Have you tried raising the level of the reservoir?"
''It's very high as it is."
"One metre?"
"One and half."
"Do you need something from the storeroom?"
"No."
"You won't need the soldering gun?"
"No."
The member would then go to his project in the relevant laboratory and begin working. Wiza would
turn to the next member: "Swithen Kombe. Twenty-past five. Anopheles mosquito control project.
What's the progress?"
"I am on the larva stage now." "Good."
"Playing with malaria?"
"That's what being a scientist means. You need something from the storeroom?"
"A telescope."
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Wiza would collect the item from the storeroom and the member would sign for it in the record
book.
Wiza was so obsessed with school, and the activities of the science club that, although he did bump
into them from time to time, Yona Sumbukeni and Sailasi Mutono appeared hardly to exist in his
world.
One day in June, Luka 'Mr Bloodshed' Talanti, the mailman, came panting into the physics
laboratory to see Wiza who was working alone.
"There you are Chief, straight from the land of Queen Elizabeth where they say the sun never sets.
These British and their madness!” the mailman said and handed Wiza the 'reward'-a postcard from
Wiza's elder brother Kocha.
Wiza read: "Hi, old chap, reckon you're getting right on with yo' second term. Keep on. All is well
with me. Letter following. Wishing you the best and blessings. Ciao! K.C.C."
"Thank you."
"You don't have to say it Chief. England. God, kill the devil, this is the mail to receive! How long
has your brother been in England now?"
"Three years."
"I keep forgetting."
"He is doing his second year of the degree course. He spent the first year doing A levels."
"Won't you go there yourself?"
"I don't know."
"You must go; you will go."
"Hopefully.”
"God, look at the stamp", he gazed at the postcard now in Wiza's hand; "that is Queen Elizabeth.
Ah! To marry that one my friend, you would have to be a close friend of Jesus Christ."
Wiza laughed.
"Chief, I am going. Let me not disturb your invention work. I have to go and sort out the mail. All
this. My voice will go today. Ah! Reading some of these names! You would think some of them
were phrases describing some heavenly phenomenon and yet the owners are just little useless things
yet to stop wetting their beds."
After Luka had gone, Wiza read through Kocha's message on the postcard again, and then looked at
the picture on the reverse side-the picture of a bridge-and lastly he read the details about the picture,
printed in very small letters below Kocha's message, as follows: "Battersea Bridge by Moonlight,
1885, by John Atkinson Grimshaw. The Christopher Wood Gallery, London. Photography: The
Bridgeman Art Library." He put the postcard away in his shirt pocket and continued working on his
project.
The letter from Kocha arrived two weeks later: "It is bright, warm and colourful here in London
now, being summer ...” he wrote, and went on to tell Wiza about the social life and the tight school
programme in England.
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"There are race problems in England, but I forget about such things most of the time, knowing I am
here for my education, and will be back home in a couple of years’ time. In fact, you do get used to
being a black spot surrounded by swarms of whites. These days, I often forget I'm a black man. One
is only reminded of the fact once in a while."
Kocha asked about Wiza's health and schooling, and expressed the hope and trust that everything
was "going on well that end".
Abruptly the letter changed its tone and became advisory: "As I've always told you", Kocha went
on, "in whatever you are doing, you must always remember that your position in the family is a
very important one, especially regarding the matter of education. Our family, though fairly well off
by the village standards of our home area, is really poor and backward. Its salvation, and the
promise of a better future, can only come through the two of us obtaining good academic and
professional qualifications."
It was true, Wiza knew-Leya and Chakonta had already dropped out of school, the rest of the
brothers and sisters were still too young to be counted. This left only the two of them, Wiza and
Kocha.
"Your performance so far is most gratifying but must continue. Your loving brother, Kocha Celestin
Chambuleni. P.S. Warm greetings to your friends, Humphrey and Nonde."
He was lost in savouring Kocha's words, and after he
about his future, absently chewing at his Parker pen.
tables, alone. The pen felt delightful to his touch-the
would become educated, he would be well-employed,
honourable man.
had read the letter a second time, he mused
He was in the library sitting at one of the
very tool which would see him through. He
properly married and rich. He would die an
His elbow on the table, his legs crossed, and nursing his left cheek in the palm of his left hand, he
looked into the future and saw himself. A song by The Temptations rang in his head, and Martin
Thole's bridal party appeared before his eyes, entering a packed reception hall. Slowly, the party
was replaced by a better one, in which he was the bridegroom.
A voice from the present called him, bringing him back from his daydreaming. He looked up and
saw Humphrey standing about a metre away.
"The library is about to close."
"Oh!"
He gathered his books and joined his friend.
"Kocha sends you his greetings", he said when they were out of the library, walking toward the
dormitories.
"Thanks. The letter he wrote of on the card has come?"
"Luka gave it to me a few minutes ago."
"How is he doing?"
"Kocha? Very well, he says."
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The bell for supper rang. They hurried to their cubicle where they left their books. When supper
was over they went to the sickbay and rested until it was time for prep. After prep, they went to
their cubicle and slept.
That was a Monday, and for the rest of the week Wiza was silent and moody. It was a common state
these days. Whenever he heard from Kocha, or from his father, the happiness and sense of
determination that their admonitions and words of encouragement and love at first brought him
vanished after a while, and he became disagreeably affected by the fear of his inner self and of his
enemies, and he would suffer migraine for days.
During the week, he had problems concentrating on school and his duties in the science club. The
mood in him was finally expended, and he went back to his school work with full force once more.
Wiza's project for the science club was called the Aricom, which stood for Arithmetical Computer.
The Aricom was an electrical device for carrying out simple arithmetical calculations-answers in
round figures between -250 and +250. When completed, the device would be contained in a
wooden box measuring 0,5 x 0,5 x 2 metres. The instructions to the device to perform a given
function would be made by way of completing circuits, using pieces of copper wire insulated at one
end with wooden handles. Upon receiving the instruction, the device would give a red light under
the correct figure on the answer board.
Wiza had started working on the project early the previous year. He had completed the calculations,
and the design and construction of the box. The wiring, which was the critical part of the work,
remained to be done, together with the labels, illustrations and manual.
He was uncertain whether he could complete his project before the fair. Finding a workable design
for the Aricom had taken him longer and had been more trouble than he had envisaged when the
idea of the project had first occurred to him. There was now little time left for the rest of the work.
Everyone in the science club said it would be a pity if the device did not work. Wiza had spent a lot
of time and effort on it and it was widely believed that if it did work, the Aricom was bound to be
the school's best project in the senior physical science category. This concern had stirred Wiza to
extra efforts to ensure that the Aricom worked, and was completed in time. He relinquished his post
as chairman of the debating society, no longer went to Boy Scout meetings where he was a senior
patrol leader, like Humphrey, and withdrew from membership of the writers' club.
Getting the Aricom to work was extremely difficult. It took Wiza many days and nights before the
task was accomplished; that was on the Monday before the fair. In another two days he put the final
touches to his project.
Now that it was complete the Aricom looked a fine handsome piece. It did not look as though it had
been made by hand.
"I swear you just bought this from IBM-International Business Machines", quipped Mr Wijnbergen,
after inspecting it.
"You will have a tough time on Saturday convincing the judges that you made it yourself."
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"You will be my witness, sir?"
"No thank you!"
"Why?"
"I don't intend to be accused of being an accomplice to pirating. See what I mean?"
The student and teacher laughed, and said "good night" to each other. Wiza hurried away to the
dining-hall for supper, and Mr Wijnbergen strolled to the teacher's compound.
Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School began to assume a festive mood. As well as the activity
concerning the competition, there was also a great deal of excitement about the girls who were
coming to invade the grounds of all-boys KK.
"Are you sure there will be so many?"
"Like locusts."
"Then only a fool won't taste a peck if there will be so many."
"That's the way things are going to be."
"I just hope it won't be a troop of ugly ones only."
"My friend, it's just 'lightning' that's coming, products of God's real science, art and technology."
"Let it be so."
"Ahaa!"
The Red Equinox, the school's musical group specialising in songs by the Beatles, Rolling Stones,
Santana, Grand Funk, The Equals and other musicians, sought permission from the school
authorities to stage a concert on the eve of the fair. There was to be an entry charge of twenty
ngwee per head.
Granted permission, the group started rehearsing. The school was plunged into a whirl of frenzied
preparations- organising the laboratories, checking the adequacy of the dining facilities, making
arrangements for the accommodation of the coming guests and the displaced hosts, and so on.
During that busy first week in July, before the fair was opened on the second Saturday of that
month, officials from the parent body of JETS in Lusaka arrived at the school. By mid-week,
students from the other schools in the province, together with special guests such as judges and
observers from industrial and development agencies, began to arrive. By the middle of Friday
afternoon KK was more colourful and alive than ever before in its history.
Many girls had come just as it had been rumoured and, just as it had been hoped, a lot of them were
pretty, or so they looked to the hosts and to those who came from solely boys' schools, being
unaccustomed to seeing a lot of girls in one place, save at bus stations when they were travelling to
and from home.
All the boys, hosts and guests alike, were alive with anticipation - inspecting themselves in lookingglasses, arranging and rearranging themselves with the zest of recruits bound for a military parade.
Thereafter, they frequently sauntered about, as near to groups of female folk as was possible; like
suspicious looking strangers who in fact were poachers after game to kill and taste; poachers with
guns that were never fired, or with arrows and spears that never left their hands. Poachers hampered
by circumstance.
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Of course, some went further than that and actually greeted the girls, shaking their hands and
chatting them up'. There were also the few more impulsive ones who, within minutes of
acquaintanceship, would try their luck and drop their hearts on the table. In almost all cases their
efforts proved fruitless. Instead of conceding defeat these self-styled heroes would blame their lack
of success not on their own failure, but would say: "Her friend messed things up. She is jealous of
her getting me because she loves me herself."
"No more appetite; I have seen a better one."
"She is scared."
"Shy."
Wiza was too busy and too obsessed with the impending competition to take part in the general
playfulness that pervaded the school. Besides, he had received a very touching letter from his father
a couple of days ago and, consequently, was still reflecting on this, and was in a bad mood.
Whilst Wiza was engrossed in preparations for the fair, strange things were happening to his rival
Yona Sumbukeni. One of the visiting girls had attracted his attention, and he had fallen in love with
her.
The name of the girl and the school from which she hailed were, as yet, unknown to Yona. He had
not yet spoken to her-he was gathering his courage together in order to do so. It was a true love-atfirst-sight affair. In spite of his realisation that she was of a higher social status than himself, and
was really too beautiful for him, Yona vowed to win her. He would use his position as a prefect,
and his seniority as a fifth former, to do so.
The tension of love in Yona became almost too much for him. He could no longer control his
emotions or keep the secret to himself. He confided in his closest friend-Sailasi Mutono.
"What does she look like?"
"I can't find words to describe her. You will just have to see her for yourself to know what I am
talking about. I will show her to you at the dining-hall when they are at supper. I will see to it that I
am one of the prefects on duty there. "
"I will come and pretend to collect something from you-."
"Exactly. Just find out her name, her form and her school for me. I'll know what to do after that."
"Trust me to do that."
Sailasi was able to help Yona by speaking to two boys from Mpika Boys who knew the girl.
"The girl attends Lwitikila Girls-she is in form three, and her name is Everilda. Her friends call her
Evi!"
*
*
*
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Chapter 9
T
HE world is full of things to see and admire, but there are only seven wonders of the world:
the Victoria Falls and the other six, and these cause a lot of fuss.
It is so in geography and it is so in the world of social intercourse. In the Northern Province
of Zambia, it is said that some women are blessed with a minimum and maximum of three footsteps
before a man is driven to tum and look in their direction. They are women worthy of the name. If a
woman makes a man look in her direction at the sound of her first or second footstep, they say she
is useless and without a price, noisy and good for nothing. If, on the other hand, a woman has to
take more than three footsteps to make a man stir, that woman is a nobody. She is neither presence
nor ghost. She is like a coal that won't catch fire and warm anything.
Three steps. That's the optimum for the real woman. The queen bee. Nothing more, nothing less.
At her first step you prick up your ears like a hound awoken; at the second she has you on your
haunches from a reclining position-ready to tum your head even if it means straining your neck; and
at the third footfall your eyes fall upon her and you bark.
Some people, some women, some girls, are like that. They are like Namukokolo, the North Star,
among the constellations of other celestial bodies. They are not like the sun which is so bright that it
blinds, so hot that it bums life and creates deserts, and so aggressive that it occupies the day's sky
alone, deserted by fellow celestial bodies. Nor are they like the moon which allows itself to be
overshadowed by others.
The rest of the other stars, on the other hand, are too small and faint. The North Star is somewhere
in between, crowned in a golden mystery of its own, giving its eternal charm to man's eyes. Some
girls are like that. Like the North Star.
And so everybody in the school came to hear of the enigmatic Evi. Simple, beautiful Evi-the short
'lightning' from Lwitikila Girls' Secondary School. Evi, the eighth wonder of the world.
She was small and dainty, with a smooth-textured, light coppery complexion. Her cropped black
hair was thick and well-cared for. She had a baby face with a look of innocence beyond age and
imagination. Her voice was soft.
Those who had seen and spoken to her said she was very quiet but friendly.
"But it's difficult to know where to start with her. She is too nice."
"That's gold."
"You get what you want faster with silver."
"But especially with charcoal."
The boys would laugh and indulge in jokes about girls in the charcoal grade.
At half-past five that Friday evening, Wiza was alone in the physics laboratory, engrossed in
arranging the place where the Aricom would be exhibited tomorrow morning. The area was at the
western end of one of the benches at the back of the laboratory. Wiza was beginning to feel tired,
and slightly scruffy.
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The door of the laboratory, already slightly ajar, suddenly creaked open further. The sound of
several female voices followed.
"Ssssh, there is someone in here", a voice said.
There was silence, save for the sound of moving feet.
It was one of the groups strolling about the school-five or so girls. Wiza glanced in the direction of
the door then continued with what he was doing-scraping parts of the bench he had blotched with
glue and paint. The girls walked up the middle of the laboratory and, after looking at what
interested them, they returned to the door. Wiza, busy at his work, thought they had left the
laboratory.
He did not hear one of them approaching him until she was quite close. A shiver cut through him at
the sight other: a small, beautiful girl dressed in a good quality sleeveless, multi-coloured cotton
dress, and white and light blue sneakers.
"Excuse me."
"Excused."
"Could you, by any chance, be Wiza ... Wiza Chambuleni?" "I am Wiza Chambuleni."
"How are you?"
"Quite fine. And you?"
"Not bad. Do you remember me?"
Wiza knotted his brow, trying hard to search for a memory of her.
"You know Martin Thole?" the girl asked.
"In-"
"Or Daniel Thole?"
"The friend of my elder brother-"
"Kocha in England."
"I know both of them, very well."
The girl smiled, exposing her small, pure white teeth. In her mellow voice she said: "Martin and
Daniel are my brothers. I met you for the first time at Daniel's home at the single-quarters in Nkana
West in Kitwe, and the second time at Martin's wedding. Kocha knew us, the sisters to Martin and
Daniel, better. My name is Everilda Thole. But everybody calls me Evi."
How girls can grow and change overnight! Four years ago when Wiza had glimpsed Everilda at
Daniel's home and then at Martin's wedding, the girl had been a nondescript primary schoolgirl. It
was surprising how in those four years Everilda had blossomed into such a glittering beauty. As he
looked at her and remembered the now vague moments of his previous meetings with her he
marvelled at what a miracle the whole thing was. Everilda Thole had become this angel before him!
"You have changed so much", he said, admiring her little hands.
"You have changed too. It's only because I knew you were here at KK., and a short while ago I
overheard someone telling a friend that he had left you in the physics laboratory; otherwise I
wouldn't have recognised you."
"Is that so? What did he look like, the one who said he had left me here?"
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"I heard the other call him Humphrey."
"Oh yeah, that's a good friend of mine, my best friend actually."
"The other was Nonde."
"That's 'our' boy, Humphrey's and mine."
Evi smiled and asked, amused: "You also have such things?"
"What?"
"Having- "
"Why not? But not to the extent that you girls do-having mothers, wives and all that", Wiza said
staring at her.
The gloom that had been hanging over him had melted away, extinguished by the resplendence of
her presence and her lyrical voice. He felt light, and elated. So here was the celebrated Evi, the one
he had repeatedly heard about since yesterday, from Nonde and Humphrey. The Evi whose name
was on every male tongue in the school. The Evi who was no other than the Everilda Thole he, in
fact, knew from the past, and who had presented herself before him of her own accord-the Evi who
indeed was a 'lightning' beauty.
"So, how are things?" he said, a little uneasily.
Conversation flowed. Evi had gone to Lwitikila Girls only that year- she was in form three-on
transfer from Fatima Girls in Ndola because her father, retired as a miner, had gone back to
Chipata. Her father's young sister who was keeping her now, a nurse, had been transferred from
Ndola to Mpika ... The exhibit she had brought was in the junior biology category and was a project
called: The Life Cycle of a Fly. It was a dirty project, dealing with rotten meat and maggots, but she
liked it and hoped she would win something tomorrow...
Wiza, on his part, poured out to her everything he could think of.
When a boarder from a girls' school and a boarder from a boys' school meet and like each other,
their feelings about how depriving their schools are as far as 'these things' are concerned are always
betrayed to the world, and the message in their eyes is clear. Problems arise in the circumstances of
their meeting: the roll call, the onlookers and other factors of time and space. So it was with Wiza
and Evi.
As the two swam in the ticklish waters of their verbal intercourse, it was clear to both of them that
they had each discovered a lover. The question at the back of each of their minds was whether or
not the new-found love would be consummated in the limited time before the fair was over, bearing
in mind the difficulties.
Someone entered the laboratory and called Evi's name. It was one of the girls in the group Evi was
with.
"We are waiting for you."
"Sorry. Gertrude, come and meet Wiza."
Gertrude came and greeted Wiza. She was a slim older girl, on the flamboyant side, with a brisk
swinging step and a piping voice.
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"We know each other from Kitwe", Evi explained to her, then turned to Wiza and said; "Gertrude is
a close friend of my elder sister Misozi."
"How's Lwitikila?" Wiza said to Gertrude.
"Kasama Girls."
"Is that so? How's the Provincial HQ then?"
"Boring sometimes", she said and reminded Evi that the other girls were waiting for them.
Evi looked from Gertrude to Wiza and back to Gertrude again.
"I will find you", she said.
Gertrude said "bye" and left, flooding the laboratory with the metallic sound of her shoes as she
hurried away. When she had left, Wiza scratched his forehead and asked Evi if she would be going
to the concert that evening.
"What will it be like?"
"I'm not sure, but the boys are a good band; especially when doing the songs by Eddie."
"Eddie?"
"Eddie Grant."
"Will you be there yourself?"
"I've not decided. I have seen them perform so many times, there will be nothing new for me. But if
you would like to go and see, I can take you there."
"If you think it will be interesting."
"It might be. Where are you staying?"
She explained the directions.
"That's Luangwa seniors' block."
"It's the only block reserved for the girls?"
"No. We reserved two for the girls and three for the boys."
"What about your students; what happened to the ones you moved from the dormitories you have
given to us?"
"We have made arrangements for some to sleep at Lubwa Mission and others in the classrooms."
"Very inconvenient."
"Well, it's just for a few days."
"Even so-"
For a moment their eyes met shyly. Wiza passed a hand through his scruffy hair and broke the
silence that threatened to engulf them.
"Luangwa seniors' block", he said; "I will come and collect you at eight o'clock. The concert will go
on until half ten. Roll call will be at quarter to eleven. The lights will go out at quarter-past eleven.
We can be at the concert up to, say nine o'clock-for an hour that is."
She agreed. Wiza wound up his work, locked the laboratory and walked her up to the open space
between the ablution blocks. They would have walked together further, but they saw Gertrude and
her group standing between the juniors' ablution block and Luangwa juniors' dormitory. They each
said, "bye, see you later" and parted. Evi headed towards her friends and Wiza towards his
dormitory.
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It was another do-or-die business for Wiza-the getting ready for the concert. It would not be wise to
take chances and be too simple in the way one dressed. In his company, Evi would attract a lot of
attention and boys like Alex Kaulu, the vocalist for the Red Equinox, could be stupidly daring.
Losing Evi to another boy? That was not a thing to happen to a person of his standing at KK. It
would dent his pride and reputation terribly. Worse still, it would lead to a serious fight. He applied
shampoo to his hair several times. After the shower, he dressed in his second best outfit, a casual
velvet suit, coffee-brown in colour, which Kocha had sent him as a present after he had passed his
form three. He wore it only on very special occasions– it still looked new and smart-especially with
the collarless, white cotton shirt which Kocha had also sent, and which complemented the suit well.
He reserved his best outfit for tomorrow's ball-the farewell event after the science fair.
He had borrowed a bottle of Brut from Edwin Zuze, who always came to school with such
expensive paraphernalia from Kitwe. He applied the perfume to his body and clothes; threw a piece
of peppermint chewing gum into his mouth, and made a final inspection of himself in the lookingglass; and told the boy Nonde that they could now leave for the concert.
"You look tops", Nonde commented. "Yeah."
"Charm-brains", the boy uttered his invented English version of Wiza's surname, Chambuleni.
"Terrific, she will faint when she sees you."
The boy Nonde also looked splendid in his light brown corduroy trousers, red baggy shirt and toney
red boots. There was a spotless white band round his left wrist and a red ribbon tied round his wellcropped head, the long ends of which dangled over his right ear.
"Do you know who you look like?" Wiza asked him.
"No."
"Jim Kelly, in the film Buck Town"
"Phew!" the boy clenched his right fist and rammed it into his left palm.
They went out of the cabin. Nonde set off for the sick-bay to wait, with Humphrey, for Wiza and
Evi.
The Red Equinox were on the top of the world in many respects that day. Everything about them
and the concert told of high spirits, the kind the band had never displayed at any of their previous
performances. They were playing Mick Jagger's Dead Flowers when Wiza and Evi, in the company
of Humphrey and Nonde, arrived at the dining-hall-the venue of the concert. From outside the hall,
their dry guitars gave one the illusion that they were electric. If you had never had a chance to listen
to the original track, hearing Alex Kaulu screaming, you would think he was the original composer
of the song, or that he was Mick Jagger himself.
Humphrey paid for the four of them. It was crowded, colourful and alive inside. There was a big
population of girls, which gave the concert the colour and dignity many a previous concert by the
Red Equinox at the school had lacked.
There was a spacious, oval-shaped dancing area around which seats had been placed. Beyond this,
boys were standing; others sat on the edge of the tables, legs dangling. Still further behind there
were boys standing on the tables. There was quite a crowd on the dance floor, with the girls
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participating in the dancing. Wiza and his group squeezed on to one of the middle benches facing
the stage. As they settled down, the guitars and drums roared to a stop and loud cheering and
clapping from the crowd filled the hall.
Alex Kaulu skidded to the edge of the stage and, repeatedly thrusting his fist in the air, cried:
"Yeah... yeah... yeah!..."
The crowd echoed his cry. Then, seething and sweating, Alex Kaulu announced that they were now
going to play the last song before the first break; the song was Hey Joe, by Jimi Hendrix. The
crowd yelled.
"Say yeah!", he cried.
"Yeah!", chorused the crowd.
"Feel good... yeah... feel good everybody. You are welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, you are most
welcome to the sound of the Red Equinox- "
He pointed at the large white cloth on the back wall of the stage. On it, there was a red drawing of
the globe, surrounded by four- pointed red stars. Below the globe and the stars were the words, also
red in colour and written in big capitals: THE RED EQUINOX BAND OF KKSS.
"Yeah!", he wailed again, "The Red Equinox, guys and dolls... when the days and nights are equal
in length, the world is at its sweetest and we paint the town red with our sounds ... Red Equinox.
When the number of boys on the dance floor equals the number of girls, the concert is sweetest, and
we paint the whole world red with our rhythm... Yeah... say Yeah!"
"Yeahhh!"
"Red Equinox ... Red Equinox..."
Alex Kaulu had the features of a slender, beautiful girl. He was in his famous beribboned velvet
blazer and a pair of cream, bellbottomed trousers with crimson ribbons down the sides. Apart from
a long, red woollen scarf around his neck, with its tasselled ends falling below his waist, he was
wearing bangles and two different types of necklace and a pair of glittering earrings.
"Who is he?" Evi whispered to Wiza.
"Alex."
"Oh, Alex Kaulu?"
"You know him?"
"No. I have just heard about him. The girls at our school talk about him a lot."
"He is some character."
"He looks it."
Jerry 'Fox' Mtambo, the lead guitarist, finished tuning his guitar. He began to play. The others
joined in and music boomed again.
After the break, the second song was a slow number. Wiza and Evi paired up and danced. They did
not dance to any specific step but just held each other and made soft, swaying movements. The
instruments concluded the song with a smooth whining then quickly exploded into another song,
fast and noisy. They separated and danced on. More people came to the floor. Next to them, two
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young girls arrived and started dancing with each other. Nonde stormed by and asked one of the
girls to dance with rum. He did it by bringing his hand to his waist and bowing slightly to the girl
and saying, "please!" Shyly the girl turned to him and continued dancing. Like a whirlwind, Nonde
swung round and twisted his body in violent rhythmic dancing. The unaccompanied girl gazed in
his direction and laughed admiringly. Evi looked at Wiza; when their eyes met she turned to look in
Nonde's direction and smiled. Wiza brought down his mouth to her ear and said: "He is crazy with
such songs."
"He dances well."
"We call him Mr Rooster."
"Why."
"You can't see he dances like a cockerel?"
She laughed and gazed at Wiza amorously. In the meantime, Humphrey had joined the other girl
but, as usual, was dancing with less ease than Wiza and Nonde. He was generally a less colourful
person, always dressed simply, and somewhat withdrawn. Tonight he wore the same clothes he had
been wearing during the daytime: a pair of black trousers and a green shirt. On occasions such as
this many reached the conclusion that it was strange for him to have Wiza and Nonde as close
friends.
The concert proved to be very successful. Evi enjoyed it, and said so to Wiza at parting. Gertrude
and her group had arrived later in the evening, and had provided Humphrey and Nonde with more
hilarious dancing partnerships, and thus gave Wiza and Evi more time to themselves. But, deep
down in their hearts, Wiza and Evi wished the girls had not come, because after the concert Evi
would be forced to walk back to the dormitories with them instead of walking back with Wiza-just
the two of them alone together.
That night, Wiza went to sleep lost in his life's dream, in relationship to Evi. In the short time since
meeting Evi, the dream had unequivocally honoured Evi and placed her at its core. In time, given
the chance, he would marry her. When Martin Thole's bridal party revisited his memory and
became his own, the image of Evi in the distant future, grown into an educated lady, took the
position of the bride. The 'lightning' bride that was to be his wife.
In the morning, before the fair opened, after they had displayed their projects, Wiza and Evi
bumped into each other outside the laboratories as they were strolling about, waiting for the visitors
to arrive.
"I want to show you something", Evi told Wiza after they had greeted one another.
She opened the textbook she was carrying to reveal a blue envelope addressed: "Evi Thole". Her
name was written in a handwriting Wiza immediately recognised as that of Yona Sumbukeni.
"Take it and read it", Evi urged Wiza.
Wiza took the envelope and unfolded the notepaper it contained. It was a declaration of Yona's love
for Evi. How dare that idiot Yona nurse ideas of having an affair with a girl with whom he, Wiza,
was in love? A girl as good as Evi-what a cheek!
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Wiza was enraged, and more so as he read Yona's declared feelings: "I pray to God that after
reading this letter you will come to appreciate me for what I am and love me the way I love you ...
Please don't let me down. Accept me as your future husband. I may not be handsome but remember
that it is the heart and not the looks that matter... I am a house captain and a prefect, and I will give
you all the protection you need. Our headmaster and I are good friends, he trusts me even more than
the head boy and the deputy head boy. Nothing will go wrong for as long as you are in my care...
This letter is for your eyes only. Destroy it as soon as you have finished reading it."
Wiza's face broke into a derisive smile as he refolded the letter.
"Have you replied to this? Do you know who he is?"
"I have an idea-there is a short, dark guy who has been trailing me. But, well, I don't know-" she
shrugged again.
Through her words and gestures Evi proclaimed her position regarding Yona, which confirmed
Wiza's own triumph in the situation.
"How is he going to know that you also love him?" he teased, smiling.
"You may tell him", she answered looking down and away from him. "You know him, don't you?"
"So, what do I tell him, that Evi–"
Just at that moment Gertrude, Evi's friend, appeared and called Evi away with some urgency. Wiza
was left holding Yona's letter in its blue envelope. As he watched the two girls walk away, Wiza's
heart was full of admiration. It sounded stupid, he knew, but at that moment he felt he was even
prepared to die for her.
Two figures suddenly came into view which Wiza recognised as Yona and Sailasi. They looked as
though they were about to set off and follow Evi, but suddenly Sailasi on his own began climbing
the stairs to the corridor above the laboratory.
Wiza acted swiftly: he cancelled Evi's name on the envelope and replaced it with the name of Yona
Sumbukeni, and then called out after Sailasi: "Here, give this to your friend, Yona– it is from
Everilda Thole". After handing Sailasi the letter, without another word, Wiza turned and walked
away.
*
*
*
Chapter 10
I
T was two o'clock on Saturday– time for the long-awaited distribution of the prizes. The hall
was packed. The students, teachers, government officials and others, in varying degrees of
anxiety, waited impatiently for the presentation to begin.
On the stage, the corpulent figure of the headmaster of Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School sat erect
and imposing in the middle of the row of other educational dignitaries, next to the national
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chairman of JETS, a wiry, grey-haired man with a haughty countenance. On the table, in front of
the official, lay an array of envelopes and well-bound packets-the prizes. There was also a large
silver trophy and a small copper one, to be awarded to the overall winning school and to the
second-placed school, respectively. The headmaster and the JETS official were chatting with
pleasant animation.
Once in a while, with an occasional adjustment of his spectacles and smiling a smile of
sophisticated academic tolerance, the JETS official turned his attention away from the headmaster
and surveyed the crowded hall. There were as many people standing as there were sitting. Most of
the girls were seated at the front of the crowd. Wiza sat between Humphrey and Nonde near the rear
of the hall.
"It will stay here", Nonde was saying to him, talking about the big trophy.
"You talk as if you are the judge."
"I can feel it."
"There is no witchcraft in science."
"Not even scientific witchcraft?"
"There is no such thing as being rational in an irrational way. Superstition is against logic through
and through; it can never be scientific."
"So, if we don't take the trophy then the judges who were assessing the projects are superstitious.
Superstitious scientists."
"You are crazy."
"We deserve to win with the Aricom!"
Wiza eyed him and raised his brow. "You are a superstitious scientist all right", he said. "You
would judge projects by the way they look without considering the invisible aspects of them which
are what matter: the principles, thematic relevance, originality, level of creativity or innovation,
objectives, social and economic importance, and all that."
In Wiza's judgment, the competition had been extremely stiff. KK stood some chance of winning
the trophy, but, indeed, as Mr Wijnbergen had confessed to him shortly after the exhibition, only
some chance. His own presentation was not bad, but you never knew. The group of judges, five of
them serious looking, like no-nonsense criminal investigators, had found Wiza ready and alert. He
had confidently answered question after question; and had fought the battle courageously, with the
shield and cudgel of his intelligence, and with a social tact that was in advance of his years.
"For genuine development to take place in any nation, the citizens of the nation must go to school
first and rid themselves of illiteracy through formal education", he had replied enthusiastically to a
question on the relevance of the Aricom to the theme of the fair, which was: Development Through
Your Own Resources. "The Aricom represents a technology meant to facilitate the teaching of the
physically handicapped; that is people-local human resources-who by the nature of their deformity
cannot use their hands for writing but are capable of using them at least to operate the keyboard.
They will use the Aricom to practice and master basic arithmetic."
"Aricom. Does it stand for anything or is it just a name?"
"It stands for arithmetical computer."
"Arithmetical computer, good."
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"Is it functioning?"
"It is."
"Can you operate it for us to see how it works?"
He had switched on the Aricom and performed a few functions to the satisfaction of his judges.
Then questions pertaining to the principle upon which the technology was based were raised. How
was the hardware designed and made, and how did it work? An electrical engineer-a white man-a
lecturer at the University of Zambia, had asked some particularly searching questions, probing into
such minute details as why Wiza had used a certain size of cable for a given electrical connection
and not something else. What was the point in insulating ABCD?... How?... Why?... Since when?
He was one of those men in life who make you feel guilty and wanting, even when you are right
and adequate. He had spoken with a dry voice which seemed to involuntarily grow sterner when he
was insisting on some point.
After the judging was over, the laboratories had been opened to the general public. Humphrey and
Nonde came and kept him company as he explained the Aricom to the numerous people who came
to his stand. Evi passed by twice and he visited her once at her stand. Her first visit was preceded by
a brief note written in a small, neat feminine hand, brought to him by Nonde. The note simply
enquired how things were "going on that side", announced her intended visit to him in a few
minutes time, and abruptly ended: "LOVE! E.T.", above a tiny scribbling that was her signature.
She arrived fifteen minutes after her note, and admired the Aricom-saying it was fantastic; chatted a
while with him and left. Her second visit to his stand, after he had been to her stand, was longer,
more intimate and ended just before the lunch hour and closing time-twelve o'clock. He had not
seen her again.
He suddenly thought about her and wondered where she was in the hall. He searched for her with
his eyes in the girls' section of the crowd. As if Nonde had read what was on his mind, he said;
"By the way, the sister-in-law, where is she?"
Wiza smiled but said nothing.
"Who?" Humphrey came into the conversation.
"Evi."
"There, in front, to the right of that girl in green, there..."
At that juncture, Mr Wijnbergen, who was to make the announcements, rose and called upon the
headmaster "to say a few words". Mr Dasgupta's opening speech over, Mr Wijnbergen stood again
and requested the JETS national chairman to "now go ahead and distribute the awards". The JETS
official stood up. He adjusted his jacket and spectacles and paused lengthily. After comments about
the present Provincial Science Fair whose standards he said were very high and impressive, the
official began announcing the results in a clear, resonant voice holding captive every ear in the hall.
"The junior agricultural science category", rang out the erudite man's voice. "In fourth position, we
have the fish breeding project, from Mporokoso Secondary School, second-year student: Juliet C. P.
Limwanya."
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As was the established code of etiquette earlier set out by Mr Wijnbergen, the girl, Juliet C. P.
Limwanya, stood up. But she did not receive anything apart from the applause of the crowd. Prizes
were to be given to third, second and first-prize winners only. As soon as she had done what was
expected of her-standi ng up for people to see her-she sat down amid more clapping and cheering,
especially from her schoolmates and friends.
"Third position", returned the official's voice. "The improvement of the nutritional content of the
cassava meal project-Mporokoso Secondary School, third-year student: Obino Kapampa."
A lean-figured boy, with an unhealthy complexion and of an age not easily discernible, stood up at
the rear of the hall. With long strides and a nervous swinging of his thin arms, the boy made his
way to the high table. The JETS official picked up one of the packets on the table and passed it to
Mr Dasgupta who shook hands with the boy and gave him his prize - the packet - which must have
contained three medium-sized books. The boy then shook hands with the JETS official and returned
to his seat. The accompanying applause was louder and longer than that which greeted the occupier
of the fourth position.
The second prize in the junior agricultural science category went to a second-year boy, a member of
the JETS Club of KK. The first prize was awarded to a third-year boy from Mpika Secondary
School.
In the senior agricultural science category, KK took fourth position. Kasama Girls, Isoka Boys and
St. Francis Boys were third, second and first, respectively.
"Next" the official said, "junior biology. Fourth position, photosynthesis project – Luwingu
Secondary school, third-year student... "
Wiza thought of Evi. This was her category.
"Third position..." went on the JETS national chairman. Coming to the second position in that
category, he prefaced his announcement of the result with the statement that the position was shared
by two exhibitors The co-winners he went on to say, were a third-year boy from Kenneth Kaunda
Secondary School, Lawrence Sikazwe, and a third-year girl from Lwitikila Girls' Secondary School,
Everilda B. Thole.
In the categories that followed, KK won one third prize and two second prizes. Then came the last
and toughest category: senior physical science. As the JETS national chairman mentioned the
category, Wiza, in spite of his resolve not to exhibit any signs of anxiety, fidgeted and waited with
unmistakable nervousness for the announcement of the winning names.
"Fourth position, the water purification project - Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School, fourth-year
student, Zealous Soko."
The usual uproar followed as the winner stood up and sat down again.
"Third position ... Second position..."
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The chairman adjusted his glasses and peered at the end of the sheet of paper in his hand. All eyes
in the hall were directed towards him.
"And, lastly, the first position; this goes to the owner of a most remarkable exhibit", he said,
adjusting his glasses once more: "The Arithmetical Computer Project-Aricom-Kenneth Kaunda
Secondary School, fifth-year student, Wiza Otoni Chambuleni."
The burst of acclamation that followed, especially from the students, distinctly declared Wiza the
most famous and respected scientist of the event. As the tall, handsome figure of the prizewinner
rose up and made for the high table, the sound of applause became deafening. It grew still louder
when he received his prize and started walking back to his seat.
Next were the results of the quiz competition which from the fourth position to the first position
were in favour of: St. Francis, Mbala, KK and Mungwi for the junior section, and Mpika, Kasarna
Girls, Lwitikila Girls and KK for the senior section.
The best overall project chosen was Wiza's Aricom.
"And now the overall performance by schools."
St. Francis, Lwitikila and Mpika were placed fourth, third and second, respectively. KK won the
main trophy.
At the invitation of Mr Wijnbergen, the headmaster, and the JETS national chairman made closing
remarks and the ceremony ended.
The jubilation that followed on the part of the hosts was unprecedented. Everybody said the science
club, and particularly Wiza Chambuleni, had brought great honour to KK, not only because his
project was the best in his category and the whole fair, but also for the organisational role he had
played during the preparations for the fair in his capacity as the secretary-general of the science
club, and as an active member of the school.
The ball in the dining-hall that evening was more crowded than the concert on the previous day. It
was more orderly, but lively too. Following a number of dances, soon after Wiza and Evi had
arrived in the hall with Humphrey and Nonde, Evi complained of the heat to Wiza.
"I need some fresh air."
"Let's go outside."
They made their way through the crowd, and walked out of the hall into the night.
"There is a place where we can sit."
"Where?"
"Come this way."
They headed southwards, in the direction of the teachers' compound, along the lane that passed by
the woodwork and technical drawing workshops. They walked, silently, further and further away
from the hall. When the light from the hall was far behind them and they had been swallowed by
the thick darkness of the night, they finally sat down on a slab, a long distance from the lane.
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Unknown to them Yona stood some distance away glaring into the darkness into which Evi and
Wiza had just disappeared. He was taut with envy and bitterness at the sight of Wiza. He could have
tolerated seeing Evi with any other student, but not Wiza! This was the most cruel of things to
happen to him-he was humiliated and embittered to the core.
The whole day had been a bad one for Yona. After the incident at the labs he had left the school
altogether to roam about at Lubwa Mission. He had felt like someone in a coma and had wanted to
be away from the science fair in which Evi and Wiza were participating, He had even made sure
that he escaped the company of his friend, Sailasi, and had slipped out of KK unnoticed.
Crossing the stream between KK and Lubwa Mission he had then branched off into the bush and
wandered about in the forest, watching birds and insects and looking at the vegetation-brooding
over Evi and the incident of the morning. His efforts to try and lose himself in thoughts other than
of Evi and Wiza failed; a strange pain had eventually developed at the back of his head.
Around mid-morning he emerged from the bush into the grounds of Lubwa Mission Primary
School, which he crossed, to reach the mission's graveyard to see again the graves of President
Kenneth Kaunda's father, David Kaunda, and of his mother, Helen. From there he visited the
birthplace of the President, and then walking still further west he returned to KK just before lunch.
After lunch he went to his cubicle to sleep. On waking he lay for some time staring at the ceiling
and thought about his contemplated affair with Evi. Towards supper time Sailasi came to the
cubicle.
"Where have you been since morning, Yona?"
"Around."
"I looked everywhere for you. This thing concerning the girl seems to have over-affected you.
Forget it. You are a man. Come on, let's go for supper. Forget about Wiza and that little girl of his.
Things like this happen to everyone. Let's get moving."
After supper Yona failed to escape Sailasi's company, and was persuaded to follow him to the ball
where he was immediately confronted with what he had tried to avoid the whole day-the sight of
Evi talking to Wiza. She was even dancing with him!
Then, before his eyes, Evi and Wiza had slipped out into the darkness of the night holding hands,
unaware that Yona was watching them.
When, after only a short time Wiza was seen entering the hall alone, Yona's eyes did not leave him.
He watched Wiza as he scanned the crowd looking for Humphrey, who was eventually seen
dancing with Gertrude. Wiza waited impatiently for the music to end. When the music did stop,
Humphrey and Gertrude did not leave the floor but were waiting for the next number. Wiza rushed
over to them.
"Key", he whispered into Humphrey's ear after he had excused himself to Gertrude and drawn his
friend to one side.
"For-?"
"The sick-bay."
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Humphrey thrust his hand into his trouser pocket bringing out a small bunch of keys. Removing one
of the keys, he stealthily slid it into Wiza's hand, winking as he did so.
Yona, from where he was seated, saw everything.
Unaware that Yona was following him, Wiza left the hall. Silently he made his way around the
school buildings to the administration block where he had left Evi. Once satisfied that the place was
deserted, he beckoned Evi to join him. Quietly they unlocked and entered the sick-bay, locking the
door behind them.
*
*
*
They were sound asleep. There was a knock on the door, then another which was impatient,
prolonged and loud. On hearing it Wiza threw the blanket to one side and, between sleep and
awakening, he inquired who it was.
"It's me, Humphrey, open", Humphrey's voice sounded blunt.
"Humphrey, is-"
"Just open. Switch on the light."
"A moment."
He put on the light and checked the time on Humphrey's bedside clock. It was six minutes after
eleven, over twenty minutes after the time for the roll call. Not to alarm Evi, he hid the clock away,
under the bed, woke her up and asked her to dress quickly.
"Wiza, who is it?" Evi whispered sleepily.
"Humphrey."
After they had both dressed, Wiza opened the door. Humphrey appeared before them, as mute as a
monument. Behind Humphrey, Wiza saw something that froze him at once: an anxious-looking
group comprising Yona Sumbukeni, Patrick Sambo the head boy, Sister Magdalene-the white
matron from Lwitikila Girls' Secondary School, and the headmaster, Mr Dasgupta himself.
The matron, Sister Magdalene, came forward and peered behind Wiza. She shook her head
mournfully and withdrew in disgust. She turned and faced Yona Sumbukeni.
"You are right; she is there", she said lamentably, her calm old face full of sad and shocked
embarrassment.
"She is there." She repeated the words to Mr Dasgupta, sounding confused.
“I am very sorry, Sister Magdalene." Mr Dasgupta said, visibly fighting his own embarrassment and
fury. "It's not her fault, she is still a very small girl. Take her back to the dormitory. The boys will
escort you. We will sort out everything tomorrow. Drive carefully back to the boma…”
Without looking at Wiza, he asked Yona Sumbukeni and Patrick Sambo to escort Sister Magdalene
and Evi to the dormitory and left.
"It was Yona Sumbukeni", Humphrey told his friend after the rest had left.
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Wiza, still planted in the doorway, was silent. He gazed at something invisible and distant for a long
time. Eventually he said: "Insist that you didn't give me the key. Just say that I stole it from where
you had hidden it at the dormitory." In the morning, Kenneth Kaunda Secondary School was ablaze
with the story. The school was wrought with tense speculation concerning what the verdict on Wiza
would be. Several meetings were reported to have taken place in the headmaster's office during the
morning.
Soon after lunch, the news broke that Wiza had been expelled. The headmaster handled the matter
in a manner that baffled everyone. He called the police to come and supervise Wiza's departure and
ensure that he left the school peacefully.
At two o'clock, Wiza collected twenty kwacha and fifty ngwee from the bursar for his transport.
Under police surveillance he proceeded to Mweru seniors' hostel to collect his belongings,
Humphrey, Nonde, Luka Talanti and several other friends came to help him pack and to console
him. Before long he was driven away in a police Land Rover to Chinsali boma where he would take
a bus to Mpika. From there, the authorities said, he would connect to Kasama and his home district,
Mbala.
*
*
*
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Part Three
Light and darkness
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Chapter 11
wo solid years and four months had passed. Wiza had spent the years neither at his father’s
homestead nor at another school. He had spent them in the capital city; hundreds of miles
away from the horror of confronting his father. He had become enmeshed in the octopus
limbs of the town, nursing a herculean load of guilt in his soul. Walking the streets; scratching a
living single-handed in the squalor of the world of the deprived.
T
Living like that, two years was a long time. Those two years in the capital city had seemed a
decade, a tortuous and devastating decade, an eternity of Satan's furnace that had charred him from
gold to charcoal, from the shimmering ore of intellectual potency to a deathly dross of intellectual
inertia. He was deeply pained and shamed by it.
During those years, he had perpetually been gripped by a very real and desperate longing to see
Kocha come back from England to help him return to school. In the absence of his brother, apart
from his father, there was no one in the world who could help him get back into school.
On his own, schooling was impossible because of the near tramp's life in which he was trapped. He
could not even attend night-school. Kocha alone could save him.
Wiza could not go home and face his father. He had vowed to himself that he would set foot in his
father's homestead only after he had completed form five and obtained a school certificate. Such
had been his resolve for the past two years and four months. But now he had changed his stance. He
would brave things and go back home to his parents. Kocha had not returned from England as
anticipated. He was expected back only in another year or so. Wiza was afraid to continue with his
present life for another year. He might become too eroded to remain material for further education,
or go insane, or die altogether. He would now go home and wait for Kocha from there.
The news of Koch a's change of programme had come a month ago. That had been during the last
week of the previous month, October. Wiza's anxiety about his brother's arrival in Zambia had been
at its peak. Other returning students who had completed their studies in England arrived in the
country around the end of September. However, instead of Kocha arriving, a letter had come. The
letter had informed him that Kocha would be repeating his final year for medical reasons-he had
been hospitalised with tuberculosis for most of that year. He had, however, finished the course of
his treatment for the disease and was now in good health.
The news had hit Wiza like a bout of cerebral malaria, and after a month had elapsed he still had not
fully recovered from its paralysing jabs of disappointment, desperation and fear.
It terrified him that his
What would Wiza do
who had ignited and
circumstances, his only
elder brother had suffered from such an illness. Suppose Kocha had died?
without him? Kocha was his guiding spirit and idol; the academic luminary
sustained his life's ambition for educational success and, in his present
possible source of salvation. He needed his presence more than ever before.
Always in the past when the two were young they would be together. In times of trouble with his
father Wiza would turn to Kocha whose soothing words would console him: Do not take such
things to heart" he would say. "He is our father and he is concerned about your future. The spirit in
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which he speaks is right and in your interest; he wishes you to do well, to succeed in life. You are
intelligent, bright and loving-I know this. There is tremendous potential in you..."
Thereafter Wiza would be calmed, but would weep at his brother's concern for him.
*
*
*
The minibus, rusty and smoking, crawled its way from town into Kanyama shanty compound. It
was full to bursting point; the air pervaded with the compost odour of suffering humanity. Wiza
Chambuleni, the conductor of the minibus, finished collecting the money from the passengers and
tucked it away in a filthy canvas bag hanging from a string of chitenge around his neck and resting
on his chest.
Quietly, he drew back and stood on the last step, leaning slightly against the door. He was
exhausted and hungry. With faces that choked the minibus, he stared out of the window and for the
umpteenth time he thought of how far away he was from the comforting silence and loving familial
atmosphere of his father's homestead. Here too, in the city, he was far away from the pure water
creeks chattering their way to bigger rivers, the fresh air and the enigmatic tranquillity of the
countryside. All around him now throbbed the uneasy heartbeat of overcrowded squalor - the other
side of the city's glittering serenity and sweet scent.
He hadn't wanted this. He would have preferred to live at his father's homestead with all the guilt of
having been expelled from school. He hadn't expected any of what he was going through to happen
to him. He had hoped to find a clerical job in one of the banks within a month· of his arrival in
Lusaka, and he had hoped to stay at Martin Thole's house for some days before he found himself a
bed-sitter to rent. Reality had held the very opposite in store for him.
Upon his arrival there was
roaming Cairo Road in the
rushed soon after alighting
the news that Martin Thole
training award through the
mid-twenties, had attended
no option but to spend the first month sleeping at Kamwala Bus Station,
vain hope of a white collar job. At Martin Thole's employers - where he
from the bus that had brought him from Chinsali - he was greeted with
had gone to Manchester late last year, for three years. He had obtained a
British Council. The receptionist, a well-spoken beautiful woman in her
to him at that first awkward moment.
"Even his wife went?"
"She has gone to Luanshya, on the Copperbelt, to stay with her parents. Their flat has been given to
one of our accounts personnel."
"Oh!"
"You are related?"
"Not as such; we are family friends."
"I know the family quite well. There is the other one, the one who comes after Martin and works for
the mines-"
"Daniel?"
"Daniel Thole, yes; he went to Canada, early this year. The mines sent him to do-what was that
again? – Metallurgy for something like three years. They are a lucky family."
"Yeah."
"Some of our families!"
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"Thank you, madam."
"You are welcome, bye." He had left. He did not hire a taxi as he had done for the trip from the
station to the office, but walked back to Kamwala bus station.
Thus the bitter life of roaming the streets, scrounging for food, and sleeping among the rabble of
travellers at the bus station had begun. He lived like that until he was arrested by the policemen on
night patrol at the bus station. He was in the cells for two whole weeks, sleeping on a bare, damp,
concrete floor, next to a bucket half-filled with stale-smelling human excreta, enclosed within walls
thick with grime, before being released. Then followed a week at the railway station, and then the
endless transferring from one shack to another-shacks of the shanty compound dwellers-with whom
he would acquaint himself in a bar or at a market place or at the labour office.
During all these days Evi was in his mind. Where was she? What was she doing? Would he, Wiza,
fail to marry her? How he loved her, and how he missed her. He told himself that a day would
eventually come when they would be married.
Initially, his only source of income and basis for negotiating his accommodation were his clothes
and other possessions, which he sold one by one at pathetically low prices. Later he had to do piecework. In October of the following year, Humphrey came to the Great East Road campus of the
University of Zambia.
"My roommate is a third-year in electrical engineering; he is away for practicals until the beginning
of the second term", Humphrey said on the third occasion they met in town and conversation
touched on the subject of Wiza's homelessness. "You can come and stay with me for the time
being."
"Is it safe?"
"You think anyone will notice?"
"I don't know."
"No one will."
Those days he stole into the campus to sleep in Humphrey's room ate five-star food at the university
dining-hall and posed as a student in the university library-one of the best libraries in Africa. Those
were fairy-tale days of memorable strolls with Humphrey by the famous Goma Lakes, the pride of
the only university in the land. They would relax together on the lawns, greener than green, beside
the fragrant shrubs of flowers whilst feasting their eyes upon sophisticated female folk, rich and
dignified in looks and speech. They mingled with swarms of the best brains in the country, who
were bound for Mount Everest of social success. Those days were invigorating nectar, whetting the
appetite of a human bee plucked out from a queue for a flower. They were engraved in his mind
like the pristine drawings of ancient folk on cave stones.
The spell was painfully brief however-only one month. While he had been waiting for admission to
the University of Zambia, Humphrey, with the help of a doctor friend of his mother at the hospital
in Chinsali, had applied to the bursaries committee at the Ministry of Education in Lusaka for a
scholarship to go and study veterinary medicine in Spain-the course not being available at the
University of Zambia. It had been a mere give-it-a-try effort, and Humphrey had even forgotten
about it. But a day came, barely two months after he had arrived on campus, when he received a
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letter of notification from the bursaries committee announcing that he had been awarded the
scholarship. Within a month he had abandoned his studies at the University of Zambia, and had
flown away to the capital of Spain-Madrid. Wiza followed him to Lusaka International Airport to
see him off and to see the airport for the first time. Coming back from the airport to a shack in
Mtendere shanty compound, reliving the experience at the airport, he wept for his friend's success
and for his own plight.
What fate on earth! He had come to learn from Humphrey that other students had done what he and
Evi had done during the Provincial Science Fair. Why had it to be him and Evi who were caught
and expelled from school?
Alone again, Wiza had sold his last possession and was left with only what was on his body: a pair
of blue jeans, a black t-shirt and white and blue sneakers-worn out and dirty.
That was when luck had struck and he had found his present job as a conductor on the decrepit
minibus. But he was not prepared to stay with the job. Tomorrow, Friday, would be his first and last
pay day. His decision to quit had been made quietly, but it was firm to the point of rigidity. On
Saturday he would be on a bus to Mbala his home district, on his way to his father's homestead.
The old, tattered minibus gnawed at the distance with tortured perseverance, discarding gear after
gear-like a troublesome, toothless old man turning away food on grounds that one type of food was
too hard for his gums and the next too soft to kill his hunger-as if it were not a small bus but some
heavy duty truck.
"Conductor, I am getting off at that corner... here ... just here, conductor. I said I am getting off
here", an arrogant male passenger called out.
"There is no station here", Wiza told him.
"What do you mean there is no station here?” the passenger raged at him. "Will the vehicle refuse to
stop if the driver applies the brakes? I have told every conductor to tell his driver to drop me here
and they do just that; my house is just there. Why should I go so far, up to the station and then walk
back? Don't you see how fat I am? You boy, throwaway your madness and tell the driver to stop.
You ... you ... I say tell the driver to stop."
"Tell him yourself."
"Driver, stop!"
"Has the conductor not told you there is no station here?", the driver shouted back.
"Are these spaces around not good enough for you to park just for a few seconds? Who will arrest
you if you park in a safe place just because it is not a bus station?"
"This bus is express."
"What express, what express? This caterpillar of yours is express?
This rotten scrap metal not a bit worthy of being on the road? Are you not just lucky there are no
real policemen these days?"
"Who asked you to jump on the caterpillar? Did we write you a letter pleading with you to come
and ride in our bus?"
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"Just drive. You are a useless pair, the two of you. I am sure your employer is just as hopeless a
beast as yourselves."
"Why do you insult us? I ask you' not to tempt me into disrespecting you; the conductor and 1
haven't insulted you. Our employer is not even here."
"I say just drive and close your mouth."
"I am closing mine; but mind yours,"
"Rats!" the man yelled back, indignantly, with an 'its-over' edge to his explosive voice. It ended
there. His house was far behind by then.
The minibus belched on, like a decrepit old soul with the sickly belly of an alcoholic on the verge of
regurgitating sour milk. Wiza was silent and still, staring hard at something outside the bus, and out
of this world, with a stony meditative expression, as if lost in speculation of how to kill the man.
It was always like this in this job, especially on routes to shanty compounds. This kind of life
irritated him. This whole world, on this other side of urban society, was not his wilderness. It
threatened to suffocate him. Tomorrow, he must go home. He would come back to the towns when'
he had become ripe enough to find a place on the right side of the coin of urban life.
With a form three certificate and statements of form four and first- term form five results, he had
been proved to be too raw. For the post of bank clerk, for instance, the bank managers had insisted
on a minimum of a division three form five certificate.
"Unless you have connections, nothing less will work", a security guard at one of the banks had
cautioned him on a friendly note. "A few years ago, they would have given you the job right away
with these papers. Not now. I am a form five myself with a division six certificate, but you can see
what job I am doing. The managers themselves, some of them, are mere form threes. There is even
one here who is just a primary school leaver."
At another bank, he had been told that they were more interested in those who had dropped out of
university for the quality of clerks they were looking for.
"You see, this is over ten years after Independence. Form fives with good results are everywhere
and no longer the precious manpower they used to be in the sixties. What then of a form three?"
The minibus completed its journey. First and last station. The passengers, looking fatigued, hungry
and thirsty, poured out, leaving it empty but for Wiza and the driver.
"One more trip?" Amos the driver said after the bus had emptied.
"What if it breaks down again?"
"Town and back-"
"The sun is setting. If something goes wrong now, we will end up sleeping on the road like last
week. This bus-"
"Let us go and park then."
Big Dube, the proprietor of the minibus, lived in Kanyama. They drove to his home, a clumsy
partly fenced shack, and parked the minibus. Big Dube was not home. Wiza gave the day's earnings
to Mrs Dube.
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"No business?", Mrs Dube said, putting the money away between her huge breasts.
"It's the bus; it broke down three times."
"Same problem?"
"It was the points today."
"I will explain to him. Good evening. "Some distance from Big Dube's home, Wiza and Amos
shared the rest of the day's earnings and went their separate ways.
Wiza turned into a street leading to the shopping centre. Lost in the crowd, miserable and
thoughtful, he walked along with his head bent forward and his hands in the side pockets of his
jeans-a lonely individual-mentally not of the world around him: piles of shoddy bricks, arrays of
scrap metal and cardboard serving as roofing and walling materials, mountains of garbage, pools of
stagnant water and sharp-scented urine. He was a superior species in a tarnished condition but,
nevertheless, still above the rest of the multitude. Someday, he would be on the other side of
society, where he should be-polished and successful.
The extreme potency of his dream had set before him a life's goal of erudite power, material wealth
and personal prestige to be attained not through licking anyone's boots, which was for misfits like
Yona Sumbukeni, but by merit alone. In this respect he considered himself entitled to great success.
Although a believer in his natural abilities he was also a lover of fairy tales. His imagination had
been stimulated early in his childhood by stories and anecdotes from his grandfather Mazimba, his
father's father-now dead-about men rising from total poverty and insignificance to positions of
authority and affluence. His energies had gradually crystallised into a strong moral attitude, which,
in his youth had translated itself into a powerful ambition. This dream he valued and nursed
jealously and was determined to see that it was not thwarted. His experiences had opened his eyes
to the intricate nature of the world, and life. Let Kocha come back and provide the pillar, and he
would send himself flying heavenward with unstoppable velocity.
"What if nothing happens for the better?", an inner voice said to him. He shrugged involuntarily.
This question was the form of doubt he feared most. Often when he was engrossed in thoughts
about his plight and future, he had such moments of dreadful mistrust of the world and life. Such
moments visit all men of great ambition-a despicable emotional state that courts despair and fires
the need for solitude. He thought of his room and quickened his pace as if to hurry away from his
own thoughts.
Someone behind him patted him on the right shoulder. He turned to face a sturdy, clownish man
who was a complete stranger to him.
"That car is hooting for you", the man said, pointing at a battered white Peugeot 404 station wagon
parked on the other side of the road.
"Oh", Wiza saw the vehicle and recognised it. Big Dube was behind its wheel, the latter's bulk
almost filling an entire half of the car's front seat.
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"What are you thinking about, my friend?", the short stranger said jokingly. "If it is about a woman,
don't waste your time. Women are useless things, my brother. The ruin of this world. The only
language they know is money and sex. You sweat for them and all you get from them is disease ..."
The man continued talking as he passed Wiza. When he was some distance away, Wiza crossed the
street, over to Big Dube.
"How did it go today? Problems again?" Big Dube asked in a worried tone.
"It broke down three times."
"My God, that vehicle; what does it think I will feed my family with? Where am I going to find
money to buy a new carburettor?" He gave the steering wheel a slight blow with his right fist.
"It was not the carburettor today."
"Something else?"
"The points."
"That's a better problem. Where is the bus?"
"At your home."
"It's good you decided to park it early. We see each other tomorrow then", he said and drove off.
Alone again, Wiza continued with his brooding as he proceeded towards the shopping centre. His
earlier emotional state returned and he thought of the refuge of his room of cardboard and scrap
metal, an attachment to the house of a recent acquaintance to whom he paid five kwacha each
month.
Reaching the shopping centre, he went into his favourite No Sweet Without Sweat restaurant and
ordered himself nshima with beef, which he ate by candlelight as it was already dark by the time he
was served and there was no electricity. After supper, he went into Soweto Bar, another favourite
place since he came to Kanyama from Mandevu, three months previously. He drank one beer and
went to his shack. He lay down on the cardboard covering the floor, with his clothes on and without
anything to cover his body, until sleep overcame him.
When Wiza and Amos went to pick up the minibus the following morning, Big Dube gave them
their pay. During the day when the minibus was in a queue of other buses waiting to load and he
was free, Wiza bought himself a new pair of canvas shoes, a shirt, miscellaneous small items, and a
big plastic carrier bag into which he put the rest of his purchases.
"I won't come to work tomorrow", he told Amos the driver, as they were parting, after knocking off
duty.
"You are feeling sick?"
"No."
"You hope to have a beer hangover after your first pay?"
"I have stopped work."
*
*
*
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Chapter 12
O
N his long journey home Wiza was lost in many thoughts, and he realised his dream had
not faded-not at all. It was still fully aglow. He would be highly educated and would
branch out into an exemplary professional career, and he would eventually be married to
the beautiful, sophisticated graduate-Evi.
Evi was back in school somewhere on the Copperbelt. He too would get back into school someday.
What was happening to him now was a temporary setback. In the end he would succeed.
His father received him back at the homestead, as they say, with open arms. After the two years that
had elapsed, Chambuleni's anger and frustration had withered and given way to a terrible fear of
where his son was and what was happening to him. So when Wiza reached home at last,
Chambuleni was very happy.
The sight of Wiza, however, was very depressing to the family. He was very thin and drab-a most
distressing prodigal son-garbed in dirty clothes near to rags that gave him the appearance of an
ailing tramp. He had an unhealthy, greyish complexion that had almost obliterated his natural
freshness and shine-the glaring evidence of a human body that had been subjected to prolonged
hunger, physical hardships and mental strain. Milika, his mother, shed tears the first time she saw
him.
A chicken was killed and cooked in honour of his homecoming. His father and mother surrendered
two of their blankets and a chitenge to him for his bedding, and his brother Chakonta gave him a
pair of his shorts to alternate with his jeans, Wiza's only pair of trousers.
Chakonta cut his hair. The girls washed and pressed his clothes. Love and peace came back into his
life. He could now look forward with assurance and security, whilst living a life in which food,
shelter and laughter were taken for granted like air and daylight.
He ate and slept a great deal. Chakonta was with him most of the time and, after work in the fields,
they would go together to inspect animal traps, or they would attend to other minor chores of their
own. Once in a while, when the weather was bright and hot, they would go to swim at Matumbi
stream, south of the homestead.
Christmas and New Year came and, for Wiza, were spent amid the most joyous of circumstances in
years. A sheep was killed on each of the holidays and there were lively drink-ups at the homestead
attended by other families from Viyamba village. After three months, it was obvious that Wiza was
regaining his weight and health. His complexion had also improved.
Wiza was very happy. Whenever he had a chance to show how grateful he was he would hold his
hands together and say to his father and mother that he owed it to them that he had regained his
health and dignity, and his position in the family.
"No parent could do better", he would say. "I am most grateful to you."
"You don't have to say thank you to a parent", his father would respond. "What else are we here for
as parents if not to take care of our offspring? They say your own child is like an axe. It will drop
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from your shoulder and cut your flesh open but you still pick it up and hang it on your shoulder
again. "
One day, on a Saturday in May, six months after Wiza's return to the homestead, it was quite late in
the evening and Chambuleni had not returned from a journey he had undertaken. He had left on a
bicycle early that morning. He had been wearing his best clothes. After supper, Wiza and Chakonta
had retired to their hut. Chakonta, sitting on his bed, was sewing a patch on one of his pairs of
shorts, and Wiza, lying on his bed, was reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Suddenly,
some distance away they heard the sound of a shaking bicycle mudguard. Wiza and Chakonta
stopped what they were doing to listen-to hear whether the noise would go past the homestead. It
didn't.
"That is father", Chakonta said.
"It must be him."
Wiza coughed and resumed reading. He had reached the part of the book where a group of men
from the nine villages of Umofia, fully dressed and carrying sheathed machetes over their left
shoulders, were taking the boy Ikemefuna to the forests to kill him. One of the men approached the
boy and raised the machete. A short while later the boy was dead. At this point Wiza paused
lengthily and mused about the things to which men were driven by traditionalism. He thought about
witchcraft and evil spirits.
He read the next paragraph slowly, trying to visualise everything. Then placing a pencil between
the pages of the book, he closed it and stretched himself out on the bed, feeling tired from the day's
work at the fields.
Have you stopped reading?", his brother inquired.
"I am just taking a rest."
"I wanted to ask you something I have just remembered."
"You can ask."
"Has anyone ever mentioned Saini to you since you came back from Lusaka? Saini Chundu?"
"What about him?"
"You have heard about him?"
"No. Who is he?"
"I keep forgetting to tell you about him", said Chakonta, suspending his sewing. "There is a man at
Yandenge Village, named Saini Chundu, who recently came from Sumbawanga in Tanzania. They
say he went to Tanzania a long time ago, before Independence. When he left, he was a nobody, but
now he is feared and respected. He came back with all sorts of powers and medicines; there isn't
anything he can't handle; he has cleansed Yandenge village of all the witches already. You should
talk to mother and let her go and see him for you."
"About what?"
"About your schooling."
Wiza merely shook his head. Yes, he wanted to return to school, but did not believe witchcraft
could help. His young brother meant well and Wiza appreciated his concern, but his suggestion was
a forlorn hope. Kocha had always said there wasn't any magic about achievement. Neither medicine
nor witchcraft was of any help when it came to schooling. The only answer was personal initiative,
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good conduct, determination and hard work. Kocha had succeeded because he had lived up to these
be1iefs- Wiza knew he too would religiously follow these disciplines and would succeed just as
Kocha had done.
He picked up his book, but before he resumed reading there was a knock on the door.
"Ohdi", a girl's voice followed, and then came the knock again.
"Are you sleeping?"
"Is that Edna?", responded Chakonta.
"Yes. Father is calling you."
"Tell him I am coming."
"He wants both of you to come."
"Understood."
The veranda of the main house, where Chambuleni and the rest of the family were, was lit by two
kerosene lamps made from tins and placed on small mortars turned upside down. Chambuleni sat
on his animal-skin chair, facing the entrance to the veranda. A small calabash containing katubi
beer with a sucking straw, slightly curved in the middle, resting across its rim, was before him. To
the left of the calabash, water was boiling on the charcoal brazier in an old black pot without a
handle. Milika and Edna were knitting. Pelina was plaiting Tekela's hair. The small ones had
already gone to sleep.
"Girls, go and bring chairs from the living room for your brothers", Milika said as Wiza and
Chakonta arrived at the veranda.
"Are the stools not better?", asked Chambuleni.
"The chairs, yes, will be too high up from the fire; it is cold. Girls, stools!"
Pelina and Tekela for whom the instruction was meant brought out two three-legged, carved stools
from the living-room. After Wiza and Chakonta had sat down, to the right of their mother and the
girls, and opposite their father, Chambuleni remembered there was a drop of katata beer in the
house and asked Milika to serve it to Wiza who didn't take the katubi beer.
"Chakonta will join me here", he said and added a cup of hot water to the calabash and invited
Chakonta to take a pull.
Chakonta knelt down before the calabash, picked up the straw from the mouth of the calabash and
sucked from the frothing vessel.
"It is dynamite!" he quipped afterwards as he replaced the straw, and sat down on the stool again.
"It was ripe three days ago."
"That explains it."
"Your aunt Nakatanga at Yandenge village gave it to me. She greets you all. She is still talking
about Christmas."
Chakonta and the girls laughed and passed comments about Nakatanga, their aunt, and how funny
she was-Christmas in the month of May!
"How is she? So it is to Yandenge that you went?", said Chakonta in an adult manner.
"She is well; it is there I went. I came back late because of her.
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She kept on delaying me after I had finished the business I had gone to do in the village. She
insisted I must eat supper with them; after eating she said I must drink a little with them. I had to
press hard for my departure. That was when she gave me this beer and saw me out of the village."
"She never makes bad beer."
"Nakatanga? No, she is a gifted brewer."
"Mother says she has the hand of a witch when it comes to making beer. Everything she makes is
powerful!"
Milika laughed and said it was true that Nakatanga had the hand of a witch.
"Her mother, my aunt Chitimba, was like that. A single calabash of the beer she had brewed would
leave a whole village senselessly drunk. Nakatanga has taken after her", Chambuleni said.
Conversation progressed. At intervals, Chakonta and his father sucked the katubi from the calabash
while Wiza sipped the katata from a cup.
Wiza could see that his father had something serious on his mind which he would speak of later that
night. He could tell from the way his father talked and addressed him. What his father was going to
talk about, whether it was bad or good, whether it was going to concern him directly or not, he
could not tell; but it was clear to him that the chatting and jesting taking place now was just a
preamble to something more serious.
Having observed his father's temperament, Wiza was quiet most of the time, anticipating a turn in
the conversation at any moment. As time passed, the anxiety that had sprouted in him like a fungus,
after his observation, became too strong to be comfortably tamed. He became uneasy, consumed by
an unfamiliar feverish feeling, so that to hide his emotional state he deliberately drew his mind
away from the rest of the family and what they were talking about.
The living-room, part of which was visible from where he was sitting, attracted his attention. The
room, he mused, had changed greatly from the time when he had been a small boy. In those early
days, everything in it had been modem: the furniture, decorations-it had been like that up to the
time he had completed his primary schooling. Then, bit by bit-he had never figured out when-the
living-room had gradually lost its original appearance and acquired a predominantly traditional
look.
These things had come to his notice with the deterioration of the plastic mat. When the mat had
become tattered, Chambuleni had instructed Milika to throw it away, saying that a new one would
be bought to replace it. The new mat was never bought. Instead, Milika had arranged reed mats
where the old modem, plastic one had been, without any objection from Chambuleni.
Then Chambuleni himself had placed the animal-skin chair, originally on the veranda or in the
kitchen, in the living-room. Later, the clay pot for storing water and other items had been moved
there, giving the room a mixed appearance.
His father too. Hearing him talk now you wouldn't think it was Chambuleni; he had completely
discarded the habit of punctuating his vernacular speech with English words and phrases; and his
Mambwe accent had grown so deep and firm it had completely overcome the previous somewhat
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anglicized tone. He had learnt traditional ballads and when, especially under the influence of
alcohol, he was in the mood, he would sing them loudly in preference to his earlier favourite songs
by Jim Reeves and the Black Mambazo. He had become so comfortable drinking katubi and katata
that Wiza wondered whether he could still enjoy bottled lager.
Pelina mentioned Kocha and asked what he had said in letters about the weather in England at that
time of the year. Wiza became attentive as Kocha and England were mentioned, like an expert
whose subject of specialisation had finally been reached on the agenda. Chakonta had also heard the
question. He turned his attention from his father and quickly answered, as if not to squander the
chance of displaying how rich and wide his knowledge was.
"This time in Inglandi - May. It's hotter than our October!"
"It's not yet so hot, father said Kocha said-" Edna tried to challenge him.
"Why do you argue? I have seen what Kocha writes. I now know that place more than those who
have been there."
The girls laughed scornfully. Tekela, the youngest of them, but the most talkative, further drew in
her breath and murmured something about Chakonta talking as if he could even remember reading
his own name.
"This girl is as stupid as a bush baby. Who cannot remember reading his own name? Me?"
Chakonta growled at her and made as if to slap her face.
"Yes, you", Tekela replied and cringed at Chakonta's fake attempt to slap her.
"This one needs a good beating to rid her of the stupidity in her head. Where did you see a grade
seven who cannot read a letter?".
"Ah! Chakonta, can you read a letter written in English? Say the truth, Chakonta, can you read any
letter?"
"Why not?"
Like an adult, Tekela bulged her eyes, pouted her lips and clapped her hands in sarcastic contempt.
"I can even write a whole book if you want to know, a book as big as the Bible!"
"The world would come to an end if you wrote even a Dongo na Sundu"; Tekela chuckled. "Is it not
yesterday Pelina asked you to read from Benny and Betty and you failed?"
"Did I fail?"
"Didn't you fail? Are you refusing to admit it?", exploded Tekela.
Milika hushed the girl and, turning to Chakonta, said: "Why do you waste your breath on someone
you know yourself has the sharp tongue of a bird?"
"I say it, I am going to pull out that tongue of hers one day", Chakonta said, "then she will learn to
keep it blunt when I replace it in that wide mouth of hers, and the man who will marry her will
thank me for it. Kapele the bird is always singing songs of praise about his brother-in-law; he never
used to until the day his wife confessed to him that it was her brother who had cut her tongue short
and ended her days of being sharp-tongued."
Everybody laughed.
When the petty quarrel between Chakonta and Tekela had ended, Chambuleni asked for the
attention of everyone. He turned to Chakonta and Wiza.
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"I called you here to discuss an important matter with you, Wiza, in the presence of your brother,
your mother and your sisters. They say it does not pay to sit down and watch your neighbour
without finding out what is in his heart. Wisdom is born from questions and time is wealth. What I
want to find out from you, and the main purpose for my calling you, is to find out what your plans
are now, after your wise decision to come back home. A man cannot be without plans for his future.
To look ahead and see one's toiling in the future is the way to live like a man. What do you say?"
"I will go back to school."
"School? How are you going to get a place?"
"I know how."
"Have you got one already?" "No."
"It is good that you still think of going back to school, but it is not school that I want us to talk
about", Chambuleni said firmly. "I see no need for us to even discuss school again. Your schooling,
you know it yourself, is something we have put everything into, but we failed to get you to the end.
I don't see anything coming out of it, even if you obtained a place. I am talking about something
more important-about you settling down. You are now over twenty-one and out of school. It is
important that you settle down and start building a home. You must get married."
The blow sounded savage and cruel to Wiza, Cold dejection gripped him. He lowered his eyes in
angry revolt but smiled tolerantly, contriving not to look petulant. Get married? No, not now, not
here, not him! One part of his heart urged him to state his position there and then; the other, a larger
part, restrained him and cautioned him that his father meant well and deserved to be treated in a
similar spirit, one that would show that Wiza respected and appreciated his proposal. In the
meantime, he would see to it that the proposal was indirectly, but wholly, frustrated. It would be an
unnecessary risk to his relationship with his family to go against the wishes of his father just now.
"What do you say?"
"I have understood."
"What does that mean?"
"I will marry."
"Every man has to marry some day; I want to know when exactly you think you are going to do so.
Is it today or tomorrow or next week or after ten years?"
"I will think about it", replied Wiza. There was torment in his whole being. Was this what he had
plunged himself into by coming back home to his family? His gaze was fixed on the floor; he was
taut with frustration.
"You don't have to go far looking for someone to marry", came his father's voice again. "Your
mother and I are happy with the one you have already chosen. Her family is good. She herself is
hardworking and of good character."
"Who is that?", Wiza raised his head. What was his father talking about?
"Gelina, the daughter of Maselino Sinzumwa of Yandenge village", Chambuleni replied.
Wiza's eyes nearly popped out of his head as the revelation touched the thawed avalanche of his
memory. Gelina, the daughter of Maselino Sinzumwa of Yandenge village some five miles east of
the homestead, was a primary school drop-out he had once dallied with six years ago while he was
in form two. The girl had been in grade six then. She had stopped school the following year as he
was completing form three. Five months ago, weeks after his arrival from Lusaka, he had
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accidentally met Gelina near the homestead on her way from Senga Hill and had walked with her,
out of the outskirts of the homestead, towards Yandenge. He had done it merely for something to
do. A few days later, his mother had told him that Nakatai, one of the women at Yandenge, had on
two occasions asked her whether Wiza was intending to marry Gelina, saying she had seen the two
of them together. Now, Wiza realised that the little incident of his escorting Gelina had caused
serious waves in the sea of village life.
It was irritatingly amusing. Did his parents seriously believe he would marry a girl like Gelina? He,
Wiza, a potential graduate from a fairly well-to-do family? And now, at twenty-one years of age?
"The Sinzumwa clan knows no trouble with anyone". Chambuleni came again.
"Especially the family of Maselino Sinzumwa itself," Milika chimed in.
"No one is a trouble maker in that family; they are peaceful and very hard-working. It is only fate
that the family is so poor."
"Gelina especially", helped Chakonta. "She is as quiet as water in a well."
"I went to Yandenge to go and see Maselino and his wife about the matter, just to hear their opinion
before we send a Siukombe to go and approach the family openly on our behalf. They are
agreeable; they say they would be very happy to see one of my children marrying into their
household. I said to them: 'Let the sun continue rising; your words have made me the happiest man
under the sky.'
"To you, my son, I say: You don't have to worry about anything because I will take care of
everything: the bride-price and other things. You can go and think about it as you say, but let me
have a good answer soon so that we can start making preparations for the wedding-enough time
before the next rainy season ... ", Chambuleni continued.
Wiza stayed moody for over a week. His father's persistence in soliciting his acquiescence to marry
Gelina drove him to stem impatience, and each day that came and went his peace of mind suffered.
There was one thing he was sure of though! If his father went beyond a certain limit in his
endeavours, he, Wiza, would leave the homestead to go and wait for Kocha's return from England
elsewhere.
And that was what he did two weeks later after, without his consent and knowledge, a Siukombe
was sent to Maselino Sinzumwa's home to present insalamu, in the shape of coins amounting to
fifty ngwee. The money was accepted by Maselino Sinzumwa's family, and the ritual concluded
Wiza's engagement to Gelina. The very day he learnt about it, he packed his few belongings and, at
night while everybody was asleep, he fled from the homestead. The family woke up in the morning
to find him gone. Milika, his mother, as was to be expected, wept at length and Chambuleni was
silent for months.
*
*
*
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Chapter 13
K
OCHA was the only hope. His imminent return from England was the last possible hope
of salvation. The thought of his arrival was Wiza's daily enlivener. As the time Kocha was
expected to be back in the country drew nearer, Wiza became more and more anxious to
return to school, and more determined to succeed. In Wiza's life, Kocha was not just a name, he was
also a model of the person Wiza aspired to become.
Wiza's place of self-exile this time was Mpulungu. He earned his living among the fishermen on the
shores of Lake Tanganyika, catching and selling fish with the owners of nets and fishing boats.
Mpulungu was an ideal place. It would be easier to learn about Kocha's return from there because of
the proximity of the place to Senga Hill, and it was cheaper and easier to fend for oneself at
Mpulungu than it had been in Lusaka. Besides, life among the fishermen was not as dehumanising
as had been the life he had experienced in the shanty compounds of the capital city. The fishermen
were good people. They called him 'son' and showed they cared. In Lusaka it had been each man for
himself and the only language had been money.
September came. Every weekend, from the middle of that month, Wiza would catch a lift and travel
to Senga Hill where he would spend hours strolling around with the intention of catching wind of
Koch a's return from England, before returning to Mpulungu. Kocha's arrival in the country, even
before he reached his father's homestead, would be popular news in the village as soon as his
parents knew and talked about it.
Five weekends later, arriving at Senga Hill, Wiza met Chakonta and heard from his young brother
that Kocha would not be coming back that year. He was continuing his studies for another two
years and would come back home only for a short holiday sometime next year.
"Father received a letter from him the day before yesterday; there were two letters in the envelope:
one for father and the other for you."
"Can you come here again, tomorrow, and bring the one which is mine?"
"What time?"
"I will be here by ten o'clock."
The letter from Kocha was, apparently, written in a hurry. It merely greeted him and informed him
that he had completed his first degree with such a good result that his university had offered him a
scholarship to do a two-year MPhil. After this, depending on his performance and other
circumstances, he might proceed to do his PhD for another three years before he returned home.
The authorities in Zambia had agreed and he himself was happy with the arrangement. How,
thought Wiza, could Kocha know of his troubles? Hadn't Chambuleni always warned his children
against bothering Kocha about their problems at home? "I am the one who is the head of the
household and responsible for your welfare, not Kocha'', their father had said. “Leave Kocha alone
so that he can concentrate on his studies. You will have time to talk to him when he is home for
holidays. Don't harass him with your letters."
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In particular, Chambuleni's appeal had been directed at Wiza by requesting him "not to bother your
brother with problems of your own making".
As a result of Chambuleni's request that Kocha be left alone, a custom had developed in the family
whereby the only time the family wrote to him was in reply to Kocha's own letters.
It was too late now to plead with Kocha to return home. Everything in Wiza's world lost meaning
and direction. Hope and vision disintegrated. Darkness and hopeless fear held reign. It was a host of
days before the turmoil in him subsided. When that happened, he began to suffer a nostalgic
longing for his family and his father's homestead. He wanted to get away from the fishermen, away
from Mpulungu and away from the whole jungle of self-exile. But the feeling grew alongside the
brooding resentment of his father's desire to get him married-and to Gelina. The result was a cold
nausea of fear to return home. Neither did he dare to embrace the alternative of going to the big
towns only for a repeat of what he had gone through in Lusaka. So he stuck to his life, among the
fishermen, a bitter, aimless life, but his only option.
Over a year and half passed. It was July. He found himself frequenting Senga Hill at weekends
again, but not to seek information about Kocha's possible return to Zambia for a holiday. He had
put everything to do with Kocha at the back of his mind. His mission tins time had to do with
Gelina. He wanted to find out if there was still something between his family and Gelina's family.
Was there still talk about him marrying Gelina? If everything had died down, he would go back to
his father's homestead and convince his father to let him complete his form five by correspondence
from home.
He had saved his own money for that purpose and already had the enrolment forms from the
correspondence college in Luanshya. After completing his form five by correspondence, he would
find a place at some technical college and later at a university, in or out of the country. He would
then keep away from the homestead and the danger of being lured into marriage at the wrong time
and to a wrong spouse.
Satisfied that things concerning Gelina had died down, after a spate of visits to Senga Hill, Wiza
wrote a letter to his father and told him that he would be coming back to the homestead in a month's
time to discuss something with him. Overcome by emotion, weeping as he concluded the letter, he
even told his father the date on which he would arrive at the homestead.
He arrived at the homestead on the day he had promised. There was no one at home. The family had
gone to the fields, according to a note in his father's handwriting, addressed to him and stuck on the
door of the main house. The note further said the keys for the main house, where there was food
and other things he might need, were in the same old hiding place. He knew the place, a point in the
thatched roof of the kitchen.
On opening the door that was opposite the main bedroom in the main house, the smell of beer
enveloped him and he drew in his breath, shocked at the number of calabashes of katubi and katata
beers that were there. You would think they were meant for some great tribal feast. What was it all
for? Perhaps his sister Pelina had come of age, he thought, and closed the door.
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He ate a couple of bananas from a bunch in a basket in the living- room and went out for a walk
around the homestead to while away time. It felt nice being back home. There were a lot of changes
at the homestead: the group of banana plants behind the kitchen had greatly multiplied; the
population of chickens had increased; the roof of the kitchen had become very old; the furrow was
now inundated with debris and weeds...
He went to the southern fringe of the yard to inspect the bamboos by the entrance of a small
pathway. A good number of the big ones, he noticed, had been removed and there were a lot of
young ones coming up. The spicy scent and healthy, deep green color of the sugar cane by the
pathway attracted his attention next. He walked along the pathway, admiring the succulent stalks.
He thought of eating one but noticed there were no signs of harvesting in any part of the field and
put the idea aside.
Coming to the furrow, he crossed, then sauntered along it in a north-westerly direction. At the place
where the furrow turned north towards the western fringe of the yard, some or the water trickled
along a smaller furrow. He followed the small furrow and came to the fish pond at the foot of an
anthill with a beard of young saninga trees and creepers. He found a termite mound, crushed it and
took his time throwing the termites into the pond, watching the fish compete to swallow them.
When the termites were finished he collected two more mounds. Around half-past three he went
back to the yard and lay on a reed mat under one of the eucalyptus trees in front of the main house.
He dozed off and was awoken by the giggling of the young ones returning from the fields ahead of
their father, mother and elder sisters.
Chakonta was not with the family when they entered the yard. He was in Kasama, Wiza was told.
He had gone there that day to buy some things in town, and would spend the night at the home of an
old friend of Chambuleni from the Copperbelt who had been transferred to Kasama.
Wiza did not ask anything about the beer in the main house, convinced it must be for the 'coming of
age' ceremony of his sister Pelina. Naturally, it would not be in order to ask one's parents or sisters
about something that had to do with such a weighty matter. Chakonta would be the right person to
confirm this when he came back from Kasama.
The family did not go to the fields the following morning. Wiza attributed this to his homecoming.
During the day, his father was perpetually up and down, taking errands to and from the
neighbouring villages. His mother stayed home and was very busy throughout the whole day. Wiza
himself, wrapped in the pleasure of being back home, had his own busy day touring the homestead
and occupied himself with such pastimes as pruning the banana plants and slashing patches of
grass, and so he did not notice many of the strange things that were taking place at the homestead.
When it became clear that Chakonta would not be coming back from Kasama that day - it having
got late without him arriving - his father and mother were strangely restless. This, too, escaped
Wiza's attention.
The next day, the family did not go to the fields again. His father had already left the homestead on
his bicycle when Wiza woke up around half-past seven. The small children, who were the only ones
at home, told him they didn't know where their father had gone, but said he had headed towards
Senga Hill. His mother and the girls - Edna, Pelina and Tekela - had gone to the stream. Later in the
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day the girls came back alone, but their mother had proceeded to Yandenge village, they said, to
discuss something with Aunt Nakatanga.
"What were you doing at the stream?"
"We were removing cassava from the wells."
At noon, the girls prepared lunch. Wiza ate with the small ones. After the meal, he went fishing at
the stream, Matumbi. When he returned home, after a couple of hours, with a small catch, he lay
down on his bed and collapsed into a long, dreamless sleep.
Daylight was approaching its end. Wiza awoke to the rapturous laughter of a crowd. He opened the
door of the hut and, looking out, saw the source of all the laughter and drew back. It was a group of
young and elderly women sitting in front of the kitchen, merry looking and well-dressed." Lunga,
his second-last-born brother, hopping playfully on his left leg by the crowd of the women, saw him
and ran over to him.
"Chakonta has come back from Kasama", the boy informed him, scratching his thigh.
"Go and call him."
"He has gone."
"Where."
"This way."
"To Yandenge village?"
"I don't know."
Tekela appeared nearby from somewhere behind the kitchen. Wiza beckoned to her. When she
came over, he asked her if it was true that Chakonta had come.
"He has."
"Where has he now gone?"
The girl explained that Chakonta had been sent by their father to Nsindo village to go and see
Fanson Sindala and some other people. Fanson Sindala was a local music maestro of great repute,
known everywhere in the thirteen villages around, and beyond. It was said everywhere and without
equivocation that he was the best guitarist and singer in those parts by any standard.
Something stirred inside Wiza but, whatever it was, it disappeared as Wiza caught sight of his
father leaving the main house. Wiza also lost track of his conversation with Tekela. Chambuleni
looked in Wiza's direction and saw him. Wiza rubbed his eyes. Chambuleni looked down and went
back into the house. Tekela had seen him look their way and, like someone caught doing something
forbidden, she told Wiza she was leaving and went away half walking, half trotting.
"There are people in the house", the boy Lunga said to Wiza afterwards.
"What sort of people?"
"Men."
"Who are they?"
"I don't know them; there are many; one of them mentioned your name-"
The boy stopped talking to scratch his thigh. Just then, Chambuleni reappeared from the house,
carrying a medium-sized cardboard box. Out in the yard, without uttering a word to any of the
women seated by the kitchen, he shrugged his shoulders and walked towards Wiza. The women
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turned and quietly watched the father approaching his son. As if in wait for the end of the universe
the world lay quiet under a pale crimson twilight, as the sun touched the horizon.
Wiza felt tense. The strange feeling that had earlier stirred in him welled up again. Slowly, his
father approached; he looked as serious as a man digging a grave.
Behind his father, Wiza saw his sister Edna arriving at the kitchen from the furrow, with an
enormous basin on her head, full of utensils. Behind her was Pelina, balancing a clay pot on her
head. Beyond, to the north, in the direction of Nsindo village, a sound germinated and blossomed-it
was the noise of approaching youths-male and female, laughing, singing, and whistling merrily.
Nearby, in the same direction, there came the violent vibration of a bicycle mudguard-a fast-moving
bicycle had gone over a big bump. In a few seconds Chakonta cruised past towards the main house,
maneuvering the bicycle with a dexterous hand and, clearly, a proud and jovial heart. On the carrier
of the bicycle was something that sent a shiver through Wiza's heart-the large musical instrument
called the babatoni, the giant three stringed gadget of steel, animal skin, and wood that supplied the
thunder-like bass in Fanson Sindala's celebrated band. The instrument was lying on the carrier, with
its face uppermost, as if in conversation with the heavens.
Chambuleni glanced at the instrument then walked on without a pause.
"Let us go inside", he said on reaching Wiza.
Wiza went in and sat on his bed. His father sat on Chakonta's, opposite him. A tense, sombre mood
reigned for a full minute with both father and son face to face like two disputing hills separated by a
river, silent and questioning each other in the inaudible language of their postures and
countenances. Then Chambuleni handed the cardboard box he was carrying to Wiza, cleared his
throat and spoke, tersely, looking directly at Wiza for the first time.
"Try on what is in there and see if they will fit you; they are for your, wedding tomorrow morning; I
am sure everything is the right size."
He cleared his throat again and continued, "You will be marrying Gelina, daughter of Maselino
Sinzumwa, at Yandenge village.
"Your mother and I have spent sleepless nights since you left school, thinking about your future.
Experience and the winds of caution from ancestral spirits have told us that you must marry now
when your blood has started boiling with the whims and errors of early adulthood; that you must
marry a girl like Gelina-someone with whom you can build a home rich in traditional wisdom, a
home with roots. Not a marriage like the jokes of marriages you see in the towns and their spineless
weddings, expensive and colourful for nothing. Useless marriages which stand their ground like a
pole and not like a tree. Where love knows no courage and reverence; as soon as hunger strikes
through the door the love flies away through the window. Your mother and I will not leave you to
throw yourself in that kind of fire or in any other fire. That is why we want you to get married now,
to Gelina whose worthiness we have seen ourselves. Marry, my son, and avoid calamity. The world
has teeth.
"We are getting you into this because we love you. We know the world better. You may look at
things differently, but they say when an elder does a dance there are aspects of it which the eyes of
the young ones cannot see. It is also said that he who makes one travel through the night wins one's
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praise in the morning. Marriage will bring you dignity and integrity. It will make you think twice
about any wrong thing you are about to do because when you are married you think not only of
yourself but also of your family. Your wife and children. What is there for you to wait for? It was
different when you were still at school. There was reason then for marriage to wait. But now, you
have neither school nor employment.
"I respect your desire to go back to school, but I no longer have faith in that ambition. It is a good
ambition but it will not take you anywhere. You must put it aside and look to other things. School is
something but it is not everything. And like any other human endeavour it is not meant for
everybody.
"Life is like that. Anyone can hold a bow and an arrow, but it is not everybody who can kill a
running gazelle with an arrow. It is also not correct that everybody who fails to kill a gazelle with
an arrow is not a good hunter. One may be bad at using the bow and arrow but excellent at handling
a gun or a spear. One does not become a failure in life just by proving to be a failure in hunting or
fanning. School is not any different from these other human activities.
"The new world is trying to give school the status of life itself. You young ones are intoxicated with
that view of things and are being made to regard school as everything, and failure in school as being
failure in life. That is wrong. Illiteracy is bad but it is not a crime; it is not even a shame. What is a
crime and a shame is society's failure to provide schooling-which it considers to be a right and a
matter of life itself-to everybody on the basis of merit. If the uneducated are failures in life, then
society itself is life's failure; for if school is life then society has failed to provide that life, and
cannot boast of being alive or a success.
"It is all nonsense. I have been to school myself, I have been to the towns, I have mixed with the
educated. I know what I am talking about... I knew what I was doing when I stopped working and
left the towns to come and settle here in the bush. There are things education can do for you and
things it cannot do for you.
"There is no need for you to insist on going back to school. It is not wise to put all one's eggs into
one basket-that is a proverb even the white man knows whom you, our children, want to emulate
instead of your ancestors and elders. You have tried hard to be educated-with every support I could
give you-but you failed to complete your secondary school. Don't blame yourself or anyone else for
it-look to something different. Life is such a puzzle. If the devil decides to stand in your way and
fend off your arrows, you can never kill your prey even if your bow and arrows are made of gold
and you are the best huntsman. Should you insist on throwing your arrows in spite of your fate, the
devil will end up turning your arrows upon yourself. Life is like that.
"A porcupine knows not only how to throw its quills but when and where to throw them; for its own
quills may cause it harm. It is true. It is also true regarding the quills of desire in a man's chest.
Many, my son, and avoid calamity."
After a lengthy pause he concluded: "The ceremony starts tonight. You will be leaving for
Yandenge village as soon as the party we have arranged to go with you is ready to start out. The
Siukombe has already arrived. He is Vipingo from Sume village; you must have seen him before,
although you wouldn't know him. You know the duty of a Siukombe. He will be your guide and
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adviser where you are going. You must listen to him carefully and obey everything he tells you.
There is nothing to be frightened of. Just be brave and avoid anything that may embarrass us as a
family. That is all. I must go now."
He stood up and walked out of the hut. Instinctively, Wiza put the cardboard box down on the floor.
The world dissolved into nothingness. Neither matter nor phenomena of any kind seemed to exist–
only vacuum and emptiness.
A long time passed. The sun had set, though there was still light. The wedding party was complete
and ready to start out for Yandenge. Everyone was tired of waiting.
All this time, Wiza had neither moved nor spoken. Several people had since come into the hut,
failed to elicit his response and had gone out mortified. Now he heard a sob right there in the hut.
He turned to see his mother, sitting on the floor with her legs folded to one side, weeping profusely.
He blushed. Their eyes met. He hung his head. Milika rubbed her tears away and began to speak in
a tense, trembling voice: "Wiza, my son, your name 'Wiza' means a lot in this house. You are the
father to your father, my own father-in-law, the legend Kambole himself, the greatest hunter who
ever lived in the Silavwe clan. You cannot let us down on a thing like this and expect me, your
mother, to go to my grave happy. It is because we love you that we have done what we have done.
If we did not love you, why would we bother? We would leave you to wander as you wanted until
life caught up with you, and did to you what it does to the rest who do not live the way the world
requires of them. But we care about you. That is why. Do not betray us. A word is enough to a
person born of human beings. Let the spirits of Kambole, Mbita, Chitanti, Namukunyu and the rest
of our ancestors be with you my son. People are waiting outside. Let us not take more of their time.
They are here because they respect us."
She dropped her eyes to the ground in expectant silence. Chambuleni came in and sat down on
Chakonta's bed but said nothing. Suddenly, Wiza lifted his head and asked for water. He sounded
confused. "Water to drink?" his mother asked.
"For washing."
"You are not supposed to wash until tomorrow morning."
"Where is Chakonta?"
"He is in the yard with the rest of the party."
Chambuleni joined in: "I will send him over when we go out", he said. "I have already explained
everything to him. He will be next to you most of the time where you are going. You will send him
for what you want, and he will tell you certain things you will need to know… he knows where we
have packed everything that you will need…"
"Let us go, father of Wiza", Milika said with relief. "Vipingo, the Siukombe should come and brief
him quickly about the rituals. People are tired of waiting."
She rose to her feet, brushed the dust off her chitenge and went out. Chambuleni followed her
without uttering another word. Shortly afterwards, Vipingo came in. He was a tidy-looking man in
his mid-forties, dark, energetic and sober.
"We are late", he said taking a seat on Chakonta's bed. "It is not a small distance to Yandenge. I
have suggested that I do the explaining of everything later so that we can leave now and avoid
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delaying the party further. Do you have any questions you would like me to answer just now, before
we leave?"
Wiza shook his head.
"Good."
Vipingo went to the door and called out a name. The owner of the name came-a lean, polite man
about Vipingo's age.
"Start off everybody. The bridegroom and I will come behind. Make your pace quick; we are late",
Vipingo instructed him.
The man hurried back. Vipingo sat down on Chakonta's bed again, looking at the cardboard box on
the floor and then at Wiza.
"Let them gain a distance ahead of us", he said.
The commotion and noise of a crowd setting off on a journey started outside: the shuffling of feet,
the clinking of bicycles laden with baggage, the giggling of boys and girls, the noise of the eldersremaining behind for their own part of the celebrations at the homestead-uttering injunctions and
admonitions to the departing party. Wiza thought he felt himself shivering and indeed he was,
lightly, imperceptibly. Chakonta came into the hut and collected the cardboard box.
"I will wait for you outside; we will be together at the rear", Chakonta told Vipingo and went out.
A short while later, the noise of the party could be heard a considerable distance away in the
direction of Yandenge village: isolated singing, whistling, and laughing in announcement of the
happiness and high spirits of a crowd on its way to a great ceremony.
"We can move", Vipingo said and rose.
Wiza stood up too and quietly followed him out of the hut. Chakonta hurried up to the hut and
closed its door.
Dusk was gathering. The twilight had lost its brightness and the world wore a dull grey veil soon to
be dyed black by the impending night. Chambuleni, Milika and other elders came and wished the
trio well through Vipingo, the Siukombe, saying they would be with them in spirit throughout the
night and until their return tomorrow morning.
"Once in a while throw your ears this way and you will hear our drums thundering and our
ululations tearing the sky."
"Travel well, friends."
"The gods and spirits be with you."
"Go well", Vipingo said and urged Wiza and Chakonta to be moving.
*
*
*
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Chapter 14
I
N the tradition of the Lungu people of the southern parts of Mbala District, the wedding festival
goes on for two days and two nights. It begins with the arrival of the bridegroom's party in the
village of the bride in the evening. The party is shown a place, by the hosts, for their base.
There, a big bonfire is made and there is dancing and drinking till morning. Those who are not
relatives, from within the village and from nearby and far-flung villages, are welcome and often
become the majority.
The bridegroom does not take part in the merry-making, but he is not allowed to sleep either. The
Siukombe, as leader and spokesman of the party, is also supposed to refrain from the merrymaking,
and keeps the bridegroom company and awake during the intervals between long marriage lessons.
In the meantime, a similar occasion is taking place on the bride's side, somewhere else in the village
and individuals who so wish are free to commute between the two centres of festivity. In the
morning, rituals pertaining to the handing of the bride to the bridegroom are performed. By noon,
the bridegroom and his party leave for the bridegroom's home. The bride and her own party follow
shortly afterwards.
At the home of the bridegroom's parents, a crowd of elders, most of whom have also spent the
previous night drinking and dancing in celebration and have been waiting for the return of the
bridegroom, welcome both parties, shaking off their fatigue, and stirring the slumbering mood in
the yard to fresh fits of revelry. The bride and her party are shown a hut where they can rest and
work. In the evening, a bonfire is made.
The merry-making continues in the bridegroom's parents' house, where the elders sing and dance to
the drums; outside, by the bonfire, the youths sing and dance to the guitar, the banjo and the
babatoni. The following day, the last rituals are completed and the ceremony ends. The bride and
her party go back home. The bridegroom is then free to go and collect the bride, who now belongs
to him, from her home the following day, and the couple there after live together as husband and
wife.
Apart from some of the intimate details, Wiza knew everything about the wedding ceremony from
what he had seen as a spectator at other weddings and from hearsay. In the middle of the night
journey to Yandenge, as the turmoil in his head abated somewhat, Wiza thought about the
proceedings and wondered if he really was at the centre of the impending wedding; whether, truly,
his soul had surrendered and abandoned his chosen path to the mountain tops of modem education
and living, by succumbing to the devilish force of the path to Yandenge- to a primitive marriage
with an illiterate spouse, Gelina, and not to the Evi of his dreams.
Was it too late to act? But that question, it seemed, was only at the very fringe of the thickets of JUs
reaction and hope. Beyond it, there came into his mind's eye an expansive meadow of the prickly
grass and sticky marsh of his father's and mother's words that evening, words whose treacherous
gloom spelt blood and death. The meadow, merging with the sky all around, lay menacingly before
him with the impassivity of a python waiting to ensnare stray game. In the shape of a ghostly
lullaby that was the resultant sound of a cold breeze and the rhythmic rustling of the prickly grass,
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and with the furious generosity of an old, hungry lion and the diabolical gusto of a wild fire, the
meadow challenged him to cross it.
He was afraid to cross the meadow. He was afraid to push his father and mother aside. What would
he do, where would he go if they disowned him? But again he would find himself wondering
whether his soul had indeed given up his life's battle and whether it was too late to change the
course of events. Neither of his two conflicting thoughts gave up its ground. The mental search for
resolution merely teased his senses and eventually culminated in confusion. Deep, cold, nerveblunting confusion. The confusion became his solace. In its tempest, his nerves were less burdened
with the pain of mental strain. In a sense he could relax.
The night was black, and monstrously still and silent like a corpse-a dry corpse. Chakonta walked
ahead of Wiza, Vipingo behind him. It was not easy picking his way along the path, with its lunatic
bends and its narrow way thickly overhung with grass and branches, even with Chakonta's vague
silhouette in front of him. Chakonta and Vipingo once in a while interrupted the ghostly night
silence around them with snatches of low conversation, and ahead of them, some of the girls and
boys in the party sang hymn-like songs but did not whistle or laugh, as they had done when they
had been on their way to the Chambuleni homestead and when they had just left to begin their
return journey to Yandenge village.
A meteor suddenly lit the sky and, after travelling some distance, vanished. Chakonta and Vipingo
spat on the ground, a curse to the witches and evil spirits responsible for the evil flash in the sky.
Wiza frowned to himself in contempt of their exhibition, and became lost in the mire of his
confusion again, unconscious of the world around him. Extra deep silence followed. The party
snaked on, their minds obviously troubled by the incident.
The buzz of life in Yandenge became suddenly audible. They had entered the outskirts of the
village. Wiza awoke from his stupor but a great spiritual drowsiness fell upon him. Again thoughts
of Evi came flooding into his mind: how beautiful and promising she had been. Right now she must
be at the University of Zambia. She had been completing her form five at the time he left Lusaka
and there was no way a girl like Evi could not have passed well enough to go to university. She
must be on the campus. Evi, his ideal wife. He had not come to resent her for what had happened.
How could he? It had not been her fault.
He saw himself as he would be the following morning, standing next to an awkwardly-spruced-up
Gelina- all crude castor oil and beads, before a crowd of jubilant villagers witnessing his marriage.
Would he really allow things to happen to him that way? Would he travel that crucifyingly
retrogressive journey to the end? A pain stemmed from the back of his head. His spiritual
drowsiness, mingled with confusion and fear, was brought to its most devastating pitch. He
clenched his teeth, and trying to shake off the strain and pain in his head, he plodded on, treading
gingerly, as if careful not to disturb the earth under his feet.
The hosts showed them a whole compound for their base-this was a sign of great respect. Everyone,
except Wiza, was impressed. At most weddings, the provision of even a small, isolated hut with a
meagre yard was deemed sufficient. Here, a separate house was reserved for the few elders who had
come along. This was a good two-roomed house with brick walls; it was the main house of the
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compound, and was to be the main drinking place. The second biggest structure in the compound, a
two-roomed mud house was reserved for Fanson Sindala, the musician, and his band. There would
be beer in there too for the youths. The third, a neat spacious hut, was reserved for the bridegroom.
The rest of the huts in the compound were to be used as the guests wished.
Vipingo inspected the hut for the bridegroom and after he had lit the kerosene lamp invited Wiza to
enter. Like a prisoner invited into a cell on arrival from court, Wiza obeyed. Vipingo gave him a
newly-carved three-legged stool brought from home.
"This stool is specially for you", he said. "It has not been used by anyone. You can see for yourself
that it is new. From now, until the wedding is over, you are not to sit on anything other than this
stool. It is a precaution against witchcraft, apart from being tradition. You can sit down and rest. I
will come back soon; let me just organise a few other things outside."
After Vipingo had gene out, Chakonta brought the luggage into the hut. When he was through, he
closed the door and knelt down before Wiza. Quietly, he put down on the floor an old handkerchief,
tern and drab, containing a Vaseline bottle, half-filled with a dark jellyish substance, two fetishes,
each tied to a wax string, a piece of paper in which was wrapped a mixture of powdered medicines,
and eight pieces of two different types of root, each piece the size of a small baby's finger. After he
had untied the handkerchief, Chakonta opened the Vaseline bottle. He took a little of its contents
with the tip of his index finger and applied it to his hands, arms and face.
"Do the same."
Without a word, mechanically, like an electrically-driven doll, Wiza applied the substance.
"It is for keeping your eyes open to the secret evil doings of those who are not happy with your
marrying of the bride and who may want to sabotage the wedding", Chakonta explained after Wiza
was through.
The fetishes-charms for good luck-were tied round their arms under their armpits. The powdered
medicine was thrown into a lukombo of water and drunk; this was medicine for making one vomit
as soon as one had swallowed witchcraft or simple poison. Then the pieces of root were hidden in
pairs, by Chakonta, at the four corners of the roof-one of each type-as a defence against any
dangerous things that might be thrown on to the roof.
Weddings were not always the safe occasions they were generally considered to be. The secret
admirer of a bride or bridegroom who had failed to win her or his heart, and other enemies, often
attended weddings with all kinds of sinister intentions.
"Father told me to tell you not to shake hands with anybody until the wedding is over", Chakonta
said, placing the bottle of Vaseline, the lukombo and the handkerchief back into one of the bags.
"Ohdi." It was Vipingo. Chakonta lifted the straw door from the doorway and Vipingo entered
carrying a stool;
"Have I disturbed you?" he said.
"No", replied Chakonta, "we were just trying to see hew the suit will fit the bridegroom tomorrow."
"Does it fit him well?"
"Very well."
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"Good. Time is not with us, friends; you, Chakonta can leave us. I have finished the task outside;
the bridegroom and I must now start our secret business.”
Chakonta said it was true and bowed out, leaving the door slightly open. The Siukombe sat down
opposite Wiza on the stool he had brought with him from outside. He immediately assumed a
dutiful posture. Taking a furtive glance at him, Wiza trembled at what a serious-looking man he
was. Everything about him vividly revealed he was an expert at his job as a Siukombe and that he
was a man who had enjoyed that role at many- very many-weddings in the past; a no-nonsense wise
man whose fierce sense of rectitude was belied by the even tone of his voice and melancholy face.
"I am sure your mind has settled; you can listen to me properly and understand the things I will talk
about", he began.
Wiza shifted, an all-consuming nervousness surging through his body and soul.
"Is that not so?"
Wiza nodded, so faintly the Siukombe nearly missed the movement.
"This is very important business", Vipingo continued evenly. "You must be very attentive. If you
listen to me carefully and follow my words, everything will go smoothly like water coursing down
a throat and, tomorrow, everybody will say you are a child born of human parents and not of
animals. If you don't, things will go wrong and tomorrow the obvious will happen: our names-yours
and mine, and the name of your family-will be laughed at.
"Unfortunately, I will be the one to take the worst insults; people will say I did not chaperone you
properly. They will tear my name apart and say I have ceased to be suitable as Siukombe. That will
be the end of me. After that, no one will be fool enough to give me so much respect as to trust me
with their bridegroom. Now my friend, do you think I am going to like it? Eh? I have never been let
down by anyone for whom I have acted as Siukombe, and I have acted as one thrice or so every
year since so long ago I cannot even remember when. Not a single soul has caused me shame. I do
not expect you to be the first person to do so.
"If you have any dust of doubt about this wedding or marriage in general now, I implore you to
throw it away through that door, here and now, because I won't tolerate or excuse you for anything
short of excellence.
"You are a respectable young man from a very respected family. I agreed to come here and be your
guide and spokesperson in my duties as a Siukombe because of the high respect I have for your
father and because I have trust that you are not the kind of young man who will let me down.
Where I am not sure of the person I am to chaperone or his parents, I always refuse to do the job. I
fear risking my name. It is nature's demand that dogs should counsel fellow dogs and human beings
fellow human beings.
"I am too full of reverence in my heart for the ancient, sacred rituals of our customs, left to us by
generations of our ancestors, to waste my breath on the furtherance of the spirit of our forefathers
on people who are unworthy of it-ne'er-do-wells with heads full of nothing but air. To me, it is a sin
to talk of such sacred wealth to a man that you know is a living corpse. Do you follow what I am
saying?"
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"I do."
"You do?"
"I do."
"You also promise to listen to me carefully and to the elders who are going to give you marriage
lessons?"
"I do."
"The word is from your mouth. The spirits of your ancestors will be my witness. There are three
things I am going to talk to you about: the wedding ceremony itself, the way you are supposed to
conduct yourself during the wedding and, lastly, the marriage lessons to be conducted by the elders
when I go and call them. I will start with the wedding ceremony which is the main subject. May I
start explaining?"
Wiza was silent. His mind was far away, staring into a dark void in mute desperation for away to
save himself from the fangs between which he was about to find himself resting. But Wiza was not
scheming anything- he was too full of anger and horror.
"Do I go ahead or not?"
Dead silence.
"Wiza", called the Siukombe.
Wiza looked at him, awakening only then.
"If there is anything you would like to ask, you can ask me before I proceed. Do you have a
question or something to say?"
"No."
"So, I can start explaining?"
"Yes."
"You are young and educated; your head can absorb a lot of information at one time, and it can
learn fast."
Sickened with hopelessness, Wiza clasped his head in his hands and continued gazing at the floor to
suppress the frustration that was burning in him like a charcoal fire.
Outside, the bonfire had been made and now became so fully ablaze that some of its light reached
the hut. The beer had been brought by the hosts, and Fanson Sindala and his band finished tuning
their instruments and began playing a low instrumental tune. It was a sad, slow tune-a cool cry-the
type that complains in a peaceful way, cries pitifully for mercy, and caresses the heart with sorrow.
The twanging of the guitar pierced his ears in smooth electrifying waves and touched his nerves
with a soft warmth. The rhythm, tender and sonorous, tugged at his heart-strings, fanning his
thoughts and sending ripples to all parts of his body. The frustration in him faded away and gave
way to sentimental reflection: Evi ... Evi ... Evi!
Vipingo called his name again. He looked up at him, dreamily. Having imagined Wiza was
pondering a question, Vipingo asked him to postpone it until another time. Then he began his talk.
The first two subjects-the wedding ceremony and conduct on Wiza's part during the wedding-were
long. It was some time before he turned to the last subject.
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"The last issue as I said is on the marriage lessons", he said. "There is not much to say on this one.
Only two things need a little explanation. First, as I have explained earlier, you must listen carefully
to what the elders are going to tell you when they come. I will also be around to put in a word
where necessary, but it is to them you will have to give your full attention. If you don't, they will
sense it and they won't tell you everything you need to know about marriage-that is, they won't
explain everything in depth, and that will not be good.
"Second - the elders will also come and mention it-all the knowledge that will be imparted to you
here is a total secret. It is for your ears, and for the ears of those who have passed through a
traditional wedding, only. Nothing of it should be divulged to any other person, not even to your
own brother. It is a serious abomination to do so. It is equivalent to stripping your own mother
naked and doing terrible things to her. I am finished now. One word is a thousand words to a wise
man. I am going to fetch the elders. I won't come with them right away. You can relax for some
time."
He stood up and walked out. Fanson Sindala and his band concluded a fast tune and immediately
picked up a cool kakonko. The guitar whined complicatedly in a shrill tone, the notes rising higher
and higher. The banjo met it with smooth alto ejaculations while the babatoni plucked a deep
throbbing bass that shook the earth and the sky with its groans. Fanson Sindala burst out into one
prolonged wail, tearing the August night like an electric arc. His magical voice then smoothly
descended into a cry and then into words. The rest of the crowd picked up the song and flooded the
night with their singing. The music continued with a whirl of countless footfalls telling of the most
lively dancing. After the first verse, the crowd refrained and Fanson Sindala took reign alone, in a
low poetic cry:
Get closer Maliya,
Get closer woman.
I plead with you woman,
Get closer to me.
After the second verse, he substituted the name Maliya with that of Gelina the bride, and the last
sentence became: "Get closer to me, Wiza Otoni Kambole Chambuleni, the man with a beautiful
face and a loving heart."
Wiza shivered. Martin Thole's wedding reception those many years ago in Kitwe presented itself
before him in all its delicious modern colour and finery. Where Martin and his bride had been, he
saw himself and Evi, looking polished and very modern.
The vision vanished, and a pain came to the back of his neck; he shook his head to try and dispel itthe pain continued. He gazed at the door. From where he was, through the small opening of the
door, he glimpsed the wild dancing, and the bonfire plunging its tongues into the night with the zest
of tribal warriors. For a long spell he kept his eyes there while the music filled his ears with a
confused message of love, sadness, joy, tears, hatred and death.
Another song and half later, the door opened and Vipingo entered, followed by three elderly men. It
was time for the lessons on marriage.
*
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Chapter 15
T
HE rest of the ceremony happened- according to plan, and the wedding was concluded to
the happiness of Wiza's parents. Tomorrow morning he was to go to Yandenge village to
collect Gelina. That Sunday evening, after the wedding was over and people had dispersed,
he sat alone behind the itanda thinking and reflecting on his life. There was a tense kind of serenity
about him; everybody at home, including the small ones, knew better than to disturb him. The other
members of the family were busy attending to petty chores or resting or playing.
It was a calm yet grim evening. A fiery crimson sun, muted by approaching dusk, was shining on
the sultry earth, calling a sad, tearful goodbye in the midst of a cluster of small, whitish grey clouds.
Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, the girls and the small ones raised a din and began hurrying
towards the path that led to Senga Hill. They were shouting Kocha's name. Chambuleni and Milika
rushed out of the main house and stood by the stairs with their arms akimbo, gazing where the girls
and the little ones were going. It was true, Kocha was coming along the path towards home-he had
returned from England.
When the girls and the small ones had reached him, Kocha put the big black travelling bag he was
carrying on a patch of grass, by the path, and began shaking hands with them, smiling,
acknowledging his sisters' and brothers' admiration of him. He was clad in a striped navy blue suit,
a pair of black, pointed leather shoes and a white cotton shirt. On his wrist was a gold watch with a
dark leather strap. Everything about him looked new, expensive and of excellent quality. Kocha
himself sparkled handsomely and appeared fresh despite his long journey by road from Lusaka.
After the rapturous bout of greetings, Pelina lifted the travelling bag on her head, and the small
crowd of welcomers, together with the newly- arrived, proceeded to the yard. There, Chambuleni
and Milika each embraced Kocha excitedly, saying it was not true what they were seeing.
"Girls, hurry, bring your brother a chair."
"Quick, Tekela; a chair."
"Muzeya, get me my chair, the skin one."
"Lunga ... the reed mat... it is in the kitchen.”
The bushes behind the hut stirred, and Chakonta came rushing into the yard from the fish pond
where he said he had been throwing food to the fish. He began shouting his greetings, as if
possessed, long before he reached Kocha, asking the gods and spirits not to tum what he was seeing
into a dream, and swearing that his eyes were deceiving him.
"Greetings, lost one", he said deliriously on reaching Kocha and, like an old man addicted to
clownery, he grabbed Kocha's right hand with his own two hands and shook it in a lively up-anddown motion.
"How are you?" responded Kocha.
"Where there is breath, there is a life; you have found us breathing. Is everything well where you
are coming from?"
"In England?"
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"Land of the white people.”
"Everything was fine when I left."
"Good thing."
Tekela and Muzeya brought the chairs. Kocha and Chambuleni sat down. Milika followed the small
one, Lunga, into the kitchen and brought out the reed mat for herself. She spread the mat next to
Chambuleni and sat, facing Kocha, with her legs stretched in front of her. The girls and the small
ones joined her on the reed mat. Chakonta found himself a stool and joined them all.
"When did you arrive in the country?" Chambuleni asked.
"Last Saturday. Between Monday and Friday, I saw my employers in Lusaka and on the
Copperbelt. I started for here on Saturday, yesterday."
"You had a good journey?", his mother asked.
"But very tiring."
"Naturally. What do you expect when you cross from one end of the world to the other the way you
have?", Chakonta chimed in.
Kocha was anxious to ask about Wiza's whereabouts, and did so.
Chakonta, Pelina and the young ones, received the enquiry with apparent uneasiness, looking at
their father and mother as if requesting their support. Chambuleni explained the troubles in Wiza's
life, and how he had fled to the towns, and had not come home for a very long time.
"When he finally came back", continued Chambuleni, "he could not go to school again, although he
said he wanted to. It was too late. His age had advanced and he had changed. What he needed was
something to make him responsible, to keep him from evil temptations. So we have had to give him
a home. He is now a married man. His wedding ended a short while ago, today. If you had arrived
yesterday, you could have joined in the ceremony."
An expression of great pain and disappointment came over Kocha's face. Attempts to suppress it
were in vain. Its spirit dampening marks were betrayed to every eye present.
"We had to do it", his father said.
"With his approval?"
"Well, not as such; some force had to be used. You know how your brother is. He would not have
offered himself just like that."
Kocha was silent.
"We had to do it", repeated Chambuleni, firmly.
"To save him from the dangers of this world", Milika added. "When a man has a wife and children,
he is careful with his life; his soul and being are tethered. He can throw eyes on this and that, but he
also looks behind him where his family is. He has roots and limits. You know your brother. He has
difficult blood. Without a wife and children to think of, his life was soon going to be ruined. When
he was still at school, the books were holding him, but now, when he is out of school, what was to
stop him from going anywhere the wind was blowing? Nothing. Only marriage will save him.
Things have failed with his schooling; he tried and we also tried but failed. What sense is there to
continue trying? Your brother was probably not meant for school. "
"It is good that he has married", Chambuleni said.
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"Some of us would have married a long time ago, but we have been waiting for you, our elder
brother, to open the way", Chakonta supplemented, smiling, oblivious to the emotional stress on his
brother's face and to his silence.
Kocha, close to tears, straightened his posture and bit his lower lip lightly to assuage the bitterness
within him.
"Where is he?"
"Wiza?", belched Chakonta.
"Wiza."
Milika indicated to Kocha that Wiza must be out of the homestead, taking a stroll in the bush. "If he
was around, he would have come and joined us by now", she said.
One of the girls, Tekela the talkative one, refuted that and claimed that Wiza was in the yard, that
she had seen him sitting behind the itanda, with his head resting on his knees, when she and the
others had been running to go and meet Kocha.
"That cannot be", Chakonta interjected.
"It is true; I saw him."
"He would have heard us and come."
"He is there. Why do you argue?"
"Liar!"
Tekela, as usual, insisted until the boys Muzeya and Lunga offered to go to the hut and confirm it.
They entered into a bet with Tekela and ran off to the hut. After a few moments, they came back
and reported Wiza's presence there. A moment of uneasy silence followed, then Milika asked: "Did
you tell him Kocha has come?"
"We told him."
Kocha said he was going to greet him and stood up. But before, he could walk away, he saw Wiza
approaching.
Wiza appeared, drab and unkempt, like one at a funeral. They shook hands uneasily and enquired
about each other's health in low melancholy voices. Pain was evident on their brows. Chakonta left
his seat and let Wiza sit there. He fetched himself another stool and sat down between Wiza and his
father. Three-year-old Obeti, a boy, the eleventh and last born, went and propped himself between
Wiza's legs and started playing with Wiza's hands. Wiza let him, but did not answer the boy's
playful questions.
Conversation in the group lost direction. It limped from trivial subject to trivial subject. No one
mentioned the wedding or said anything about marriage in general. Wiza became silent. Kocha
constantly stole glances at him-all the while nursing a feeling of pity blended with outrage. Wizahis immediate younger brother and favourite member of the family--once fresh, handsome, neat and
lively, was now dispirited and dull looking. He had a strained vacant look, and in his pale face his
once clear eyes were red and fiery, like the eyes of a trapped rat dying in a hole choked with smoke
and guarded by a cat. He wore tattered jeans with patches all over them, a once-white singlet, tom
here and there, and a pair of worn-out tropical sandals.
Milika excused herself.
"Girls, let us go and cook", she said, wearily.
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She stood up and together with the girls went to the kitchen and started bustling around in
preparation for supper. Not long after that, Wiza mumbled, almost to himself, that he was going to
lie down and left. He refused to turn up at the main house for supper, saying he would eat
tomorrow.
When it was time to sleep Kocha was shown a room in the main house. He and Chakonta were to
share the room. Wiza was now a married man; a hut was reserved for him. He would sleep there
alone and be joined by his wife tomorrow.
Sleep did not come easily to Kocha. The pain of the knowledge of Wiza not having completed
secondary school and of his recent marriage was tearing at his heart. He resolved to intervene and
save him. He would not go back to England to complete his MPhil. Instead, he would start working
and let Wiza stay with him in town. He was convinced that if and when he found him a school,
Wiza would pass his form five well enough to go to university. Initially, he would convince his
father and mother to let Wiza live with him on the grounds that he just wanted to get him a job that
would be good enough to enable him to have his own decent accommodation, and for his wife to
join him. After Wiza had completed his studies and had a place at university, it would be easy to
convince his parents to let him continue his education. After a long time of waiting, Wiza's wife
would leave him of her own accord, and Wiza would re-marry at a later time, to a better woman and
in a better way. He collapsed into sleep, at last, determined to talk seriously with his parents first
thing the following day.
When he woke up in the morning, he found a crowd of people sitting outside the main house, his
father and mother among them. No one greeted him and only a few took notice of him. They all
seemed engrossed in serious thought. Some of the women and girls had tears in their eyes, which
they seemed to be suppressing.
One of the men, a distant relative, came to him and said: "There is trouble. Go and sit down there."
The man pointed to the worn stool he had been sitting on. Kocha nervously seated himself. The
man fetched himself an old sack which he folded and sat on next to him.
"It has never happened in our clan-what he has done, your young brother", he said to Kocha in a
low sad voice.
"Who?"
"Wiza", his voice sounded mournful. He paused for a moment, then went on: "He has taken his life.
His body is still in the hut, hanging from the roof. We are waiting for Saini Chundu the medicine
man at Yandenge village to bring us medicine before we can bring the body down. Such a thing has
never happened in the whole of our clan. Taking one's own life!"
Kocha, not wanting to believe the man's words, sought out his father in the crowd.
"It is true", Chambuleni confirmed. "It is true. Wiza has taken his own life."
Saini Chundu, the medicine man, arrived around midday. Nine men including Saini Chundu himself
washed their faces, hands and feet in a tin bath containing medicinal water. After Saini Chundu had
sprinkled different kinds of medicine around the hut, and on the roof, the men entered and brought
out Wiza's body wrapped in a blanket. They took the body straight into the bush and came back
hours later after they had buried it.
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The crowd dispersed.
Wiza had been buried without a normal funeral, and without anyone crying openly for him. He had
committed suicide: it was not allowed by custom to hold the usual ceremony or mourn openly for
someone who had taken his own life.
The hut where he had tragically died was burnt to the ground that same day by the same group of
nine, after everyone else had gone away.
Kocha lay awake through the night. It was all so clear to him now. Why had he not seen it before?
He had been so concerned about his own education and his own future that he had failed to think of
Wiza. He should have known something was wrong.
Kocha solemnly made up his mind to leave his father's home the following day, but before going he
must pay his last respects to his dead brother.
In the morning when the world lay silent and still under a pale sky, Kocha made his way through
the thick bush to the grave of his brother. A fiery sun adorned with grey-fingered clouds stood
above the eastern horizon. There was an air of horrifying serenity-Kocha could feel it everywhere.
The grave was marked by a carelessly dug ridge of grey earth in the centre of a group of trees. Here
Kocha knelt throughout the day in great sorrow.
When the sun had set he made his way to the homestead. There he gathered his belongings together
and set out for the bus stop at Senga Hill.
The end.
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