by Adeline Loh
Pausing at a marshy yet enchanting floodplain a little farther on, we watched a 500-strong herd of buffaloes ruminate under a grove of shady mahogany trees. Nearby crocodiles yawned and left their jaws wide open as if they were hoping some animal would voluntarily stroll into their mouths. We continued rolling across the dry, wooded savannah, with mad impalas everywhere prancing about like dainty princesses on springy high heels. Once the day progressed to broiler point, though, more and more mammals were seen seeking respite from the burning sun.
Come noontime, we were as sluggish as the wildlife so Major picked a heartbreakingly beautiful riverside spot to have a picnic lunch followed by a bout of forty winks. Unravelling our thick blankets under a dappled canopy of browning leaves, we devoured ham sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, fried chicken, tomatoes and fruit while watching elephants suck water, hippos sunbathe, crocodiles lounge and giraffes tower over everything else. In the middle of the Luangwa River were two men trawling for fish in a pirogue that was merely an inch above water. Occasionally, birds would fly in for a surprise visit to say hello, or more likely, check if we were going to finish our crumbs.
After a productive day of animal peeping followed by a stomach-busting dinner, I was naturally in high spirits. So happy that I took a shower without any prompting from Chan about the just-got-out-of-the-Dumpster look I usually sported at the end of a long sweaty day. I scrubbed, rinsed and stared in fascination at the discoloured pool of water that slid from my filth-bedaubed body.
Stepping out of the cubicle clean as a whistle, I dried off and got dressed. As I stretched out my hand to unlatch the door to leave, I noticed a gleaming five-inch decor item made of china sitting inert on a thin protrusion behind the door. It took me a while to realize what it really was, and when I did, I shrieked a falsetto note that I’d no idea I was capable of ever hitting. My reflexes bounded me backwards, and I stared with unspeakable fright at the slimy freak of nature before me. The dark grey scaly creature gazed back at me with hostile lidless eyes and ballooned up its neck to emit a most guttural, bloodcurdling croak. I was pretty sure that horrid little thing wanted to mate with me.
Of course I’d later discover that it was a square-marked toad whose main hobby was hopping into damp bathrooms with leaky taps. Right now though, a major crisis was on my hands: how was I going to get out without the risk of it leaping towards my face and depositing eggs in my nostrils? My fear, however irrational and unfounded, drove up my heart rate so quick that I felt faint. I thought I was doomed.
I paced frantically around the bathroom in circles like a mental asylum inmate, praying it was nothing more than a misty hallucination from having over-sniffed the floral-scented shower gel I’d borrowed from Chan. But no, after pressing my eyelids shut several times, it was still there staring at me, silently mocking me. I gathered that it must have been divine punishment for eating so many frogs’ legs – my favourite food by far, especially when cooked with basil leaves and dried chilli. Yum.
Eventually, I knew I had no other option but to suck it up and get out on my own. Psyching myself up, I took a breath so deep that I choked. I closed one eye (the one nearest to the toad) and cautiously crept towards the door. Stretching my trembling right hand to undo the latch whilst covering my face with my other, I pulled the door open very gently to avoid alarming the toad. Once it was open just enough, I ran out – yelling and covering my eyes – with such astonishing speed that I would’ve bulldozed my grandmother if she was in the way.
Rather than calming me down when I relayed my traumatic tale, Chan was rolling around in bed, clutching her stomach and laughing her arse off. I got angry and demanded in no uncertain terms that she translocate the toad back to the bush at once – the bathroom was not big enough for both girl and amphibian.
*
Shivering in the chill of dawn the next morning, Chan and I vacated our cosy chalet with a heavy heart and heavier eyelids, and curled up on the comfy sofa at reception to wait for our ride out of Flatdogs. Paul and Amy were leaving with us, too. As much of a favour to us as it was to them, they readily agreed to pitch in for the expense of hiring a four-wheel drive station wagon back to Chipata. Last I had heard, the two English boys we came with had deeply regretted their decision to come by road and opted instead to hop on an aeroplane out of Mfuwe – all in order to avoid another earthquake simulation.
Well, I’ve to say our shiny escape vehicle was not too shabby, either. Besides being a remarkable improvement from the rackety moving heap we arrived in, Chan was profoundly happy because our hired car was air-conditioned, meaning the closed windows would spare our faces from being involuntarily caked with rust-red foundation from the dirt road. It’d also save us from being squashed between a bum and an armpit in a crumbling, oxygen-starved minibus for half a day (if we were lucky). ‘Take it from me – it’s not a question of whether the bus will break down,’ Amy pointed out candidly, ‘but how many times.’
When the station wagon came, we were greeted with warm smiles by our soft-spoken driver and another guy. It turned out mystery guy was a mechanic who had come free with the vehicle. No doubt it was a bargain, but having a mechanic travel with us gave me a sense of morbid foreboding. It was almost like having a coroner follow you around – you know something’s going to go bad sometime.
By the time all of us were bundled in, there wasn’t any cushiony space left for the poor mechanic. ‘No, no, I’m all right,’ he told us when we looked at him with deep concern. He then made like a Chinese contortionist and squeezed himself in with our sooty baggage at the back.
After waking up at 4.30 freakin’ a.m. just so we could reach the Chipata bus station in time to catch the 10 a.m. bus back to Lusaka, I was fast asleep the second we got underway. That was until I was startled awake by a loud rapping coming from the back – it was the mechanic signalling that he wanted to take a leak. Not one to waste a toilet stop, I rejoiced and dragged Chan – my designated wee guardian – out with me. Searching for a safe place to squat required the utmost concentration as unsavoury surprises were abundant, such as prickly fallen twigs that threatened to deflower my arse.
With all outstanding business rightly attended to, we resumed the ceaseless trundling. ‘Fasten your seat belts, please,’ the driver reminded us after noticing that we’d neglected to do so through his rearview mirror. ‘To be safe,’ he added ominously before swerving sharply for the umpteenth time to avoid falling into the cataclysmic potholes. We did as we were told.
Just as I nodded off to begin yet another inane dream, I was jolted conscious again, this time to the terrifying sight of us coming out of a blind curve and heading straight for an oxcart! Before we had a chance to scream, our car careened away from the oxcart and drifted wildly from one edge of the road to the other at blinding speed. When the driver attempted to regain control of the vehicle, we were flung about like rag dolls, our bodies knocking against the fixtures and each other. I thought we were goners for sure when the fishtailing car started spinning out 180 degrees and screeched towards a ditch on the side of the road.
WHAM! In a catatonic state of shock, all fell silent. Except for the squealing of brakes, which continued reverberating in my ears even as the smell of smoked rubber cleared my sinuses. The whole drama replayed in my mind like a slow-motion action movie sequence, and it wasn’t before ten extended minutes had passed that I fully understood what just happened. As soon as I regained the use of my synapses, I patted all of my body parts. Phew, they were intact. Then we quietly inspected each other for gaping wounds and missing eyeballs. Thankfully, apart from being dazed and confused and me almost ripping a hole in Amy’s pants while bracing myself earlier, everybody appeared unscathed. We peered out and found a stunned family of five standing behind their dumbfounded oxen, gawping at us. When our stunned driver shakily opened his car door, I followed suit and we all tumbled out like street drunks.
Circling our car slowly to ascertain the extent of the damage, we were amazed to find a few de
nts and scratches the only evidence of our near-death experience. The cruddy ditch we had crash-landed into was shallow, thank God, and we were able to pull out the vehicle with the help of the family and oxen we nearly massacred.
We left the crash site without further fuss and continued on our journey – this time at a comfortably less suicidal speed. To my surprise, we still managed to arrive at the bus station 15 minutes before 10 a.m. We wished our driver a cautious and accident-free journey and hotfooted it to the ticketing office. But there was no joy; we found out that the damned bus had left at 9.30 a.m. and the next bus wasn’t due to arrive for another four hours. I howled in frustration.
Oh well, that’s what happens when you travel – you wake up at an unearthly hour and narrowly escape a bloodbath only to find out that, in the end, your efforts had amounted to nought.
Gee, I couldn’t wait to do it again.
8. HOMO ALIENS
Since the accident had made us age ten years, I thought we might as well get something to eat. The closest thing to a meal, we found, was a mucky eatery next to the ticketing office. I was pleased it had nshima – there’s no better food in the world, really, to soothe a nerve-wracked tummy than a hot plate of the starchy stuff.
Made from ground maize (corn) flour, nshima or mealie meal is the lovely staple food across most of Africa. It has a stiff texture that feels like sticky Plasticine but looks like mashed potatoes, and is probably the most fun thing one can eat. Like rice, it’s mainly tasteless and usually accompanied by side dishes of meat and vegetables (called ndiwo or relishes); though I must warn you that half a plate of nshima can fill you up and jam up your digestive system faster than three bowls of rice. The typical Zambian way to eat it is a wholly sensory experience: first tear a bite-sized hunk off with your bare hands, press and shape it into a nice round golf-sized ball (locals like to squeeze it like a stress ball), create a small indentation in the ball with your thumb, and then use it to scoop up the meat and greens before tossing the whole shebang into your mouth. Yum.
Quite reluctantly, Chan stepped inside the dark, dirty shack with Amy, Paul and me, and did not try very hard to disguise how utterly appalled she was. I couldn’t blame her; the interior was pretty grotty and my sneakers were gliding along the slimy floor when we went up to the hole-in-the-wall to order. Eyeing the chipped wooden tables scattered haphazardly around the claustrophobic joint, Chan unilaterally decided that she would rather starve than subject herself to questionable hygiene practices. Something told me she still hadn’t come to grips with the fact that we were in Africa. It did not matter – all the menu choices on the blackboard were anti-vegetarian, anyway.
We parked ourselves at a corner table that looked like it would fall apart the second our elbows were on it. ‘Yuck,’ Chan nudged me and pointed to the cooks in the open kitchen. ‘Look at that revolting pot they’re using to cook your nshima in. It probably hasn’t been washed since this place opened ... in 1932.’
Her efforts to disgust me didn’t work as I was deadly hungry. My steaming nshima was soon plopped on the table alongside the room-temperature side dishes of beef and cabbage. Chan stuck out her tongue as the staffer turned her back. ‘You’re going to put this in your stomach, are you?’
‘Yes, I am,’ I replied confidently.
She clasped her hands, lowered her head and closed her eyes. ‘I shall pray for you,’ she said soberly.
‘Chan, isn’t this similar to the KL hawker stalls next to smelly gutters with rats and cockroaches running under our feet?’ I pointed out.
‘Yeah,’ she answered smugly. ‘That is why I eat at home.’
I sighed and rolled my eyes. Concerned that she wasn’t eating anything, I offered her some of my nshima but she screwed up her face and pushed the plate aside in disdain. So we went on shovelling food in our faces while Chan scrutinized the place and tsk-tsked every detail of filth. Then she poked me again. ‘That guy keeps staring at me,’ she whispered.
Before I could accuse her of being paranoid for the squillionth time, I noticed the man eating at the table across from us indeed developing a keen interest in her. Shouting something to the three men sitting at the table behind us, they chattered animatedly in their language, all the while goggling Chan curiously from head to toe as if she were an exotic animal on a game drive. Finally deciding to settle the issue once and for all, a gangly chap behind us stood up and looked right at Chan.
‘Are you a homosexual?’ he boomed.
I exploded in guffaws. We’d been asked if she was my mother before but this was the first time Chan was mistaken for a girly man. I guess we could not blame the guy for being curious as she did possess a squarish countenance that aided and abetted her somewhat masculine features and short wavy hair. Her geek-boy glasses and unbecoming clothing ensemble – a cream-coloured office lady pantsuit (the only clothes in her wardrobe resembling a khaki safari outfit), hideous meconium-green headscarf and white baseball cap – also did little to dispute the crass accusation. Having said that, the mannish façade was entirely intentional on Chan’s part in a bid to avoid unwanted male attention. Unfortunately, her slick disguise seemed to be having quite the opposite effect.
‘No, I am Homo sapien!’ Chan blurted in mock outrage, causing Paul and Amy to crack up like schoolchildren. The local men continued to be bewildered, discussed Chan some more and eventually left us alone.
After lunch, we walked to the shaded concrete benches and resumed our long wait. Paul and Amy hugged their backpacks on their laps and looked perfectly comfortable just sitting there. ‘When we wanted to get to Mfuwe from here, we waited inside a stationary minibus for half a day before it filled up with enough passengers,’ Amy recalled. ‘We didn’t want our seats to be taken so we didn’t dare move a muscle. It was so hot and stuffy inside, we were virtually melting.’
Paul nodded and frowned. ‘Yeah, we had such fabulous luck that the bus broke down midway,’ he continued. ‘We were made to wait six hours before another bus came.’
‘So, you see, this is bearable compared to that ordeal,’ Amy concluded.
Still, I was restless and asked the two of them if they would like to check out the dicey marketplace behind the bus station’s waiting area. They wanted to lay low instead, telling me that they felt uncomfortable sticking out like white shark fins in the dark sea of locals. So I moseyed down the muddy, narrow passageways between seemingly endless rows of frail, run-down stalls by myself. It didn’t bother me much until I noticed the amount of attention I was attracting from every single person in the marketplace. I might as well have had landed from outer space with purple tentacles sprouting from my butt because everybody froze in the position they were in and just gawked at me. I reckoned they were ready to cast a net over my head. Without hesitation, I doubled back.
By the time I returned, Chan had made fast friends with Mwizenge, an affable university student who looked like he’d raided Will Smith’s wardrobe. He was bringing his hyperactive seven-year-old nephew to visit their relatives in Malawi across the border.
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ Chan asked him nosily.
He grinned shyly. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘So your parents won’t force you into an arranged marriage and insist that you and your wife give birth to eight children?’ I took over busybody duties.
‘Oh, of course not. My parents are very open-minded. Our time is very different from that of our grandfather,’ he replied with a smile. ‘In fact, my family is very small too. It’s just me and my brother.’
This was indeed typical of the new generation of Zambians. Africa was keeping up with the times fast. Like many aspiring graduates, Mwizenge had grandiose visions of greener pastures outside Lusaka, and that was to finish his engineering studies and go on to work in the US or Europe.
Just as we were starting to really bond, Mwizenge’s bus arrived. Before he left for good, Chan handed over her notebook so he could scribble down his email address for us – our standard goodbye ritual
whenever we made friends with anyone.
‘Make sure you email me, okay?’ he said, grabbing his nephews hand. ‘I dislike it when people say they’ll email but don’t keep their promise.’
I nodded, insisted that I would never do such an execrable thing and waved him off. Man, am I going to end up on somebody’s shitlist.
We were close to getting mouldy by the time our bus pulled up at a little past 1 p.m. Like old ladies flocking to a Lock & Lock sale, everyone rushed the bus and formed a crooked queue at the bus door. Trust me to stand right next to the conductor who was tipping a jerry can of fuel into the bus’s fuel tank. Just as I was about to pass out from the lethal fumes, it was my turn to climb aboard. I followed Chan and we made like gazelles prancing over other passengers’ migration-sized carrier bags, cardboard boxes and suitcases.
Six gospel songs on side A later, we abandoned the bus station’s scene of disarray. I hummed along mindlessly while glancing over my tattered, tea-stained itinerary scrawled with dates, names of lodges and inane remarks. We were a day ahead of schedule so I thought it’d be nice to break up the deep vein thrombosis-causing bus journey with a two-night stopover at Bridge Camp. Located just off the Great East Road between Chipata and Lusaka, the former brothel turned respectable guesthouse was built amongst picturesque hills overlooking the Luangwa River. Inadvertently conned by my idyllic description, Paul and Amy decided to join us.
9. HANGING OUT AT THE HALFWAY HOUSE
It was dangerously close to dusk by the time we were dropped off at the charming Luangwa suspension bridge smack in the middle of an unexpected marketplace. We were figuring out which way to head when a Rasta-looking dude named Victor zeroed in on us like a predatory raptor and offered all kinds of help.
‘No – we are fine by ourselves, thanks very much,’ Paul assured him.
