African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441)
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Christine could almost see those early morning scenes: most of the slasher women had babies tied onto their backs, who slept peacefully even as the women swung up and down, up and down with labor. The women wore old, faded busutis and head scarves wrapped shabbily over their hair. They were barefoot or wore thin rubber sapatu. They didn’t speak English, of course. Christine and her friends didn’t greet them, even though they looked just like their aunties back in the village, whose close, sticky hugs smelt of sweat and kitchen-fire smoke. They were comforting and discomforting all at the same time. But here in town, the lesson these women gave was so clear no one even said it: Study hard, speak English well, get into one of the few good high schools, go to college. Onward and upward. You are not these women. Do not become them.
It was now half past one. Christine was rarely early for anything, but this time she was almost at the school. Past the roundabout was a giant tree that seemed to have retained its immensity even as the school buildings ahead shrank as she grew older. It was an olive tree, though she didn’t know that when she was at Lake Vic. The fruit, empafu, were green, hard, and bitter, or black, a little softer, but just as bitter. Christine grew to like their chewy texture; it was like an interesting thought to be turned over and over. The fruit left her tongue and inner cheeks rough, as though her mouth had become someone else’s. That was the taste and feel of walking home from school all those years ago. The sound of the past was of the small hard fruit falling. They would drop on her head, plop! or just miss her, startling her out of her daydreams of being first in class; of how she would show them, whoever they were, after whatever slight; dreams of visiting an aunt in Kampala; of going somewhere even farther away, England perhaps. America! As her mind roved, she climbed on the curb, carefully balancing, her arms stretched out wide like wings, one foot straight in front of the other. She was a ballerina, a flying airplane, then plop! The hard nut’s sudden fall surprised her into tripping. On other days, when she walked home with her friends Carol and Karen, they would playfully push each other off the black and white curb. Christine could almost hear the laughter, the running, the joking shouts of abuse. All those days merged into one carefree moment in her mind.
Now, the curb’s paint had faded to gray and its edges crumbled to dust. All the same, Christine stepped up onto it, stifling a giggle. In Patti’s red high heels, she felt like a chicken clumsily trying to fly. Her laughter rang out in the silent hot afternoon, making her catch herself. Nicholas would think she was crazy!
Here was the Upper School Assembly, another faded apology of its former imposing blue and white state. It was now ten to two. Christine was early, oh no, a sign of desperation. Coming on time was bad enough. This was a date, not a school appointment. She wished she had asked Patti or Rosa for advice. No, not Patti, she didn’t go out with boys; she would have stopped her from going, called up the Bajomboras or something! Rosa wouldn’t be much help either; she would have laughed at her and kept bringing it up forever to embarrass her. So much for big sisters. Well, she had the time to cool down, wipe off the sweat, check her lipstick.
Christine sat in the shade on the cement ledge in front of the Assembly Hall. She doubted the toilets were open or clean. She wouldn’t look at her watch again. The Assembly had long glass doors all along one side to keep it cool, and long windows on the other. Some of the panes were cracked or empty. She looked into the darkness of the hall. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the forms inside took on recognizable shape. What a mess. The curtain on the stage was torn; a piano’s dark bulk squatted awkwardly to one side on only two feet, its lid broken and askew. A few small chairs were scattered around the huge dusty floor, and on one of them was a pile of neglected, ragged-looking exercise books. It was hard to believe this was the same school that had performed so well once that even Amin’s children had joined it for two terms when they lived in Entebbe State House. It was only three years since Christine had left P.7; how come she hadn’t noticed this mess? This we-have-given-up-why-bother state. Things must have started falling apart years ago. She hadn’t noticed it then, probably because she was here every day. The change was gradual and the result normal, like many other things about Amin’s time, including the everyday fear in the air. She remembered how everyone had laughed in astonishment, then got used to it, when Amin by decree banned minis and wigs. He made Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, a day off and Saturday a workday. Everyone adjusted to the upside-down week, the upside-down life, including other unbelievable and ugly things she didn’t want to think about. The bad smell became familiar.
In this very hall, Christine had been through five years of morning hymns, prayers, and announcements. She remembered the cheerful routine of singing “We Wish You Many Happy Returns of the Day” for different students every week. The word “returns” had puzzled her; it still did. The headmaster, fat round Mr. Mubozi, had led assembly since Christine’s first year in the Upper School, when she was eight. He looked kind and jolly, like Father Christmas, but he wasn’t, oh no! She remembered him shouting at a kid once, “Wipe that grin off your face!” Everyone looked around in astonishment for a green face. Christine had gone to his wife’s nursery school. She was white. She too was fat and round, but kind, giving them homemade toffee every week. The nursery school was a room at her house, with children’s colorful drawings up on every wall. Most of the other kids were Indian. The lasting impression of that year was of their heavy black hair and spicy smell, and how they jostled up to the front, not afraid to seek the teacher’s attention, while Christine hung back, waiting, as she had been taught to do. But in one week that year, 1972, the Indian kids disappeared; Idi Amin sent them all away. Christine remembered busloads of frightened faces heading down Circular Road past Saint John’s Church to the International Airport, and the piles of comics and all sorts of toys she, Rosa, Patti, and so many others got for almost nothing. Those Indians were rich! Where were all those kids now? Christine wondered.
* * *
It was now ten past two. Okay, calm down, Christine told herself. At least she was in the shade. Out in the sun, two yellow butterflies chased each other round and round. At the corner of the school building was a huge flower bed with three plants. Someone had planted only three of them. Strange, this neat flower bed next to the dilapidated hall. God, it was quiet. Well, private too, which was good. How come there was a cooling wind in the shade and none in the sun? she wondered distractedly. She should have brought a book. She remembered the dirty book she had seen peeking out of Rosa’s suitcase, about a year ago. There was a naked woman on the cover, her body twisted in a weird position. Christine’s face went hot as she peeked through the pages. How could Rosa read this? People didn’t really do these things! But Maama and Taata must have, at least three times! Christine now giggled at the thought, then guiltily murmured, “Taata, rest in peace.”
Goodness, two thirty. Should she leave? Christine heard a clamor of voices and froze. A group of rough-looking kids came running by, boys chasing girls, dark round heads bobbing, all of them screeching and yelling as they ran past, wove round the corner, and, just as suddenly, went out of sight. Silence rose up and took over again. What was she doing there? Christine decided to walk around the school once. Nicholas would have to wait. She would not think past that.
Christine peeked into the P.3 classroom. The chairs were so tiny. Innocent looking. This was where her class had done experiments with beans, to see what made plants grow. They tried to grow one plant without light, one without water, one without soil, and one that got everything. It was science in a bean shell. A guided experiment about life that you could control and be sure of the results. How simple. A few years later in P.7, as a prefect, Christine had stood sternly like a policeman in this very class, tapping the end of a stick on one of her palms slowly, threateningly, barking silence! at the smaller kids. It had been a serious game.
Here was the P.4 classroom, where one of the Bajombora boys, not N
icholas, had jumped through a window because of a fire. It wasn’t a real fire; someone had shouted Fire! as a joke, and he got scared. He jumped and broke his leg and became a mini-hero, even though the whole incident was laughed at. Girls didn’t talk to boys, oh no, but they gossiped about boys all the time. How stupid he was, they said, as they secretly admired him. Christine would never have dreamt she’d be here waiting for his big brother.
Christine came to the steps where she had fought with Karen and Carol, her two best friends. It was a game at first: the person in between the other two was the queen. They playfully pushed at one another to get into the center, but gradually the game turned from playful to rough to mean. Before long Christine, the smallest, was pushed to the ground crying, while the other two ran home separately. She was left there sniffling, wiping off the mud. The next day they pretended nothing had happened, but were shamefaced and awkward with one another. They didn’t speak about it ever, but now they knew that friendship was envy, admiration, anger, and longing all mixed together. Three years later, Carol’s parents retired and the family moved to their village in Toro. Karen went to a different high school. The flow of letters between them gradually dried up. Had all that emotion been for nothing after all? Time passed by and stole it away.
And now, now, time was moving too slowly. Christine circled back to the huge silent Assembly. No Nicholas. A part of her couldn’t believe it. So he actually wasn’t going to show up. Had he even planned to? Anyhow, had she really, really expected him to come and see her? That would have been the shock. She should leave. But she wanted to sit there and wait. Just sit there. Not go on. Tear out the end of this book.
Christine’s feet in borrowed grown-up shoes hurt her. She undid the long red straps. She was tired of this place, the whole of Entebbe, in fact, filled with buildings that had been alive in the past, but now were small and irrelevant, ruins, almost. The three flowering plants, the only sign of new life around, now looked so stridently and annoyingly red and perky. She glanced over her shoulder, then went and pulled at the plants roughly. The stems were tougher than she was: taut, elastic. She tore at the tender petals. The flyaway pollen made her sneeze. She used her hand to wipe her nose and cleaned it off on her skirt, staining her nice tight jean skirt. That made her even angrier. Christine pulled harder at the green stems, leaning her body back. Aaaah, she felt the roots tearing, the dark brown earth moving, loosening, the plant breaking free. The release made her stumble back, almost fall, and she laughed through her tears, holding the limp, useless plant in her hands. Now there was soil all over her borrowed open-toed shoes and her feet. She threw the plant carcass back onto the soil, disgusted and feeling silly. Childish. Christine wiped her tears with the back of her hand and cleaned it on her blouse, smudging it red and brown with lipstick, tears, and dirt. What a mess. Nicholas should see her now. She had better go home; they would all be back, asking for her. Maybe there would still be some cookies left for tea.
STEVE CHIMOMBO
Steven Bernard Miles Chimombo was born in 1945, in Zomba, Malawi. He received his BA from the University of Malawi and a teaching diploma in English as a second language from the University of Wales. He earned an MA and PhD in teaching at Columbia University in New York City. After studying at the University of Leeds in the UK, he returned to Malawi, where he edited the literary bulletin Outlook-lookout. Currently, Chimombo is Professor Emeritus of English at Chancellor College at the University of Malawi. He has published in a variety of genres: plays, poetry, novels, short stories, children’s literature, and criticism. Among his books are the novels The Basket Girl (1990) and The Wrath of Napolo (2000), the plays The Rainmaker (1978) and Sister! Sister! (1995), the collections of stories Tell Me a Story (1992), The Hyena Wears Darkness (2006), and Of Life, Love, and Death (2009), and a work of literary criticism, The Culture of Democracy: Language, Literature, and the Arts and Politics in Malawi, 1992–1994 (1996).
Another Day at the Office
(2009)
He joined the throng of people at the top of the small street leading from the marketplace. The main road marked the central artery of the main stream of people. They formed a vague column of marching feet kept in line by the fact that where the shops did not prevent them from leaving the main column, the ditches or the embankment did so further down.
A quarter to seven. Plenty of time. From the shop at the corner, the street leading from the marketplace to the office would only take fifteen minutes using Adam’s mode of transport. The bells and the whirl of bicycle chains sounded a quicker form of locomotion which kept to the edges of the tarmac. This ensured that they were not directly in the path of the four-wheeled monsters that were the owners of that black road. But sometimes the cyclists violated this truth, only to be rudely reminded by the horn of an irate motorist and an oath that tore past at fifty miles per hour to leave the culprit shivering from its passage.
His faded, size seven brown shoes pinched a little after turning the corner. As traffic was heavier here on the main road, he was forced to keep to the pedestrian path. The dust formed a fine film over the polish his wife had applied that morning, as he was hurriedly washing his face and gargling his mouth to get on the road in time. The shoe repairer who worked opposite the vegetable stall in the marketplace had remarked in a friendly manner, “Why don’t you let me keep this pair for patches on other customers’ shoes? Another repair job on them and the makers won’t recognize their handiwork.”
He had muttered something to the effect that he did not see anything remarkable in the shoes. Just because he wanted another patch added to the areas where they pinched most did not warrant that he should turn into a charitable institution. Did he want him to go barefooted to the office? Still, the man had done a good job. It would be another two months of daily wear before the customary slight limp reappeared.
The familiar face he met at the top of the street leading from the marketplace had greeted him amiably enough. “How are you this morning, Chingaipe?”
All he got in reply was the most overused cliché in the Civil Service—“Fifty-fifty”—which could be understood to mean anything from “I’m broke” to “I’ve got the grandfather of all hangovers.” After that, Chingaipe did not show any signs of interest in developing the theme. The familiar face continued on its way, silently falling in behind Chingaipe.
The street leading from the marketplace was flanked by the Indian shops. Old structures built in a random, absent-minded fashion. Garish colors and dusty spaces sprinkled with wild grass. But as soon as you turned the corner at the top, you met the shops that made a pretence at being modern: cemented car parks for the customers, wide shop windows boasting imported merchandise. Chingaipe did not glance at them. His vision always centered on a spot vaguely ten feet in front of him.
The sound of water forming the background to the hum of engines, whirl of bicycle chains, and voices informed him he had left the shops far behind and was nearing the bridge over the small river they called Mzimundilinde. This receded as he climbed the long hill, still in the column of other workers heading for duties.
It usually took only fifteen minutes to walk from the top of the street leading from the marketplace to the office. Chingaipe noted subconsciously that he must have used ten minutes already, for the column of which he formed a part was now noticeably thicker and faster-moving. The October sun was already making itself felt. He traced the course of a trickle of sweat from his armpit along his ribs down to where his vest, shirt, underwear constricted him round his waist on account of the leather belt he used to keep his trousers up. The trickle down his thighs was from a different source altogether.
Chingaipe had dressed with his usual care. In spite of the hurry in the morning, he had looked at himself in the mirror to see that the parting on top of his head followed the usual groove. The spiked bamboo comb he used for this purpose never failed him. He could perform this action in the dark if the need arose
. The small knot on the cotton tie had been slightly to the left. He had pulled it right and shouted to his wife, Nambewe, in the kitchen, that he was off. Apparently, she had not heard him. The children, who were preparing to go to school, were making too much noise.
The road rose steeply after the river. Chingaipe felt the tie round his neck also constrict him, but he did not loosen the knot. The Higher Clerical Officer would give him a cold, disapproving stare if he noticed something faulty in the appearance of his clothes. Chingaipe’s cheeks puffed a little and he breathed with some difficulty as he trundled up the steep incline. Only fifty yards to go.
He checked a little as he turned into the drive that led to the department he worked in. It was a huge, sprawling building that had belonged to some top government official in the pre-independence days. With the shortage of offices, the government had converted the residence into a block of offices, without changing the original design or the gardens surrounding it. The green corrugated iron roof was also the same. If you wanted to use the front door, you climbed the steps and came to a short passageway that led to what used to be the drawing room. It was now used by half-a-dozen young clerks, fresh from their School Certificate. Chingaipe’s desk occupied one corner of this room.