Too Much of Anything

Hi all,

This post is by way of dispatch from Ndola, in Copperbelt Province. It’s my second foray up here, and I shan’t be leaving without a Congolese visa resting snug and proper in my passport’s greasy pages.

I have been to the Congo Consulate, yes. And yes, it’s true they’re feeding me the same line about invitations and highly irregular and we don’t know and the chancellor this and the consul that. The difference this time is that I have made a number of contacts who want to make it happen for me. The most promising is Lucas, a Kinshasa Congolese who is staying in the same guest house I’m in, the Castle Lodge. He’s down here doing IT for one of the mining outfits, and has contacted some of his friends in Lubumbashi about drawing up a little letter of invitation for me. From Lucas I’ve learned that, at 3 million, Lubumbashi is a much larger place than I had imagined. He’s thinking about going up there over the weekend, and has invited me to come along. Better just hope the visa is in place—though he did seem to think something could be arranged at the border. Twenty minutes, he said. He is the first Congolese I have met. He complains that Ndola is small and provincial, and that there’s nothing to do. He says it’s been difficult to make friends here. The Zambians, he says, don’t like to have fun in a modern way.

My other helpful contact is Bart, a brash jack-of-all-trades Zambian I met while in Livingstone whose current gig is to operate drill rigs on behalf of clients who own land where there is mineralization and want him to drill down and do some core sampling. He seems to think that we can walk into the consulate together and sort things out with the help of a few trusty Andrew Jacksons or Benjamin Franklins. The Congolese are very fond of these two trusty Americans, he says.

Between these two fellows I hope to be able to swing a visa.

But that stuff is cursory, accessory. I’ve had a very revelatory few days that I think have made this trip worth it. What I mean is that through the people I have been meeting, especially through Bart, I have started to glimpse the soul of this place. I believe I have a feeling for these things.

But I will forbear with my judgment and let you be the assessors. I do not fancy myself the kind of traveling writer who goes on tour in order to levy a moral judgment for the edification of the folks back home. Obviously that sort of moral-empirical reporting is valuable and has its place on our bookshelves and in our minds, but I do not think that my house is in such perfect order that I am entitled to assume the pedestal of moral authority from which to peddle my judgments. More and more, I prefer to deal in the subtleties of clear observation. Maybe that will result in a judgment that is the clearer when the time comes. Who knows, maybe I would be keener on this business of judging if I were here to write something pithy and cutting for a magazine, if I had to wrap up my experience in a bow of conclusive words. But I am here on a more abstract and deferred enterprise. I prefer to present my experience in a more gaseous medium, and one prone to flux.

~

When I met Bart in Livingstone he struck me as a lonely type. There was little sophistication in my impression: Toward the end of our conversation he waxed lonesome and asked me, “What is this thing people call love? I’m serious. I know what it is not. It is not sex, it is not flirting, it is not just stability. I have known those things, and they are not love. I just wish one day I could experience what these people are talking about when they talk about love.” Obviously I could give him no conclusive answer to the query, so I confined myself to the remark that it is the sort of thing one simply recognizes when one is in it. When I told him that I was working on a novel, he told me that his grandfather had been a Bemba moralist and that he had written a number of books about righteous conduct. More importantly, he told me I was welcome to accompany him on a drill run.

I contacted him when I got up here, which worked out well timing-wise, since he is on a 7-day leave. Because Bart is involved with mining, however peripherally, this translates as a 7-day bout of drinking. I’ve spent the past two of those days with him, and I must say that he is difficult to keep up with. On the first day we hung out with his friend Longyear, who is also a Bemba. When I put the tribal question to him, Bart said yes of course he’s a Bemba—otherwise you wouldn’t see me hanging out with him. Longyear is smaller and more fine-featured than Bart, who is quite a big man. We started with lunch at a nice Italian place, during which luncheon we talked about various things. Bart told the story of how he had been stung by a scorpion in the bush, and how, believing it had been a snake, he had rushed off to the nearest medical clinic, fully convinced that he had 40 minutes or less to live. He said I would see strange things if I went into the rural areas. There would be little fellows about yea high kicking a football around and playing children’s game, but who were in fact not a day under 30 years old. There would be old men who could remember a time a century ago and more when no one had yet seen a white man. They live a long time in the bush, he said, because there is no pollution, no time for drinking, and no money for TVs and other dissipating distractions.

After lunch we proceeded to a place called the Boating Club which, as with most of the names of such establishments, is in fact a fig leaf for the very heavy drinking that goes on between its walls. When we showed up at 2:30, the groundskeeper reported that they wouldn’t be opening for business until 4:00. Or sixteen hours, as they say here. To kill the time, we walked over to the SPCA of all places. It was appalling. I suppose that all impounded dogs have it tough, but these dogs were in a league of their own. Vicious, slavering, every one of them was barking at us with a kind of murderous fury as we trooped past their warrens. I took a couple of pictures but don’t think they turned out. A funny thing happened as we strolled back to the boating club. I saw some women working a field alongside the road. The field was backgrounded by a giant belching cement factory. They were on their guard from the moment they saw me, and as soon as I pulled out my camera, they fled into the cover of some bushes. One woman threw herself to the ground. It was as if I had pulled out a gun.

There was still some time to kill when we got back to the boating club, so we sat ourselves down on a bench to take in the view of the lagoon and the cement plant and the haze. Bart and Longyear told stories of crazy Australians they had known. One of them had addressed some Zimbabwean police officers as ‘boys’ at a border crossing. Unamused, one of the cops picked up a bag of pot that had been sitting on the dashboard. To which the Aussie’s response was “Ah, good on you, mate. I’ve been looking all day for that.” The problem was rectified through the good offices of Benjamin Franklin. At length we proceeded indoors. Things started off slowly. At first it was just the three of us playing pool. I taught them how to play cutthroat. A couple of beers in, a fellow by the name of Salim showed up with a little coterie of grizzled-looking drinkers. They were already drunk. And that’s when it started. Salim, you see, was keen that everyone have a new beer in his hand every fifteen minutes. It reminded me of that scene in Back to School where Rodney Dangerfield asks the waiter to bring “a pitcher of beer every five minutes until someone passes out, and then bring one every seven.”

Salim is one of Africa’s “Asian traders.” He owns a big garage called Mirza Auto and seems to be a major player in town. He was born in Zambia and was highly amused to hear that I was writing a book about Africa. He wanted to know one thing: Had I ever read the work of Wilbur Smith? I said no. But how could I possibly hope to write a book about Africa if I hadn’t read Wilbur Smith? I allowed that I would have to look into it. But Salim kept riffing on it every beer or so: You mean to tell me you’re not familiar with Wilbur Smith? At length I pulled out my own name-drop bomb: Was he acquainted with V.S. Naipaul’s work set in Africa. Salim protested that he read so much that he couldn’t be expected to keep track of trifling matters such as the authors’ names. I smiled and started working on my 8th beer.

Awhile later Bart’s son and a woman prefaced as his son’s mother joined us. His son’s name was Brandon. Brandon was 8, and he sat there quietly as all the grown-ups drank and talked shit. At one point Longyear and I had a revealing moment. We were off in a corner observing the loud and hollow carousing, and I said it didn’t seem right that Brandon should be in this place. Longyear agreed, but indicated that there was little to be done. After all, the boy’s mother and father were both there. I asked if perhaps we should make a move to go, and Longyear thought that sounded like a good idea. “Too much of anything…” he said. Indeed. I think Bart felt some of the unspoken opprobrium when we indicated that we might go. He finished his drink and mobilized in a hurry. We all piled in his Toyota Corolla, and he drove us home with all the abandon of 12 beers. We made plans to meet again the next day.

~

The next morning, predictably, was rough. I did manage to get into town by around 8:30 to do some e-mailing, which I did with the sort of yo me odio that such mornings can bring. Bart came to pick me up from there around 10, and I accompanied him around town on some errands. He needed to pay his son’s school fees, wash his car and see some people. I brought up the issue of the roads as we drove. The roads, like the rest of Ndola, are in an advanced state of decay. What Bart had to say was something along these lines: This is Africa. Here, instead of getting better, things are constantly getting worse. Things have been crumbling around me from the day I was born, and nobody lifts a finger to fix anything. Actually, the roads are being mended right now. After a fashion, that is: The potholes are being filled in with raw dirt that will wash away with the first rain.

Back to first impressions: One of the first things Bart said to me was that he didn’t really feel that he belonged in Zambia. Because he was skilled, because he was ambitious, because he had traveled widely within Africa and met all sorts of people, he felt that he was destined for the West. He has some Zambian friends living in Texas, and plans to visit them in September.

Back to yesterday: I told him that based on what I had seen, Ndola was indeed very much decaying, that I couldn’t dispute him. He said that, if possible, he wanted to move to America and bring his son there. Surely he could give his son a good education there? I allowed that it was so—but he’d have to live in a good neighborhood to make it so. So many complexities! Bart told a joke to diffuse the discomfort: What are the only two things that a black man cannot steal, he asked? I question-marked. A snake and a tree, he said. A black man cannot steal a snake or a tree.

I countered with a joke about a Scot. A Scot calls in to the obit. page because his wife has just died. The editor says he knows this must be very hard, but let me just explain the terms. You get 4 free words, 4 words at 5 quid each, and every words thereafter at a quid. The line is silent for awhile. Sir? Okay, says the Scot. 4 free words, eh? I have it: Mary McFadden is dead. The editor is dismayed. Listen, Sir, he says, you shouldn’t think about it that way. Let me tell you what. I’ll make an exception in your case, and give you the first 8 words for free. That way you can give your wife a proper obituary and not have to worry about the money as much. Mr. McFadden considers this new development and thinks about it for awhile. Sir? Eight free words, eh? He’s thinking. Okay, he says. I have it: Mary McFadden is dead. Ford Fiesta for sale.

Bart’s son’s school was quite interesting. It’s run by Indians, and once on its grounds I had a hard time imagining that I was anywhere but in India. It had that same sort of majesty-in-decay-as-informed-by-some-inscrutable-wisdom with which I felt forever surrounded while on the Subcontinent. There were mangos, tamarinds, bougainvillea, jacaranda, and lots of vines and flowers I did not know growing up along a trellis that ran along the whole perimeter of the school’s colonnaded courtyard. I gathered that school was in session, but there was no child’s voice to be heard. The only thing I could hear were the hundreds of bees and wasps buzzing around the blooming trelliswork. I noticed several signs in various places on the grounds advising young minds on the sacredness and scarcity of water. Water is sacred: respect it. The same water flows through us all: keep it clean. For his part, Bart seemed somewhat put off by this (Rajastani?) dictum. They have something funny about water at this school, he concluded. For my part, I could not help concluding that this must have been the first time Bart was setting foot inside his child’s school.

Next we went for a lunch of nshima (or pap, as a plate of corn meal paste is called in Southern African English) in Ndola’s derelict industrial district. It was actually pretty good, and it’s the first time I’ve eaten nshima without eliciting the laughter of those defter at eating it. Over lunch I learned how Bart had at one point not too long ago got quite wealthy as the owner of a trucking outfit that ran parts between the copper mines and their South African suppliers. I can’t recall the details, but everything had gone downhill a couple of years ago when two of his trucks had been stolen and he had been forced to write them off as losses. This had caused his company to fold, and had coincided with his wife deciding that perhaps he wasn’t the best of guys to settle down with after all, and leaving for a time, only to return when he had found his footing again.

It must be added that Bart is only two years older than I am. I’ll be perfectly honest and say that his life to date seems to have been enticingly rich. I’ve not been married, I’ve not had a child, I’ve not made a fortune and lost it. All I have is a book that is written but unpublished, one that is half-written, and a shitload of ideas for more books.

Our next stop was Quick Collisions, the motor and body shop where Bart’s male in-laws work. The grounds of Quick Collisions were littered with cars whose drivers could not possibly have survived the crashes that put them there. Several cars’ passenger cabins were simply crushed. I asked Bart’s brother-in-law Manfrid about the circumstances of the accidents. Drinking, he said. And I have to clean them up. See that car over there? I looked over at a heap of twisted metal and nodded. That used to be a Kia. 3 Chinese died when it collided with a bus.

In addition to the scrap and wrecks, the yard had 2 goats nibbling morsels of trash in a corner. There was also a banana tree. The sun was shining strongly onto the gray dirt and gray-streaked metal and glass, and for a moment I wondered if I might have hurt my eyes taking it in.

It was Manfrid’s birthday, and Bart persuaded him to come out to the tennis club with us for awhile so that he could buy us beers. When I asked why Manfrid should be the one buying, Bart said it was a new thing in Zambia. Because everybody was so poor these days, friends could no longer afford to buy rounds of beer for all the birthdays that came around. So the burden had been shifted to the birthday boy. This way people only had to buy their friends free beer once a year, when they turned, instead of having to buy free beers here and there all the time as birthdays came and went. Of course, he said, people seemed to be having fewer and fewer birthdays these days. Some people even claimed to have suddenly forgotten their date of birth.
Given the night before, I did not want to drink. But my protests went unheeded. The Castles started coming. I managed to put a stop to the session after 3. Manfrid needed to be getting back to the garage anyway, and we dropped him off. Bart was keen to continue drinking somewhere else. We went to see his secret girlfriend. On the way there he explained that they weren’t having sex. You could never be sure these days. I'll omit the description of their meeting--I didn't like her very much.

The next stop was Highcrest, an area of town where the ‘coloured’ or mixed-race people live. The area is also known as “Highly” because of the propensity of its denizens to dabble and deal in dope. Sure enough, there were a lot of men around who were red-eyed and grinning. Bart said that Highly is the type of place where anything can happen. Nothing happened to us beyond the consumption of a beer or two (or was it three?) at a shibeen with a few associates of his in the transcontinental trucking business. Stories were told. And what stories they were!
More on that later—I need to sign off for today and go pick up a pair of Colormatic eyeglasses I ordered the other day. Call me Royal.