Two things, or Three

If you count the first, that is. Which is that it’s often true that when you return from a voyage, or even a prolonged absence, most of the folks back home do not care all that much about the pictures you took. They’d rather pick things up where they left off. Which is not to say that they do not care about you, or how you have been, just that the pictures have greater immediacy to the one who took them. And the folks back home are happier to see you alive and in the flesh than to ponder the frozen images of your absence. It seems that pictures can serve a much more useful function if made available to the home front for viewing while still away. And that is what I am trying to do here. Pictures with words, that is. They say a picture is worth a thousand of these things, but I reckon you will have to make do with unconverted verbal currency for now.

The first thing is about sleeping in the tent. Yesterday I was told by Mrs. Zulu—the maid where I am staying—that it is a very bad thing to sleep outside. I am not happy, Mr. Markus. It is not good. At first I laughed it off, saying that it was in fact good for mzungus such as myself to sleep al fresco. When her husband came to pick her up after she was done cleaning, I could see them discussing something over in a corner. Then Mr. Zulu strode over purposefully and expressed the same concern. You should not sleep outside, he said. You will get sick. The expression on his face was very stern. It occurred to me that there must have been some taboo at work. I asked if there was any reason other than the cold and the possibility of getting sick that prompted their concern. Mrs. Zulu explained that it was a custom among the Bemba to sleep outside during when grieving someone’s death, and only then. I said I saw, and that I’d make sure to bring the mattress in that night. They would not leave until I had done so.

The next thing is much more problematic, and I wish to present it succinctly to avoid giving it too much of my own overlay. Before heading out to the bush last week, I learned in bits and pieces from Rex, one of my cab drivers, that his wife was sick. He was very concerned, and spoke with feeling about wanting to send her to the doctor but not being able to afford to. I gave him some money. Not much, but enough to cover the doctor’s visit. He was thankful, and I felt I had done the right thing. The next time I saw him he seemed distraught. The doctor had mentioned something about ulcers, about surgery. I recall advising him to be very thorough in questioning the doctor, and to insist on being guided through the thinking behind the diagnosis and treatment. I had heard too many horror stories already. The next day, when I had made it as far as Chililabombwe, I got a call from Rex. I asked him how he was, and he said not good. But since talk time is expensive and Zambians are understandably loath to use their minutes, the conversation did not last long enough for him to tell me what had happened. I said I would call him when I returned. Because I suspected he had called me in order not to ask for money, but perhaps to obtain it from me obliquely by putting me in a position where I as the rich white man could not keep myself from offering it. I decided that it would not be proper to give him any more if he asked or tried to put me in that position.

Two days ago, I decided to call him for a ride and find out what was going on as we drove. When I asked him how he was, he said OK. I asked what had happened to his wife. She was dead, he said. I was shocked, and for a while did not know what to say. I told him I was very sorry and for a time could say nothing more. When I had gathered my wits I began asking questions. I determined that she had been to the hospital, that they had not been able to find anything directly wrong with her, and had sent her home. She died the same day. Rex did not know why. Just one of those things in Zambia: People die and nobody knows the cause. When he said that she had been pregnant, I told him I thought it had probably been an ectopic pregnancy, meaning that the embryo had lodged in a fallopian tube and grown there. And that when it had got big enough, it had ruptured the tube and caused her to bleed to death. It must have been very painful. I didn’t say that last bit.

When I asked why he hadn’t challenged the doctor, he didn’t know what to say. Easy questions for the educated white man to ask, I know. But Rex was living in the present. His wife was dead, there was no changing that. Now there were funeral costs to attend to. The coffin had to be bought, as did the grave plot. Her parents had to be fed and their transport back home to Southern Province paid for.

The thing floored me. I talked to a friend just after finding out about how normal he had seemed in light of the circumstances. She said she had seen it before in Africa. It was a defense mechanism. When life was an unmitigated succession of tragedies, there was little to do but grin and bear it. Or drink. And it is true that Rex had been driving on several brandies.

Let me try to wrap up as briefly as possible. Later that day I gave Rex some more money, my earlier vow notwithstanding. I told him to try not to spend too much on drink, and think of his children who needed him. At home I cried at the senselessness of it.

The next day I mentioned the thing to Fabian, another driver I use around here. He expressed surprise, saying that this was the first he had heard of Rex’s wife dying. And Fabian, I should note, appears to know about pretty much every other thing that goes on in Ndola.

So now I find myself in the morally strange position of really wanting her to be dead. I don’t want to have to come to terms with the possibility of having been played that badly for the fool. Or having to acknowledge that someone I like(d) could stoop that low. I’ve posted Fabian to a reconnaissance mission, and expect to be finding out the truth anytime now. I am aware that Fabian is a cynic, but this is the environment that reared him, and he has every reason to be.

Either way, it’s very much another TIA: This is Africa, friends.

Oh, and one last thing. Yesterday I hit somebody for the first time in a long while. It was a thief going for my pocket outside the supermarket. It just happened. As soon as I felt the hand grope, I turned around and let fly