BEASTS

Beasts. That's what they present themselves to be. Dirt coats their skin and they leave a putrid smell in their wake. They smell so bad flies don't even want them. They have reached a form of humanity so harsh that only prostitutes can compare. They have no shame, nothing they can't do. What's a little embarrassment if it can feed you and your family? Soap or food? Surely food wins the contest. But they see everything and everyone. They see you with your supple skin and designer jeans, they see me as I post pictures on Instagram and answer calls using my 'in public' accent. They know they don't belong so to numb the pain that every outcast feels they drink. Not Moet, not Honey Jacks or Cîroc and triple sec. Their drinks are as hard as their affliction. 

I won’t lie, many times they have been faceless to me, just dark figures in dirty, smelly clothes. I went to school in the heart of Lusaka’s CBD, I had a driver pick me up and drop me off. When I got to 7th grade all of a sudden all my classmates started going to Kulima Tower together and getting on buses home dubbing them 'school buses' and having fun in them. I felt left out of the fun because every day, while my friends went to have fun, I sat and waited for my driver. Bored. So one night I sat my father down and told him I was a big girl ready to handle my own transportation. He stopped me, I sulked and eventually he let me do it. I blended in. Till this day I appreciate the experience. I knew conductors and the man that sold sweets at Kamwala, I made friends. TJ and I got close then. We would sit on each other’s laps and spend the other's fare on éclairs. She held my hand when we crossed the road because she was more experienced, well versed, and older; gosh I looked up to her. I still do. 

I know Kulima Tower very well, I knew it before the renovations and that tree they cut down. So these thugs, the beasts are people I'm used to. They have nauseated me as much as they have made me laugh. They have hit on me and ridiculed me all at once. I have seen them strip someone and I've watched in fear. Treat them like beasts and they will be beasts. 

Street harassment goes further than just the people that strip or get stripped. To me it goes as far as the sociological structures that make one person fail to see another as equally human and free. Could it be said that the perpetrators of street harassment don't know any better and have been left behind in the modernization and exposure that the rest undergo. I have my views because of education, exposure and experience. Who can say that I would have turned out different from them if all I knew was what they know; survival, hustle and the streets. Their norms are the same ones our grandparents have; a woman must not show her thighs except they are brutes and mob psychology makes them get together and strip women. How come there hasn't been any laws to ban it?Perhaps the lawmakers also don't like the revealing dresses, they are just too dignified to strip anyone so they let the beasts do it. 

I'm a dreamer and an optimist. You know that picture of paradise on the Awake! Magazine? The one with the lion licking a baby gazelle, children and adults smiling and eating fruit. That's the kind of society I think we can aspire for.  They say to reach the clouds aim for the stars. So I'm not exactly fantasizing about vegetarian lions but can we at least get humans that let each other become great. Or at least mind their own business so that if someone fails it is not because they were afflicted by their fellow humans. 

I'd say most of our social problems are caused by each of us dehumanizing each other. One unable to see the other as a person with a life and feeling. 

If you hang around Kulima Tower long enough you will notice that we are all human. From the random person using the station as a transit to their actual destination, to the lady who was house shopping and has too many kitchen goodies to carry, to the beasts; the ever menacing presence of thugs making ends meet.  If you pay attention you will see they that they have loyalties, jokes and if you respect them enough to greet them you will see a smile in their eyes. They are human.