LOVE BINDS. PART NINE: BOMA, SEX AND LIES.

“Shit!”

The word literally just spewed out of my mouth as I tried to sip on a volcanic cup of coffee. I am not the biggest hot beverage fan, but a lot can change in two years.

Kundabene visited  Ishmael's house two weeks after her little stint to pick up the rest of her stuff. "bitches aint loyal’. She tried calling him after but Ishmael was just not having it. Kundabene  was  the type to fuck the whole squad and look at you like you were the crazy one. Nope.

It had been two years. The name Kundabene became more foreign than the constitution is to the average Zambian citizen. Ishmael had managed to push his life reset button once again. That is what he did when life’s proverbial shit hit the fan. Sometimes life did that. Rolled it’s tumble weed ball of shit self into a cosmic fan that just crushed every bit of it. Nuts, fibres, the whole enchilada, all the graphic bits that constitute any imaginable ball of shit, will be splattered so far into the atmosphere they will have you wondering what your name was. That is what Ishmael’s life felt like when Kundabene left.  It was all too much and it pushed him to the edge of his sanity. He had felt betrayed.He had been lied to. He had been played. Again. Bison had died then Kunie left, his Kunie.

 Ishmael had heard from the proverbial grave vine that she had managed to land herself some married Nigerian tycoon of sorts in Lusaka. He did not give two hairs of a rat’s behind, if she had signed up for the Naked Cartwheel Show at the Cirque du soleil tour, he was done with her.

Ishmael was determined to leave his part of earth and go anywhere. Everywhere he looked in the City, he was reminded of every single girlfriend that he had had, and they all seemed to carry a heavy story with them.

“Ishmael!” that was the 1000^th text from Mandy. Ishmael still had Bison’s phone and every time that he switched it on after  a random two week hiatus, an ‘Ishmael’ text popped up. What did he/she want? The dilemma was in trying to find out what she/he wanted to say and how she found out that he had her phone or to throw it away because it was the last string that tied him to the memories and virtual existence that was Bison. Did he really want to find out what this Mandy character had to say? Did he really want to open that particular Pandora’s Box?

He buried it at what he deemed a very special place. He had to say goodbye to that part of his life and that is what he was going to do. Right at her grave

“That’s so gay exsay,” he finally heard Bison say as he lay the wreath of yellow roses on her grave, Yellow was her favourite colour.

I sat there; staring at my stained Paul Smith Ice-Blue White Shirt. “Not today Satan, not today.”

“You really must get that cleaned up Mr Woolworths,” Longa coughed up, “or wifey will be mad at you.” She winked, licked her lips and swang her chair back to face her workstation.

In the two years that passed I managed to work on myself and get my shit together. A lot had happened, and you can agree with me that I had been to hell and back.

“Fisanga Abaume” (Only the strong survive), Chintu always said.

After Kundabene’s sudden departure, I felt that I needed to recalibrate and take a second look at what my life had become and where it was going. Is this what I really wanted for life going forward?

The longest part of my two year Sabbatical was about getting super stoned on exponentially more exotic highs, reading more on African History because contrary to popular belief, there was more to me than dick slinging and running away from my problems, oh, and making sweet love to my Longie, but I will tell you more about that later.

“I really need to get rid of this stain before I become the topic at the canteen again”

I drove back home, which was a 20 minute walk and 10 minute drive from work. Yes, I drove,for 10 minutes, because I can.

 I took off my shirt, I couldn't help but catch a glance of my developing six-pack.

“dang, you are one hella sexy mofo!” A daily mantra which I noticed made my days a hell of a lot better.

Here is the thing they don’t tell you about losing someone you love.

First of all, everyone gets over the whole situation way before you do. Secondly, you see their face, ALL THE TIME. Third, if you keep an item of clothing to ‘keep their smell’, that shit wears off faster than an aerosol spray in a public toilet at intercity bus terminus. (Ok so maybe I took that one a little too far, but you get my point.)

Then there are the people you deal with. Friends, family and colleagues. Most of the time they don’t really know what to say. Then when it comes to visitations, I can never look at Hungry Lion the same again because that is all I ate from my visitors at Chainama. You also lose hope in the potential of greatness, that is life and living. Picking your pieces back up after is what is the hardest part.

“This is a good strain,” I whispered to myself as I blew out my second pull of the fat joint I rolled myself. I was home, the precious haven I created for myself in Chisamba.

“Boi, tell Kasanga I will not be coming in after lunch, I just got a runny tummy and will be hitting the clinic in a few,” I growled at Chintu on the phone and comfortable on the couch. Turned out if you left your jacket and laptop at the desk, the fake sickness thing worked like a charm.

I was high as a kite.

“Boma ni Boma!” I sang as I attempted to ‘Jerabo dance’ my way to the kitchen. I had the munchies at 10am on a Wednesday.

The letter I received sent me to the accounts’ department at the District Department of Water Affairs office in Chisamba. It was a divine occurance that I knew was my gift from Bison and above.

NdaLonga, everyone calls her Longa. Longie is what I call her. She was the married woman that is keeping me 'busy'. If you catch my slightly heavy drift. She was eighteen years older than I was and had the sexual libido only matched by the thirst of a stoned goat. My penis still hurt from the previous night, but she was the right kind of distraction. I gave her what she needed, and she reciprocated accordingly. She took care of me in every way a married woman humanly possibly could.

Chintu. When I got there, it was like we just smelled each other’s butts and knew we were meant to be. He was brought up on the Copperbelt and went to one of the infamous ‘Trust Schools’,which I did too for two seconds, before they were swallowed to the ground by privatization. I knew we would get along when I heard him, the day I arrived, speaking Bemba to one of the Janitors in the kitchen. I walked up to him with my ‘Kopala’ swag, and when he did not flinch for one second, I knew he was my brother. That day we spoke about how the Copperbelt was the best place on earth and how it still managed to produce such awesome down-to-earth characters.

Ishmael had appeared to Chintu the way an oasis appears to a man stranded in the desert. First it’s an illusion, then it’s real then you start to convince yourself that maybe it should have stayed an illusion because now you want more.

He was the friend that Chintu had been longing for in his social desert that was Chisamba.

Chintu had grown up on the Copperbelt and found that life in Lusaka was a whole different than had anticipated. Lusaka folk always seemed to have some sort of ownership hold on Lusaka such that no one could claim it as their own as well. He chose to embrace the Copperbelt as his own and wear it on his sleeve like his Father was the Paramount Chief there. He spoke Bemba without question or correction and learnt to speak Nyanja just for the janitors. Bemba was the way he was going, and that was that. Five years in Lusaka and he still felt like he never fitted in.

It was the day of the new recruits that he met Ishmael. Literally a God-sent,this guy was everything he had ever wished for in a friend a consequent bromance partner, and he spoke Bemba.

From his narrative, Chintu gathered from Ishmael that though having being born and bred in Lusaka, he had spent a few scattered months on the Copperbelt and attended Ndola Trust School at coincidentally the same time that he was there. They had exchanged a few names of teachers and popular kids that they both knew, laughed about the Christmas concerts which were held each year and promised each other to go ZNBC to find a video of a concert in which Ishmael had played lead role. They were practically married.

Having been a year older, Chintu played the ‘big brother’ role in guiding Ishmael in his seemingly carefree style of living. Chintu understood what his friend had been through and had surrendered to playing the devil’s advocate in his evils.

Chisamba does not have much to write home about. It is as dead as it sounds. I managed to get a job there because the small town was recently declared a district and due to that newly acquired status, recruitment was carried out. I knew somebody who knew somebody, who knew something about it and that is how the letter was sent to me.  You know how it goes in Zambia.

It had been an hour and I really started thinking about going back. But first I needed to eat. The thing no one ever tells you about munchies is that they will make you eat literally anything, I shit you not. So I kept assorted snacks around the house, it helped  that Longie didn’t complain either.

The day Ishmael came to the office he had that ‘deer in headlights’ look. The new guy. Longa had been assigned to orient and welcome Ishmael together with other recruits into the office. This was a very rare occurrence considering it was a Boma office, this never happened.He must have had a connection. The task was going to be a drag. She was going to be a sport and do it anyway. She fought with  Gérard , her husband of five years, the previous night about who was going to take Chimensemilo,their six year old son, to school which had escalated into the seventh circle of hell. So held in the drama. She was going to be professional regardless.

NdaLonga Chisanga walked into the room with the poise and prowess that only a proud Tigress possessed. There was something about her that you could not really put your finger on. She did not own the generic beauty that is splashed on your Instagram timeline. No. She was slightly taller than the average Zambian woman, fair skinned, almost ‘yellow-bone’, if you like. Her eyes scanned the room like a mother Eagle looking for her lost young. Her presence brought upon a sudden chill that only an African queen bathed in milk and honey carried in her shadow.

The woman was beautiful.

Ndalonga’s middle-class up-bringing, private school education and all, was responsible for this unapologetic confidence that silenced conversations when she walked passed a group of whispering colleagues in the Boma corridors. It was not fair. Why did she never seem to struggle for anything? She seemed to have it all; at least that is what it looked like from the outside.

Coming from a broken home, she had her apprehensions about getting married but did it anyway after 6 months of dating Gérard . It felt like the right thing to do at that time. She was wrong.

The short of the story is that now she was in God-forsaken Chisamba and there was nothing she could do about it. She had to make the best of the experience and that included finding the best strain of weed there was.

Uncle B, that is who her supplier was (who ever really knows the name of their dealer anyway,the less information you have, the better). He turned out to be a very good outlet for hypothetical stories of people he did not know. Gave sound advice nonetheless and that was her ‘friend’ in Chisamba. Working for Boma meant trips to locations only her personal account could dare to dream about. That also meant that she could get away from the five-year-old mistake that was her husband and marriage.

Ishmael on the other hand, was going to be her friend, she could feel it in her loins. She had gone through the name of the recruits, as she was on the recruiting panel, and locked eyes with Ishmael’s passport sized photo. She knew there and then that they were going to click as buddies. Fuck buddies, Banje buddies, whatever buddies, she was going to HAVE him. Something about him made her want to be young and 27 again. Must have been his Skiwy eyes (whisky for the cool kids). Something about them told her that he had seen more than his 29 year-old-soccer-playing-Hercules-built frame was giving off. He was a bad boy gone good, and she was going to make sure that the transition was deterred for the moment. 

She wasn’t wrong.

The first night she spent at his allocated two-bedroom cottage (which she was responsible for allocating because a queen deserves to be sexed like a queen,”ifiko aweh”), he ran her bath after they shared slightly more than two hours chatting about everything and nothing. Something about him made her feel like she felt when she was 27, alive and herself ,before the pressures of life, society and age had taken over like  a hurricane without warning. She was at home with him. He pulled out a joint without warning and an unapologetic “do you mind?”

They were a ‘match made in heaven’, adultery heaven, heaven nonetheless.

That night they had supper which he cooked, a bottle of what seemed like the best bottle of wine she had ever tasted, some sort of Moscato, and it was white! Just how she liked it. He was heaven-sent.

Gérard had taken ‘Milo’ to his grandparents’ house on the Copperbelt for his annual ‘Gogo-break’ so there was no sense of guilt whatsoever as to whether he would be worried about her whereabouts; she was in heaven, which was where he would find her.

The bath was magical; she felt every single sting of the hot water due to the super-sensitivity that the weed had helped to induce. He had shower gel and bubble bath. He could not be have been a real Zambian man. ‘Where was ‘Ish’ when I was looking for a man to marry?’ she thought to herself as she virtually travelled through space and time soaking in the therapy that was the bath .

Their ‘situationship’ went on for the longest part of six months before they had the talk and she nearly lost it. At  43 she was not going to get caught up in a ‘thing’ with an exe’ of a man-boy still trying to figure out his life. He had, in bits told her about his life before moving to Chongwe, but to be honest it just sounded like the usual bullshit that every man would share with his latest conquest for pity, sympathy, empathy or whatever it is men imagine will get their penile glands into that that is the magic of the Yoni. Longa just did not buy it, it was too fantastic of a story;  there was a super crazy ex-girlfriend,  a confused, former ‘Muchurchano’ converted waste of woman, a dead girlfriend-not girlfriend and some weird bandit of a best friend to the dead girlfriend.  This guy could give Shonda Rhimes a run for her money in story-telling. Lies he told!

He was here for a fresh start.

She had turned into somewhat of his sugar mama. She did not give two shits. He had a beautiful penis and she did not mind thanking him and God for that.

“So naufyuka kunchito nafuti te?” Bellowed Longa through the ear piece of my phone. Christ! Did I just pass out on the couch again? I hissed looking at my time piece, it was 16:30. I was supposed to sneak in the back of the office and get my laptop from Chintu after my little stint. That was not me. It had to come to an end. People go through shit in life but was I not too old for a quarter life crisis? Jesus!

“Hahaha! Don’t worry I helped cover for you, spoke to Kasanga, you know how he has a soft spot for me…,but doesn’t everyone?” she giggled.

That laugh, “I will be at yours in a few and by the way, I picked up your shit. Tsk! Yaba…..’’ she trailed off as I attempted to gather my thoughts as to what month of the year I was in.

“Longa cannot be good for you man”  Chintu’s stern voice was in the back of my mind. “A woman that chwangs with you cannot possibly be what you need in this phase of your life.”

I swatted the thoughts away like persistent gnats at a Braai in October. It was not the time. I straighten the throw pillows on the couch and pick up whatever littered the floor of the living room, I knew how much Longa hated it when the house was a mess “nothing like a man with a stank house”, she always splattered hints in every other conversation. The rest of the house was as I left it in the morning when I left for work. Being a Friday, it was tradition to see each other and share a joint before she went home to what she referred to as the seventh circle of hell. I'd never understand that phrase with reference to a union blessed by the big man G himself.

I heard the car outside, she arrived. I put on Rihanna’s ‘Needed me’ on medium volume to set the mood. I picked up a cigarette and my lighter  from my coffee table as I sauntered to the door to welcome my queen, what I saw when I swang the door open, curdled my blood solid.