My Journey

I remember quite clearly sitting on a very small carved wooden stool. The stool was small in the Zambian sense, so it was about the size of a coffee can. I was sitting in the house of an elder from the Catholic church. There was a circle of Zambian men and one muzungu around a large plastic pail filled with local beer that smelled of corn and rough alcohol. It was there that I decided I loved her.

The man in charge of pouring the beer filled each of our glasses in turn. The other men talked about church functions and finding ways to get enough money to buy a flatbed. I thought about the girl at the clinic. Her name was Lwendo. Her father was from the Taonga tribe in the Southern Province and he had given her the name which meant Journey in his tribe's language. She spoke Bemba and English on top of that. I had been spending nearly every evening at her house for almost a month. She cooked me dinner and made me tea and I liked her a lot.


My glass was filled again and I drank the thick, gritty corn beer down as quickly as possible. The alcohol created by the passionate dance between the corn meal and the monkoyo root was coursing through my veins. It all seemed so clear to me then: Lwendo meant a lot to me, and there was no reason that I should wait any longer to say something.

I waited for my cup to be filled one more time. I drank the beer down very quickly and had a brief battle with my gag reflex. Winning the battle, I politely said goodbye to the other men in the circle and got up. The world spun around me, but I managed to make my way to the door and out of the small mud brick house.

I picked up my bicycle and aimed its front tire in the direction of the clinic.

On the tarmac, I realized just how inebriated I really was. I tried to pedal in a straight line, but found that this was far more difficult than it had been before the meeting around the bucket of monkoyo. I pushed off and soon my front tire decided to leave the road. Finding a rut, the front tire soon decided to stop entirely. As I landed crotch-first on the bar between the handlebars and the seat, I sobered up briefly. I looked around to see who had witnessed the muzungu being too drunk to drive his bicycle in a straight line. No one was there.

I found a route to the clinic that took me past as few houses as possible. My headphone's pumped Neil Young directly to my brain.

Oh, this old world
keeps spinning 'round.
It's a wonder
tall trees ain't layin' down...

Walking up the stairs to Lwendo's door, I marvelled at the reality of my actions. I had spent a lot of time convincing myself that starting a relationship with a Zambian girl was a terrible idea. But I didn't care at that moment. I was willing, after that, to deal with any of the bullshit that could follow. We would make it work.

I watched my hand as it made a fist and knocked at the door. The door swung in and a man stood in front of me. "Hello," I said. My balance was gone in several ways.
"Hello."
"I... um, is Lwendo home?"
"No," the man answered with no expression. "She has gone to the clinic."
"You are a friend of her's?"
"I am visiting my lady."

There was an electrical feeling behind my eyes and I lost focus for a moment. I recognized the feeling as a side effect. How I looked at the situation had changed very abruptly; like being in an emotional fender-bender.
"I'm... I'm a friend of Lwendo's," I managed to get out. The man in the door accnowledged what I said silently and just as silently gave me a que to leave as soon as possible.
"Well..." I wanted to leave her a message but could think of none that I wanted the man in the doorway to relay. "I'll see you around."

I backed down the stairs and found my bicycle. As I walked the bike out of the yard, I could feel the man's eyes on my back. The back of the muzungu usurper.

I found Elvis Costello on the MP3 player.

Welcome to the working week.
I know it don't thrill you,
I hope it don't kill you,
Welcome to the working week.

Lwendo faded back into the crowd of faces of girls that don't feel the same way about me. I pumped my legs, kept my eyes on the front tire and allowed the jangling guitars and driving drum beats of "My Aim is True" to feed my self-pity.

When I looked up from the tire, I was at the gate of Belga, the headquarters for a Belgian road construction company. A Zambian guard greeted me by name and led me to the dining area where I was welcomed by three red-faced Serbian men sitting around a large wooden table. They asked me how things were going. "Horseshit." I don't think they understood this word, but they got the idea. Soon I had a glass of Johnnie Walker Red and a Zambian cigarette.

The men were watching tennis and doing very little talking. I felt the liquor run through me and watched the smoke rise from my mouth like exhaust.

Soon it was dark and it was time to go back to my hut. I thought about how I would be there by myself in the evenings for the time being.

Blame it on Cain.
Don't blame it on me.
Oh, oh, it's nobody's fault,
but we need somebody to burn.

In the deep-cave dark of my hut, I found a single candle and gave the place a little light. I plugged my portable speakers into the MP3 player because the place was as quiet as it was dark.

With my headlamp I found my disposable razor that should have been disposed many weeks before. Then I opened my first aid kit. Moving aside small packets of pills and packages of gauze, I found the small scissors included to cut through bandages. I then aimed the beam of light from my headlamp at the wall next to my door. It bounced off my small camp mirror and back to my face. I stood up and grabbed the mirror.

Sitting on my own coffee-can sized stool in front of a basin of water, I squinted at the camp mirror to see the dull bandage scissors and to guide them. My hair fell in small clumps to the reed mat covering my dirt floor.

Why don't you tell me
'bout the mystery dance.
I want to know about the mystery dance.
Why don't you show me...

The dull razor scraped over my scalp; over and over, I drew the blade from front to back.

...'cause I've tried and I've tried,
and I'm still mystified.

When I had finished I walked out of my door and stood in my yard. I looked up at the rest of the Milky Way. Without America's light polution, it was all visible. A cool breeze blew accross the newly revealed skin on my head. In the house, the song changed.


I'm not angry anymore.


I smiled and exhaled, allowing my breath to drift out there with all the rest.