“Just let me keep it” (Chilonga, Part I)

We have gone to the market, my brother and me, to retrieve my umbrella – one of the many personal belongings I seem to be shedding with alarming regularity since I arrived in Africa – from the shop where I’ve inadvertently left it on an earlier “bun run.” My umbrella, my fleece, my raincoat… I know I’m just being spacey – and I’d like to think I could come up with a more compelling and more permanent way than this anyway – but I think I must be desperate to leave my mark on this place, to be remembered. After only twelve days – many more by the time I will have a chance to post this – it has already begun to leave its mark on me.

But I am lucky. As with the raincoat (which I left behind in Dorica’s office late last week and got back from her today), the shopkeeper was glad to return my umbrella (my fleece – my Old Navy fleece which I got for $7 and which I loved and which would have come in handy during the unexpected cold snap in Chilonga – I fear is lost forever). Not that Dorica couldn’t use a raincoat, or the shopkeeper an umbrella. It is, after all, the rainy season, and Chilonga is in the Northern province (not, as I erroneously reported in an earlier post, in the Northeastern province – there’s actually no such province - though it is technically both north and east) and gets a boatload of rain. But this is not, from what I’ve observed, the way Zambians operate. So we cup our hands, one over the other like trapping a firefly, clap twice and, with a slight nod of our heads, express our thanks.

We have gone no further than fifteen feet when my brother spots a crisp, 1-pin note (1,000 kwacha) fluttering in the red dirt at his feet.

“Ah! Whose is this?” my brother asks the women in the market as he crouches to rescue it.

The women glance furtively around and shake their heads. “It is not mine,” they murmur, as much to each other as to us. They look away – none of them wants to be the one to admit their poverty, but hungry eyes and taught skin over sharp bones belie their feigned indifference. One thousand kwacha is equivalent to only 25 U.S. cents but, at this market, could buy someone a dozen tomatoes for nshima relish, or two buns, or a small sack of onions, or a heap of mangos. I am stunned at their reluctance to claim it.

“Is it yours?” my brother asks the small woman seated in front of the shop to our left. She shakes her head, chews her fingers. “Yours?” he says to the two women on our right. The Bemba, at least here at Chilonga, are not given to fits of laughter or grand expressions of mirth, but these women cackle and slap their knees, as if he is asking the world’s most ridiculous question.

“Not mine,” they say, waving him off, still chortling.

“Ah, but it is not mine so maybe it is one of yours?” he persists, looking from his left to his right. In truth, it probably is his (or mine), having doubtless escaped a loosely-zipped pocket on our earlier visit, because the people in these villages don’t often carry denominations of this size – they are used to dealing in 50 (roughly 1 cent) or 100 (2 cents) or 500 (you get the idea) kwacha notes – but we’d pretty much rather set ourselves on fire than flaunt our white privilege.

We stand for a moment, a now-familiar feeling of helplessness settling in. We know we can’t keep it; we know they won’t accept it. But we must wait – until the need becomes greater than the fear – because this is the way things work in Zambia: You wait. And wait and wait and wait.

By now a small crowd has gathered, and they watch us curiously. “Who will take it?” my brother asks. There is an uncomfortable, scratchy silence. I hang back, mirroring his pleading left-to-right looks – though with decidedly more desperation than he - and shift my weight. I feel my face flush with unexpected judgment. “Please, somebody, just take it!” I shout inside my head, as much to assuage the terrible ache of my own impotence as I would their palpable need. “It’s just a thousand kwacha!!”

But the rules of the game don’t allow this. And so the women continue to regard each other suspiciously, a double-dog dare flashing briefly in their faces. Who will confess their need? Who will flirt with (gasp!) greed?

“Who will take it?” my brother asks again, and there is movement to our right. All eyes go to the tall-ish, wrinkled bun-seller (one of at least two bun-sellers who, like the rest in this baffling and frankly ineffective model of commerce, sit right beside one another, in competition, selling the exact same buns for the exact same price) as she steps towards Chris, her left arm outstretched and beckoning vaguely, noncommittally, in his general direction.

“Ah,” she says with affected authority as she plucks the note from his fingers. “Just let me keep it.”

There is an eruption of laughter from the crowd – one of those atypical fits of grand expression – and a chorus of who-knows-what-they’re-actually-saying in Bemba that relieves the tension (mine especially) and paints the women in their shared judgment of the bun-seller’s scandalous lack of shame, their shock at her audacity, and their flapping, conspicuous envy.


Picture 1: Fish-seller at Mpika market