I am not a people person.
Which is why by the time the company bus slid into the glittery lights of late afternoon Kitwe, I was frizzled out and my social battery completely drained. I refrained from partaking in the awestruck ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ of my companions, as they counted off many similar landmarks around the country. It was a six hour drive and my patience wore thin, as we wove in and out of the many towns seperating Lusaka and Kitwe.
I could practically hear a collective sigh of relief from my three colleagues, as we passed the infamous Black Mountain and slid into the meandering end of day traffic in the mine town’s CBD. Despite my exhaustion from the long journey, I actually liked Kitwe. It had a different sense to it than Lusaka, somewhere between lackadaisical and urgent, the story of city where still waters truly do run deep. We reached the city as the sun was setting, and almost as if a reminder went off, lights sprung to life almost immediately.
“Kitwe is organized, huh” Jerome remarked.
“Oh, I know right,” Ketty purred, agreeing with him as always.
I rolled my eyes and ignored them. Ketty’s crush on Jerome was painful to watch. Chilufya, who was driving focused his eyes on the road, as we turned off into a dusty gravel road, where our accommodation would be for the next few weeks.
“Lights or not. We ought to be careful,” Chilufya murmured, as he drove slowly, navigating the dips and bumps of the road.
“I thought jerabos were a thing of the past,” I said lazily, watching the landscape outside my window fade into dusk.
“Something is amiss in this city,” Chilufya replied evenly, “ There’s a lot worse in this world than a thief.”
As I gazed out the window, I gasped in surprise as I saw people lighting lanterns outside their gates and fixing mirrors right next to them. I caught the eye of an old woman, who hobbled slowly away from her makeshift gate, a small hand held mirror attached clumsily to its frame. She looked at me searchingly, as if suspicious of our presence.
“Whats with the mirrors?” I asked no one in particular.
“It’s a stupid ritual that was done away with in the 80s,” Jerome said. “People put up mirrors to ward off evil spirits. My grandmother used to do it. I never knew it made a come back.”
“I bet your grandmother had the most beautiful mirror outside her gate,” Ketty said, in a disgustingly sweet voice.
“What?” Jerome said, batting her away with irritation. He rolled his eyes. “It seems it’s become a shared superstition, city over,” he continued, joining me in gazing at the dusky landscape.
“Like I said,” Chilufya growled, “there is far more worse than a thief.”
I started to laugh, Chilufya was far too young to have such superstitions. My laugh ended in my throat and was replaced by a scream as the car lurched suddenly to the side, and careened off the gravel road, hurtling uncontrollably to what appeared to be a large ditch. I grabbed frantically at whatever I could as I felt the car tilt sideways. Chilufya grunted with the effort of trying to control the car, and by some miracle we made a round spin and the car rested in the middle of the gravel road. Ketty had taken advantage of the situation and was holding onto Jerome, who was trying desperately to free himself from her clutches. I exhaled shakily, glad that for the most part, we were all unharmed. I tried to open the door, but Chilufya stopped me.
“Look,” he whispered, so quietly I wouldn’t have caught it had I not been next to him. Crouching in a tumble of weeds and unkempt hedges, was a man with what could only be described as obsidian skin. His skin was flawless and darker than the night, yet rather than absorbing light, it cast it off in an eerie glow. He had his hands on the collar of the largest dog I’d ever seen in my life. Both were baring their fangs at us.
“Fangs?! Humans don’t have fangs!” I thought frantically. I turned to point this out to Chilufya, who shook his head silently, as if asking me not to say anything. I turned back to get another look of the beautiful black man, but he was gone.
“Chilu, what the hell?” I demanded, as I turned again. With a stoic face, Chilu was pointing a mirror at where the man and his dog once were.
…
The Loving Kind 