Joy Comes in the Morning

When I was young and restless, I had a propensity for driving in the evening whenever I was on a long journey. Some many moons ago, I started from Chama at 16:00hrs, and by 18:30hrs, I was already in Lundazi. Sable Construction Company Limited had just completed work on the Lundazi - Chipata Road. It was a smooth, unadulterated, and unmarked highway.

There I was, cruising at an average speed of 140 km/h.

The air conditioning was set to its lowest, fast-paced music blared at high volume and adrenaline rushed through my veins. I wore the cloak of invincibility from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. A whippersnapper, I felt the need for speed.

At around 20:30hrs, I reached Chipata.

Against my better judgment, decided to pick up four people who were hitchhiking. Sitting in the front passenger seat was an elderly man. Behind was a young couple and another elderly woman.

I later realized that the old man had appointed himself the responsibility of keeping me awake by telling endless stories. He also doubled as my navigator.

“This stretch usually has domestic animals on the road,” he would say.

“There’s a large hump in 500 meters.”

“There’s a dangerous curve in this area.”

He genuinely looked out for me, and for everyone else in that car that night. By extension, he helped in keeping us alive. As a result of his close supervision, we reached Lusaka at around 04:00hrs the following morning. Very late for my Satwant Singh alter ego.  

After dropping off three people, including my assistant driver, the elderly lady remained. Apparently, she didn’t know where she was going; her son was supposed to come and pick her up once we arrived in Lusaka. She was in terra incognita. 

Unfortunately, her phone had run out of battery and we couldn’t call him.

After some frustrating conversation, she asked for her backpack, which I had kept in the boot. She began searching through it, eventually pulling out an old, worn-out A5 exercise book. She flipped through pages filled with scribbles, some in pencil, others in pen. By then, my already thin patience had completely withered.

At last, she found the page she had been looking for and showed me her son’s phone number. The very son she had come to visit.

However, there was yet another problem: his phone number wasn’t going through, and my conscience wouldn’t allow me to leave her anywhere.

In Obotunde Ijimere's The Imprisonment of Obatala, the multifaceted Yoruba deity Eshu makes a profound observation: kindness has never killed anyone but brings a lot of problems.

It was almost 05:00hrs. when I decided to park in front of Radian Stores on Freedom Way.

This decision was as strategic as it was an act of resignation. Strategic because I was assured by the security guards at Radian Stores that I would be safe there; resignation because I truly didn’t know what else to do with my only remaining passenger, who had no idea where she was going.

Sleep eventually set in, only to be interrupted by the hustle and bustle of Lusaka’s morning. I checked my watch, it was almost 07:00hrs, I tried the lady’s son’s phone number again.

And voilà, it rang.

Truly, joy comes in the morning. By 07:30hrs, he had arrived, explaining how he had started panicking when his mother’s phone stopped ringing, fully aware that she knew nothing about Lusaka.

From this experience, I learned a few lessons.

Firstly, there are people sent to look out for you. You may never get the chance to thank them, and often you may not even know their names. These are people who mention your name in corridors of power and influence, who believe in you more than you believe in yourself.

By the same measure, there are people who will dislike you for no reason other than you being yourself. They use frivolous justifications: “I don’t like the way he walks,” they’ll say, or “I don’t like his head or his nose.” Nothing about character, only things you cannot change.

Secondly, don’t be too quick to judge people unless you fully understand their situation and perspective. As humans, we judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions. We must extend to others the same grace we so readily give ourselves.

The old lady’s life experience had taught her to keep important phone numbers in an exercise book. Experience, often held by the elderly, is the antidote to the reckless invincibility that many youths exude today.

Thirdly, humanity thrives on interdependence, and interdependence is a never-ending chain. I cared for the hikers by giving them a ride. The elderly man cared for me, and everyone else, by navigating and keeping me alert. I cared for the old lady by not abandoning her. The security guards at Radian Stores cared for me by providing a sense of safety. The old lady’s son cared for his mother, and his relief completed the circle.

No one is truly independent. Our survival and success depended on a network of mutual responsibility. At various times, we are all the driver, the old man, the old lady and the waiting son. In theory, every single person falls somewhere on the continuum and can fit perfectly into one of the four categories. A functioning society relies on these roles being fulfilled with patience and duty.

In the end, this journey mirrors life itself: moving from the arrogance of solo speed, through the humility of accepting help and bearing responsibility, to the exhaustion of persistent duty, and finally to the redemption that comes with dawn and resolution. It reminds us that speed is not the same as progress, and that while our greatest trials on the road often come from our fellow travelers, so do our greatest lessons and aids. As we step into the new year, slow down when needed, be kinder than required and always assume that the person besides us may be fighting a battle we cannot see. The road ahead should be shared, just as the one behind was.

 

A Bullet Repaid Kindness

In the mid-2000s, I had a friend named John.

I remember exactly how we met.

On my very first day of school in Lusaka, I showed up in rags, nothing “representable,” as the teachers called it. My guardians couldn’t afford a uniform either due to unpreparedness or lack of means. John’s parents gave me some of his clothes that I wore at least for that particular month. At school, he never mentioned nor made fun of some happenings. He also never said a word to other school kids.

Just like that, I stepped into that classroom looking like I belonged.

We were both village boys, new to the city, trying to outrun the dust and squalor we'd been born into. For a while, things looked up. School. Shoes. Friendship. But John's life hadn't started softly.

Him being a friend, I would learn and understand his life like my own.

He was born in Bimbe Village, a small, forgotten speck in south-eastern Chongwe District, tucked kilometers from Chalimbana. The village drew life from the Chalimbana River, a persistent vein in Soli land, though Lenjes like John's family had settled there from Mungule in Chibombo. Ba Lenje, bantashi. Bene chishi!!

His birth came on the cusp of January 2000, as the world braced for the Y2K bug, a chilling spectre threatening to crumble digital infrastructure, from power grids to banks. Programmers scrambled globally, but a primal panic swelled too: religious leaders and survivalists proclaimed it the End of Days, blending tech glitches with apocalyptic prophecies. Economic collapse, nuclear meltdowns, a plunge into pre-industrial darkness, millenarian zeal fuelled stockpiles for the final reset. 

In Bimbe, nobody knew computers. The nearest clinic was over ten kilometers away in Chongwe's central business district, so John entered the world at home, his umbilical cord buried in the village soil. While half the world fretted over a computer bug, the other half birthed babies in huts, cut off from proper healthcare. A stark contradiction of realities.

His mother, young and restless, left him at three months old with her own mother, Subeta, to seek work in town.

Subeta was... different.

Not Sabetha, her Christian name. In Bimbe, names bent to the land's tongue: Subeta. She walked like a soldier, talked like a Pentecostal preacher, fought like both combined.

“If someone touches my blood,” she'd say, tying her chitenge tight at the back like a boxer, “I won’t ask for the story. I’ll write it myself.”

Like the people of Umuofia in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, she believed the fox must be chased first; only then can the hen be warned against wandering in the bush. Villagers whispered she once trailed a drunk who insulted her niece to the market and slapped him into next week. Unconfirmed, but it felt true.

She had one child, Rabecca, from a man named Chanda who vanished before the girl could walk. Life plodded on as it always does, hard, dusty, sun-baked.

Subeta hustled, her ventures dramatic. A trip to Itezhi-Tezhi for fish resale brought back more than stock: a fisherman husband, trading free kapenta for her capricious affection.

Subeta’s fisherman husband looked like a question mark somebody had forgotten to straighten out: shoulders drooping so low they practically waved at his knees, back bent in a permanent apology to gravity. The village kids swore that on windy days his silhouette looked exactly like a fishhook, and even the chickens stopped pecking to watch him pass, probably wondering if he was coming or going.

As expected, their love was tumultuous.

Their grass-thatched mud rondavel reeked of dried fish and resentment. One scorching afternoon, Mr Fisherman asserted authority, targeting young John, must have been out of clumsiness, defiance or both. The boy stumbled into the kitchen, tears streaming.

Subeta, who was cooking something at the fireplace, didn't turn immediately.

When she heard, her breathing drowned out the chickens.

“Tell me,” she commanded, “how did you get so comfortable putting hands on my grandson?”

“This boy needs discipline! I’m the man here!” He scoffed.

Subeta’s eyes narrowed. “No. You were a discount. A bag of free fish. You are nothing.”

She slapped him; his palm-leaf cap spun like a coin. A brutal fight erupted. Minutes later, he was out, hessian sack full of his belongings, tossed into the dust. He vanished to Itezhi-Tezhi or wherever Subeta’s exes went. Bimbe never saw or heard of him again. 

John grew under Subeta's wings, but the streets whispered when adults weren't listening. He found fast boys who laughed at rules, slept through lessons. He craved their boldness, the fear they inspired. 

At ten, a cousin from Lusaka visited, finding him shoeless, eating cold nshima, wandering like a retired old man.

“This child will die here,” the cousin said. “He should be in class, not a water boy for an old woman.” 

And so, John was taken to Lusaka. For a while, things looked up. School. Shoes. Even meeting me.

Years rolled by.

John was constantly pressured to work hard, to be better, but the echoes of Bimbe’s neglect were too loud. School felt like a prison. The streets and the easy acceptance of the wrong crowd beckoned.

Teenage John now ran with a small-time crew that stole whatever they could carry. Not big crimes. Bags. Scrap metal. Chibuku crates. Sampo silema, was their mantra.

"Just be the eyes, John. That’s all you gotta do. A quick twenty minutes, and you got cash for weeks," whispered Linos, the gang leader, his face hidden in the shadows.

The target that night was the local Chibuku brewery factory, adjacent to the cemetery. John was the lookout, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

"I don't like this, Linos," John hissed, peering over the wall.

"The guard looks twitchy tonight."

"Relax! He's dead-asleep," Linos sneered. "If he wakes up, you whistle. Simple."

John waited. The silence was broken only by the distant clink of metal. Then, a sharp, frantic shout from inside the factory compound: "Stop! I've called the police!"

John spun around to whistle, but before the sound left his lips, a blinding flash and a deafening report split the night. A bullet tore into his chest.

He collapsed instantly, the cold cemetery dust filling his final sight. The gang scattered. The responding police officer, answering the guard's distress call, lowered his firearm, his face pale in the light of the security guard’s torchlight.

John’s body hit the ground like a sack of maize. His world instantly went dark.

He was dead.

And.

I was the cop on duty who pulled that trigger. His day one kindness has just been repaid, ungratefully so.

Mourning the Undead

The phone rang again this morning at 05:21hrs. By now, I know what these early morning (sometimes, late evening) calls mean. You my brother (or sister) has been caught stealing. Again. The mob found you first, and by the time the police arrived, you were barely clinging on to dear life. And me? I don’t complain. I may not even share my struggles with anyone. I don’t even flinch. I simply reached for my phone and started checking how much of what little I had left with in my mobile money account, figuring out how much it would take this time around to bail you out of this latest escapade.  

That’s what my life has become now: not a savior, not a comforter, but the Chief Executive Officer of the cleanup crew. I sweep up the mess you leave behind, mop up the aftermath, patch over the scars. While all this is happening, I am also breaking inside. I need a version of Simon of Cyrene to help me carry this cross to the familial crucifixion. Or else, I remain stuck due to this anchor on my life. 

This is the silent side of addiction to alcohol and the associated crime that no one prepared me for. We usually talk about the people who fall, but rarely about the families who fall with them. Families who live on edge, never knowing if the next call will be another arrest, hospital or the final call no one wants to answer.

I remember us before all this. When we were children, full of hope and reckless laughter. Queens and kings in our own rights. Though poverty was our prison, we swore we would not die in it. We dreamed of living in houses on the hill surrounded by forests, of better lives carved out of ambition and outworking everyone. We had the world by its tail and opportunities felt abound. It was bonded to the belief that we the hoi polloi would take charge of our own story.

I still see traces of that dreamer in your eyes sometimes, before the demons take over, before the addictions dictate your every move. I beg you, in my heart, to fight brother. Fight on sister. Claw your way out of that sunken place. Remember who you were, and who we promised each other we would become.

But how long can you hold on to someone who refuses to hold on to themselves? How do you love someone who is drowning, when every time you reach out, they drag you down with them? Our mother, God bless her soul, confessed to me just last week that she can’t do it anymore. She cried and told me she had changed the locks on her heart. Imagine what it takes for a mother to say that about her own child. That’s what addiction does. Not just to the person using, but to everyone who loves them.

And here’s the brutal truth: I am tired. Tired of rehearsing goodbyes that never come. Tired of being the strong one, the last line of defense, the one left to absorb every new wound. I am exhausted from being a pallbearer while my siblings are still breathing.

They say love is supposed to be tough. But how tough? How many second chances? How many bailouts? How many prayers whispered into the void? At what point does love stop being strength and start being self-destruction? Though they say that for the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction. It easier said than done.

This problem bigger than just my family. Walk through neighborhoods, police stations, even hospitals, and you’ll find the same stories repeated: sons and daughters consumed by alcohol addictions, siblings stretched to breaking, parents burying children who never found their way back. It is a slow, quiet epidemic. The one that doesn’t always make the headlines but is tearing families apart, piece by piece. Though Zambia's per capita alcohol consumption is generally placed lower than other countries, its rates are still a significant public health concern especially due to high rates of illicit and unrecorded alcohol consumption within the country. There is a huge alcoholism problem in this country, it is never recognized as a problem because alcohol is such a huge part of our recreational culture.

My siblings and I were supposed to make it together. To live the Zambian dream. Instead, I’m left carrying their stories of wasted potential. Of what could have been. Of a life consumed by choices that seemed small at first but ended in ruin. Of liquor slaves. 

And yet despite everything I still hope. Hope that one day, they will rise. That they will remember the child who once dreamed of hills and light, not chains and darkness. Because until the very end, hope is all I have been left to give.

Moba ndi msampha woipa (alcohol is a very dangerous snare) – Chewa Proverb