The Dream Of A Journalist

My name is Mulenga Chanda. I was born in Nkana East, Kitwe, in the 1970s and I am a journalist. A freelancer. As a child, I wanted to be a lot of things and a journalist wasn’t one of them. My parents made sure that my brothers and I went to the best schools and provided us with everything a child would need and want. In retrospect, my parents’ success was my curse. As a partaker of my parents’ wealth, why did they want me to get educated? Don't people go to school to amass wealth in future? Now why should those who are already rich get educated? But little did I know that wisdom and knowledge cannot be inherited. I was only a child sowing, and now 30 years later, I'm reaping. The law of seedtime and harvest is cruel. Very cruel indeed. Well, as expected I failed to make it into grade eight, but father's influence secured me a place at one of the high-end secondary school. This secondary school was where the crème de la crème, the best of the best minds went for secondary education. Another group of children found there was of those with parents who could afford the school’s invoice.

I was chased from there, for what the authorities called ‘bad behavior’. I was caught smoking. Is smoking that that bad to deserve a dismissal from school? And no, it wasn’t nicotine. In my effort to be absolved, I told them it was for medical reasons. It was a shot in the dark.

Nonetheless, I finished school through push and pull and hey presto I even managed to do journalism at some of those colleges, where today it’s a college and tomorrow it’s a house. My college was even without any proper mailing address. It was care of some individual, The Principal. His name is on the tip of my tongue, maybe I will remember it later.

I did journalism because I wanted to be famous. Journalists are famous right? They are always in the media with their stories, especially political scandals. Those journalists are famous. Everyone knows them. I wanted to be famous. I was going to be this journalist, I decided.

I would relentlessly narrate to my girlfriend how proud and eventually famous she will be when her man becomes one of the most famous journalists. And she entertained my hallucinations. I bet that is what lovers do, cheering on their partners to dream.

That was a long time ago. I am now thirty. I am now a journalist. But not what I imagined I will be. No. the prefix freelance was what I was using to hide the fact that I was a latent failure and bad with the job. Media houses also exploited me every time I was selling a story to them. Damn capitalists. I had no choice but to accept that exploitation was part of my condition of service. At least the peanuts they were giving me could pay my two roomed servants quarter I was renting in Kalingalinga and buy me the necessities I need to survive the hustles and bustles of the Lusaka life.

It’s true, life is a grindstone, and it was grinding me down.

Since I could not afford to drink from expensive places, I patronize cheap and stinky drinking spots. My favorite was one place called Die Hard Tavern in Kalingalinga. Its owner must have been a Bruce Willis fan. This place’s smell was a mixture of Chibuku, sweat, urine and some smells that one cannot really put a finger on. Patrons could just urinate from the tavern’s wall.

I bought and got drunk on Chibuku. Just added some milk, and it went down well. On my way home, I would buy one bottle of Mosi or Castle lagers to show off to my landlord that I was doing well in my job. Even a struggling man must have some self respect. Very important!

I haven’t had any story to sell to these media capitalists for two weeks now. Am I losing my touch? How am I going to pay my house rentals? It was 08:00hrs on the clock but I was already at the watering hole galloping from the Chibuku that I bought. Then I remembered that I had a K1 coin in my pocket, allowed my hand to dive in there and fish it out.  I then walked to the Juke Box, throw in the coin and pressed the number for House of The Rising Sun by The Animals. As I walked back, I overheard one of the bar patrons telling a friend that a burglar was shot at his neighbor’s house in the wee hours as he tried to enter through the window.

I got interested, dragged my chair there and listened to this man, who we all called Long Spanner, narrating the story. Long Spanner is obviously a tall glass of water and walks like he has all the problems of the world on his shoulders. Whenever he is just standing, he looks like a tree resisting being blown over by a wind gust. He is the best motor vehicle mechanic in the neighborhood, though. Grapevine has it that he always has a spanner in his deep pockets. What a guy!

I got my note book and wrote down some few information from this story. I learnt that the man who got shot was currently admitted at Levy Mwanawasa General Hospital.

This was my break.

Before Long Spanner could even finish his story, I absquatulated and decided to go straight to Mwanawasa General Hospital to look for this story. I took out my cellphone and called Peter, a taxi driver. Peter is a highly skilled driver; someone you need to call if you want to be early for a meeting starting at 11:00hrs even when its already quarter past that time. In life, always contacts for people that are best in their respective fields.

Now, I helped Peter find his job and hence he felt indebted to me and he had himself the responsibility of driving me home from drinking spree whenever needed.

When he arrived for my pickup, he was with a female passenger.

‘Boss this passenger is going to Chelstone,’ shouted Peter as he winked at me whatever he meant this time around because in behaviour, Peter is more slippery than an eel.

Throughout the shot trip to Levy, I kept on thinking how this would be my breakthrough story. My rentals cheque. I wanted to be the one capture. I wanted it so bad. And wanted to the first journalist. You know, journalism is a cutthroat job, you need to be the first one to report a story if you want to reap the full rewards. The whole universe has just conspired to help me. 

At Levy, I hatched a plan on how to avoid the Police and the medical staff and get hold of the burglar. Get the story from the Balaam donkey's month. I was meticulous in my scheme. I need to look for a white lab coat and pretend that I am one of the medical team...............

Suddenly, I started hearing a familiar sound. It was the alarm. It woke me up with the sound of my favorite music. 

Phew, what a dream that was?  I have never even tasted alcohol in my entire life. Maybe I need a totem to test my own reality. 

"What is real. How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." - Morpheus (The Matrix)