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.