I WENT on the campaign trail out of conviction that my preferred presidential candidate was the best out of eleven and so he needed to be voted for.
The political temperatures and the stakes were very high so I felt, as a loafer for years of time to spare, I could, if I was welcomed, take an active role in the presidential campaigns.
The first obstacle was of course my wife, Amake Pachikani whose concerns were varied.
Firstly, she felt that if I truly had time to spare, I should spend it on reading the Bible to understand God better and benefit from His providence, His love, His merciful nature and so on.
She believed this should be my turning point to get involved in things of God and thereby, access His blessings fully.
In her opinion, I was a most active and articulate person who would be a fruitful and invaluable addition to any evangelistic team that could adopt me.
The thought of walking the streets of Avondale or wherever asking innocent passers- by if they knew Jesus and thereafter trying to persuade them to accept that He was their personal saviour who had
died for them 2000 years ago (that is before they were born) did not sound as appealing to me as wooing people to vote for my candidate.
After all, I saw not a single poster of Jesus in the streets while my candidate’s posters were all over the city on walls, street lamps, or cars and so on and almost every few meters I walked, someone was
talking about the election and my candidate.
Having muscled my way past Amake Pachikani’s resistance, the next was a more formidable one, and which in my naïve nature, I had least expected.
Almost every team I attempted to join found one reason or another for blocking me directly or indirectly, or referring me to another team which they claimed would be best suited to use my skills.
You thought these people would be eager to have a famous man like me in their campaigns but no, sir!  They were mostly cold or hostile, because, as I later found out, this was cut-throat business getting as
close as possible to the big guys at the top of the party.
Apart from eating of the campaign funds, the more you were seen jumping around higher than everybody else, the more the chances that your high jumps would be remembered when it was time to share positions like district commissioner, permanent secretary or minister of information and the like!
Not even the party secretary general could succeed in getting me accepted in the media and research teams where people felt I would best able to contribute.
The members of these teams scheduled meetings for me which they never fulfilled till I gave up and was only incorporated by a long time friend in a team he was leading out in the outskirts of Lusaka!
“You have to be tough, Meexy,” he warned.  “Where we are going, there is no luxury, no comfort!  You will be saved as dinner for mosquitoes even in broad daylight.  You could be bitten by wasps as we walk or cycle towards villages.  Blisters on your feet too, eh?”
My wife had expressed the fear that we might get attacked by hostile cadres from other parties.  We never met any hostile and violent cadres where we went.   We instead met men and women who wanted to listen to our messages, afterwards show us the nearest local pub and join us in singing silly drunken campaign songs.
We had money to spend anyway, party money.  Apart from what we shared among team members, there was always sufficient to get villagers engaged in drunken shindigs as we distributed tee shirts and chitenges and posters.
You can trust that yours truly Mix Njombwinjo, son of our father, Chichayeni Padadzi, retired headmaster, Republic of Zambia, quickly won over many hearts both among the villagers and the team.
They found my antics a brand new thing and unlike you who have gotten tired of hearing or even seeing me dance to the Mongolian national anthem and such things, Mix Njombwinjo was a new thing around which many found so, so tickling.
They looked forward to getting me very drunk so the nonsense could begin!
Remember I can dance with virtually any part of my body when there are sufficient alcoholic fluids running in my blood!  If the Congolese national soccer team goalie, Kidiaba, who celebrates goals scored by his team by doing some bum dance crawling on the ground amuses or irritates you, you would have to take your pick with me as well because I do dance on my back side.  I have attempted to dance on my
head, tough mostly I succeed to hold out for a few seconds before crumbling on my back… yeah, falling! I never quite mustered that skill and in any case, I am not young but beer sends me into all kinds of
efforts, I tell you!  It doesn’t matter if it rained and after the dance and other antics I am all mud and the rest of it.  Its campaign time and it appears to make all the sense to sing “This is the one we want” while soaked in mud.  It shows your enthusiasm and excitement about your candidate.
There was lots of fornication and adultery too in the camp.
There were many people’s spouses who as a result of alcohol, excitement or sheer bad manners ended up doing the most unthinkable things you expect from married people with married people or red eyed boys, those nincompoops who the following day would tell every other nincompoop which old lady in the team they had bedded behind wet shrubs a few meters away from our camp.
Sheer madness I tell you!  We also feasted on village girls and women.  Some of them were as cheap as a packet of salt while others were also part of the drunken culture or merely immoral imbeciles like Mix Njombwinjo.
Maybe that’s why Amake Pachikani was uncomfortable I was joining this campaign thing.
Surely, all I ever got to do was Devil’s business.  There was no Godliness in whatever we did on the move although we kept telling our audiences that our candidate had God’s favour.   Yeah.  Returning
God’s favour by celebrating with the Devil every single night, drinking, dancing foolish dances, singing morally unacceptable songs, and fornicating and committing adultery all over the shore in the name
of getting us a new president!
Of course there were a few beatings too. Some girls or wives got themselves thoroughly beaten by their lovers or husbands for being seen in unholy postures with males from the campaign team.  Then there
was the odd old woman in our campaign team who beat up a young member of our team for disclosing that she had allowed him to bed her the previous night!  She got so annoyed with him and asked him why they had to go out of sight of everyone else to do what they went to do if such information was for sharing with the public.
“Echo mwatumpila mwebaiche… that’s why nshangalila nabaiche…(That’s why you kids are stupid… that’s why I don’t play with kids),” she fumed after clobbering the still drunken youth several times.  “You want the whole of Mtendere to know after the campaigns that you… I… fusek! We are respected people where we come from.”
Well, this campaign thing was something new though it added nothing to my CV.  I had seen it all before, I had indulged in it all and if there was anything new, it is that I was told at the hospital when we got back into Lusaka that that itching sensation I strongly believed was the beginning of syphilis or whatever because of the woman exchanges I was involved in was no more than a urinary tract infection
(UTI)!  The guys at the medical lab consoled me that it wasn’t a sexually transmitted infection (STI) though it could have been passed onto me through having sex with a woman who occasionally used a pit latrine that was not disinfected.
“The air coming up from down that pit latrine can infect women as they use it…” I was lectured.  “… and sometimes such infection can be passed on to men through sex…!”
I hope I got this lecture right.  Whichever way you looked at it, I came back home with some silly infection.  Perfectly in order for me.
Nothing out of place.  We have done it before and if there are new infections waiting for us to experience them, whatever their category, whether sexually transmitted or collected from pit latrines, we are on the waiting list! Yes, on standby.  For as along as there is beer to make us lose our sense