I HAVE just remembered an incident some years back when, while on a bus trip back home to Chelstone.
Some two young ladies were in such exuberant mood they were causing a rather displeasing cacophony I wouldn’t have minded if someone on the bus had expressed their distaste for the hullabaloo by removing his belt and thrashing their buttocks the way our father, Mr Chichayeni Padadzi, retired headmaster, Republic of Zambia, used to do with us whenever we overstepped our boundaries of happiness!
They were singing and reproducing the Yoohoo sound every now and then other passengers kept turning to give them the disapproving look to no avail.
“Why do girls drink like this, nowadays?” asked an irritated elderly man. “Surely this is so disrespectful but they can’t even realise it!”
Sharing the same disposition, I mustered as much politeness as possible as I dared to ask them what on earth it was that had so pleased them they sounded ready to vomit out their throats shouting as they were doing.
“Oh daddy, this is our happiest day of our life,” she started.
“What has happened for this, of all days, to be your happiest, both of you?” I followed up. “Both we two, we went for voryuntaly testing… for AIDS!” answered the same girl who was the loudest of the two.
“And the both of us we are AIDS negative yoohoooo!”
“So we have drunk the beer today,” joined in the other.  ‘Twavimwa lelo!”
“To cerebrate you know, daddy,” interjected the other.  “There are very little people in the wild today who are not with AIDS, you know, so that’s why we are extreme happiest girls in the wild today!”
People were obviously shocked.  What had these two little rascals been doing to get so weirdly upbeat about testing HIV negative?
Never mind their wrong assertion and belief that the majority of us in the world were suffering from AIDS, their bombastic expression of joy was a veritable display of disgraceful conduct which revealed what kind of careless, dirty, promiscuous lives they must have been living for them to so believe they were positive when they “passed” the test they had to conjure up such a reckless show of joy everyone was discomforted in the end.
“Ok congratulations, girls,” said the elderly man.  “Be sure not to repeat your sins now, do you hear?”
‘Yes, yes, yes daddy, no more doing it without condoms now!” shouted the noisier of the two.
“We have rained our resson, Papa!  From today everyday now it is no sex, no condom!”
I couldn’t help chuckling, as many others on the bus burst out laughing.
&&&&&
I have remembered this story because as we drove along on that bus, I came to learn from the less noisy of the girls that her friend was Loyiwe.
I had a girlfriend by the same name so many years ago.  It could be as way back as twenty years (plus/minus) when we parted ways.
Sometime last week she shocked me by calling me and insisting she desperately needed to see me again.
I asked how she had discovered my phone number but she said that was not essential.
Did I want to see her or not?  Our parting had been rather acrimonious to the extent where I had slapped her several times across her small face and in return, she had organised some red-eyed male friends, one of whom someone intimated had been having a “share’ of her anyway, to panel beat the hell out of me.
I was never a fighter, getting easily and thoroughly thrashed whenever I got into physical fights so I bolted for dear life, and went drifting from township to another.
When I reminded her that the last time we ever talked she had been angrily trying to remove my eyes with her nails before she set a mob of ganja smoking friends of hers, so why should I want to bring myself anywhere near her, she said she had long forgotten about that incident, and that in fact, all these long years, all she remembered about me were the fond, intimate moments we shared together!
“I miss you,” she said persuasively.  “I used to think a lot about you; I wanted to get hold of you and tell you to forget what had happened and just let us get back to each other. So when I got your phone number, I was so excited!”
“You really mean, Loyiwe, that after all these long years, you still think of me?” I queried her.
“But even if you did, I am sure you no longer have those strong feelings of love that you used to have for me.  I for one have moved on and …”
“I know,” she started.  “It’s not like love really but you, you spoiled me.  To tell you the truth, I have never again enjoyed the kind of intimate times with any man like I used to do with you.
These guys are like….er…they just can’t kiss me the way you used to do.  You, you can kiss, jokes aside!  And when you are done with me, I used to say to myself “Yes, this is the way it should be when you have been with a man”.
I told all my friends about you, you know and maybe that’s why I never forgot you.”
“So you want us to meet so that I kiss you again?” I asked laughing.
“I can pay my whole profit to be kissed by you again,” she said laughing.  “Jokes aside ba Meexy imwe.”
Loyiwe was beautiful though I could tell that her light complexion was artificially achieved, borne of long years of application of skin lightening creams.
Although she was small, she had a huge, lovely round backside that made up for whatever physical deficiencies you might have noticed, including her nearly bare chest.
Even if she wasn’t such a memorable prospect in bed, we had had enough exquisite moments it wouldn’t be a bad idea to meet her and just have a bit of bedroom fun again.
She used to quaff a lot and if possible, we could have a few beers before the privacy!
We agreed to meet the following day at 14 hours and then move on to some lodge or guest house for our mutually agreed misconduct.
If it wasn’t for her insistence on meeting a.s.a.p., I would have opted to meet her weekend.  But I complied for the sake of my eager former.
I had that same image of Loyiwe and so was expecting a youthful lady full of life and well done hair, make up and highly perfumed body.
I was parked for a while and was becoming a bit restless that a woman who had been so eager to be with me was keeping me.
I called her and she said she was just five minutes away, running.
I saw her from afar, indeed almost running lest she misses good old Meexy.  Even from several metres away, I was fast getting anxious if this was the same Loyiwe I had known years back and worse still, one I would want to take to a lodge and misbehave with.
I got out of the car and leaned against the bonnet.  When she got to within handshaking distance, beaming with joy at seeing me, and shouting “ba Meexy, iyeah,” I was in utter shock.
She had lost so much weight nobody would be surprised if you mistook her for a bamboo growing in a pond!
I thought she could also win a bone-protrusion competition hands down.  She literally threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders and made to donate a public kiss there and then as passersby watched.
I ducked the kiss and told her people were nowadays in the habit of getting pictures of unsuspecting people and flashing them on Facebook.
I held her around the waist as we greeted happily.  One thing had already so astounded me there was no turning back from the instant decision I had made upon sighting Loyiwe from within ten metres!
The years of skin bleaching had now turned her face into several patches of black crusty lumps that were most unpleasant to look at.
One glance at her and I did not want to take a second look.  Her lips too were now a crimson pair with small black spots reminiscent of people given to swallowing too much Kachasu, the local gin that hardcore drunks took daily in the  townships.
“I am so happy to see you, Loiii!” I pretended. “But it’s just as well you are late because we would have wasted time starting off for the lodge.  My boss called just after I called you.  He wants me at the office because he is supposed to be at State House tomorrow.”
“Ooooh,” lamented my former.  “I need to draft a speech for him.”
“Ooooh,” she repeated her disappointment. “Don’t worry,” I lied.  “We will go tomorrow.  We can meet same time, same place.  I will just have to confirm in the morning in case Boss says we are going together to State House.  Ok?” “Sh….t!”
I hugged her again, dipped into my pocket, took out a K100 note and gave her.
“Tomorrow honey, ok?”
“Ok,” she said as I got into the car, started the engine and drove off.
There was no boss going to State House and I wouldn’t be making a return trip here tomorrow.
You may despise me for running away from Loyiwe but I feel little sympathy for her current predicament.
I had spoken against the use of skin lightening creams to her several times when we were in the relationship.
She was just reaping the prize for her stubbornness.  Kiss that face, those lips?  Not for the prize of all her business profits!
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