IN the evening when all and sundry went about passing their evenings, one man exclaimed when he saw an aircraft hovering overhead getting ready to land.
“I know that it is about 20:00 hours because I have seen that plane pass in the sky… This is the first plane to pass and the next one will pass after I hour,” concluded the man.
As Lazzo listened, there was another conversation running between two men who recalled their school days and were discussing mathematical angles.
He also raised another controversy when he told his mate that it was difficult to communicate with people who had not entered a classroom.
“Remember, the teacher would draw a horizontal line on the blackboard. In the middle of this, he would draw another vertical line running upwards. This formed vertically opposite angles,” he said gesturing to his friend as if he were the teacher of the time.
He further went on to explain that the figure formed by drawing the two lines looked like an inverted letter ‘t’ in capitals (turned upside down).
“But you know my friend, it is difficult to make people who do not know these things understand anything,” he said.
On the sidelines, there was an argument about the proliferation of city townships.
One man was chiding the other that he dared venture out of the precincts of the hood, he would get lost!
There was a revelation that the city had spread far and wide to a point where in the far east of the capital, one locality had been named after the former United States (US) President Obama while two others after Chiluba and Mwanawasa, respectively.
“Now, what has that got to do with a teacher drawing lines on the blackboard?” asked a man seemingly riled by the academic argument.
“Well, one can get lost very easily if they are in unfamiliar surroundings, especially if they had been to the watering hole and lost their campus!” joked one man.
Lazzo began to recollect his past and thought that ignorance was like a swimming pool in which he swam in one of the low-density areas.
He was a beneficiary of the extended family system that saw him being adopted by a close relative.
The swimming pool was dug in such a way that it had one ‘shallow end’ and the ‘deeper end’.
This figurative formation was related to intelligence and explained the position of some patrons now embroiled in an argument who had for some reason not entered a classroom.
The ‘deeper end’ represented this group while those who gradually got rid of their ‘ignorance’ through a process of education were at the ‘shallow end’.
It transpired that persons at the shallow end had somehow managed to refine their intellect over time.
Lazzo got this idea when he nearly drowned in the swimming pool as he unknowingly swam to the ‘deeper end’ in his childish glee.
Gasping for breath and swallowing some of the pool water in between gasps, he felt like virtually drowning when from the ‘deep end’, a boy with vast swimming skill he had developed over time came stroking through the water and quickly clutched Lazzo in one hand while using the other hand to stroke back to the ‘shallow end’ with his evacuee.
But not all was lost as the reactionary man in one corner had a point about ‘logic’ having nothing to do with going through a classroom.
He came out the whole hog and stated that clever men and women existed in history except that their ‘intelligence’ was never recorded.
Some educated people had written books quoting these sages of the past and their reasoning is comparable to the ‘intelligence of the white man’.
Today, however it seemed the ‘black man’ was reputed to be ‘far away from civilisation’.
Many patrons out of reverence for wisdom of the old seemed to agree with him.
Lazzo went back in his heydays when he was at boarding school where he learnt how to use kitchen utensils on the table.
That was after growing up in a situation where side-plates were supposed to be ones hands or palms.
Pieces of meat were given to each one member of a family and the plate became a preserve of elderly people!
That was the time he also learnt how to dance the ballroom dance lie ‘foxtrot’.
He learnt later that very few of those taught elitist pastimes had the chance to exercise these skills in later life.
To many of them, steered away from these elitist teachings and were mired in ‘seeking tradition’.
Just as Lazzo was sometimes irritated by some people insisting they were right when they were wallowing at the ‘deep end’ of the swimming pool, so were those in shallow waters about ‘the been tos of the day!’,
They found pleasure in humiliating anyone exposing academic excellence.
It seemed, there was always a reason to sharply disagree with the ‘persons’ who showed that ‘education was the key to prosperity’.
Sometimes, Lazzo thought the watering hole was just another laboratory of human life in the hood.
All schools of thought revolved round this social enclave sometimes for harbouring those who used its drinks to excesses!
Lazzo discovered that this was a perennial argument that has lasted
since the last century.  It was time to retire and Lazzo was thinking about changing times of the hood.
It was better to be early in these changing times when timeliness was getting very crucial.
Many seemed upbeat about the same issue and Lazzo recalled the previous times when at dusk, everyone was rushing to leave the watering hole and be safe indoors.
Soon, the patronage had trickled to a sizeable number and it was clear why.  It was getting hectic all over the place!