SORRY but the honeymoon is over. I think by my standards, I have done extremely well to avoid taking any form of alcohol from just before Christmas to now.
The secret of taking strong coffee and Coca-Cola has played its part for the while it lasted but last week, I ‘brushed’ the stuff.
For my wife, Amake Pachikani, it was like participating in the filming of a horror movie without being warned about it. Imagine you are sleeping at home then the windows come flying off their hinges and in floats a zombie dripping blood. While you are screaming to death, people are taking shots of you.
It would make better images of horror than any acting because in this case, you would be unprepared for what you see and will be genuinely horrified.
Amake Pachi was living a new life with a different very decent husband so she was not prepared for the monster that showed up on Saturday night last week.
We had driven four of us from the funeral in Chipata I wrote about last Sunday where I met my childhood acquaintance, Orgasm Zgambo, a.k.a. O. Zgambo as at now.
Driving to Lusaka from Chipata, especially having started off straight after burial around midday
meant there had been no time to rest.
The crew bought some take-aways (both softies and alcohol) at Luangwa Bridge and started swallowing it as we headed for Lusaka. I chewed some roast fresh fish, imbibed a Fanta Orange and then hit the gas, averaging a good 130 -140 kilometres an hour.
Just after Manenekela, as we approached Rufunsa, I started feeling sleepy. I convinced the crew that a beer or two would awaken me. They tossed a Castle Lite in my lap and I drained it inside one long swig!
Hey! I didn’t realise till then how tortured my throat had been after being denied its favourite beverages for so long. The beer sped past my throat, feeling cool and tasting nice.
I soon got down to drain a second and after that, the crew stopped asking or worrying, but continued to toss me one bottle of Castle Lite after another.
We reached Chongwe just when it was getting dark and the guys decided we should perch at some bar and relax. I told them I was tired and if we spent too long there, I might fall asleep and fail to drive.
They said anyone could drive us into inner City of Lusaka who would be sober enough, no big deal. So we imbibed, we swallowed and enjoyed the refreshments. Having been off alcohol for some time, I started getting drank that much faster than I would normally do.
Signs of trouble came when I missed the way to the Gents and landed in the Ladies where a not-too-amused fatso in full session doing her thing, with skirt raised to the abnormal standards where I saw a lot without anyone’s permission raised protest when she came out of there.
She walked straight to where I sat with the crew and told me I was a bum. She said I had deliberately walked into the Ladies because it had been my intention to see the things I had succeeded in seeing and she now wanted me carted into the same Ladies so I could undress for her to also see my things.
Firstly, it was not true that I had gone in the Ladies intentionally. Secondly, yes, I had seen things there but it was not true as she suggested that, instead of running out after realising my mistake, I had stood goggle-eyed, staring at her in awe as she screamed for me to get out.
Okay, maybe only momentarily, out of shock, I might have stared at her huge beautiful legs. Thirdly, ar… er… how on earth did she expect a full grown man like me to now deliberately walk into the Ladies with a woman for the sole purpose of undressing for her to see my nudity simply because I had seen some parts of her by accident?
But hah, some women are tough, I tell you!
“Teeti…!” she was screaming. “Teti untambile mahala iwe, nakana (You won’t see me naked for nothing, I object)!”
One of the crew suggested that perhaps this business of viewing each other’s private things would go best if we acted the adults we were and went into the nearest lodge or Rest House and agree on the terms for conducting such sensitive business, meaning that if demons were awakened that could be awakened as a result of two people, male and female, viewing each other’s private things, then the normal procedure for exorcism should come into play.
She got furious with him, coming close to slapping him and said she was not a prostitute so she did not take kindly to being mocked over an act of indecency conducted by one in the group who couldn’t differentiate the Ladies from the Gents. She said if I didn’t react correctly to the situation, she would invoke the wisdom of the local Police, many of whom she warned were her friends and as she could see I was a foreigner I would soon be jerking in agony in the cells. I was drunk. Some of the crew were too.
But one of us was sober so he ordered that I and the lady go aside and agree on how to solve this matter amicably outside of earshot of the rest of the guys.
Once alone with her a good 20 metres away, I told her in my drunken stupor that I had only seen her thighs so I could readily pull my trousers down and let her see mine as well.
She insisted I had seen her thighs and more and if this transaction was to make sense, I must strip to the pants, she views and thereafter, I pay.
“If you are going to revenge by seeing my…my thi…ngs,” I stammered, “why agai…n… agai… argh… pay you? You just want to make… mo…ney the quick… qui…kway!” She blasted my face with a hard blow.
“Elyo wacinsanga ndesunda nemwine mu cimbusu (When you found me urinating in the toilet)…did I look like I was looking for money?” she protested sarcastically. “We-cinangwa-we (you fool)! If I am looking for money I know where to find it not in the toilet with my underpants
down below my knees. And you must be a very foolish drunkard.  Give me K200 ndeya (I go)!”
When I insisted the issue of money did not arise and that I would now happily pull my trousers down and then my underpants as well so she could satisfy herself and let me go, she changed her stance and said she was no longer interested in seeing the nakedness of an impotent drunk so could I get lost and never ever venture into a women’s toilet again under the guise of being intoxicated.
And for viewing freely what she was very positive I had viewed without her permission and denying her revenge or paying for my sins, she again clapped me hard and viciously in the face. Because it was so hard and I did not expect it, I tumbled backwards to the ground.
I landed with a huge splash, only then realising we had been standing next to a pool of muddy water.
I rolled over and scrambled up and out, feeling plenty of water inside my shoes, my clothes totally drenched.
She walked briskly away and disappeared into the night muttering obscenities.
The boys said we had had a bad enough stopover at Chongwe and should proceed. I volunteered to sit alone in the baggage booth of the vehicle so as not to soil my colleagues.
We laughed about the incident and the woman’s demands all the way into Lusaka, the boys offering several interpretations of the expression “Teti untambile mahala” suggesting that whenever a man and woman see each other naked, love or not, strangers or not, they are supposed to…well… I mean, the one who has seen the other must volunteer to be seen
also, but obviously such being very private things and only seen between people that are intimate, intimacy is supposed to follow!
I don’t know. It’s not me. It’s that Chongwe woman’s strange logic. And me, I only saw things I wasn’t supposed to see because of being too drunk to notice I was strolling into a ladies’ toilet.
And so you can imagine how horrified my wife was to see me arriving home dead drunk, staggering into her neat living room totally drenched in mud.
“Ndiye vicinji soti ivi Awisi Pachikani (What on earth is this again, father of Pachikani)?” she inquired visibly shocked and pained. “Ndiye ku malilo kwamwakolwela novinila mu matika (Is it at the funeral where you got so drunk and started dancing in mud)? Matika na mu sisi monse (mud even in the hair)?”
I wanted to tell her about the Chongwe woman and her logic and how it got me all soiled up like this but urine was almost escaping from the tract I ran past her, falling over in the passage, gathering myself and then reaching the toilet at a gallop.
By the time I undid my zipper and started doing my thing, a few litres of urine had escaped into my already wet trousers and underpants.
Mix Njombwinjo had just done it again. After a lull of some weeks!
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