Morning

My cellphone bleets out the African drum song to wake me up at 6:15 AM. I have been dreaming, like usual, of far-away places (last night I was driving through the desert in Nevada). I kill the alarm and disentangle myself from my sleeping bag, which I sleep in under my blankets as a deterrent to the creepy-crawlys that frequent my bedsheets. I duck under the mosquito net, which I belatedly put up in the middle of the night last night after being awoken by that characteristic wheeeee of a mosquito – and I have a nice bite on my temple to show for my procrastination. After doing my morning toilette and getting dressed, I lock up my little house (a bedroom and a bathroom) and head over to the big house (which holds three more bedrooms and the main living quarters), shouting Good Morning to the baby-faced but smiley night guard, Moses, who waves back a cheerful Morning Madame! The smell that is everywhere in Zambia is thick this morning, a mix of burning leaves, trash, and something that reminds me of peanut butter, no doubt from the piles of street trash and lawn trimmings that are burned daily in the gutters and sides of roads. A common third-world waste solution, when no infrastructure or real area to dispose of trash exists. I take care to avoid stepping on the red ants nests on the little path between the two houses, and note the garden bed is looking a little dry since being watered a day ago. I really need to get in a second bed, else it’ll be lettuce and beet salad forever, but there’s so much broken glass and random electrical parts in the dirt that digging takes a lifetime. In the big house, I make some Jungle Oats! oatmeal and tea and grab my lunch (salad today, can’t do nshima five days a week!). It’s a ten minute walk to the mini-bus station. On the way, there are schoolkids in uniform, shoving and giggling when they see me, men sitting by the side of the road who yell My Sister! Hello!, and boys vending fried dough balls and cellphone talk time cards. I make a brief pit-stop into the gym, where I greet Sara the desk girl, who shakes her head at me. She knows why I’m here. I nod at Shaun, the white South African dwarf who runs the place, who just glares. It’s okay, he always glares at everyone, and sports an identical scowl as he flexes glossy, short limbs in his body building photos that line the wall. In the locker room (it’s the room under the taxidermied large fish on the wall – another Shaun accomplishment?) I spot my shoes, which I had left here yesterday. I grab them and make my escape. Sara says, Forget something again? on my way out and I shrug at her. The day before yesterday it was a pair of sunglasses. Before that, a book. I’m an absent-minded regular, evidently. At the mini-bus stop, the conductors see me and shout LET’S GO! LET’S GO?! Cheston! Arcades? LET’S GO, Madame! And swarm around me, each trying to pull me into their half-full bus. I ignore them and look for the fullest bus, as they will not leave until packed to the gills, and I have no desire to sit around in the fumes and smells of the station any longer than necessary. I see a good candidate and hop in, squeezing four or five to a row in the bus (which is really more like a VW van). I dig out my 1,500 ZKw to pay (about $0.30) for the 7 minute ride. This bus has Virgin Mary stickers and a particularly odd “Girls used to cook like their mothers, now they drink like their fathers” slogan over the driver’s head and ZamPop/Gospel music blaring from the stereo. The conductor gets a running start and jumps in to the moving vehicle. Inside, he snaps his fingers and says Ndrama! At each new passenger, who will hand the bills in a folded pile to him individually. He counts, separates, and repeats the finger snap for each of us. At my stop, I unfold myself, wishing again that deodorant was a more culturally acceptable/affordable item (it’s about $5.00 - $10.00 a stick in the store, obscenely expensive like most toiletries). I cross the street looking left-right instead of the right-left I’m used to – that one took me a full month to master, and several near-misses! It’s a four lane highway, so it requires pausing between car lanes as well as at the meridian if you don’t want to wait for a rare synchronized opening. I step around the begging women at the station with an apologetic smile, and walk across a parking lot, over a field, and through an impromptu car-wash station before turning into the fence surrounding the office. It’s just another morning in Lusaka.