Madam, it is just this ka woman pa market. She is a relative to Ba Enela.’
‘Is she? And what is her name?’
‘Ah? But I think they are calling her Loveness.’
* * *
When Sibilla hunched into the stall of the Northmead market where Chanda had directed her, she was surprised to find a glow coming from above. She looked up and saw that the ceiling was a sloping raft of plastic bottles. It kept out the rain but let in the light. She was charmed by this resourcefulness – she remembered well using what you have to make what you need. There were two women on the floor inside, their shoulders pressed comfortably together, chatting and drinking beer. They were dressed well for market women – one wore a velour tracksuit with gold and pink roses, the other a tight lycra dress with what looked like deliberate wrinkles stitched in.
‘Loveness?’ asked Sibilla.
‘What’s up?’ The darker-skinned woman looked up from her Mosi.
‘I have a proposal for you,’ said Sibilla, and removed her face scarf.
The women’s eyes widened but they did not flinch. Local Zambians had always accommodated Sibilla’s condition easily – they were so used to foreigners being strange, they had no expectations or judgments about the nature of that strangeness. Sibilla explained that she had come to offer her services – her resources. She wished to donate the long white hair that still spilled daily, endlessly from her scalp, so that they could package it and sell it as wig.
‘So you are what?’ Loveness laughed up at her. ‘An NGO for hair?’
The other woman stood up and circled Sibilla, ran her fingers expertly over the product on offer. ‘No, but it is good hair,’ she said to Loveness with a shrug. ‘We can use it.’
Loveness narrowed her eyes and requested funds as well, in the Zambian way – not asking directly but wondering aloud if there was any to be had. Sibilla reached into her purse and handed over what she had saved from teaching Italian. It would be just enough to build a salon, to fit it with a wall-length mirror, and paint it with a sign and a mural perhaps, to advertise their services.
* * *
The Balaji girls were placed in the back seat of the blue Mazda. Drinks were placed in their hands, drinks that would be drunk too fast, held in too long, expelled among tall grasses on the side of the road. A climate pattern of bubbly colourful rain: gulped in through sticky lips, splashed out between sticky legs. In the spaces between, the journey. Sounds and insects and hot dusty air drifted in through the open windows, riding the spines of uneven breezes. A funk steadily grew: bodies sitting still in the midst of movement. They were off to Lake Malawi.
Daddiji was at the wheel, master of the Mazda and the road. Mother was in the passenger seat beside him. On either side of Great East Road, breeze blocks rose and fell, half-built and quarter-built houses, like Lego projects abandoned by baby giants. The car passed through a village every once in a while, the road filling with bodies and bicycles. Daddiji would honk and the pedestrians would scamper gingerly out of the way as if scalded, then stare at the passing car and catch the girls’ eyes – a brief connection, severed by speed.
Potholes riddled the road, sometimes crowding into a sinkhole so cavernous its shadowed depths were as dark as fresh tarmac. Sometimes Daddiji would swerve too late and thumpety-thump they’d go. Slow down, Mother would mutter. SLOW DOWN!!! the four girls would echo-yell from the back, making Mother smile and Daddiji actually slow down. Sometimes there were too many potholes to avoid, and then a new sound joined the soundtrack of the drive: the clackety-clunk of a giant typewriter writing their journey eastward.
When the morning sun grew strong enough to scorch the breeze, they rolled up the windows and turned on the air conditioning, which smelled of frosted dust. The girls row, row, rowed their boat. They were animal, vegetable or mineral. They spied with their little eyes something beginning with…Naila’s back pressed into her seat as the road through the front windscreen began stretching upwards like a cobra. The car climbed swiftly, swallowing it, until it came up behind a putt-putting minibus, blue on the bottom, white on the top. It was bursting at the seams with people, their elbows jutting from the open windows. The car drew close enough to