mind. I cannot think off of her behalf.’
‘She’s a revolutionary!’ Naila yelled. ‘This country has become a dictatorship. The rich are richer, the poor are poorer. Government is controlling us. And the worst part is – we chose this. We held our hands out to them and said PLEASE BEAD US! We can’t even frikkin take them out of our hands or deactivate them. It’s the perfect system to monitor us, to force compliance.’
Jacob nodded. ‘I heard that in the Copperbelt, the miners are chopping off their fingertips.’
‘That won’t work,’ said Joseph with disgust. ‘They’d have to chop off their whole hands. But wait, why are we talking about Beads? Matha Mwamba blew up a vaccine clinic, not a BeadTime kiosk. That’s not political. That’s just preventing people from getting the treatment they need.’
‘Need?!’ Naila slurred angrily. ‘First of all, it’s not a cure, it’s a vaccine. Second, it’s a beta test. Other countries get cheap, generic ARVs and we get to be guinea pigs for an untested vaccine on a national scale. And third, this issue with Mrs Makupa’s Bead makes me think they’re going to use our Beads to force all of us to get the Virus vaccine, and that means fourth, the side effects are going to turn us all into frikkin leopards—’
‘You sound like a bloody anti-vaxxer!’ said Joseph. ‘There’s no scientific proof of those side effects and—’
‘It is your vaccine then?’ Jacob challenged him. ‘The one you made with Musadabwe?’
‘Our research was just a tiny part of what Ling accomplished at Huazhong.’
‘So why are you now defending?’ Jacob seethed. ‘This guy? Awe, apwalala.’
‘You’re such a hypocrite, Niles!’ Joseph paced the roof. ‘You go on and on about colourism. And your friend, Tabs, always going on about greetings black brother—’
‘What does that have to do with—’
‘This alleged side effect everyone is protesting?’ he went on. ‘It’s literally superficial. This terrible thing people don’t want, even though it vaccinates against the most deadly and pernicious virus in the history of mankind – all it is,’ he pointed at his arm, ‘is a bloody tan!’
‘It is not just a tan!’ Jacob yelled. ‘It is black patches! It is another disease, like leprosy.’
‘Leprosy—’ Joseph sputtered and slugged the rest of his beer as if to quench himself of wrongness. ‘First of all, the condition is called melanism, and it’s the reverse of the condition your girl has.’
‘What girl?’ Naila frowned.
‘She is not my girl any more,’ said Jacob. ‘Pepa made her own choices, that one. And it is not the same as albino!’ Jacob shook his head. ‘To be black in this world is a curse.’
‘A lack of melanin is no blessing either!’ said Joseph. ‘Ask your girl Pepa, or not-your-girl Pepa, whatever. Melanin is a biological advantage – it protects our skin and our neurons. It’s an organic conductor of ions and electrons, which is why Bead circuits work better in dark skin.’
‘Mmhm,’ Naila nodded vehemently. ‘The world hates black people but they love our biological advantages. Our skin, our bums—’
‘“Our”?’ Jacob started laughing. ‘What do you mean “our”?’
‘Laugh all you want,’ she said. ‘I’m African and I’m not white and in this world, that means I’m black. They don’t like us but they wanna be like us. But,’ she turned her back to them coyly, ‘you can’t put a price tag on this,’ she spanked her own copious ass. The guys responded at the same time:
‘You are the one who put a real price tag on it,’ said Jacob.
‘You literally can. It’s called butt implants,’ said Joseph.
The guys laughed and clinked their drinks. She saw Joseph frown slightly, but before he could ask about Jacob’s comment, she shifted the conversation back to Matha Mwamba.
‘Even our grandmothers are tossing bombs,’ she concluded. ‘So why are we doing nothing?’
* * *
She and Joseph fought about it the next morning driving back from New Kasama. It was dawn, the dark sack of the night slowly turning inside out, baring its pale inner surface.
‘So, you told Jacob about your ass tattoo?’
She scratched her ear. ‘Oh, ya, we were, uh, chatting about the historical shift from a barter to a money economy and I used my tattoo as an example of how capital converts every product into a social hieroglyph because, you know, a barcode looks like a sign that needs interpretation and—’
‘And where was I during this little chat about commodity fetishism?’
‘In the loo,’ she said, looking out of her window. It was only six but the road was already thickening