driven into town from the farm to purchase a new sprinkler. They were waiting their turn in the queue, standing in the shadowed vestibule, the sun-drenched courtyard glowing behind them. Mr Mwamba had worn a suit for the trip to town and Matha was wearing her bomber jacket over a floral print dress – the latter a concession to her aunt, who ached for Matha to look more respectable, given her condition. Bored as ever, Matha was absently scanning the signs pasted to the walls of the Boma as they inched forward, absorbing the words in the shallow way of literate but distracted eyes – not reading exactly but registering shapes and sounds and general wordliness.
POUNDS…STERLING…CURRENCY…KWACHA…LAST DAY…!!!
As they reached the counter, Mr Mwamba extricated his spectacles and the money for the sprinkler from a worn grey satchel, the sole remnant of his teaching days. Just then, the meaning of the words on the signs flooded Matha’s synapses.
‘Ba Tata?’ she gasped.
‘What is it?’ her father grumbled, putting his spectacles on. Visiting the Boma always made him irritable.
‘It says it’s the last day to trade in the…’
‘Oh God!’
Mr Mwamba, too, had now read the writing on the wall. His face crumpled and he dashed out of the queue towards the exit, his satchel flapping like an elephant’s ear. Matha raced after him. Outside, she saw him clambering into the battered Peugeot he had purchased from a farmer’s widow – midnight blue, edged with orange rust. Matha managed to jump in the passenger side as he turned the key. The vehicle woke with a cough that gave way to a wheezing pant as Mr Mwamba drove back to the farm.
‘These people!’ he ranted. ‘They do not give you adequate and fair warning! What is the time? Oh God, almighty saviour, please do not let these people close the bank before I come back…’
Mr Mwamba did not normally use the Boma bank. Handing his money over to other people had never brought him much luck, so he had invested his earnings in the safest place possible: land. The Mwambas had held on to their farm property for decades, refusing to sell to white settlers, colonial administrators and government developers in turn. Whenever he had cash, Mr Mwamba put that into land too. Literally – he buried it. No need for a bank when you can use the ground for a vault, he always said.
But today, Mr Mwamba needed a bank. The colonial currency that he had been burying in the earth for the past ten years – the British pound and the Federation pound – were about to become obsolete, replaced by the proud new Zambian kwacha! The sun had risen! One Zambia! One Nation! One Currency! The new government would let the Zambian pound circulate for a few more years and they had stretched out the process of colonial currency extinction to accommodate the rural provinces, but according to the signs in the Boma, today was officially Mr Mwamba’s last chance to trade old money for new.
The Peugeot lurched to a stop at the farm and Mr Mwamba gangled out without even turning off the engine. He ran to the field behind the house, snatched a spade from Mulenga’s hands, and started digging. Matha’s aunt was on the veranda, twisting water from a rag. Seeing her brother’s unaccountable actions, she cupped her hand to her forehead, then started running towards him, holding the edge of her chitenge, shouting: ‘What are you doing?’
Matha stayed in the car, watching the drama through the windscreen. The Peugeot panted around her. Outside, she could hear a woodpecker making its hollow, intermittent racket. In the distance, she could see her father bent over in the middle of the fields, which were bursting with green leaves and, now, mounds of red soil from his digging. When Matha’s aunt reached him, he stood up straight and they accosted each other, their shouts as vague as a distant waterfall. Hired hands gathered around to watch. Mulenga wandered over, a puzzled look on his face. High on mbanji, no doubt. A mosquito whined piteously. Matha’s eyes darted around the inside of the car, hunting it, then landed on her father’s old satchel on the floor.
Now, Matha had loved driving from the moment Ba Nkoloso had taught her during space training. She loved how the mere step of a foot could send a vehicle zooming forward, its weight magically dropping away into speed. So she felt a little giddy as she slid into