From ‘wa lwanda’ to buying groceries on nkongole.
There will be food for mourners at your funeral if you died of hunger. Just as money will be found to buy your casket if you die without anything in your account or mobile money. I didn’t make the rules. I’m only a messenger. This is what befalls the black Zambian man in his communities.
There’s something we need to talk about.
Remember when we came up with an honestly xenophobic phrase about broke Rwandese refugees who simply craved a cold beer in townships? Today’s story tells a completely different turn of events.
We’re now walking into Rwandese corner shops in townships and communities to buy groceries on nkongole. The people we mocked for coming to Zambia with nothing can now decide if you can get a loaf of bread, sugar and cooking oil then pay at the month or weekend.
Where am I going with this? Certainly not to a Zambian corner shop at 5am to buy matches because our own outlets are not open until maybe 8am and probably out of stock.
The point is, we’ve fallen behind gents. It’s not that they don’t have their own challenges but look at the collaboration of our brothers in the Lebanese, Rwandese, Somalian or Indian communities. A sense of purpose prevails over everything else.
If they argue over who is driving the better vehicle, slept with which woman, has a bigger house, recently got divorced or married, they certainly don’t make it their personality.
Well, not to the public at least. Not on Facebook. Or every day at the bar. The point is, they sit down to smoke shisha or drink coffee after the deal is done. Or at least with one in the works. Everything else is secondary to building businesses, capacity and networks.
We have a high chance of contributing a thousand Kwacha each for beef, ice, drinks, fuel, charcoal and chicken before we can all spare half of that to buy a gen-set that we can hire out and build a cash reserve for an emergency or revolving fund to tap into for re-investment.
Among us, there is always suspicion of success. We look at each other first with questions before we are inspired. You’re gay. Sleep with wealthy women. Your father was rich. You have connections to State House. Satanism. Anything but a lesson on how one of us has made it.
So, what do we actually do well? Nobody can match a Zambian man when it comes to arranging a meet-up or beat up. We can mobilize ourselves to rough up members of another political party, drink in the club and be the saintly pallbearers of a friend we did not talk to for years.
Today, the Zambian man is ordering another round of Black Label on the sinking ship of his purpose. Weekends are a blur, weekdays spent scrolling social media and chatting on WhatsApp, sitting in a vehicle in shopping mall car parks, dying naked in lodges and guest houses.
We’re occupying the wrong places and are angry at the wrong faces. Something’s got to give. Soon.
*‘Wa lwanda’ is a slang term for somebody who seeks to drink free beers on somebody’s account in the bar. Derived from a time when Rwandese refugees sought out some entertainment on empty pockets across Zambia’s townships.
*Nkongole is simply put, a loan.
