It’s Alive!
My favourite…the Alligator Bug.
In the first few months of living in Zambia, I developed a fascination with bugs. They are everywhere, in endless shapes and sizes and sometimes, alarming numbers. Experience taught me that if I feel a vague tickle somewhere in my bra, it’s because there’s definitely a bug in my cleavage and it’s probably biting me. I’m now so accustomed to this, that I think nothing of plunging my hand into my underwear while standing in the queue at the bank to fish out whatever’s taking a forensic tour of my breasts.
My Husband and I take delight in sharing with each other our new discoveries.
‘Just look at the size of that!’ A Matabele ant: black, leggy, about an inch long. So-named after the fierce and brutal warriors of the Matabele tribe who, it is said, destroyed everything in their path. Or it could be the sheer inventiveness of Mother Nature that has us peering in wonder. My particular favourite is the Alligator Bug, which sports a long snout that looks just like the business end of an alligator. Utter genius.
One morning as I was brushing my teeth, my Husband burst into the bathroom with emergency written all over his face. ‘Come and see this’, he said, ‘quick!’
‘What?’ I bubbled through my toothbrush.
‘Quick, you’ve got to see it!’
He ushered me into the kitchen towards the shelf beside the cooker.
‘Look! It’s Alive!’ he proclaimed, pointing at something small protruding from the whitewashed wall.
I approached with caution, peering at an area above the head-height shelf. My Husband stood triumphantly beside me, his face glowing with discovery.
I stared at him. Really? Was he winding me up? No, he was serious.
‘It’s a nail’, I said. A nail with a shadow.
And to prove my point I reached up and touched it.
The nail.
My Husband’s eyesight isn’t great because he had an accident at work many years ago, which severely damaged one eye. Add to this the natural effect of ageing and he is rather challenged in the vision department. He is also challenged in the memory and organisation departments, meaning he rarely has his glasses, or the right glasses (one pair for distance, one pair for close-up). Mostly, they are broken glasses.
One of the things I love about my Husband is that he has no vanity. He rarely looks in a mirror and he simply does not care what other people think. The downside of this, is that he will, quite literally, wear anything. This includes glasses held together with a generous strip of silver gaffer tape across the bridge of his nose. He once breezed through our local town centre sporting newly repaired glasses and trousers held up with a piece of string. To complete the look, his flies were undone. I found him in a hardware store looking for more string, being trailed by a security guard who was not sure if he was a threat or simply homeless. I frog-marched him to the nearest department store to buy belts and glasses. We agreed that from then on he would not leave the house unaccompanied. Or at least, not until I had checked him over.
I’ve had to re-think my own wardrobe here in Zambia because it’s so darn hot. As a woman of generous proportions I sweat a little more than those of meaner dimensions. In October – known as suicide month – temperatures rise to 40 degrees and more. More than thirty seconds away from a fan and I start to dissolve. In the briefest of conversations held with a shopkeeper I see their eyes widen and their brows rise as they notice the drips appearing on my forehead and upper lip. I ask about their extensive range of plastic buckets. Their eyes glance upwards – is it raining? Has she been swimming? Then, a closer look at my face. Does she have malaria?
Before I’m directed to the clinic I mumble a thank you and dash for the car, where the seats will be hot enough to de-glove my legs. But at least I can dissolve in private until the air-con kicks in.
The standard bush-wear for Westerners is khaki shorts or trousers and cream or light brown shirts. This is not due to lack of imagination or a desire to blend in with the landscape (unless you’re in the bush tracking lions, when you might very well want to blend in). Tsetse flies are attracted to blue and black, and other insects pursue any pretty colour that could be a source of pollen, so my colourful U.K. wardrobe is redundant here.
Yet the Zambian women are incredibly stylish and colourful. It’s astonishing how well turned out they are, especially given their lack of resources. There are no washing machines here, most homes don’t have plumbed in water and whole villages become flooded with muddy gloop during the rainy season. And yet I see these beautiful, spotlessly clean and elegantly dressed women walking along the road, often with baskets or packages balanced on their heads. I don’t know how they do it. Hats off to them.
I was raised with Edwardian notions of modesty that stick with me even in the privacy of my own home. My Husband, on the other hand, is quite happy to be naked as often as possible. I once knew a woman who worked in my company’s accounts department. I’d just got Beau and was sharing cute puppy photos as she cleaned her keyboard. She sighed as she worked her way between the letters with a cotton bud; she would never get a dog because she couldn’t bear the idea of its balls on the furniture. I wondered if this extended to her husband? Later I heard she’d divorced him. Perhaps she’d caught the filthy man with his crown jewels on the furniture.
As the temperature rose here in Zambia, from the moderate months of May, June and July, to the blistering, eye-ball drying heat of October and November, I simply had to wear shorter shorts. In the privacy of home, wearing just underwear has become the norm from the sheer necessity of keeping cool. My Husband predictably was one step ahead and he and the sofa are now even more intimately acquainted.
Yesterday, I found my Husband outside at 5:30am in just his pants, chasing baboons. I stood and watched from the verandah for a moment, the Zambian rising sun just edging over the lagoon behind him. The baboons were making a monkey of him and it was a beautiful sight.
