For those like me who get so drunk, we end up in all sorts of undesirable problems including and especially unnecessary beatings, you might think these are situations we get used to.  The biggest problem how to deal with this truly nettlesome problem is how to stop drinking to the point where I lose control of my sane faculties!  I want to assure you, my friends, that each time I get beaten up, it is simply because as they say in township parlance “tinacita over” (we overdid something)!
And sadly, I tell you, I rarely wake up the following morning nursing serious wounds and able to remember (i) where the beating occurred; (ii) who did the beating; and (iii) why they did the beating.  In my case, wherever it is that I awaken feeling battered and sore all over the body, the discomfiture being utmost around delicate areas like the eyes, the lips and the nose, and in no position to tell where on earth I am, unless I am in some hospital or police cell, or by some dint of luck, in my bedroom with AmakePachikani, I always I am able to quickly utter a statement of forgiveness to the unknown who clobbered me because I am 100 per cent sure I provoked them as a result of my drunken stupor.  I may have unreasonably agreed to go with an equally drunken woman to her marital home, because she imagined after taking more than her normal share of intoxicants, that her husband had gone fishing in the Kafue when in fact he had just returned the previous night so I end up landing into a barrage of unappreciative punches, kicks and head butts from the jealous stricken husband cohabitant or partner
In some cases, I don’t even leave the pub with the woman.  I just anger the folks who sponsored her to the pub by unreasonably insisting on whispering inaudibles to her, which in many cases turns out to be attempts to cart her away from someone who saw something ‘precious’ in her well before I did (and in my case, believing there is something precious in her simply because I am too drunk to notice that she is not worth any hassling over).  But I sometimes end up soaking punches because I have failed to resist the beat from the loud music system and so have gone about doing my dance thing in too exuberant a style I fall against other patrons’ tables, unnecessarily filled to the edges with bottles of Mosi, Castle, Heineken or Savanna and Redds(if they are in the company of ladies), and so on.  It’s no gentleman’s business dancing oneself silly and falling all over the dance floor and well beyond to the extent of sending other people’s hard earned beers crushing in pieces to the floor.
They are usually irritated enough to instantly start donating punches though sometimes, for a start, they are polite enough to ask you to replace the broken bottles.  Being full to the forehead with alcohol, even when mypockets are so full with cash I can replace the broken bottles threefold I choose to quarrel. Surely, in any sober situation, the red eyes of the owners of the broken beer bottles, added to their massive scars all over the faces, would be sufficient warning that the most reasonable thing to do is pay and smile and let the night wear away.  Instead, I am told by colleagues who have sometimes witnessed such happenings that I become so full of myself, pompous right down to the underpants, telling the red eyes that so many years after independence, there is no need for people to overload the bar tables with more beers bottles than they can consume at a single time.  They say I attempt to teach these guys “table manners” by pointing out to them that there are no longer any beershortages as used to be the case before 1991 when Dr Kaunda and his UNIP presided over such a bankrupt economy everything was in short supply forcing buyers to always overbuy (in bulk) whenever they found stuff to buy.I am told I sometimes just tell them to their faces that they are obviously rascals from the townships because it was only such who overbought beer to show off to those at the next table that they had money and were not at the pub to scrounge for drinks.
“And you are showing off beer buying prowess from money you stole from unsuspecting shoppers on Cairo Road,” putting the icing on the cake, you might call the finale to the provocation.
For sure, you don’t expect anything else from such careless conduct.  I get beaten up so badly because if indeed there are seven red eyed and badly scarred rascals, each one plants his own punch, head butt or kick on me.  None of them is willing to let the others exact punishment on me on their behalf.  They all clobber me and leave me in such a veritable mess you don’t want to look at me hours after they were done with me.  I probably have several lives not to have died after one of the many such beatings.  Nevertheless, it’s not always my own doing that gets me into trouble.  I have found out that sometimes I got hit because of things friends or drink mates did.  This happens a lot when you overload “Beer Tanker” Dexter Kabotolo, the driver at the International Institution to the point where he starts “kusabaila” and needlessly provoking people by teasing them and maybe their properties or things in their possession.  In one of the languages of the East (where I hail from) I sometimes am a perfect example of “kufelazaeni” (dying for other people’s sins)!  For surely why should I be at the wrong end of a serious fist fight when in spite of being so very drunk, I wasn’t dancing and falling over and breaking other peoples’ beer bottles; and neither was I sniffing at other people’s prized women.  I was quietly enjoying the brew when Dexter started telling a bunch of red eyes that they are better off spending their hard earned cash buying polonies to nourish their unhealthy bodies than on beer.
“Just look at you, all of you!” he provokes.  “You are all so emaciated, bones protruding all over from poor diet you can do with polonies instead of beer but … none of you is wiser than the other so you overcrowd this dump and buy alcohol!  I mean look at you: as weak and sickly as the private part of a male duck!”
Frankly speaking I haven’t the slightest idea what Dexter may be ranting about but from the reaction of the boys, it must be very insulting and provocative.  They crowd him so rapidly each attempting to bash his face in.  He is too tall and big so he is mostly able to keep the hardest of missiles off target or minimize the effect.  They land most of their punches in his stomach and all the time, he is trying to convince them that all he wanted was to draw laughter out of them; that the bad insults were only meant as a joke.
“Napapataguysmwifulwa please, please nacilasekafye (Please guys don’t get upset with me I was just joking)!”
He looks ridiculous the giant that he is wearing that “napapatabamudala look” at guys so small he shouldn’t be fighting them for any reason in the first place.  They tell him they are not his friends so how can he insult them and expect them to treat it as joke?  They continue trying to punish him severely.  You would expect me to maintain the calm as I had done all evening and not get involved.  If anything, it is perhaps time for me, as Stakes “Girls” Chitambo does, to sneak out; to bolt into the night and pretend I was never with Dexter.  But because I am used to foolish drunkenness, I get involved by telling the guys that beating Dexter will not change the fact that they indeed ARE malnourished show-offs who look like what Dexter said they look like!  Isn’t it bad enough to see someone being clouted for a silly utterance but you go on to repeat the utterance when you don’t even understand its meaning?  I had never seen a naked duck so how and why should I tell people that they truly look like the nakedness of a duck?  I am not a giant like Dexter so I get thoroughly beaten up.
In the morning, there is no evidence on Dexter that he was beaten up.  As for me, it’s business as usual, landing in the nearest clinic or home so swollen and sick I am unable to get out of bed for a couple of days.  And you can bet I haven’t the slightest hint who beat me, where they did it and why they did it until some eye witness asks me why I chose to help Dexter receive punches over his ill-timed insulting provocation of people he didn’t know.
Phew!  That’s me.  Such a hopeless drunk you have no business imitating me.  You won’t like it a bit.
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