FAMILIARITY breeds contempt, so asserts an old adage and this saying proved apt in Lazzo’s outing on the northern outskirts of the city recently.
Being a happy-go-lucky kind, Lazzo could not resist clinging on the bandwagon of a weekend pleasure jaunt mooted by one son of the hood.
The originator of the idea was no other than the pirate taximan who usually got the car from the car park when his boss was not looking, especially during weekends!
It was the end of the month and the hood had a tradition tagged to this day as it meant merry-making and paying off debts!
Anyone who did not paint the locality red this day would never be recognised as a vibrant member of the watering hole!
Four of the contingent pooled not less than K700 for the expedition, which was characterised by guzzling and eating pieces of pork from a drum cut in half used as a roasting base.
The seller appeared eager to make roaring business from the travelling five revellers from the city.
The group found itself a table in the pub off the road a few metres away from where the tarmac began to bend.
Two hours had elapsed and Lazzo was beginning to get past the inebriation stage but could not resist the temptation of dancing to a tune whose lyrics thrilled him.
Back in the hood, it had proved to be popular and was about a woman who had recently met her Waterloo ending a streak of wayward romance.
It was in effect, a lament by one of her surviving male acquaintances who was admitting in the song that in fact, he had gone out with the departed colleague but regretted that he never used a condom …
Lazzo moved back and forth on the dance floor and in his preoccupation paid least attention to the presence of his mates from the city.
As he mused to the sentimental tune, the four colleagues had a quick caucus in passing and thought Lazzo was a liability.
He had not even contributed anything to the proceedings at the watering hole and yet he behaved as if nothing was wrong.
The driver of the vehicle was an acquaintance in the hood but exhibited conservative behaviour bordering on being a miser.
The man at the wheel worked out a plan that one by one, they should get to the car and leave him to his devices!
Meanwhile, Lazzo hardly noticed the gradual withdrawal of his city mates and by the time he took a hard look in a drunken stupor, they had left him.
Lazzo was now between the devil and the deep blue sea because he was in a strange land.
He staggered outside the watering hole and was behaving like a man groping in the dark but although it was night, he could not figure out where any of the routes were leading to!
After a spell of aimless wandering in the vicinity, Lazzo met a cop who noticed that he looked disorderly.
Apart from that, a cop had reasonable ground to suspect anyone sauntering about at a late hour and in local parlance, this was widely known as ‘loitering’.
Lazzo was being questioned what he was up to in the night and due to excessive alcohol influencing his reasoning, he became reactionary.
When ordered to stop, he argued that he was busy and wanted to go his way and at this point, a cop confronted him grabbing him and led him to the police post where he spent a night in a cell.
In the morning, he was released to find his way but was given a lecture about being careful when drunk because in future he would get into serious trouble.
He was told that he had been argumentative and incorrigible and simply not amenable to discipline!
Lazzo was lucky because the cop who kept him at the post was also manning a road block the following morning.
By a stroke of luck, he persuaded a motorist to give Lazzo a lift back to Lusaka and it was about 06:00 hours in the morning!
The modest Toyota Corona soon reached Lusaka just as the sun was rising in the east and deep down inside, Lazzo let out a sigh of relief.
One thing was clear: That he had learnt a lesson that surprisingly, another chance came up to go out of the hood with a different person, but he remembered the abandonment sequel.
He declined the offer and seemed content with being at the local watering hole where one did not socialise with a pending risk of movement.
Looking back, he began to visualise what had transpired and remembered what his mentor once said:”There is nothing for nothing”.
He should not have gone with the rest when he realised that he had not contributed to the leisure jaunt.
Lazzo began to realise how naïve he had been and that even intelligent people can sometimes think lowly!
But he should have known better because one time, he was excluded from a round of drinks at the watering hole solely because he wore a new shirt.
When one imbiber noticed that Lazzo had been left out, he spoke out for him but purchaser of alcohol retorted that since the omitted mate had a new shirt on, that was a key indicator of his ability to sponsor himself!
Still, this reaction was a pointer to a myriad of characters thinking on these lines but providence had dumped Lazzo in these precincts not by choice but by design, so it seemed!
He had to contend with some crude reactions in life which ostensibly meant to punish one another in the hood.
But one pertinent factor Lazzo was missing was the very squalor around him that created a vindictive mentality.
It seemed many people grinned at another person’s misfortune to a point of sadism!
Sometimes Lazzo felt vexed at the lack of minimal civilisation that he longed for in the hood but often met calculated indifference as if no one wants their neighbour to succeed!