SOME time early this year, I was in Chingola visiting a family friend, Peter, whom I had not visited for a long time since he was transferred to the Copperbelt from Lusaka.
Peter had been complaining that I did not bother to know his new home in Chingola, a city not far from Ndola.
He had the right to complain because he had been visiting me at least two times a month. True, as friends, people need to visit one another to consolidate their friendships.
This was also important because from paying each other’s visits, friends would also be helping one another in times of
need.
So it was pertinent that I travel to Chingola on a weekend, which was a Saturday. I got to Chingola around 10:00 hours and since I did not know Peter’s residence, I phoned him so that he could give me directions on how I could get to his place.
He asked me where I was so that he could instead come and pick me himself and I told him I was outside Mwaiseni Stores.
Apparently, the man was around the town centre because in less than five minutes after calling him, he was there to pick me and we drove to his home in Chikola Township.
Yes, we got home, had lunch together with his family members and we chatted reminiscently of yesteryears.
After spending some time home, Peter decided that we take a ride around. He knew I would not leave Chingola without visiting any of the drinking places either in town centre or the townships.
So, we settled for Nchanga Township where there were all sorts of drinking premises and soon we were at one of the bars.
We were seated on the stools at the bar as I was drowning my Windhoek lager and Peter was taking his Castle lager.
It was while we were engaged in conversations relating to our friendship when a man seated next to me burst into a outburst
laughter.
The man was laughing his lungs out uncontrollably that even tears started flowing from his eyes, while his friend, perhaps who had tickled him into that wild laughter waited for him to normalise.
This made the people close to this man, including me, joining into laughter though we did not know what the whole laugh was all about.
May be we were laughing at the way he was laughing.
However, when the man finally controlled himself, his friend continued
the story seemingly from where he had stopped.
As an Eavesdropper, I was interested.
I came to learn that men will do anything to please their wives even at the expense of losing their jobs.
This man was narrating a story about his colleague who was known as Ba Mule (short for Ba Mulenga) who had planned to smuggle out a 45 tonne heavy duty Rectra Haul Black Dodge truck used to carry copper ore in mines to show off to his wife at home
What happened was that, Ba Mule had secured himself a job at the mine and after some time, he was trained to drive that big equipment.
To him, this was a plus in his working life and he wanted people to know that he was a man among the men who were driving those huge machines.
Many people he used to tell, including his wife, that he was a Black Dodge driver could not believe him and this troubled him so much.
But since he could not drive this mammoth vehicle from its operational area, how were people to believe him.
How was his wife going to be proud of him? Surely there must be a way. Even if other people did not believe him, at least his wife should.
But instead, she was teasing him that he was just a kawayawaya who was building castles in the air or sand by dreaming that he was a driver of such a big thing.
He tried to convince the wife that what he was telling her was the truth and that was why his salary had been raised and he could manage to buy things that he could not afford previously.
He told her that was also why his status in life had improved and he had graduated from drinking from social clubs in townships to posh clubs in town, but the wife could still not believe him.
An idea clicked in his mind. He was going to smuggle that heavy equipment home so that the wife could see and believed him.
It was at this point that the man listening to his friend exploded into that uncontrollable laughter.
Smuggling out a 45 tonne Black Dodge just to convince the wife!
The idea was alarming to say the least.
The man narrating the story said he thought Ba Mule was joking, but the man was serious and begged to help him find a way of getting the equipment out of the mine premises to his house just for a few minutes.
The man told Ba Mule that this move was impossible and the action was tantamount to instant dismissal if found.
The man who was telling the story was probably a workmate of Ba Mule.
He explained that he advised ba Mule to organise the bringing of the wife to the plant instead of smuggling out the machine to his home but this fell on deaf ears.
Ba Mule stuck to his idea of driving the mine machine out of the plant. The Black Dodge, like many heavy duty equipment, is a type of vehicle which is not allowed to be driven around anyhow especially in townships.
Some types of these vehicles are very big and could cover the two lanes of the road.
In many, if not all instances, these vehicles are escorted by ‘sweepers’ in front and behind so that other vehicles park off the road to leave room for their passage when they are driven to or out of the mine premises.
So, one day when he was doing night shift, Ba Mule decided to drive out the big vehicle in the early hours of the morning and when he reached home, he hooted the horn to awake the wife.
The wife peeped through the window and saw the big Black Dodge parked outside and her husband calling her to come out and see the thing he had so much been talking about.
The wife came out and cheerfully hugged Ba Mule. It was during this time when he heard sirens of mine police and state police vehicles sounding.
Immediately on arrival, Ba Mule was arrested and bundled into a police vehicle as he pleaded that he did not mean any bad by driving the huge vehicle home but did so to prove to his wife that that was a kind of the vehicle he was driving at his place of work.
What courage!
Potiher2014@gmail.com.