AS Lazzo briskly walked down a crowded Lusaka central business district shopping area, he was swallowed up in a sea of multitudes jostling and moving at a quick pace.

One woman made an abrupt turn from a pile of second hand clothes while another  squeezed through heading northwards amid a haphazard formation.

Suddenly, she loudly accused the passing woman of having dipped her hand in her open bag whose straps were firmly hung on her shoulders.

There was an abrupt stoppage of pedestrian traffic on the sp

ur of the moment as passerbys/PASSERSBY converged on the spot.

“She was dipping her fingers in my bag as she passed by!,” yelled the woman who had turned from the salaula heap.  “Where is she?…” responded a male bystander with a glint of violence in his eyes.

A few metres away, the woman was heckled and was almost by the skin of her teeth, she was saved from an instant lynch by a dissenting voice that almost sounded like a command. “Let her go, just let her be,…” the man said as the ‘black sheep’ proceeded.

Still, another woman within Lazzo’s earshot bemoaned the rampant presence of female pickpockets! 

As they walked on side by side Lazzo pressed on whether she had any evidence that the woman being accused of being a pickpocket had pilfered anything from the accuser’s bag.

“Yes, you don’t know that women have joined the bandwagon of pickpockets?,” she chided Lazzo for his ignorance as she proceeded. Lazzo made an abrupt turn to the right to join the Freedom Way crowded pack.

It was Christmas eve and an unprecedented rise in the norm of civic disorder was manifest in road traffic congestion caused by indisciplined driving!

A myriad of passengers had been dumped at various undesignated ‘bus stops’ on the premise that crews could not infiltrate the city centre’s core.

In this context, Lazzo observed that this was a ramification of an ages-old problem in neophyte language called ‘a challenge’.

Now,  he recalled what had transpired a few minutes earlier before the hapless passengers were unilaterally dumped to their fate!

A conductor had refused to accept Lazzo’s coins on the pretext that even children had stopped accepting them!

A heated argument arose between the two protagonists until a woman seated in front of Lazzo came to his rescue by producing a banknote for his fare as other passengers entered the fray…

One said the nature of the crews was a reflection of their background because t hey did not even know that refusing legal tender was an offence..

In his defence, the conducter amidst overwhelming censure muttered to himself:”You think that at this age I have never entered a classroom?,” he asked like a man talking to himself.

Another said the casual approach by proprietors by the casualisation of the conductor’s portifolio had given rise to misconduct on the buses. Sometimes the conductor is chided as ‘transport officer’!

Still a woman with a tinge of bitterness in her tone said she had travelled outside Zambia and they had no mischief with conductors because none existed there.  Passengers paid straight to the driver.

There was a certain urge of outrage that gripped many people when faced with such behaviour from the crews but could not be expressed outward.

Lazzo began to think that this whole mini-bus business had become some lawless self regulating sector that did not fear the long arm of the law.

In a near-miss, he was almost run over because one driver had decided to break t he norm by driving the wrong lane of the one way street with passengers on board!

Just when he was about to enjoy a game of soccer on the screen, there was a blackout and he felt like someone at  the national control centre of t he utility power company was cynical about the watering hole watching their favourite  team.

It was either Manchester, Arsenal or Barcelona from January to December and Lazzo wondered how many people felt the invisible man at the switches  preying on their merry-making!

But one thing that bugged him was the ever rising obsession with foreign soccer when  the local lads needed all the ideas lavished on alien  football teams should be a preserve of the Chipolopolo.

Lazzo also thought that electronic media entertainment was a necessary tonic especially for the less well-to-do because it made them forget their woes although sometimes they fought over support for their respective teams!

However, he had lived many Christmas eves todate and he saw them no different from each other as they numbered not less that fifty the ultimate of the Jubilee tag!

It was business as usual at the watering hole as the clientele converged on the premises to what  Lazzo considered to be a  perpetual toast to providence!

Maria had just entered and once in a blue moon was capable of unleashing bombshells that will come long after the Santa Klaus melodrama…

But Lazzo was just preparing to take leave when she bolstered his long stay at the watering hole with a token drink in the spirit of the Chinese proverb: A long journey begins with one step!