ONE apparently boring Friday, I was just home doing some manual work – clearing the overgrown grass around the yard and weeding at the backyard garden.
I am saying a boring Friday because on Fridays, I usually have a bit of money which I keep during the week for my outings.
That week, after having travelled a lot, I failed to save anything for my weekend entertainment and it was obvious that I would spend the whole day at home.
I tried to watch TV, but I could not concentrate. I tried listening to some music, but I still could not enjoy it.
The time was around 18.00 hours and I thought the best there was for me was to have an early sober night.
But 18.00 hours was too early for anyone to go to bed, unless they were sick.
Having had no choice, I decided to go through a pile of some old newspapers to read some news items and feature stories I had not read.
It was just when I picked an old copy of the Sunday Times of Zambia when my cell phone rang.
When I checked to see who the caller was, the ‘ an unknown number’ was reflecting.
Not that I don’t answer to numbers I don’t know, no. If a number you don’t know is ringing and it is reflecting, why shouldn’t you answer?
It could be that someone had just bought a phone and was calling using it for the first time and since you didn’t have the number before, you may not know who the caller was and the best to do was to answer.
The case was different from this caller because what was reflecting as the phone was ringing was unknown number.
On some phones, this reflects ‘restricted’.
These calls, even if you just missed them, you cannot call back because they refuse to get through.
That is why I did not want to answer.
Why should someone who knows you and knows your number call you using an unknown number or restricted?
There had been times in the past when I had answered to such calls only to find that it was someone I was owing who was calling to ask for his money.
On several occasions, he had called me using that restricted number and one day I told him that I did not like his idea of calling me on this number each time he was broke and he was asking for his money.
Before I owed this man, he used to call me on the number which was in my phone book. I used to invite him for some drinks many times and why was it that he had to call me on a restricted number now that I was owing him?
It was for this reason that I stopped answering calls which indicated unknown number or restricted and it was the unknown number which was now calling and so I ignored it until my phone went unanswered.
About 10 minutes later, my cell phone rang again, but this time a name was indicating. It was a good friend of mine calling and I wondered whether it was the same man who was using the unknown number which I did not answer earlier.
Since his name was now indicating, I answered the phone.
My friend wanted to know where I was and when I told him I was home, he asked me to book a cab which he going to pay for when I got to the destination.
Instantly, I knew my Friday wasn’t going to be as boring as I had earlier thought.
So I booked a cab and soon, I joined my friend who was accompanied by other two men at one of our favourite drinking places in town.
After greetings and introductions, my friend ordered a six pack of Windhoek lager for me and six Castle lagers for him and the two friends and we engaged in our guzzling.
My friend told me he had called me because there was a business deal in which he wanted me to help.
I thought it was a good deal because at the end of it all, I would also have a bit of money for myself.
It was at this time when I heard a woman’s voice behind where we were seated saying:” I tricked my uncle. He believed the man I had gone to his home with was my husband.”
I thought this was interesting. How did this woman trick her uncle?
What did she mean her uncle believed the man she had gone home with was her husband?
Being an eavesdropper, I thought something good for my ears was coming.
I picked my beer and had a swig as I patiently waited for the woman who was probably in her late twenties or early thirties, to continue with her tricky story.
Her friend who also seemed interested to know what had happened between her friend and her uncle asked:” Chali shani boyi? (How was it my friend?)
It was then that the woman in her tipsy condition started explaining to her friend her dishonest behavior.
It was some time last year when this woman travelled from Lusaka to Ndola, with her boyfriend – or was it her man friend – to her aunt’s place in Northrise residential area around 18.00 hours and her aunt happily welcomed the ‘couple’.
The home being near some bars, the woman sent one of her cousins to get some takeaway lagers which they, together with the aunt and the man, were drinking.
It was around 20.00 hours when the husband to the woman’s aunt got home.
The man knew this young woman from sometime back because she often visited this home but this was the first time she had come with her ‘husband.’
When the uncle took a seat, the niece introduced her husband to the uncle:” Mr…… (name withheld) this is my uncle, the husband to my aunt. Uncle, this is my husband,” the woman told her friend.
She said after introductions, the two men cheerfully greeted each other and the man (uncle) who was good natured, suggested that the two men go to the bar to have one, one while the two women remained to prepare some food.
Her friend asked whether her aunt knew her true husband and the woman replied that her aunt knew both her husband and her boyfriend.
“You know how we get along with my aunt.
She knows my husband and she also knows my boyfriend,” the woman boasted to her friend who was as much enjoying this narration as I was, though I did not like it.
The woman picked her glass of wine or whatever it was she was drinking and had a sip before she continued narrating to her friend her infidelity.
She told her friend that her uncle recently unexpectedly visited her in Lusaka and he nearly caught her napping when he found her real husband at home.
What happened was that her uncle called her that he was in Lusaka and he wanted to know her home.
She said it was around 10.00 hours when her uncle called her that he was in town and he wanted to see her.
She gave him the directions on how to get to her home somewhere in Garden Township.
“Since my husband was at work and he never used to come home for lunch, I gave directions to uncle.
I told him to get to a certain well known place in the township and I told him whoever he was going to ask from that point, would direct him home because I was very well known in the area.
“Ten minutes or so after I gave my uncle directions, my husband unexpectedly got home.
Any time my uncle would arrive. My husband was not the man I had gone with to my aunt’s place. What was I to say when the two men met? I wondered.
“Before it was too late, I told my husband that uncle from Ndola had just called that he was on his way home and it was good that he had come because he would see him,” she explained.
She said she had just finished telling her husband this when her uncle’s Toyota Corolla arrived and there was a young girl who had escorted him from the point she had directed him to get.
“When my uncle entered the house, beads of sweat formed on my face.
Surely, he was going to find a different man from the one he had seen in Ndola.
The man I had spent two days with at his home,” She told her friend.
But luck was with her. When her uncle entered the house, it was the woman’s husband who embraced and hugged the man he had never seen before and greeted him:” Welcome uncle. How is Ndola?”
The picture of this man who was supposed to be the husband of his niece, whom she had come to Ndola with, was totally different! Was the man dreaming?
But a few minutes later, the woman’s husband told the uncle that they would meet later in the evening after he knocked off from work because he had just come home to pick an important document he had forgotten when he was going for work in the morning and he was rushing back.
The woman said she felt relieved when she heard her uncle say that he was on his way to Livingstone and he would not find him.
After the woman’s husband left for work, the uncle thought he should find out whether that was the man his niece had come with to Ndola a few months back.
The woman told her friend that she told her uncle that he must have been very drunk that day because that was the man she had gone with.
“You must have been very drunk, uncle.
That is my husband and I came with him to Ndola. How could you forget the man when he still remembers you very well? I told uncle,” she explained to her friend.
But a week later when this woman went to visit her aunt, her aunt told her that her uncle told her about his visit to her home in Lusaka and told her that her husband looked very different from the way he looked when she went with him to Ndola.
The two women laughed as they ordered more of their drinks.
I was really astonished to hear this; aunt and niece playing such kind of games!
I was not happy with this and if I knew the woman’s husband, I was surely going to tell him what I had just heard his wife revealing to her friend.
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