^{Japheth Gundani}

The worst mistake a beautiful young lady can make is to travel a long distance by public transport, especially a minibus, without a fully charged phone and a pair of functional earphones. And Tamala was about to discover that the hard way. A lot can happen when you sit next to a stranger for an hour or more especially when that stranger happens to be “dog’s best friend”–man. 

Tamala had seen–or heard from ladies who had learned the hard way–why God instructed Noah to pack more animals than human beings in the Ark. In fact, Tamala could swear she had heard more stories of rape attempts, ass-grabbings, boob-gropings, not to mention body-shaming and unsolicited lecherous gazes encountered in public transport narrated by unfortunate young ladies, than she had heard tales of the shenanigans of the legendary Kalulu The Hare in kindergarten. And from all instances of such acts of indecency she had witnessed or heard, Tamala had observed that most of these incidents could have been mitigated if a) men had hearts–but that, of course, is a lost cause–and b) if the victim happened to have had earphones or earbuds on, which is why the second thing Tamala packed for any journey by public transport was a pair of earphones, the first thing being her battered but still beloved Techno Spark 8C, of course. 

“Kondwani, that brat!” Tamala muttered under her breath as she gnashed her teeth with rage upon discovering that her trusty Oraimo earphones were not in her travelling bag.

Tamala was sure she’d packed the earphones–and she was pretty damn sure her younger brother Kondwani had nicked them. He must have swiped them when he “offered” to carry her travelling bag for her when they were escorting her to the bus depot. She should’ve known he was up to no good. Since when did Kondwani–or “Kho” (as he of late insisted on being called), a known lazybones, volunteer for anything that had nothing to do with food? 

Tamala hated her parents for buying Kondwani a smartphone. Kondwani had roped them into promising to buy him one, on the condition that he pass his Malawi Secondary Certificate of Education (MSCE). To everybody’s surprise, Kondwani–a straight C student–dazzled them by scoring grades good enough to qualify him into applying for college. And ever since Kondwani got that phone, Tamala’s earphones had known no peace. 

Now here she was, trapped in a minibus between a heavily pregnant woman and a man with a huge scar across his forehead, whose breath reeked of smoke even though he wasn’t smoking at the moment. Tamala begged the pregnant woman to swap seats but after one glance at Scarface (as she had mentally dubbed him), the woman vehemently shook her head in refusal and looked away.

Tamala was under the assumption that Scarface was one of those athaiming’i^[1] guys whom unscrupulous minibus drivers pay to fill the seats in their minibuses so that passengers should board their vehicles thinking they are almost full, then when there is only one or two seats left, the seat-fillers then cook up an excuse and disembark, usually at the pretext of going to buy airtime or to take a leak before the journey started, never to return. 

So Tamala sat next to Scarface even though he stunk and looked like he was not aware of the fact that aside from drinking and cooking, water could be used for bathing too. 

To Tamala’s surprise, when the minibus filled up half an hour later, it was a woman who had been sitting in a row directly in front of her who turned out to be a seat-filler, after which the conductor slammed the door home and the driver started the engine. Apparently, women are into this business too. 

Such was Tamala’s plight; a rude, heavily pregnant woman to her left and scary Scarface to her right. And to make everything worse, the pregnant woman kept unashamedly staring at Tamala’s phone when she decided to busy herself with surfing on Facebook. The woman even had the audacity to tell her to go to Pemphero Mphande^[2]’s Facebook page because–as she had put it–“there are always juicy stories” there. To put an end to that, Tamala put her phone back in her purse. 

Tamala hadn’t gotten a better look at Scarface, but he terrified her. Everything about him unsettled her: For a start, she had found him slouched on his seat as if on a deckchair, his head resting on the chair’s headrest. His eyes were shut but she could tell he was not asleep because he kept humming to himself and at times making thin slow whistles with his dry-lipped mouth. That huge scar across his broad, pronounced forehead didn’t help. Neither did his grubby, faded Arsenal jersey (long red sleeves clinging to his thick arms) or the tattered jeans concealing his lower body. From his sprawl, she couldn’t even tell if he wore shoes–not that she dared look.

Tamala was so fixated on studying Scarface’s profile that the sudden lurching of the vehicle as it passed over a speed bump (one of the many near Thondwe) catapulted her straight into Scarface’s lap.

Scarface’s eyes flew open, bloodshot and furious. He glowered down at her, the hum in his throat now a growl.

“S-sorry,” Tamala stammered, her voice brittle as dry pawpaw leaves.

Scarface did not respond, at least not with his voice but Tamala could glean from his agitated glower that he was mad at her for waking him up from his fake slumber.

And then Scarface did something Tamala had not expected, he dipped his right, pudgy-fingered hand into the right pocket of his jeans and produced a … a blunt and a rusty lighter. 

Tamala released a breath of relief she was not aware she had been holding. And then she watched, this time indiscreetly, as Scarface rolled down the window of the minibus, stuck his head out through the gap, lit his blunt and started smoking.

“Hey, you can’t do that in here!” Said the pregnant woman sitting next to Tamala. “Not everyone here doesn’t care about their life like you!”

Scarface continued his smoking as if the woman was not speaking to him. After he had finished his blunt, he settled back onto his seat, dug into his pockets and produced another blunt.

“What, you want to smoke another one?!” Cried the woman.

“Mind your business, woman!” Scarface barked back at the woman, “I don’t see any No-Smoking sign in here.” 

“So?” Everybody in the vehicle booed at him. 

Tamala was surprised because she did not peg Scarface as someone who could tell letter “a” from letter “b”. Lame as his point sounded, Tamala looked around the vehicle and sure enough, there was no No-smoking sign pasted anywhere in the car, which was surprising because there were a couple–no three notices pasted in the car. The first one read, “Don’t tell the driver to hurry up: if you had wanted to reach your destination faster you could have gone there yesterday!”, “We don’t pay for lost luggage” read the second while the third warned the passengers to “Pay first before logging in to WhatsApp!”

“Conductor, remove this stinking drunkard out of this vehicle or I am going to disembark right here!” The woman threatened.

The conductor took one look at Scarface and asked, “Alipo akusika pa 3 miles pa ngati?^[3]” 

Everybody in the vehicle broke into laughter, including Scarface. “Coward!” The pregnant woman barked at the conductor.

“Masteni,”^[4] said the conductor amidst the laughter, “Kusamala mano sikuwasuka kokhatu”^[5] Everybody erupted into laughter again. 

“Alright! Alright!” Said Scarface, returning the blunt into his pocket.

“It’s not as if I’m violent or anything.” Said Scarface, a smile breaking from his mouth, revealing a set of crooked, nicotine-stained teeth.

“You never know. I wouldn’t want my handsome face to be panel beaten with fists,” retorted the conductor, sending the passengers splitting their sides with laughter.

“You would be surprised to know that I detest fights.” 

“That scar on your forehead speaks otherwise.” Said a passenger seated at the back row.

“Oh, this scar? I didn’t actually get this in a fight.”

“What happened then? An accident?” Asked another passenger.

“No,” Scarface chuckled. “Alcohol, my brother. All this is because of alcohol, brother.”

“Considering the state you’re in, one can tell it had something to do with alcohol.”

“No, this was no ordinary alcohol,” started Scarface, “get this, I was working in this other sugar plantation in Nchalo, Chikwawa–have you ever been there? To the

Lower Shire?”

“No, but I heard it’s hot as hell down there.” The conductor replied.

“And you know what else is there?” Asked Scarface.

“No. What?”

“Beer my brother. Cheap beer.”

“Really?”

“I’m telling you brother. They have this special wine down there. Mtayanjinga^[6], that’s what they call it.

“Mtayanjinga? You can tell from its name that that is no ordinary wine.” Said the conductor.

 “Oh, it’s far from ordinary,” Scarface replied,  “It looks like kachasu, yet it tastes sweet like wine. And to top it all, it is cheap, cheaper than any wine or beer sold down there. It comes in huge drums. Rumour has it that it is produced by diluting chemicals meant for cleaning factory machinery.” “And people drink that?” Asked the driver.

“Men will drink anything as long as they slap a sticker that says alcohol on it. No wonder they die early than us women.” The pregnant woman chipped in.

“But why do they call it Mtayanjinga?” Asked another passenger.

“Because once you drink one too many, it messes you up to the extent that if you came to the drinking joint by bicycle you forget it and go home on foot.”

“Unbelievable!” 

“I even saw some dude shit his pants after drinking a shot too many.” Said Scarface.

“You don’t say!” Cried the woman, tears of laughter rolling down her ruddy cheeks.

“I’m telling you! That wine is something. Never have I, in my whole life, drunk wine that strong– even kachasu^[7] falls short compared to that wine’s strength.”

“So did you get the scar at the drinking joint?”

“No. What happened is I had heard from a friend of mine who had relocated to that side–Chikwawa, that stuff is comparatively cheaper down there. So I asked him to find me a job at the plantation he was working at and he did, so I followed him there. A good guy he is, that friend of mine. he even found me a house to rent.

“Two weeks down there, I found myself this other fine woman whose husband had divorced because she was not bearing him male children.”

“Men!” Retorted a bespectacled woman who was seated next to the driver. 

“I had been spending some nights at her house. And this other weekend  I went out with a couple of friends to grab a drink or two. This is the day I was introduced to this beer. I must say I’m not a wine guy, so naturally I was put off by its sweet taste. I think Liquor shouldn’t be sweet, if one wants a sweet drink, go buy yourself thobwa^[8] or something. But we were low on cash and Mtayanjinga was the only liquor we could buy enough to drown our sorrows with the money we had. At first, I was disappointed that the liquor wasn’t living up to its reputation. But then came the time to go home. Man, was I in for a surprise! Standing up was a real struggle, I tell you. Despite the state I was in, I decided to spend the night at this broad of mine. So I bid adieu to my buddies and headed to her house. When I reached there, I just walked straight into a room and fell asleep.”

“Let me guess,” started the pregnant woman, “her former husband found you there!” Tamala could not believe only minutes ago the woman and Scarface were at each other’s throat.

“No! Turns out I was in the wrong house.”

“Noooo!!!” Tamala heard herself screaming together with everybody in the minibus. 

“I’m telling you!”

“Then what happened?” Prodded the conductor. 

“Turns out I fell asleep.”

“Right there in a stranger’s bedroom?” 

“It wasn’t a bedroom. It was a storeroom or something.”

“Nobody saw you entering?” Asked the driver, not wanting to be left out. “I guess so.”

“What happened next?” Tamala found herself asking.

“I got woken up in the middle of the night by mosquitoes. Oh man, there are monstrous mosquitoes down there. They’re bigger than your average mosquitoes. They may have sucked half a litre or so of blood from my body, I tell you. So the itching caused by the mosquito bites woke me up and I decided to have a cigarette. I light a cigarette and begin smoking and coughing, you know, from the smoke and everything. That’s when I heard somebody asking, “Who is there?” To which, in my drunken state, I answered back with, “who is asking and why are you in my house?”

“You don’t say!” Everybody in the vehicle laughed, tears of laughter could be seen streaming down the cheeks of many. 

“No kidding! I tell you man, there is something in that wine!”

“Then what happened?”

“Man, next thing I know, the woman of the house is shouting at the top of her lungs, saying there is thief in the house and before I know it man, I’m outside of the house bathing in my own blood.”

“Noooo!”

“Didn’t the people recognise you?” 

“They didn’t, man! I was new to the area and I was only home on weekends. In fact, the man of the house didn’t buy it. He thought I was his wife’s lover and I was just playing drunk. Boy did he beat me! Though I can not remember all people who beat me that day, I believe he is the one who struck me on the forehead with a burglar bar or some metal, causing a wound that led to this scar.”

“Nooo!”

“I tell you man, it was terrible. And then I heard people talking of petrol and matches and I realised they’re talking of setting me on fire.”

“Nooo!”

“Then, suddenly there came this woman – the one to whose house I was going, upon recognising me, she told the people I wasn’t a thief and cleared everything up.” 

“Oh man, you could have been killed!”

“For real man. And get this, apparently I was only two houses away from the woman’s house!”

“Nooo!”

“I’m telling you man, there’s something in that wine. Never will I ever drink alcohol that tastes sweet again, it got me this scar, man.”

Suddenly, it dawned on Tamala that they were at Chinamwali. She could not believe she, who was so afraid of strangers in public transport, had been hooked by Scarface’s story that she had forgotten to remind the driver that she was supposed to disembark at Zomba Zero minibus stage.  

This, dear reader, is why Tamala had to board another minibus back–one that dropped her at Zomba Zero, alongside a young man named Pangani, who (as fate would have it) was also headed to the same data analyst interview at the National Registration Bureau headquarters. The very same man she would two years later exchange vows with at the altar of St. Anthony Catholic Church in Chinyonga, Blantyre.

____

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^[1] athaiming’i: seat fillers

^[2] Pemphero Mphande: a popular Malawian social media influencer

^[3] Is there anybody who would like to disembark at 3 Miles Bus Stage?

^[4] A slang term referring to mother

^[5] Brushing teeth is not the only way of taking care of them, but also to void getting into fights.

^[6] Mtayanjinga: literally, forget bike, a type of local ethanol-like liquor but stronger and sweet.

^[7] kachasu: locally brewed ethanol

^[8] Sobo Squash: a local soft drink

Japheth Gundani is an emerging writer from Malawi, whose passion for literature ignited the moment he learned to read. Japheth is an alumnus of the 2024 Malawi Writing Better Creative Writing Residency, which was sponsored by the Copyright Society of Malawi (COSOMA). Japheth’s short story entitled “Once” was featured in the December Issue of Writers Space Africa in 2024. Japheth’s work, poems and short stories, can be accessed on his blog on Medium (medium.com/@jahtheauthor).