LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 4

LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 4

“Brother“, the conductor had switched onto his rough man cast and work suit now. He had stopped being nice. “I don’t think we will be friends much longer.”

“Drop him somewhere here,” suggested the driver.

They went up Glen View Road with Southerton Police Station to the east.

“He is almost at his workplace,” suggested the conductor to the driver.

“The way my brother is dressed, he can’t be a cheat,” someone suggested. “How do you know his work place? If he is near, just park and get anyone to redeem his fare.”

“We are late for work.”

“Then pay for him.”

“You pay for him then”, suggested the conductor.

‘I don’t have the correct fare,” the same passenger suggested. “I don’t have enough. If I did I would have helped a brother in arms.”

“I only know brothers in law or half-brothers,” someone suggested to laughter that enlightened the tight situation.

To add insult to injury he was stuck near the rear door of the Peugeot 4.0.4 station wagon. The door kept lifting up when the car came to a speed hump. It did the opposite after the hump impressing against his shoulder. He was reading every hump and abrasion on the road with his backsides. Someone was running for profit without replacing shock absorbers and brake linings. The screech was terrible if the door was slightly open.

Opposite him was the conductor. He was eyeing him to make sure he would never jump when the vehicle reduced speed. They were in the rear of the station wagon, four people sitting legs stretched out, tightly squeezed like potato sacks.

“Here”, a girl in a high school uniform had given the conductor the full fare. She sat in the back portion too after the bench passenger seat. “I always share the same commuter omnibus with him. He never cheats.”

“Now she is paying school fess,” someone suggested.

“Are you sure?” the conductor asked.

“Hey, you wanted your fare. There it is. It’s between him and her.”

“Thanks sister,” he had said. The conductor pocked the money giving change where it was due.

“He picks pockets in town,” one passenger suggested.

“Brother makes sure you and he don’t have the same bus stop. He will be picking your pocket real bad,” suggested an elderly man.

His plans to revise his notes had been thrown into the air. He had been so stressed by forgetting his wallet. He stood about a metre eighty-seven centimetres tall weighing at least about ninety-five kilograms. He was rather a big and tall man.

The Peugeot 4.0.4 station wagon was meant to carry two people at the front and three comfortable in the bench passenger seat with luggage in the rear. Profiteering had seen it carrying a driver and two passengers at the front. In the middle were four passengers and the rear four more plus a conductor. The opposite of much profit making was more damage to the structure of the vehicle.

The way the passengers squeezed against each other was inhumane in as much as body contact between the sexes. By the time most passengers got to the city, their ribs and backs would be aching. To make matters worse was the fact that overloading played havoc on shock absorbers. It meant every hump and bump in the road the passengers read and knew.

The same girl unhooked his bag and added it to her school bag on her lap. She was shorter than him with more flesh and a noticeable bust line. Her uniform was that of a Girls High School Upper or Lower Sixth student. Her hair was done in a bun at the back. She was reading notes all the way into town barely glancing outside the window of the vehicle.

They got off in town near Market Square. He thanked her.

“Don’t worry it happens,” she had said. “Do you have return fare?”

“I will get that from my office. If you will let me, I will return your bus fare at the office,” he suggested.

“I would be late for my lessons, don’t worry you will get to assist someone whose notes they could not find change for,” she replied.

If he had ever been embarrassed, today was one such an embarrassing episode he wished to quickly forget.

“Thanks hanzvadzi,” he had said.

“Don’t worry, one day it will be my turn”, she had given back his bag. “Have a nice day.”

“Thanks again.”

He had taken his shoulder bag hefting it on his way to the showground. He was five minutes late. Today was not his day. He took out his identity document which he had checked three times on the way before he had arrived here putting it on the desk he had. In time, examinations started.

“As you may be aware, all wrist watches should be placed in your handbags or shoulder bags whatever is the case. These bags should be deposited in the passages at the far end of rows of desks and chairs. Loose papers and note books should be treated like wise. The only things on the desks will be pencils, rulers, erasers, ball point pens, identity documents metal or waiting pass, driver’s licence discs or valid passports. The statement of entry should be clean, no handwriting on it otherwise treat it the same”, one of the invigilators had said. “You will be given two loose papers to use as working papers.”

The team of invigilators had moved within the student body checking identity documents against faces and statements of entries. They checked the roll call register to observe absenteeism. This time he was writing in segments Urban Planning I, Urban Economics I, Statistics, Economics Principles I and Academic Communication Skills for his Real estate Council of Zimbabwe professional qualification. Today he had Urban Economics I. He would be writing Statistics on a separate day. Three more days to go with a mess for now.

He forgot about his early morning troubles. The Estate Agents Council of Zimbabwe’s qualification examinations were a tough lot. He wondered why he needed spend three months on block release at Harare Polytechnic and three months almost attending night lessons when the questions were not within what he had learnt. He wasn’t the only one improving on his qualifications and putting his brains at work.

There were others from various banking firms, insurance industries and other companies that were going through different courses. They met at college and examination level where they shared subjects like Financial Accounting, Economics, Costing, Cost & Management Accounting etc. They made friends as birds of a feather did flock together.

The percentage pass rate never exceeded sixty percent at times. For a student to pass they need mental faculties, experience, diligence and hard work. He had not worked through college and on the job training that year only for him to flunk an examination because he had missed his wallet. That was a minor incident. He trudged through his paper testing his mental faculties. Why did they mix subjects that required mathematical aptitude with ones that required knowledge of History and English? A simple communication question would see him and other students failing to go beyond a quarter page each to answer what should have been answered in a full page.

Three hours later he had emerged after the bell had been rung heading for the city. Coins had slowly gone out of fashion, nothing like bus fare started at the rate of a coin. Not even a Crystal® mint sweet. He had no bus fare. He spared himself the thoughts of lunch. He walked all the way to their offices in Eastlea a distance of close on seven kilometres. That did well on burning his weight.

By the time he reached the office, he was flashed by heat. His sweat was coming down in rivulets. The clouds had given way to a sun which was fragrant. Not a speck of cloud present. He had taken no provision for an umbrella. He had no cash for even a frozen plastic mixture of colourant, water, sugar and other preservatives like sodium benzoate. This was five times less costly than a mineral drink.

“Trevor,” one of his work mates said in surprise.

He had just turned into the gate of what had once been a house that the estate agency had converted into offices for themselves and other tenants.

“That’s me,” Trevor replied.

“You are sweating!”

“Conrad”, he breathed. He found a flower bed to sit on under a shade. “It’s a long story.”

“Make it a short story then,” Conrad the friend suggested. “I will edit it.”

He related his ordeal to Conrad and another agent who came half way through. “So I went on and wrote my examinations.”

“I will get you a bottle of coke,” the other agent suggested.

“Thanks a lot Edward.”

On the morrow he had an afternoon paper in Academic Communication Skills starting at two. He leisurely took a 76-seat bus to the city around ten in the morning moving to the British Council Library. He read until one in the afternoon. This was one way of getting rid of his network of Glen Norah friends. The moment they saw him at home, they came to talk, playing loud music on his Techniques hi-fi.

They wanted to do everything that they were not permitted to do at their homes here. Twice he had been told to move out because of ramous living of his ‘friends’. Now he was wiser and good at controlling them. He kept whatever friends that came outside the gates of the place he resided. He had a pie and a drink. He sauntered into the examination room dead on two. At this rate, they would use him as a time machine.

“The exam can now start because Brother Trevor is on the dot,” they would say. By the end of the following week he was through with his examinations.

On the following months he joined a throng of people. Some crowd marshals had edged the hundreds into separate queues. There were three separate queues. There was one each for the city, Mbare and those for Machipisa. The bus fares depended on weather conditions and the availability of commuter omnibuses. The other aspect which affected boarding of commuters was the presence of the police.

The police raised roadblocks to stem the flow of unroadworthy and unlicensed passenger vehicles. The Vehicle Inspection Department normally worked in liaison with the police to thoroughly check for defects. The number of vehicles ferrying the public nosedived causing longer queues, chaos and giving pick pockets a golden handshake. The others that were bold enough took passengers through unorthodox side streets and dusty caverns beating roadblocks or at least being nabbed trying to.

The fewer the omnibuses or the rainy the weather, the fares went up. Generally 76-seat convectional buses operated by Harare United cost half what the fewer seat passenger vehicles charged. The diesel engines of the bigger buses had more fuel economy than the petrol and diesel engines of the speedy and smaller passenger craft. Standing capacity in smaller buses was twice the limit set by government.

He was in a queue following its movements for a bus that had come in and was loading when a school girl approached him. He was well dressed so was she complete with a hat, scarf and school bag in school colours. Hers was a complete winter trousers, blouse, jersey, blazer, scarf, hat and school shoes. Edgar’s Stores had a varied selection of gents’ wears from which he had been constantly picking selection on account paying more than was due every month to reduce interest charges.

“I’m back, I had been checking my syllabi,” she had said with a smile.

“Please,” he replied.

Syllabi! Her smile was broad to confirm she knew him.

Had he seen her in this queue? She was shorter than him but broader both in the chest, hips and backsides. She was taking on weight with a bust that asked for dividends from would-be suitors. Back? She did not wait for him to agree. She squeezed in between him and another female passenger. Her bag, carried on her back on two straps pushed between her and him. This was surely asking for trouble. This was a heavy looking school bag. She let off the straps choosing to hold it against her leg.

He tried to remember where he had seen her before. Because of his upbringing, he knew he never wanted to return to the mining compound and campaign for a job there. Life had been hard and backward enough without adding more complications. He was here to advance further in his career not look for female species. He knew he had never had a girl like her before. Some liaisons ended at friend level. School girls were not his cup of sauce except if they had met in her casual wear.

She took her place in front of him walking towards the bus. The space between them thinned to a few centimetres, this was better. They both stopped when the vehicle was full moving again when another came along. They got a seat side by side at the back row. He was the last one to sit down at the back bench row.

“Do you have your wallet today?” she asked.

“Ah now I know,” he said with a broadening smile. “It was you who had pinched my wallet.”

“You mean you had forgotten?” she asked.

“Thanks for the other day”, he had stated.

“Not to mention,” she had replied. “I was afraid when I saw you that you may have forgotten me.”

“I will pay today,” he had insisted. “How is school?”

“Its fine,” she had replied. The bus headed for the city. He had work to do as an agent in training. “Are you college bound?”

“I am based in Eastlea at my work place these days,” he had replied. “In about two weeks after the last examination results I will be on block release for three months at Harare Polytechnical College. That means a cut in my salary and allowances.”

“That’s life,” she said.

“But they refund total tuition, textbooks and examination fees if I pass”, he replied. “We also get a slight notch up that helps me to survive.”

“I am in upper sixth,” she had replied.

“I would have been of the opinion that upper sixth should be done via boarding,” he said. “I didn’t do as I liked in Mathematics. I was boozing.”

“So where does boozing come in?” asked a fellow passenger.

“I was looking down the calabash when I should have been studying,” he had replied. “The circle of friends grows but it’s only the students that write the examination.”

“So”, the fellow passenger and others were having a heyday. “You were having handovers while in class?”

“Smelling like a brewery during Mathematics lessons”, another had their section in stitches of laughter. “I started drinking in form 3. My father was not amused at all. I still remember the belt tearing at my backsides.”

“Did that stop you drinking?” a female asked.

“That made me drink worse,” the other replied. “But I was much better than a fellow student who brought Chibuku opaque beer to school. He left his bag outside in the heat and there was an explosion.”

He walked with her from charge office bus terminus towards Samora Machel Avenue.

“I am Trevor.”

“Naomi.”

“What does Trevor mean?”

She was forward and tactful. The last timer he had researched his name after high school bullies and peer pressure, he hadn’t been very happy.

“Trevor means ‘wise’. It’s Celtic,” he replied.

The whole dormitory had known somehow.t It was because of one enterprising youngster who had read the meaning of Celtic names. His name did not mean that, it was an embarrassment.

“Oooh?”

“What does Naomi mean besides having you as the mother in law of Ruth of the Bible?” he asked.

“It means my joy or bliss. I guess I was that for a couple of a father and a mother in Glen Norah.”

‘How is school?” he asked.

“Terrifying. At home everyone looks up to me to pass. The unfortunate situation is I am a pacesetter for the family.”

“I went through it all, it’s possible to pass”, he consoled. “How are the teachers?”

“A little bit more responsible except there continues to be a rift between female students like me, my peers and our lady teachers. It is almost as if we are competing for their husbands or males,” she replied. “The differences start to surface from the fourth form to advanced level.”

“Women, you just have a way of not working things out on your own.”

“I prefer male teachers though here and there one needs to tell the sirs that it’s not personal but keep your love outside of my syllabi.”

“Does that apply to me too?” he asked.

“Are you a teacher or lecturer?” she asked.

“Nope, a student during the night, a worker during the day. I change spots like a rhinocerous.”

“Chameleon.”

“Oops, does that apply to me, the syllabus rules and matters amorous?”

“Nope, you are a friend that requires bus fare once in a while from a girl”, she had replied with a smile.

“You know the game in schoolwork, believe you me, I went through it all,” he replied. “I had a history teacher in form 2 who was either drunk or had a hangover. You hate the subject and you fail it. I subsisted by researching and reading reference material for History and Shona where I had weak teachers.”

There was work to do after which instead of rushing home, he sauntered during rush hour to college partaking of lessons for about two hours. Around eight was when he got a bus or a commuter omnibus headed for Glen Norah A. On disembarking, he made a choice of either partaking of his beer or proceeding home to do his studies and cook his evening meal. The evening meal for a single person without a refrigerator was a chore. How much meat does a single person buys for a single meal? Even the butcheries, vegetable vendors and the sealed packs had minimums.

He solved the problem partially. He would get off with his homework load in Glen Norah at the shops. He would buy and eat his supper there. After that he would have a pint or two then head home. He got in doors past nine in the evening. That way he did not worry about any lot of friends likely to remove him from his study program. At that rate, he had no need for a girlfriend. Honestly, where would he find time for her?

He was free on Saturday. He had studies to do or if a confirmed agent asked him to be in tow, there was work to be done with the promise of a survivor’s pension. He was learning the ropes. An agent could ask him to be available at no extra allowance for him, to learn the ropes mostly doing paperwork supervised by his mentor.

© Copyright tmagorimbo 2014