Zambian Street Fighting

I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”, which was surprisingly difficult to find considering it’s said to be the most widely read piece of African literature of all time and I’m living in Africa. Anyway, I finally found it in a small book shop and got to reading.

Let me tell you something, Okonkwo, the main character, is one bad dude, renowned for his wrestling and fighting skills and proud of the fact that he’s killed a number of his tribe’s enemies in battle. He also acts out violently towards his wives (he’s a polygamist) and his children, ruling his family with a firm hand.

I was reading this book all weekend last weekend and, as I rode back on a minibus from Lusaka to Siavonga, I remember thinking about how wonderful it is living in Zambia, a country where people are relatively peaceful, where they don’t often resort to physical violence like Okonkwo.

I was thinking such thoughts literally just minutes before witnessing the following incident…

On the road from Lusaka to Siavonga there are various roadside markets where the bus will stop to let off passengers. At these markets, which all consist of a few small shops lining one side of the street, you’ll see people standing around chatting or vendors sitting in little make-shift stands selling vegetables. There’s almost always a group of women or young children running up to the bus windows holding up tomatoes, okra, rape, maize or bananas for sale, depending on the season. It’s always ho hum, just another day at the market. They’re all pretty much the same.

At one stop, however, the large older woman sitting on the minibus next to me tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a crowd gathering around two sweaty and shirtless young gentlemen at the center of the market, both of whom were clearly unhappy with each other. The crowd soon erupted as one of the guys started swinging at the other one full force. He started really pounding on this other guy who didn’t seem to be putting up much of a defense. At one point the guy getting beaten tried to run away, but his opponent chased him down, tripped him up and started kicking him repeatedly. He even broke off a nearby tree branch and was preparing to whip the guy! This all went on for a few minutes.

Eventually the guy getting walloped was able to scurry into the bush, leaving his sweaty, shirtless, heavily breathing attacker behind.

I was pretty surprised by the crowd’s reaction. Everyone was just laughing and having a good ol’ time. Children, adults, and the elderly all seemed to be genuinely enjoying the spectacle. Actually, the old old women on our bus seemed to get the biggest kick out of it of all, yucking it up and giving a rapid-paced post-fight breakdown all the way to our next stop, which sadly I couldn’t understand because they were speaking Nyanja and I don’t know much Nyanja. All I could make out was “blah blah blah Mike Tyson…ha ha Mike Tyson blah blah blah!” So that was funny.

Then, as our bus was getting ready to drive off, the sweaty now-shirted champion came and hopped on with us, traveling the 15 or so minutes to the next town down the road. As he hopped off someone explained to me that the local police would surely be showing up to that market at some point in the near future looking for that guy, so he was probably going to a friend or relatives’ house to hide out. Apparently we were his getaway vehicle.

So, there you go, I was an accomplice to the escape of a vicious, victorious Zambian street-fighter.

And I thought all Zambians were peaceful. I guess violence is just universal. Sigh…