IN BED WITH A SERPENT (PART 1)

FELLOW men, given an opportunity to break someone’s heart, please, do it wholeheartedly like your whole life depends on it, just to revenge for some of us your brothers who have suffered untold misery at the hands of this unrepentant gender.

You see, when fate yawns on your face, even a rotten banana can break your teeth. The worst part of being cheated on when you are madly in love is that you cannot even read the writing on the wall. Like a fool, you will ignore all the red flags until calamity falls on you like a thief on a dark, rainy night.

Around 2018, I was on social media just checking on some random posts when I tumbled upon a very beautiful young woman. I was single then and I was not even ready to date anyone. I had dedicated my entire life towards work. I wanted to grow as a reporter and so, I had no time for social media save for using the platform for my work.

I dissolved my soul into my job and put in my very best. My fellow reporters, especially those from the print media, know that it is almost an impossibility for one to write 10 exclusive stories in a day but I managed to do so on many occasions because my life now revolved around talking to sources, looking for ideas, and making new contacts.

One day, my news editor even asked if all was well, wondering how I could write 10 stories in a day as if I was going to be off the rest of the week. So, one cloudless afternoon, I was on social media when randomly, stumbled upon an account of this beautiful damsel.

Talk about beauty, the lady looked beautiful. Her name was Becky. First things first, I slid into her inbox and sent her a message just after sending her a friend request. In no time, we started talking. Few days later, we exchanged phone numbers and then started talking, just getting to know each other.

It was from those conversations, I came to know that she stayed in Lusaka’s Kalingalinga residential area and was an in-service student pursuing a degree in nursing at Creso University. From late night chats to “wake me up in the morning” requests, we became so fond of each other that a day hardly passed without us texting or calling each other.

Before I knew it, I had come out of my self-imposed love exile. I wanted to love again and I seemed to be on the right path to finding someone who could make my world spin again. One thing led to the other and before long, we had our first date. Nothing fancy, we just met in town at Lima Tower Bus station and she insisted we go together to her place so that I know where she was staying.

Like many students at Creso, Becky was staying at a boarding house with her friends and so, she requested me not to worry about her “naughty” friends. I was in boarding myself during my time in college so I had an idea how female students behaved especially when a man visited and they were made aware that there were no strings attached with their friend.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the roommates were not around so, we just sat and chatted a bit and because it was late, I had to start off, knowing that the evening could be unforgiving to some of us who resided in dangerous conurbations like Matero. This cute damsel escorted me all the way to the station and waited until I got on the bus home.

All this time, I was playing the friend but I knew deep down in my heart that I was as into her as she was into me, only that she could not tell me how she felt about me as is the case with most women who feel doing so makes them look cheap. In her, I thought I had won a jackpot for myself, but wait… pombowibilima, ababilimatabaya.

Few days later, we were on Cloud 9; already fantasizing how we would get married, raise a nice family, and how we would live happily. I am damn good at research work and so, every single assignment she gave me to do for her, she was getting distinctions. Of course I made it clear to her that Mathematics and I had unfinished business, stretching as far back as Grade 7 and so, I would not be available for anything to do with any assignment that involved calculations.

She laughed at me saying she knew that most reporters never loved Mathematics. I became curious. How did she know? Later, I came to discover that actually, there were a plethora of other reporters who fished from the Creso pond, including those old enough to be our fathers. No, they were no longer called Sugar Daddies. They were now called investors as we used to call them at Evelyn Hone. Story for another day.

So, our relationship blossomed into something I never anticipated. Within a short time, she opened up to me about her family and introduced me to a few of her siblings. One of her sisters was working for the Fire Brigade in Lusaka and was married. Her brother was at Evelyn Hone college while the other sister was at Creso but at another campus somewhere in Makeni.

I later met her sister who was working for the Fire Brigade a few months later and she welcomed me with open arms. She was actually the one who proposed that we go and see her mother who was working in Nangoma. I initially declined not because I was not sure if Becky loved me, but because I did not want to rush things. We needed time to know each other and bond.

I also spoke about her to two of my sisters; one in Lusaka and the other outside and within no time, they started communicating through phone calls. So, any day we had a misunderstanding, she knew where to report me.

As a reporter, I used to travel a lot and whenever I went out, I made sure I brought something special for her. I never cared. I remember on one of the trips to Nigeria, she asked me to buy her something called sheer butter and some oil, whatever it was, I did not know.

Once in Lagos, I inquired where I could find these two items but I was told they could only be found in the one of the markets in the suburbs of the city of Lagos which were terrorized by junkies who could not only pickpocket from their targets, but even kill if that was what it took to make a fortune for themselves.

Truthfully speaking, I was scared to risk my life but the Tonga blood in me told me “mwaalumimunyati” meaning, a man is a buffalo. I was not about to disappoint my cute chick. She did not deserve a weakling for a future husband. She was my angel and deserved anything she wanted as long as I was able to provide and so, facing the junkies for her sake was not a big deal for me after all.

So, I went to some feared market which I can only equate to Chibolya in Zambia. My love for Becky took me there. Even when I was warned about the security concerns, my girlfriend’s happiness overrode any obstacle that lay ahead. I ploughed through makeshift market structures until I found what my girlfriend wanted.

That was not all. I needed to buy that popular chitenge-like material from Nigeria which is popularly known as ankara fabric for my mother as well as for Becky and her mother and that I did. Two days later, I touched down at the Kenneth Kaunda International Airport (KKIA), satisfied that I had achieved my task. When I showed her the things I had bought for her, my mum and her mother, she was head over heels.

She was more into social media than I was. Our photos were all over social media. Every little gesture I extended to her ended up on social media and before long, my friends started wondering what had happened to me because there was no relationship I exposed on social media.

They were sure Becky had put me in some bottle somewhere and that this was the reason I was sheepishly following whatever she said like an imbecile that had stopped thinking. I knew what my friends were saying but olondiwe Shaka, ungakane? I was in love and I never cared but the days of weeping were drawing nigh. Nebuchadnezzar was out grazing with the cows and it was just a matter of time before I danced pelete.

Our love affair was like a fairy tale. It was hard to believe that I had found someone who truly loved me at long last. Yes, we used to have differences but it was the usual pretty relationship differences like why didn’t you pick my calls or why didn’t you call me, nothing serious.

In short, our relationship was generally peaceful. However, I should have woken up when she started sharing some very sensitive information with me which should have triggered my instincts to conduct due diligence on her. She started telling me how her closest friend who was coming from Kabwe loved clubbing and how she and her aunt never used to get along though she was very close to her uncle.

She explained to me how her friend would team up with his uncle and his uncle’s friends, went out and drink their lungs out and sometimes never returned home to a point where her aunt started suspecting that her niece was sleeping around with her husband. She told me how many men her friend had, including some sugar daddy from Kabwe.

She told me how sometimes her friend would spend weekends in Kabwe at the same sugar daddy’s house and come back to Lusaka without her family knowing. She told me also how promiscuous the other girl was to a point where she was literally paying her school fees from her forest of boyfriends and how she spent her weekends with different men.

Then, her friend from Kabwe got pregnant for the sugar daddy during one of her numerous flirtatious pilgrimages to Kabwe. The university boyfriend who stayed a few metres from their boarding house was accused of being responsible for this pregnancy and because the boy was not ready to keep the child, he paid to have the pregnancy terminated.

However, things did not go as planned. The girl almost died and to hide the evidence, they took her to Levy Mwanawasa Hospital where she was admitted but Becky made sure her friend’s family was not aware of what happened.

Actually, Becky played a huge role in concealing the pregnancy and consequent abortion as she was ever on her friend’s bedside while assuring the family that her friend would be okay and that there was no need for them to travel from Kabwe to Lusaka.

I don’t even know whether I was just plain stupid or not because, to tell you the truth, none of these honchos she was talking about came close to her beauty. Becky was such a cute girl that none of her zombie friends came close to half her beauty and if her cheap friends had so many boyfriends and they stayed in the same house, what about her?