Hometown Glory

A story by MWINJI SIAME

When Mr. de Vries assigned her the river pollution story back in the Cape Town bureau, Ivwa had been lured at first by the thought of returning to those undulating sunsets that spilled red and orange across the sky but then hesitated at the thought of seeing her estranged family. After she had left her hometown for Cape Town to finish her Master’s in Journalism, she’d completely lost touch with everyone––maybe on purpose, given all that had transpired up until the day her grandfather, her Tatakulu, had passed away. 

On that tepid October afternoon, Ivwa had been ill with the flu her doctor had ascribed to the change of season, and had been laying in bed all day. Outside her window, the gate leading up to her relic-like apartment creaked open and closed. Neighbours streamed in and out from the beach or ran errands with a vitality Ivwa felt envious of as she stood to get her phone. Glancing outside onto the street abutting the railway line, she hoped to see a delivery man bringing noodles and sauteed chicken from the Chinese restaurant two streets away. Instead, a couple embraced, and a group of children passing by in their scraggly end-of-week uniforms went “Woo.” 

Ivwa let out a weak chuckle and glanced intuitively at an old picture of her mother pecking her father. The picture was pinned to the corkboard beside her desk. When the photo was taken, she had looked away, pretending to admire the view of the verdant forest from Tatakulu’s home. 

*

“Ba Mayo.” Ivwa almost whispered without saying Hello. She hoped her mother would mirror her vulnerability even though the last time she had been home, her mother had dropped her at the airport like luggage. Mother and daughter swapped a stiff, brief hug before the mother disappeared out into the busy parking lot. Still, Ivwa figured that her mother could show her some tenderness. After all, her mother had continued to make her father special meals even after his girlfriend’s pharmacy-bought perfume became a familiar scent in their home. Surely, Ivwa choosing a Master’s degree over a fiancé from an old family was not a mortal sin.

“He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone,” came her mother’s sobbing reply through the phone.

“Who is gone?” Ivwa’s voice dropped an octave as though she was just interviewing another politician who would not give her answers. She’d grown accustomed to being unmoved by displays of emotion so that she could properly do her job as a journalist. Daniel, her ex, often accused her of carrying that emotional distance into their relationship. She’d smiled a plastic smile when her mother had told her over a video call when they broke up over his infidelity that perhaps she needed to show him her warmer side as a woman. 

Her mother stopped sobbing enough to tell Ivwa that it was Tatakulu who was gone. “He was sick for some time. We’re making arrangements for the burial. A proper farewell.”

“I’ll get on the first flight.”

“It’s okay. We don’t need any––stress. I just wanted to let you know.”

Here she goes again. “Stress? Stress!? Because I don’t want to marry a boy who drives a big car and will have a big job like daddy. And I don’t want to be––like you.” Ivwa squeezed her handset until her knuckle throbbed.

She never did get on that first flight, never did attend Tatakulu’s funeral, and, in fact, planned never to return. 

But now, 12 years after her relationship with her mother had truly soured and Tatakulu had died, work pulled her back home. 

Inside Tatakulu’s house, the scent of mukwa and moringa filled the air. She closed the window, her mind engulfed in bitter-sweet memories of the evenings the family sat around the large mukwa table. The roars of laughter as they gossiped about a cantankerous neighbour claiming a share of the other’s wife. After dinner, her parents would sit outside in the crisp, cool air. Everyone would be pretend-sleeping, the sound of snoring muffling their jostling for the one shared phone so that they could message loved ones back in the city or play games. Outside, her parents would tell more stories of the day’s happenings, falling all over each other like teenagers left home alone. As she closed the curtains, Ivwa noticed the mildew and cracks in the corners of the windows, the paint on the walls slowly peeling, behind her, a door creaking, the way all the doors in the house seemed to in this moment.

The place really did need doing up. Ivwa’s stepmother, Sheila, had offered to come along and help her make things liveable, but Ivwa, as always, insisted on doing it alone, not even with the help of her biological mother. She couldn’t yet face the cracks in their relationships. She couldn’t yet face her mother disowning her when she broke off her engagement to go and complete her master’s. Or how the circumstance of her now stepmother meeting her father had been infidelity at Tatakulu’s funeral.

Ivwa gasped when she saw Sheila had sent someone to clean the place and prepare a meal for her. How dare she try and impose herself in this way, and in her husband’s ex-father-in-law’s home, no less. How dare she have someone prepare a literal grand banquet––a bowl of beef cuts in a thick tomato soup, pupwe mixed with stewed pinto beans, fried tilapia, and millet-cassava nsima. 

But Ivwa grinned as she sat down. It had been ages since she had anything that sated her. Her mother’s spicy oxtail stew was the last meal she had eaten before they had fallen out over the engagement, and it was the last thing that made her rub her belly after a meal. Yet, even as she enjoyed being back in Tatakulu’s town, the familiar taste of home, she felt lonelier than ever, and tears sprang to her eyes. Perhaps her mother had been right, she thought. A degree was not going to keep her warm at night. She needed a family. 

On the car ride from the airport to her mother’s, where she had slept before heading to Tatakulu’s, Ivwa had scrolled through her phone. Her eyes lit up as she saw her last article about a politician who had taken a bribe to approve expired birth control.

Her mother poked her neck through the aisle when they were near Melissa’s. Ivwa adjusted her jacket and wiped some tomato sauce from the corner of her smile. Her mother was gorgeous and prim with her sculpted face and perfect wavy weave in a way that felt accusatory to Ivwa like she needed to be better.

“Home for the first time, and you’re busy on the phone.”

“I’m working.” 

“Work work work. Always working. There’s more to life than work. What about your family? And not just us. A husband. Children. Aweh mwandi. You girls of today?” 

Ivwa rolled her eyes and grabbed her headsets.

“Iche!” Ivwa’s mother smacked her hands together. “No. No. No.”

Ivwa’s eyes grew wide, and she clenched her shoulders, frozen by the kind of language she never thought her mother would use, too close-lipped to push back.

“If you want us to talk, stop treating me like a child.” Ivwa pouted and folded her arms. 

She ugghd when her father cleared his throat. He’d walked out of the room to supposedly take a call when her mother had called her a disappointment of a daughter the night before she broke off her engagement. She opened her mouth to confront her father, rearing for a fight with her parents. He turned on the stereo, and her mother’s icy gaze stopped her temporarily. 

“Turn off that… that girl’s music.” Ivwa’s mother flicked her wrist as she turned to face the road ahead. 

“At least she’s actually got a job. And doesn’t let her husband boss her around. She may be a lot of things, but at least she’s not like you.” Ivwa covered her mouth and ducked, expecting a hot slap.

“You know what? Just as well you actually never married that boy. You would have embarrassed us even more, mweh. Besides, I’m not weak; I’m just, I love your––I.”  Vivian’s voice was muffled. Ivwa craned her neck up to the mirror. Yep, she had made her mother cry, or almost. She put her hand across her belly, a knot in her stomach.

The rest of the car ride, Ivwa nodded as her father complained about the drainages overflowing with garbage, agreeing that the government was rubbish. Ivwa shook her head as he narrated how the council building where he and Ivwa’s mother had gotten married had not been repainted since then. She mustered an “unbelievable” when he explained how the university where he and his wife had met was under review by the Higher Education Board because courses were not being updated. Ivwa didn’t have much of an interest in discussing politics outside of work, but she needed to avoid the pang of regret for what she said to her mother, so she indulged her father. 

*

Ivwa tied her braids into a high ponytail. Her sharp cheekbones and the slight slant in her eyes leapt out at her from the mirror. The style made her look, she thought, like her mother. 

“Are you Lovemore?” Ivwa squinted as she climbed up into the four-by-four outside her gate. 

“You were expecting a man? I don’t know why my mother allowed me to have a boy’s name. I think she wanted a boy.” Lovemore said. 

“I think my mother wanted a girl.” 

Both women laughed. There had been some changes in the town since the last time she had been here, thirteen years ago, her Tatakulu insisting a change of scenery might calm her though it was really her mother’s idea, whispering to him before handing the phone to Ivwa who had been listening in the passageway. 

“She’s just, she’s difficult. Not like her other sisters. You know she wants to be like Christian Amanpour or something.” Ivwa’s mother laughed.

“She’s growing up. And you were like that before you married. You wanted to be, was it a lawyer? A shame. And there was nothing to stop you from going to school. Even if you had gotten married a little later. Marriage is inevitable for a woman, but it wasn’t like our days when you married so young.”

Ivwa’s cheeks filled with air behind the door, holding back laughter as she pictured her mother with a gavel, stern and strict. 

“Yes. Well anyway. I’ve made an excellent wife, even if things haven’t worked out. Anyway, talk to her. Please, Baba. She’ll listen to you.”

“I will, Vivian. I will. ”

Ivwa slid down the corridor on the parquet floors before her mother could open the door. She pretended to be shocked and reluctant but felt excited to meet the Tatakulu who had believed in her. How proud he would be, at least of her education, she thought now. How much he loved her despite her imperfections.

At the school entrance where the meeting was to be held, a small truck, shiny four-by-fours and sleek sedans drove in ahead of them and squeezed their way into the few parking spaces left. The school had supposedly been the only place where all the workers and management could be accommodated, even though, evidently, it could not accommodate them. In reality, Ivwa knew, from similar stories, it was actually about the optics of meeting people where they were. It was about the upper being seen as humble enough to come to the local community. Nobody wanted anything like what had happened at ShakaChem in South Africa to happen again. 

“Could have had it somewhere else.” She rolled her eyes.“I’m sorry. I hope your boss won’t be calling you soon to ask what the bloody hell is going on?”

“That would be the case. If I wasn’t sort of already the boss or the deputy boss, at least.” 

Ivwa blushed. All she had known back in Lusaka were aunts and cousins who, dressed in body-skimming, colourful, chitenge outfits, attended newly fangled kitchen parties and gossiped over cocktails—all of this while their husbands went to big, important meetings. 

In the courtyard, surrounded by long, narrow classrooms, a lanky gen-z was setting up a PR system with his apparent boss hovering over him and tapping a microphone. Ivwa found it hard to ignore his grey-flecked hair, what she presumed was a square jaw covered by a thick beard––a rugged handsomeness. She watched as he stuffed his tucked-in shirt deeper into a pair of blue pants that skimmed his legs perfectly––a total nerd. When Ivwa had made her way to the front of the crowd the head of the worker’s union introduced himself. 

“Ba Patrick.” He shook her hand with fervour. “I’ve heard very good things.”

Then the boss-man jumped in and shoved Ba Patrick aside. Ba Patrick furrowed his brow.

“Who might you be? Can’t you see we were in the middle of a conversation?”Ivwa barked.

“I wanted to ask you something. Privately.”

“I’m not that kind of reporter. I don’t take bribes.”

“Oh wow. Let me finish, Miss?” The boss-man stumbled back and blinked. “I just wanted to let you know your blouse isn’t, eh––” he pointed downwards with his head.

Ivwa looked down and noticed her blouse had become untucked and lopsided, revealing a little bit of her belly in medium-rise jeans. She tucked the blouse in briskly, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground so the man could not see her face grow shiny.

“Thank you.” She looked away. She didn’t need him thinking he’d done something here, being so good-looking in a way that almost made her wish she could leave the arrangement of her clothes as they were so that she could seduce him.

“Mr Kasonde.” He stretched out his hand. “Mrs?”

“Ms Sichinga. But you can call me Ivwa.” 

“Okay, Jonathan, then. Not Mr Kasonde.”

A high-pitched note rose from the PR system, followed by Ba Patrick’s booming voice.

Ivwa pursed her lips and scribbled in her notepad as Ba Patrick explained the history of ShakaChem Zambia in the area. First, he said, it had been a saving grace, bringing jobs and some development. It had slowly destroyed the town with illness as the company began to throw its waste into the nearby river, poisoning all water sources and fauna in the area. Ivwa imagined herself grabbing onto Jonathan and shaking him. How could he be so involved in such a flagrant injustice? But she held her notebook close to her chest. 

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. It was her mother. 

“Eh, someone really wants you, hey?” Jonathan folded his arms and nodded with an impressed look on his face.

“Oh. Nothing like that at all. It’s my mother.” Ivwa puffed out her chest. So, it mattered to Jonathan that she might have someone? She could hear her mother’s excitement on the phone already when she told him she had found on her own, an enviable match. That she had fixed the wrongs of the past. 

*

Lovemore called Ivwa closer to her ear before passing her the live chicken through the Hilux window.

“Ba Jonathan ni ba muntu. You’ve been enjoying. But you have to be careful. People around here do anything to get what they want. If he can get you to write a good story, he will. I won’t tell de Vries. You and I are friends now, and you’re big; you can do what you want, but I don’t want you to get hurt. Or your job if anyone finds out, but you really ought to.” Lovemore sighed. “That’s what I’m worried about. You.” Lovemore’s shoulders sank. 

“I’ll be careful. Don’t worry about me.” Ivwa chuckled and backed away from the four-by-four before waving her arms in the air vigorously. The last time she had been here, saying goodbye to Tatakulu, Tatakulu slightly raised his cane. She stuck her head out of the window and waved as plumes of dust filled the air. Her mother asked her to make it quick, or she’d dirty her father’s leather seats. She tucked her irritation away until now. Ivwa texted her mother before walking up to the house. 

Hi Mum. I hope you are okay. I’m really enjoying Grandad’s place. It’s a shame we hadn’t stayed longer the last time I was here. 

Ivwa put her phone on flight mode before she got to the house, the cool breeze against her skin. This was a day to relax, not fight. Maybe tomorrow. She did not want to ruin a single moment she spent with Jonathan with the heaviness of the past. 

Ivwa smirked as she walked into the kitchen. Jonathan leaned against the counter. His eyes darted up and down his phone screen as he scrolled over news headlines with one hand and sipped from a glass of whisky in the other. She rolled her eyes.

“Get off my counter. This isn’t your mother’s house.”

“Whatever you want, boss.” He raised his whisky hand in the air and winked. Ivwa threw her head back and laughed.

“Don’t be sorry.” She picked up the dish with the chicken and glanced at him with large eyes.

“No. I’m not doing it. It’s your house, after all, and I’m just a guest.” His face spread out in a smug smile. He could read her intentions. Just as he had, finally, when they kissed for the first time in the Happy Shoppe supermarket parking lot.

“Umm. So, all these weeks, when you said you wanted to clarify a few things, this is what you really meant by clarify, isn’t it? You––” He lifted her chin. A security guard walked past in the quiet parking lot. A squeaky sound filled the air as a woman in a Happy Shoppe outfit packed a train of trolleys just outside the large doors, the last shopper having just left. Jonathan hastily let go of her face.

“Yes.” Ivwa leaned across the armrest in his car and pressed her lips against his when the guard passed, and the woman and her friends disappeared into the Main Road. 

Ivwa’s nostrils tingled. The smell of onion and chicken from earlier when they had sat at Shawarma King was still on Jonathan’s breath, but she pried his mouth open gently with her tongue. It had been weeks of wondering what his lips felt like whenever they met to discuss Shaka Chem’s work. Of course, the conversation occasionally diverged from there about how she had felt about her parent’s divorce–after a phone call with her stepmother had interrupted the start of her third interview session with him. Ivwa had mumbled a thank you and rubbed the back of her neck when the scent of Kenyan coffee had filled the office that day, taken aback that he had remembered her mentioning how much she enjoyed it. 

“Your boyfriend?” He pulled away and raised a brow as they made out in his Sedan in the parking lot of the Happy Shoppe. 

“My ex-boyfriend.”

“I know how this goes. And I can’t imagine what he did. Aweh. That was messed up. I’d be down, bad. Personally, I’d need some time. So let’s take it slow––for now, bae.” 

“Bae?” She chuckled at his choice of that modern word but looked away and repeated it. She liked how it sounded in his baritone when reserved for her.

He had pulled out of the parking lot and dropped her home. Ivwa had not slept until midnight when she finally texted Daniel, wishing him the best.

Ivwa put the chicken in a large yellow dish, her hand around its neck. The chicken clucked, and the huffing sound of wings flapping filled the air.

Jonathan turned on the Bluetooth speaker and put on Sade.

Ivwa bit her lip like a shy teenager.

He remembered that she had played Sade the evening he dropped her off at home after that first kiss. Jonathan, unlike Daniel, thought of her in no uncertain terms as his and worthy of his time and affection. On her birthday, a few weeks after their first kiss at Happy Shoppe, the aroma of Oxtail filled the air as he introduced her to his daughter. 

“Pass me the knife, please, babe.” Her palms were moist. 

“You can’t do it, can you? City girl.” Jonathan watched Ivwa hold the knife against the chicken’s neck in front of the washing line in Tatakulu’s house. An awning of Mango leaves sheltered them from the drizzle.

“It’s okay if you can’t do it, princess. We can skip right to the desert.” He moved behind her as she stood up and freed the chicken. She grew breathless as he pressed his nose into the crook of her neck. A woody-scented cologne filled her nose.

“You smell so good. I smell of––chicken.” She pulled her neck away a little. 

“You don’t. And I don’t care.” 

“The neighbours.”

“We’ll go inside.”

“Let me shower.” She peeled his hands off her waist. Tentative. A part of her did not care if the neighbours did see, but when her uncle returned on Sunday from the next town where they had gone to take nsalamu for one or another cousin, her family would find out. She did not want any more tension than what existed.

“I’ll join you.”

“No, please. Behave yourself.” She kissed her teeth as she turned to him and smacked his chest, balancing the empty dish under her sweaty armpit. He pulled her closer and traced the contours of her lips with his fingers. 

“Nalikutemwa.”

“Nakukunda.” Ivwa took his free hand and rested it on her behind.

Then, before he could properly embrace her, the real October rain began, pounding the earth like bullets. They fled inside, his jacket covering her head and her arm around his waist. 

She had bathed about two hours before, just before Jonathan arrived, but still, it only seemed polite, especially in this October humidity. If she was going to do what Tatakulu and her grandmother would certainly find unbecoming for an unmarried woman to do in their house, she at least had to be a good host to her guests and make herself presentable for the act of hospitality.

“What’s going on? I thought there was power?” Ivwa reached for the light switch. 

“Wait. Don’t be surprised.” Jonathan’s voice was breathy.

Ivwa wanted to burst out laughing. Of course, he would claim to have the largest local government she had ever seen. Typical Big Man, she thought. But when the light came on, she saw the large welt that crawled up his left knee and stopped just where his boxers began. 

“What ha––?” She moved to sit next to him on the edge of the bed.

“It’s embarrassing.” His shoulders sank, and he put his head in his hands. 

“I’m sorry.” She put her finger on his chin and turned his head towards her. She didn’t need to know what had happened, not now. She wanted to know his body more, and she grabbed him and smashed her lips against his hard.

Her heart raced as he fumbled with the knot in her damp, red chitenge. She covered her breasts and looked down. It had been long since anyone had seen her naked, and she did not want to disappoint him.

When he saw her, he grew concupiscent, grabbing her flesh as they kissed.

She obliged joyfully and dug her fingers into his back. She pulled him closer to him. She used the opening of her mouth, the closing up of her hands, the softness of her breasts, her hips and waist. She had decided to be a balm and give him her absolute all. When they simmered down, they lay with their limbs enmeshed and their foreheads touching. Ivwa shifted away when she saw him start to close his eyes. 

 “What’s going on?” Jonathan mumbled as he latched his fingers between hers.

 “I just want to get some water. It’s a little hot in here.” She fanned herself and chuckled.

 “Okay. I guess––” His fingers slipped out of hers, and he let out a snore—the first of many that night. 

She stared at the ceiling, gathering the gaul. Then she got up and went to where his jeans were, flung over a rickety, mahogany dresser. His password was his daughter’s initials and the year of her birth. She quickly found her way to his email, whose password had also been the most obvious thing, just as her father who was only fifteen years older than him and losing his memory. There was something there, a report of some kind. As she fumbled up into the seat opposite the dresser, the pinging of shattering glass sliced her plans open. She quickly put his phone back in his jeans pocket and knelt to pick up the shards of glass. 

 “Are you okay? What’s happening?” Jonathan sat up straight against the elaborate headboard.

“Yes, I was just on my way to the kitchen, like I said.”

“Please be careful, princess.” Ivwa’s boyfriend put his head in his hand and sighed. 

“Sorry.” Ivwa could feel her throat prickle when she turned over the fallen picture frame. She traced her finger over Tatakulu’s face and her mother’s, his daughter. She was now filled with regret she had been so stubborn and had not gone to his funeral. She was filled with regret that she had made her mother’s pain about herself and her father’s death about her and her mother. She could not hurt Jonathan the same way; he also felt like family. She would leave her fact-finding mission alone.

“Sorry for what?” Jonathan said in the dark of her Tatakulu’s guest bedroom.

“Nothing.” 

“Okay. You weird person,” Jonathan chuckled and rolled onto his side, smiling. Ivwa smiled when she looked up and saw him smiling in the faint moonlight.

*

Ivwa tapped her foot. An anxious crowd, their faces suffused with desperation, their clothes clinging to their bodies in the November heat, had surrounded the car ahead of them, Jonathan’s. They pressed their fingers against the tinted windows of his and other vehicles when they failed to open doors. 

“We have to go, I’m telling you. This isn’t going to end well,” Lovemore said to Ivwa through gritted teeth.

“But this is why I came here. I want answers, too. Those children. Their mothers. They need answers. I need answers.”

“And you’ll get them. But not like this.” Lovemore’s voice was low and stern.

“Please. Just drive, okay?” Ivwa slammed her hand onto the dashboard. It was no longer about the story but about vengeance. Vengeance for Jonathan’s betrayal. She was not thinking clearly at all. 

“And like, what? You think I’ll ask him privately to spare him the shame? And you think a man who lied to me all that time will come clean, on his own, about something like this? A man who lied to his own people––to our people?”

“I don’t know. All I know is we are getting out of here, my sister.” The car rocked slightly as the crowd turned their attention from Jonathan to Ivwa and Lovemore. 

Amid the sea of faces, she could recognise Ba Patrick, his face wrung with anger as he hoisted a megaphone on his shoulder. He glared at her, really glared at her.

She fixed her eyes on a small crack on the windscreen, too embarrassed to face the truth; she had sided with Jonathan by being with him so freely and neglecting the town’s people’s side of the story. She had sided with her own kind, the educated, the powerful. It was what she had bemoaned her mother for doing when she had excused Jonathan’s cheating the day she called her.

“Well. I know it’s hard, but a man like him, just think of all the pressure he’s under. Besides, it might just have been, you know, men.”

“Firstly. No. I do not know men. Secondly, because he’s got money, is that okay? Is that why it was okay for Dad?” Ivwa took a sip of Fanta from her glass. Something sweet, before she used bitter words.

“That’s not what I’m saying, Ivwanjanji also, you know, me and your father? Fyalibako complicated. Try and understand.”

Ivwa’s mouth fell open. Jonathan had used the word complicated when he finally admitted to his affair. It had filled her throat with bile and made her knees buckle from the weight of rage. How dare he cheat, and how dare he make excuses. But from her mother, it was a revelation. She was deceitful to her father, too, capable of that masculine glibness. She was rebellious. 

“Are you saying that you?” Something dissipated in her then, an envy and insecurity that she would never be as compliant as her mother. 

“Be happy. Find someone who––don’t end up like me. Living life for other people until you can’t anymore. Be true. Be honest.”

Ivwa turned to Lovemore, who was now hooting relentlessly, and nodded.

Lovemore revved, and the crowd scrambled away, some almost falling into the nearby drainage. Lovemore revved again, and they all but dispersed, many choosing to cower in the drain rather than falling. Ivwa let out a sigh. Nothing would ever happen to Ivwa and Lovemore; the townspeople were peaceful, even if not docile. They made their way further into the schoolyard.

“ShakaChem Zambia lied, didn’t they,” Ivwa asked matter-of-factly when her former lover was handed the mic during the presser-meeting. 

“ShakaChem values integrity and transparency and strives to ensure all the communities in which it operates benefit from its activities.” Jonathan loosened his tie and cleared his throat before taking a sip from his bottle of water. Ivwa then knew he was lying. This was the clearing of the throat and guzzling of water he had done when she confronted him about his ex-wife when she noticed he no longer wanted to touch her. When he started skulking in the now lush back garden of Tatakulu’s house on his phone late at night, thinking she would not hear anything since she was a deep sleeper. 

“That is not the truth, Jona, I mean M. Sichinga.” Ivwa waved the flimsy papers that were in her hand like a panga. She had found a way to be petty in how she handled his indiscretion while doing her job. “According to the report ShakaChem got from their external consultants, the river was toxic even after the recommendations. But ShakaChem changed the information. You lied.” 

Jonathan clenched his jaw. Ivwa looked him dead in the eye. 

“So, are you going back?” Lovemore asked as they sat on short cowhide stools on the verandah.

“To that man? No way!”

“No, I mean to Cape Town.” Lovemore laughed.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe to Lusaka. To see what’s there. I got a job. Junior Producer at Copper National News.”

“Congratulations. That’s excellent news! You’ll be staying with your mother?” 

“I think I might. I think I just might.” Ivwa looked down at her beer bottle and flattened the sticker with her finger. “Until I find my own place, at least.” She took another swig with a smirk.