Love’s dilemma (I)
By Walije Gondwe
Towera sat in the corner of the recreation hall, struggling to understand what the distinguished Indian guest was talking about. She hadn’t a clue who or what he was, except that he was a very important man from Zomba, then the capital, and that he represented the Indian community in Malawi. ‘Someone like a high commissioner!’ enthused a self-appointed information officer. It still meant nothing to the majority of people, of whom Towera was one.
Her own status demanded that she should have been able to understand, or at least appear as if she did. She was quite an educated lady by early 1960s Malawi standards, having passed Standard 5, the second last class in primary education.
Before she and another girl had joined the Department of Agriculture, as agricultural instructresses or demonstrators, Towera’s job had been exclusively for men. The two girls had been taken on to see if women could do the work as well as men did. Her colleague had left to have a family; so far Towera had been working for three years.
‘It’s one thing to have learned English for five years and be able to carry on a one-to-one conversation, even if you have to be restricted to monosyllabic answers, but it’s quite another being able to understand a speech delivered in a non Malawian accent!’ she lamented to herself. She listened regardless, looking determinedly interested, and hoping that no one would ask later on what she’d thought of the speech.
The occasion was one of the most important ones in the lives of the people of Mzimba. The main street, the shops (all, except one, Indian-owned) as well as the recreation hall, glittered with decorations Indian-style. This caused one guest to comment that Mzimba had been transformed into a mini-Delhi. The August evening smelt of sweet, cool, fresh air, and it was to be the most memorable of Towera’s life, for quite a different reason.
Nearly halfway through the proceedings, a man Towera had never seen before got up and tiptoed towards her. He took the seat next to her on the right, her best side. She was always conscious of the scar under her left eye. The man whispered greetings and they shook hands, exchanging a brief malonje, the usual how-are-you’s, etc, which seem to follow naturally, even between strangers, when people greet one another.
He was very smart and educated looking. If he had been modelling the grey shorts and grey, kneehigh socks, stocks would have been depleted without notice. The green blazer gave him away as an ex-student of Dedza Secondary School. His complexion, a shade darker than Towera’s was a good advertisement for a high-class cosmetic soap company.
As they talked, his large, amazingly curious eyes never strayed away from her for a second. She wasn’t one to look a strange man straight in the eye, but she could feel his stare with every movement she made. She reckoned, from a quick glance, that the stranger had been Planet Earth’s resident for a little longer than she had, how much longer she didn’t try to guess, nor did she think it was that important. All she cared about was that he had rescued her brain from the most excruciating strain.
During the break the strange man said, ‘My name is Mwawomba, Luka Mw...’
‘Ah, the Mister Mwawomba from Karonga!’ she interposed, a little too excitedly, causing heads to turn from all sides. She licked and bit her forefinger, like a small girl caught doing some forbidden thing.
She had heard a lot about him. Well, everyone had — at any rate everyone in the Department of Agriculture. In fact, she’d heard about him before she came to Mzimba. In those days secondary educated people were very important members of society, so their names tended to be known far and wide. There was the story of a mother who used to order her never-been-to-secondary school older son off the chair in favour of her younger one, referring proudly to the latter as ‘my mzungu from seko’.
Luka had just finished his two-year training at the famous Corby School of Agriculture, at Chitedze. He had come to join the Department as one of the senior members of the field staff, and his impending arrival was on everyone’s lips.
‘I recognised you because I saw you at Corby when you came to visit your sister-in-law, about a... year... ago?’ he went on, making an eye and head gesture for her confirmation of the date. She nodded and smiled shyly. The girl she had gone to see had not then married her brother Mzamo, but, as is common practice, Towera addressed her as if she had. She had been on the same course as Luka.
Towera was rather embarrassed, since she couldn’t recall ever having seen the man, and had to admit it. Perhaps because so many people came to greet her, it wasn’t easy to remember everyone’s face, she said soothingly, and he accepted her explanation. She should have tried to be more observant, she scolded herself silently.
Because of all the stories that had preceded his arrival, the urge to analyse him was overwhelming. He seemed a quiet-ish, gentle type, contrary to reports; not as handsome as she had been informed, but then that was always in the eye of the beholder, she thought. Still, she supposed he was okay, if one liked that sort of thing! She liked gentle people, especially if they combined this quality with a sense of humour.
She, too, had been variously described. One man had said once that he wouldn’t call her ‘exactly pretty, but definitely very attractive’, to which she’d nearly responded, ‘And all these years I believed that the words meant the same thing!’ Instead she’d just smiled sweetly, grateful that he didn’t find her repulsive. Quite a number of people used to say that, but for the scar, she would have been a very beautiful girl.
The scar had been acquired when she was a little girl. Her mother had gone to the then Belgian Congo to collect her two orphaned little brothers. Towera’s elder sister, Nkhweruzga, had fallen seriously ill, and it had taken her poor grandmother, Nya
Mkondowe, a long time to notice the offending boil under the eye. Had her mother got back a week later, she might have lost the eye. Immediately on her return, she had taken Towera to the nearest hospital, at Kwendeni, a walk of about twenty miles, where Towera’s father worked as a store manager. It was, alas, too late to prevent the scar, but she always remained grateful to her mother that the worst had been averted.
Towera loved her mother for the kind of person she was, regretting the fact that the statement ‘My mother is the best in the whole world’ sometimes sounded like a cliché. To her, this description perfectly fitted her own mother.
Several people had, however, told Towera that the first time they met her they had not even noticed the scar. She never knew whether their words were genuine or not, nor did it make any difference to her feelings about it. What did make up for the distress caused by the scar was her figure. In a community where so many girls strived to put on pounds instead of dieting themselves to anorexic degrees, unless you happened to be absolutely enormous (in which case you had to grin and bear it), Towera had no problems. On this particular occasion she looked stunning in a long cotton dress with blue and white vertical stripes.
Her conversation with Luka, mainly about the technicalities of agriculture, was getting more and more interesting. When the meeting reconvened, Towera felt she ought to leave before they made a nuisance of themselves. She also thought that she might be distracting Luka, but he followed her out.
She had earlier left a pail for water by the borehole, outside the hall. Luka waited for her while she operated the machine to extract the water, which she did by propelling the z-shaped handle, first gently, and then faster and faster until she filled the pail up. The pail had a curved recess underneath it, which enabled her to balance it on her head, helped by the plaits, lying flat, two on each side. Luka offered to help lift the pail on to her head, but she declined and thanked him.