ZAMBIA LETTERS, 28

19/07/2025

I went to the backyard and did my practice. Had an easy session, went through the Shaolin form just to remember it. The headache since Mufilira has started to subside but my throat is still stiff. I was actually hesitant to eat their breakfast again but when I went into the dining room to use their hot water for my own, brought, soluble coffee the receptionist asked if I wanted my breakfast. I said yes. Today it was scrambled eggs with flatbread. I ate it in front of their suspended TV. It was showing a Zambian TV series. The dialogue was quite interesting and contained bits of well-written material that highlighted social challenges that, I assume, reflect problems in people's everyday lives. A lady refused to talk to a short man because she didn't want someone with taboos in her garden. A son couldn't handle the alcohol and tried to throw his stepfather out of his mother's house.

It took a while to clean the room of mud and sand. I didn't want to leave it too dirty for the staff. But I had plenty of time before I had to be at the bus station so I also got a chance to write for a couple of hours, in my steel chair with a soft cushion, next to the Zambian drum.

Took a Yango to the station at 1000. Friendly Salim called and asked how it had gone. I thanked him for his help and explained how valuable he had been to me. Sat down to write. A drunk man came and sat next to me. He started a conversation that I didn’t want and that could only have a content I could do without. I dismissed him, first politely, then more harshly. He called me a racist, said that all whites are racists. Look around, look at people. Africa is rich, you are nothing! All this, see this. You are racists, what you are doing… all of you. What are you working with? 

I went to the UBZ gate and asked if they had any security personnel. The man shouted in Bemba at the drunk, I think he asked him about his ticket and when he didn't have one he came around and showed the man out of the area.

—

Busstations are that way, I suppose, like ships of a sorts; or like port towns. 

You said you’ve never thought of it that way. 

I said places where people are on their way attract opportunities and miseries. I said: Liverpool is built upon an identity like that. Brest also, you know; in Querelle. 

When we ran Institutet in Malmö, I experienced it. Every fifth or tenth year or so something always explodes within the art scene in Malmö. A new coalition. Vitality released from unexpected encounters between a few souls having no idea what they are looking for, driven by something that possess them. Something unexpected erupts.

It is equally true there are no opportunities for anything to flourish there. All the shoots are adorable but they are not perennial. And explosions of another kind are also very common. In the end you need to move on, or the place will kill you. 

I returned to you there, at the station, sat down with you and told you: in the end you need to move on. 

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On my way back to Lusaka now. I've been in this country for quite some time. What ClaraShey talked about is starting to happen to me. I'm acclimatizing, getting used to it. Is my gaze blurring, or deepening? Things I wrote about at the beginning, like how children were playing in the sand between the walls of our neighborhood, I wouldn't write today. But references to the literature I packed for my trip are opening up. Where they initially felt contrived and misplaced, as if they landed on top of the landscape, they now feel organic and accessible. They speak to me, these European writers, through the Zambian landscape. Not Han Kang. Still not her. She doesn't have a voice in my flesh. It's like her words don't take hold, I can't hear them inside me, they just don't come out. Likewise, I've also started to put away my sight, my seeing. I carry them inside me, sights that I had earlier, before I stopped seeing. The picture of Gary in his pink T-shirt, where he sweeps his hand over the open pit and the clear water. Smiling, always a happy smile and enthusiastically friendly. But I didn't take any pictures. The sights were recorded only in my eyes.

__

The bus came in two hours late. Hanna wasn’t happy about that when I called her to let her know, but there was nothing I could do. She needs all the photos and the films in her smart phone for her presentation tomorrow. I hope she will be able to put her talk together anyway. 

I waded through the sea of hustlers with the sort of ease that only comes with experience.

On top of the bus being late the traffic was horrible too, so I was delayed even more. The yangodriver asked me about life in Norway. He said he wanted to move to a European country in order to make more money. Everything has become to expensive in Lusaka, he said, you cannot make enough to build your own house. He said he was willing to sell his car and buy a flight ticket for the money if he only knew he could find a job. I told him I don’t really know how these things work but that he probably would be best off contacting the Swedish embassy, as they handle Norwegian matters here in Zambia nowadays, and ask them about work visas in Norway. 

I googled a Zambian - Norwegian friendship forening in Oslo and gave him their email. 

On our way to LuCAC, we stopped at a ShopRite. I bought vegetables for the soup Hanna and I will be making tomorrow. 

Arrived late. Checked the masks from the Burning hill. They had survived the trip but one of them was still wet. I put it to dry on the window sill.

As I got home I also felt I wanted to do some catching up with Irpa, and I think she felt the same way because she invited me for a game of Nintendo. 

A short comment on this: Hanna and I have always been very restrictive with games, internet and even watching movies. We don´t have a television at home and Irpa has not used screens at all until very recently. In preparation for this trip, however, we have accepted that she might benefit from having a Nintendo. She has also been allowed to do a few pedagogic online apps. This has been useful, especially in the beginning of the trip, since she wasn’t used to talking or understanding English and Hanna and I had many meetings Irpa needed to sit in on.

As we were playing, Serah came by. She and Hanna has gotten close and they have a sincere, ongoing, conversation about life. Hanna offered some food and Serah explained her relationship to praying and to other Christian religious practices. What she described reminds us a little bit about the Fascia meditation Hanna has come across during dance workshops she has attended. Serah also explained that after her salvation she always tries to make other people become Christian. She tries to get them to begin to studie the Bible, and to start praying.

Irpa has gotten much better at Nintendo, way better then me.

The two of them remained talking, as I put Irpa to bed. Or she put me to bed. I can´t say, I was dead tired.