Meditations from the Bush
Chapter III: Farmer’s Day in Requiem.
1.
My father, growing up in 20th Century Latin America, was raised a Catholic. He would tell us stories of nuns punishing him, forcing him to sit butt-naked on the cold marble floors of the conservatory. Luckily for him, my grandparents were of a class that cared only formally for religion, and so he could drift out of it easily. I don’t think he ever forgave the nuns.
Decades later, as I travelled some parts of Spain in my late teens, my father earnestly told me to attend mass at a church. I was in Palermo, Mallorca, looking for records of my forefathers, who travelled to Argentina during the mid-19th century. The church whose mass I attended apparently held an artefact that bore my family name. I attended the afternoon mass, the November clouds as heavy as the incense wafting over to me from the altar at the front. Saints lined the walls and stared down at me with a cinematic quality, and as I beheld the Virgin Mary I am sure she shed tears. I took a seat in one of the pews at the back of the church.
I let the Latin tongue of the litanies roll over me. As I was in the throes of my own religious strife, this was an unwelcome burden, but I was too far gone by this point. I could feel the weight of history on my shoulders as I imagined my forefathers attending mass in this very same church, letting the strange sounds of a foreign tongue roll over them too. It was daunting, but strangely liberating.
2.
Much to my shame as a Lusakaan, I have only ever attended the agricultural show once. It always fell at an odd time during the year – at the beginning of a semester or during a trip to the bush. I remember that day three years ago as a series of images, as if I was in a cinema: the long queue at the gate, the red railings particularly vivid (are they red, or is my memory playing tricks on me?); the walk between the brick-façade buildings, the sun shining down on the trees, casting a shadow on the kids running about; the cows, goats and pigs expecting something, anything, behind the bars closing them off from disinterested onlookers. I also remember feeling confused. In my imagination this was supposed to be a strictly rural affair. Why were there merry-go rounds, and those plastic toys they were selling - who were they for? And where did they get that Egyptian man selling leather belts from?
Slowly I came to the realisation that this was probably part of some grand agricultural-retail complex, masterminded by post-colonial capitalist forces working to undermine the resilience of rural folk. How else could one explain the Cotton Association of Zambia shacking up next to a candy floss stall? And where were the rural folk? I could only see traces of them, like shadows on a sunny day, lingering in the smell of a goat here, or on the sweat-stained hat of a grey-haired man there. I followed these shadows the whole afternoon in earnest, hoping that they might lead me to something, anything. They led me nowhere.
3.
There was no agricultural show this year. Death-by-coronavirus for an out-of-sorts and deeply delusional show seems like poetic justice now. However, it still needed to be honoured, given a proper send-off and all that. So in its honour, on Farmers’ Day, I held a requiem: I went to the Showgrounds alone, and sat in one of the animal pens. From there I could see where the cotton-candy stands would be. I closed my eyes and meditated on the images as they played on the back of my eyelids like a film: the red railings, the sunny shadows, the sheep. I let the silence roll over me. I wondered if my sons and daughters would be able to feel the weight of their forefathers – me – in this place, if I would leave traces in this world equally confusing as the ones I found. Perhaps this requiem was a way for me to connect across time, making an altar of history that could usher these cinematic images to them in some sort of trans-temporal spiritual exercise.
I then realised, in a moment of clarity, that in a couple of decades the Showgrounds, being prime property, would probably be another mall. My progeny would in all likelihood be sat in some god-awful ‘lounge’, smoking shisha. Fucking kids - no sense of propriety.
Bazzi, the author, is a 20-something year-old cliché: an aspiring writer and photographer, unemployed for the most part. When he’s not bitter at the world he’s to be found walking around the city, usually, basking in the universe of moral poverty.
