It wasn't a secret that my car, which I had just bought from South Africa, wasn't cleared by Customs. My neighbour went a step further he notified the police, so I was always expecting their "courtesy call". I didn't have to wait long, and was confronted by a plain clothes policeman one evening as I was doing my weekend shopping at Kamwala. He seemed confident and convinced that what he was saying was nothing short of the absolute truth. He had "recognised" my number plate as supposedly being on Interpol's list of "hot cars" in Lusaka. Sensing danger, I made a hasty exit.
So as not to give away my real feelings, I sauntered to my flashy sport's car, snapping my fingers with false confidence and a not-so-contented frame of mind. Even in this state, I could not help but admire my shiny crimson coloured 1956 Porsche Spyder replica. It was a car in a million a car that did far more than merely please the eye, but also left many at a loss for words. Brand new as it was, I resolved that I would do anything to prevent it being impounded.
Before I could get to the car, however, I noticed a police car sharply swerve into the road, it's tyres screeching and siren wailing. That is when I remembered that the plain clothes cop had a motorolla walkie-talkie in his breast pocket. There was no time to waste.
I leapt into my car and fumbled for the keys. Somehow, I managed to stab the right key into the ignition lock. Firing the engine, I grabbed the gear lever and slammed it into first. Releasing the clutch pedal suddenly, I floored the accelerator, and the wheels spun madly as I wrenched the steering wheel with all my might. The car took off like a runaway rocket, the engine roaring, smoke billowing and lights glaring. It skidded drunkenly, leaving black marks on the road as the tyres heeled mightily in a smoke producing, rubber burning squeal.
The car jolted as I insanely juggled with gear, wheel, clutch and gas pedal. In the process, much to my chagrin, the door on my side flew open. I had not clipped on my seat belt and was in great danger of falling out. With a shower of sparks, the door scraped the crash barrier on the edge of the road. I fought to close the door and had it not been for power steering, I would have been unable to drive with my free hand. Despite the ferocious speed at which I was moving, well-aligned pneumatic wheels and stabilizers meant I had excellent road holding capacity, and that gave me badly needed peace of mind. The engine responded favourably to my frantic efforts to drive away, and as I gradually eased into formula one mode, Chilumbulu Road became my own.
The car roared with a din that would have woken a deaf man from deep slumber there was no muffler on the exhaust. This, coupled with the fact that the cops were gaining ground, had begun to arouse interest from pedestrians and other motorists alike.
Soon, I came to the first set of potholes, harbingers of what was to follow. I slowed down as I tried to skirt one particular water filled hole. It was at that instant that the panda car bumped into mine. My adrenalin level rose sharply. I stepped on the accelerator and the car pulled away into another puddle filled pothole riddled section of the road. The policeman behind the wheel motioned me to stop. I ignored him and instead, stepped even harder onto the gas pedal. Despite the holes, I managed to inch away, pitching and rolling as I went. The police car, which had seen better days, was in the meantime rattling like a hammer mill. Suddenly, it stopped. Much later on, I learnt that it's front axle had broken, but at that moment, I dared not slow down to see what was happening.
My car is now safely tucked away in a shanty compund where it can't be found until I raise enough money to pay customs. When I heard that Chilumbulu Road, famous for it's vast and ubiquitous potholes, was being patched and resurfaced, I felt a little sad. It had saved my bacon, and I owed those potholes a lot.
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(The above work of fiction won the first ever short-story competition in the Lusaka Lowdown Magazine and went on to be published in 4 countries including in New Zealand where it is still immortalised in this blogpost here.)
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