Unlikely saviors in my promised land

Bridget and I had been so eager to get back to Zambia. We’d spent so many transformative weeks in Zambia, learning new things about the chimpanzees, the culture, and ourselves. We’d then spent months romanticizing those memories. Of course, we couldn’t wait to get back. Yet, this visit was different. It was like we were trying to return to a place that wasn’t there for us anymore. We were trying to wear something we’d outgrown. Perhaps we didn’t need the transformative power anymore; Zambia had done its work. We’d both made changes in our lives since the last visit and were pretty happy with our worlds at home. This probably explains why we mistakenly started the long trek home from Zambia a day too early. 

We arranged to get a ride to our departure city, Ndola, the night before we thought our flight departed. We traveled the three hours to Ndola and checked into our hotel – a beautiful gated hotel with a garden that made us feel even further out of sync with our African friends. That night, as we were getting organized for the flight we thought was the next morning, we realized the flight was actually two days away. 

Any other time in the last five years of traveling to and from Zambia, I would have been thrilled to come upon an extra day. But this time I wanted to get home to my two-year-old in the States. Bridget, who was no longer getting out of a long, troubling relationship but now engrossed in an exciting new one, felt the same urge to be home. 

But we rallied. We knew how valuable this time could be. We thought, “What do we love? The markets.” Like many larger African cities, Ndola had a large outdoor market that mainly served locals. And served them everything – dried beans, beautiful fabric chitenges, vegetables, dried fish, herbs, caterpillars, cassette tapes, soap, wooden spoons – it was all there in endless mazes of stalls and plywood tables balanced on legs made of tree branches. And we loved walking those uneven, dusty aisles almost as much as we loved home. 

Whenever we visited these markets we moved through the stalls rather quickly, feeling like the perfect mix of local and celebrity. We would smile, chat superficially but easily in Bemba, then move along (collecting far more chitenges than any Zambian ever would). We loved the smells, the music, the sight of it all. A visit to a Zambian market was something we could certainly get excited about. Especially since we’d only been to the market in Ndola once, a couple years before.

The next morning we ate a non-Zambian breakfast in our too-fancy hotel and, in doing so, apparently jinxed ourselves out of any decent Zambian luck. Perhaps we should have paused when the taxi driver said, “Are you sure? That market? Can’t I take you to ShopRite?” Instead, we answered with an affirmative “Aye, mukwai!” and looked at each other like, “Ha, he doesn’t realize, we’re practically Zambian.” Then we hopped out with our dirty yet expensive backpacks in place to set out into the dusty fray we adored. 

We walked and wandered, no thoughts of time, nothing we needed to find, finally glad to have our extra day. The market was massive, made up of over 3,000 stalls connected by a maze of covered and open passageways, taking up the space of at least five football fields. We greeted folks, engaged in fun, simple Bemba conversations, and moved along swiftly as usual. Then we came across two men who were a bit more difficult to move past than most. They were also visiting the market, not working at a stall. They were persistent, wanting to buy us a drink and accompany us. “Let’s go for a walk,” one said. We were friendly, smiled, said “no thanks,” and kept moving along without them. Looking back, perhaps we seemed rude or dismissive, although that wasn’t our intention. We wanted to politely decline, remain untethered and continue to explore. 

We picked up our pace a bit to gain some distance from the two men before resuming our stroll through the endless rows. As we went around a corner, we heard one of the same men behind us say something to the effect of, “I don’t think you want to go that way… You should go this way, with us.” We didn’t trust them, so we continued on, acting as though we knew what was ahead. With that final turn, we apparently had found the one row that did end.

When we came around the corner trying to exude confidence strolling down the middle of the uncharacteristically wide dirt path that made up this particular aisle, we realized we’d moved away from the stalls and shops with the friendly faces trying to sell their goods. Now, instead, both sides of the path were lined with bars. Immediately I could feel the electricity, the chaotic energy. I saw it in people’s eyes, in their movements, in the way they gathered and hung off the makeshift porches. Most people on the porches and on the road with us were men, and most were very drunk. We were two white girls with backpacks, one with pale skin and thick curly red hair no less. We stood out. And unfortunately had booked it, chin up, straight down the wrong path. 

People from both sides started shouting at us, jeering. I don’t remember the words, whether it was English or Bemba or another language, I just remember the amused yet aggressive tone of it all. We did what we knew best – walked on quickly as though we knew just where we were going. A minute or so later we passed one of the only women I remember seeing, a strong young black woman who told us we should turn around. I assumed she was also giving us a hard time, and we continued to forge ahead, thinking that was smarter than showing our weakness and retreating, acting like targets. Bridget and I turned to each other and with our calm, cool faces in place agreed to just walk through quickly and get out of there. 

Unfortunately, this aisle was not like any other we’d been on in the market, or any African market for that matter, this one was a dead end. The street sloped so that we were walking down a slight hill, which helped with our confident pace but not with our navigational decision-making. About halfway down the path, I realized it looked like a dead end, but my view kept open the possibility that there was a path to the left just beyond the last building. As the view opened up, I realized with certainty and dread that, nope, we were definitely approaching a dead end. And everyone but us knew it.

As we approached the end, people started coming off the porches and out of the bars taunting us, yelling out phrases with wry smiles like, “Where are you going, misungu?” By the time we realized we had to turn around, we couldn’t. People had descended on us. People were filming us with their phones. I had thoughts of my two-year-old at home just as someone, a shorter man, had an arm around my neck and was drunkenly trying to hug or hold me from behind. He was starting to cut off my airflow with one arm and his other arm was across my chest, his hand palming my left breast as he hung off my body. I reached out for Bridget who was in only a slightly better position, and grabbed her forearm forcefully saying, “I need help.” I distinctly remember shedding any remaining interest in appearing to be in control; I needed her to know I was panicked. We turned our heads toward the only way out – back up the hill – and saw the two men we had shunned earlier standing about five feet away watching us.

They were just standing there, laughing a bit, looking like they had no plans to intervene. Bridget or I (or both of us?) said loudly, “Can you please help us?” They looked at each other and smirked. One of them said, “Now you would like to go with us?” We said “yes!” Finally, they grabbed our arms, pulled us toward them, and scolded the eight or so people that had encircled us. We sheepishly walked up the hill with them, hearing the taunts again the entire way back up the path. I remember sending the most evil glare I could muster at a man hanging off a porch to my left pointing an iPhone at us on our way back up. I also remember that, amid the chaos, I was imagining what the news stories would be like. I had clear visions of how our story, supported by the onlooker videos, would become a textbook example of mob behavior and groupthink. I imagined my husband and my mother seeing me attacked. 

When we made it to the top of the path, one of the men told us, “We told you not to go that way, down Devil’s Alley.” Bridget and I just looked at each other. We were tired and had no energy left for strategizing pretenses. But we still didn’t know how to get to the periphery of the market and find a taxi stand. We were lost inside these five football fields and no longer confident we could find our way. The men wanted to get a drink, and we again said no. I acted as warm and friendly as I could muster though, knowing we needed them on our side to find our way out. They agreed to show us, but the entire walk (3 minutes? 15 minutes? No idea.) I was worried we were headed the wrong way, into some kind of trap. I still thought we could make the news. 

We finally made it to a dusty area with a few beat-up old Corollas, and the two men told us to go in a tan one parked with the driver standing outside it. I was so shaken and untrusting that I considered all the convoluted ways this could be part of some plan to take advantage of us. Was this actually a taxi stop? Was this their friend’s car? Do they do this daily, are we part of some recurring scheme? I had lost my mind. Luckily Bridget was in a better mental place than I was and got in the car. She knew that waffling about getting in a taxi can incite some pretty nasty fights between drivers vying for your business. I followed her into the backseat. 

It took ages to actually get out of that market scene – the low Corolla slowly made its way down the crowded, dusty paths between stalls. Not until a full ten minutes had passed did I feel confident we were with an actual taxi driver and safely on the road back toward our too-fancy hotel to prepare for our flight that was now, actually, the next morning.