I have always found that the most appropriate measure of the level of function in a household to be the degree to which the dog is cooked.
A 'Stepford wife smile' could be permanently plastered on the face of the mother, and the household could appear so financially blessed as to have allegations of money rituals thrown at it by distant relatives. Teachers may commend the children's work ethic and send them home with gold stars and half-eaten sandwiches, but the most accurate display of the function of a household lies in the mental stability of the family dog.
Let's take our land of work and sorrows to be one big happy family with just a few more alcoholic relatives than the global average. There has been no greater indication of our decline than the rampant campaigns of street harassment by the neighbourhood associations of petite dogs that I and fellow citizens have been subjected to in the past year. These creatures, their natural proclivities to madness now steeped in darkness by the incompetence of ZESCO and their round stomachs hollowed by mealiemeal shortages due to [line redacted for fear of arrest], now hunt for both refuge and release in the collective flesh of our community.
My achievements over the past year － the publications, the new connections I have made as well as the old ones I have strengthened; the day-to-day small joys that I have found in life, of which I could not imagine a year ago, all fall short of the worthiness of being reported when one is in the midst of a personal war. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against a federation of fluff and ill-breeding.
It began in January, as most stories do. It began with a chihuahua, as most happy stories do not. To add a leaner, more toned body to the New Me of 2024, I began my mornings strutting around my neighbourhood in gym wear. A cap shielding my braids from the relentless Zambian sun and headphones drowning out the persistent mating calls of the Zambian husband.
There was one factor that I had not accounted for in any of my preparations, though, and I heard her before I saw her. She spoke in shrill tones with the desperation of a breed at the bottom of the pecking order of its species and the frustration of a dog at the bottom of the favour of the human species. She snarled without provocation, tornadoed around the legs of my sweatpants and found her first victim of the day in the shoelace of my sneakers. I looked down and saw, growling beneath me for the first time, Fefe the Chihuahua. 21 centimetres of white fur browned by her adventures on an unpaved road, her eyes tiny, round, and manic, and her fangs now fixed around my shoelaces.
At this moment in that optimistic January, I assumed that Fefe's teeth around my laces would be but a temporary setback to my fitness journey, easily shaken off with a friendly "shoo." But Fefe the Chihuahua, as I was soon to learn, does not speak English. She responds to neither Nyanja nor Bemba nor any of the languages born in our land. Fefe treats voetsek with the disdain with which ZESCO treats a load-shedding schedule. Fefe only knows and responds to the language of fury and aggression.
I do not condone animal abuse, emotional or otherwise. Our furry planet co-inhabitants should be protected just as much as they protect us. But at the same time, I do not condone allowing yourself to be abused by animals. I do not appreciate the energy Fefe brought to my morning and the way she altered my image in the neighbourhood. My neighbours' first impressions of me, a woman nearing six feet tall, were of me in the grips of a shouting match which I was losing to roughly 6 kilogrammes of fluff.
I thought my voice was shrill, her voice was shriller. I thought my anger at being inconvenienced was unmatched, hers at having the roads she had marked as her property was higher and with a degree of ferocity best seen in a WWE ring. My precious baby boy and furry German Shepherd Lord Montague could only look on in horror from the sanctum of our yard as his mother was assaulted, too far away from him to protect. My life was only saved that morning by Fefe finding a bigger enemy in the slow-rolling wheels of the Monday Garbage truck. By then, I was too shaken by the aftermath of such an aggressive trauma to power walk my way up a hill or even reverse lunge my way back home. The only thing for me to do was to make my way to the neighbourhood corner store to find a sweet treat to calm my nerves and a bland one to calm my precious baby Lord Montague.
The emotional effect of this incident shook me for months on end. I became a shell of my once vibrant self, walking around my house covered in a blanket, binging women's lives being ruined with the threat of marriage on Zambezi Magic (when ZESCO allowed me to) and when I wasn't, churning out depressing poetry and essays to whet a Western publisher's appetite of African stereotypes.
From the comfort of the house, I watched Zambia grow darker as the sun grew hotter. I watched our plants become drier and our journalists and activists get arrested. And in the background of it all, were the men in charge arguing so passionately about the inconsequential, that I felt I had unknowingly tuned in to a reboot of Gossip Girl exclusively starring middle-aged African men; enter obligatory disclaimer that is not an expression of my political beliefs, I have no inclination to any belief systems unless they sound poetic. However, I am willing to write propaganda if paid in dollars to do so.
But there is a season for everything. To paraphrase Haruki Murakami, "We cannot simply sit and stare as our chihuahua bites forever", so before the rain began, its water simultaneously flooded and renewed Lusaka, I set out of my house again. My workout uniform was the same, my hairstyle was different, and my brain reassured itself with the phrase "lightning hardly ever strikes twice." And I was right. It did not strike twice. It struck fifteen times. Throughout my childhood, my parents often warned me of the pitfalls of bad company and how one's life path and reputation can be ruined just by those we choose to associate with. When I was sequestered in my trauma, the other neighbourhood dogs (except for my precious baby boy Lord Montague) had allowed themselves to become acquainted with and influenced by Fefe the Chihuahua. Once exposed to the strain of wickedness that is only present in such a godless breed, their characters were changed forever. My neighbourhood was now run by a gang of furry creatures as opposed to just one. Fluffy Malteses, strong-faced mastiffs and canines of mixed heritage now held the keys to the neighbourhood in their mouths with their tongues flapping in the wind. The place I had called home for less than a year was now under the grip of a brutal and merciless gang. You did not cross the road unless the dogs allowed it, you did not leave your house unless the dogs allowed it, and you did not start your vacuum cleaner unless the dogs allowed it. And none of the dogs allowed it unless Fefe allowed it.
Fefe had gained an even bigger sense of self-assurance since the last time I had seen her. Her tail wag had a swag to it I had not seen before, and all the other canines listened for the soft padding of her footsteps and the harsh growl in her voice before taking any action. Some fights are not worth fighting, and some diseases are not curable － rabies being one of them. I began to back away with the stealth of someone caught in a sniper's range. Of course, they had seen me, but there are times that even hell has frozen over (I think), and as I was responsible for doling out the occasional tummy rub to some of the neighbourhood dogs before they had gone astray, I was allowed to back the short distance to my gate. But what I had not anticipated were the bottomless pits of my brother's stomach and his love for KFC. At that precise moment, I saw the speeding wheels of a red Yango bike head towards my gate with my brother standing inside it. Maybe it was the change in the wind that the scooter wheels caused, maybe the red of the Yango branding reminded them of blood or maybe the scent of overpriced chicken rubbed them the wrong way. All that is certain is that with its approach, war was declared. In an explosion of fluff, the smaller dogs came racing forward with Fefe at the fore while the larger ones took the rearguard, barking war cries. Fefe came for the tyres, the way aunties come for crop tops and child-free women. With a passion I had not witnessed before and have yet to encounter since, her teeth lunged for the tyres.
The driver of the motorbike, a man just trying to deal with both the rising electricity tariffs and costs of mealiemeal, disembarked and, in a feat of innovation, unplugged his USB charging cable and swung it around like a weapon, just above where the fluffy heads could reach. I tried to provide moral support from a distance, yelling instructions like a TV sports fanatic does to players who were too far away and too deep in the heat of battle to hear. They had him surrounded, and one can only try to keep afloat before drowning in a pool of fleas and bite marks.
But in true Lusaka fashion, salvation arrived in the form of rain. Purifying, cleansing, reminiscent of something holy － a cascade of water hit the trees and the ground and the fur of Fefe's gang. I believe I witnessed a genuine exorcism that day, as the streak of demonic possession afflicting these creatures dissolved under the threat of involuntary hygiene. The scene fractured into chaos—a frenetic rush of movement, with paws and tails scrambling toward their respective sanctuaries. All that was left standing － like the end of a night out － was the Yango driver, the overpriced chicken and me.
