A Single Swallow by Horatio Clare Page A

from Windhoek to take her home but I felt jealous rather than bad about it. Life would be lonelier without her. The way our possessions reflect our personalities and pasts back at us is an effective screen, a defence against the indifference of existence. We were a well-adjusted little unit, and I would have felt better about going into Zambia with company, albeit inanimate. I did not know anything about Zambia, except that it was one of the world’s poorer countries.
    It was a clear hot morning. Three irritated young women, and a mother and child, distressed because they were leaving Dad in Namibia, were waiting for a ride that had not shown. They allowed me to join them. When the driver turned up, the voluminous boot of his van was stuffed with ill-concealed cans of contraband petrol, which was cheaper in Namibia than Zambia. He was working as a white-water rafter at Victoria Falls, he said, and smoking a lot of dope, I judged. He got us through the border very quickly, the officers remarking that I was lucky I had got my visa in London asZambia had just slapped a stiff, hard-currency price-increase on its rate to Brits.
    Zambia did not look so different from Caprivi, except that there were more undulations in the road, and everything was broken, except the airport. We went there first, to drop off the mother and child. In Livingstone signs, buildings, roads, kerbs and pavements were all broken. There was a tatty, ragged, transitory air to the place, as if people were here despite themselves: the tourists for the Falls, and the migrants for refuge from Robert Mugabe. Half the town’s prostitutes, according to BBC news, were Zimbabwean. There were stories of trucks backed up for miles on the other side of the border, with nothing moving between them but girls.
    The pool at the Jolly Boys backpackers’ hostel was surrounded by miserable-looking girls; young Scandinavian teachers. Jollity was in short supply, thanks perhaps to an absence of boys, and also to the vast amount of kwacha required to buy a drink. There are no coins in Zambia. This means that everyone always owes someone change, and the smaller notes in unrippable and often soiled plastic are gold dust. Because computers had not yet taken over, barmen spent their shifts with furrowed brows making pencil entries in ledgers and juggling debts, loans, orders and 1,000 kwacha notes.
    The Scandinavians wafted in and out of their dormitories, clutching passports and cash like virginities. They were stalked, hopelessly, by older and drunken Brits, South Africans and one or two white Zambians, who held and held forth views on racial and gender politics and the state of Africa, particularly Zambia, which no self-respecting liberal could tolerate for a second. I nodded, smiled, said please and thank you and wondered where the swallows were.
    â€˜We’ve got fuckin’ hundreds of them. There’s been a German couple staying with my mate who are doing research on them. I’ll call him, he’s got a microlight. I’ll call him. Hey, Steve, there’s a guy here who’s into swallows. Yeah, swallows. Hey, can I give him your number . . . ?’
    â€˜Where does your friend live?’
    â€˜You can’t miss it. North of Lusaka, first left.’
    His name was Peter. We straggled out into the darkness to look for food. Pot-holes lurked like crocodiles in broad reaches of darkness. Peter soon decided that the bars were too empty, the women too proper, and he was not hungry. Like everyone else, he was counting his kwacha.
    â€˜I run a trucking firm. I’ve got one truck here, stuck in the mud, and I’ve got another the driver is saying is broken down. They’re probably trying to sell the load right now. I tell you, this place, it’s fucked.’
    I decided to leave Peter’s friends and their swallows to their own devices.
    To see the wonder of the world that is Victoria Falls you sign in, hand over dollars and pass an