06/05/2026
WILL YOU GO?
(Opening Scene)
Monday
The bus from Chipata groaned to a stop at Lusaka Intercity Bus Station just as the sun climbed over the buildings.
I stepped down onto the cracked concrete, my army bag and small backpack dragging at my shoulders—heavy, like stones tied to a drowning man.
The city hit me instantly.
Diesel smoke stung my eyes. Vendors fried fritters over blackened drums. Rain from the night before left a sour smell clinging to garbage piles. Matatu horns cut through the air. Voices clashed—Nyanja, Bemba, English—loud, impatient, alive.
My heart pounded.
The noise felt like it should drown everything else.
But it didn’t.
Even in the chaos, something inside me slipped.
The edges of the station blurred.
For a moment, I wasn’t there.
I stood on a wide golden plain beneath an endless blue sky—the same place I had visited a thousand times in my mind. Out there, I wasn’t Dingiswayo Jere, seventeen and lost in a city that smelled like burning rubber.
I was a traveller.
Free. Certain. Carrying nothing but a leather satchel filled with poems.
A girl walked ahead of me. Not the fierce one I would soon meet—but someone softer. Her chitenge fluttered in the wind like a quiet promise. We were going somewhere that mattered. Somewhere untouched by loss.
No horns. No hunger. No death waiting on rain-slick roads.
Just peace.
The vision held me gently.
Until a horn blasted.
Sharp. Close.
The world snapped back.
Diesel rushed into my lungs. Noise crashed over me. My heart lurched, faster now.
I blinked—and realised I had been standing still in the middle of the bus bay.
People pushed past me.
“Move, mwane!” a woman snapped, balancing a basin of tomatoes on her head.
Heat rushed to my face. The daydream had taken time again. Seconds—maybe more.
It always did.
Back on the farm, Grandma would snap her fingers near my ear.
“Dingi, you’re wandering again.”
Here, there was no one to pull me back.
Only the city.
And Lusaka did not wait for anyone.
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🔥
