Never Come Back! Never Come Back! Never Come Back!

Outside the bar was a battered old pickup truck. Its windows were wound down and gangster rap was blaring from the stereo. Claire and I could hear it from the dorm in which we were sat, and thought it was coming from the bar itself. We made our way down to grab a drink and some food and passed the truck actually feeling the bass as we walked by. We entered the bar and ordered a beer. Inside was the Zambian barman, a local couple and a white guy who must have been the owner of the truck. He looked like a mix between an Eastern European football hooligan and a white supremacist. He was wearing grey tracksuit bottoms, the ones that children wear in the UK that cling around the ankle. These ones were slightly too small clinging just above the ankle, leaving his socks exposed. He also had on a dirty t-shirt and a big gold chain hanging down over the top. He had shaven ginger hair and the beginnings of some ginger stubble and was over six foot tall and quite fat. I had last gone down to grab a drink a few hours previous, the barman was playing some of his own tunes from the stereo, however, that was now switched off so this guy could bang out his gangster rap.

As we sat and drank our beer, having just ordered our food, the barman was trying to get him to pay for his beers. “No,” yelled the owner of the pickup, his accent was familiar, I think he was Zimbabwean but he may have been from South Africa. “I will pay you half now, and owe you the rest!” The local couple at the bar laughed and the barman looked slightly awkward and rather intimidated. There was a back and forward for a few minutes, whilst the barman tried to get this guy to pay up, but he aggressively refused. The barman was taking it well, and I think that he must have known this guy as he didn’t seem too annoyed at his refusal to pay. During their exchange the big white guy leant over the bar and tried to grab the barman, in what I assume was a joke attempt at making him jump, and the poor barman jerked backwards instantly. The others laughed. As did Claire and I, nervously. The barman was also the chef at the lodge so he popped into the kitchen to fix us our dinner and when he did, the big fat white guy walked behind the bar and helped himself to another beer.

About fifteen minutes later Claire and I were sat at a table as far away from the bar as we could and were eating our dinner. The music from the truck was still booming in our ears , and we were praying that his battery would go flat. He saw to that though and turned the engine on, before turning the music up slightly. We continued to eat and chat, whilst the white guy and the local couple were shouting and laughing at the bar. It was one of those situations where you don’t know the full story. You’ve only just arrived so don’t know how well these people know each other, and you don’t know if this is the usual behaviour of this man. So you assume that everyone is friends and that he is just a bit of a character, but you are still keeping one eye on what’s going on just in case it kicks off. And it did. Big time.

Claire and I were mid sentence when someone from outside leant into the window of the pickup truck and switched the music off. The big fat white guy, in the children’s tracksuit bottoms and the swinging gold chain, jumped up off his barstool and walked outside. There was a man there, who we think was the owner of the lodge we were staying in. He was in his mid thirties, was much smaller than the ginger guy, was white and had dark brown hair. The owner of the truck started screaming at him for turning off his music and all hell let loose. The other guy yelled back and a shouting match started. The owner walked into the bar when the ginger guy, who was stood outside, said something along the lines of “I will slap you”. The owner threw his satchel on the floor and ran outside, squaring up to the big guy who was about twice his size. They were face to face and were yelling at each other, threatening each other and swearing over and over.  The local couple tried to break them up and out of nowhere a third white guy came running along wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. The fat guy started yelling at the towel guy who was trying to separate the pair: “When you come to my place I never disrespect you!”

Eventually the owner told him to get out and never come back – well, I have edited what he said to make it a bit more family friendly. We got the impression that these two had had issues before. That was when the fat guy jumped into his pick up truck and did the angriest three point turn we’d ever seen. Claire realised that you can’t really do an angry three point turn, it just makes you look silly. Then, after he had turned around he sped out of the complex, having to wait at the gate for the security man to slowly open it before he sped off into the night. I wished we could have seen his face whilst the security man opened up the gate for him. I imagine it would have been bright red. As he was driving off, the owner of the lodge we were staying at kept shouting: “Never come back, never come back, never come back, never come back,” over and over and over.

Claire and I were pretty taken aback. It was our first night in Zambia, we were in the small connecting town of Chipata, we’d only been in the country for a few hours and almost witnessed a fist fight. All of the commotion, however, was pretty exciting. There is no way I would have ever stood up to that guy. He looked like he ate humans for breakfast. And even though he nearly caused a punch up, the owner did get the gangster rap to stop.