…There was only that one bloke whose trust I managed to win. Akasinga was a toothless, fifty-year-old man who used to patronize the inn in the evenings. You would never see him mingle with the rest of the throng that frequented the place. He always sat alone in a dark corner of the yard, near the wall. His lit cigarette glowing through the darkness made me aware of his presence when he was there. A few meters in front of him, he always had a stall placed in the light, where he exhibited his artifacts to prospective buyers.
He created some pretty peculiar gimmicks. He used cardboard, fabrics, tin cans, and various other materials he found in the trash, which he transformed into something like an automated puppet theatre. With a complex system of made-entirely-of-wire shafts and cranks hidden in the base of the maquette, he gave life to his figurines. They worked, danced, and did various crazy things, like that one who made love doggy-style to another. “The one standing is Mugabe. The one stooping is the people of Zimbabwe,” Akasinga explained.
I visited him in his corner nearly every evening, and while we smoked weed, we engaged in various intriguing conversations. He fearlessly recounted several unbelievable incidents of brutality carried out by the country’s terroristic regime, in some of which he personally was the victim. Although I already knew that man is in general capable of the most abhorrent of acts, I have to admit that I freaked out listening to his stories.
But we did not only talk about macabre topics – life generally does never have a single side. He told me, for example, the story of how an American tourist, a few years ago, had bought one of his contrivances for an amount of money that sufficed for the purchase of a brand-new Hyundai i10 car which was now his wheeled house.
One night, he invited me to his home to go out on a brief excursion he called city safari. It was not considered a particularly safe practice to walk around this town at night, not because of crime, but because of the wild animals that take control of the streets when people and baboons – who are the town’s diurnal inhabitants – are sleeping.
We saw an elephant hanging around in a supermarket’s parking lot. We chanced upon a large buffalo herd running down the main street. This town was built amidst an area where non-intelligent life still has the upper hand.
The story you've just read is a part of my "Real Stories of Real People" collection, wherein I narrate my encounters with various remarkable characters I've run into while traveling around the world. The entire collection is published on my blog and may be read here. But if you'd like to get them with you to the beach in your ebook reader or as a physical book, and very appreciatedly support my creative activity, go ahead and grab your copy from Amazon for the cost of a cup of coffee.
