So Chileshe and Alan took me out yesterday to cheer me up after they heard that

Walter has seriously taken up with Cleantha. It’s not like I’m jealous or am still in
love with Walter Dear diary, it’s just that…Cleantha! I mean, him moving from me
to a muzungu wanna-be with an extremely questionable British accent... It just
looks bad on me. It shows what questionable tastes I had to have linked up with
Walter in the first place!

So my good friends took me for a drink. We went to Chasers right after work, then
after the place got rowdy, moved to Aunty Lorraine’s’ , some shabin Chileshe
knows in Rhodespark where he gets drinks on credit.
It was a good session, and because it was a week day after all, we retired just after
midnight, totally sloshed, but ridiculously happy and seeing the world in a whole
new light.

And today? Today I have the worst hang over since Adam and Eve’s rude
awakening when they were kicked out of Eden. My head is throbbing in 10
different directions at a thousand beats a minute. My eyes have gone light sensitive
and my entire body is protesting against the upright position I have to maintain.
And to make matters worse, this is the day Meriel wakes up with PMS and decides
to take it all out on me. Suddenly, every single report on every single thing is due:
today!

I don’t need this. Not today, dear diary. If Meriel comes into my office once more
with her clicking heels, her clanging tin bangles (that she’s hoping are passing for
silver) and her grating tone, I will not be held accountable for my actions.

Entry #88

This is the third morning in the past week that I am nursing a serious HO (though
Meriel is on the way to making this particular one eligible for the Guinness book of
Records). On Sunday, Moses’ girl friend went into labor. We were all at Mutinta’s
when it happened, we as in Moses, Mutinta, Chileshe, Alan and me. When Connie
first went into labor, it was funny. We were all excited and laughing while Moses
was breaking out into a cold sweat. By the time we left for the hospital, like two
hours later, Connie had stopped laughing. Some four hours later, we had all
stopped laughing and the guys had taken Moses somewhere to calm him down. I
watched them leave enviously while Mutinta and I stayed with a screaming,
sweating Connie. She gave birth like an hour later to a red-faced screaming full
headed boy before collapsing into fitful slumber.
Mutinta was ready to go home and pass out too, but I needed something strong and
scorching down my throat while I considered the stupidity of women letting
themselves get talked into repopulating the human race time and time again. The
entire ordeal has left me in shock and with the firm resolution never to have
children. Connie was screaming and screaming for hours. She was done with it all
in about 8 hours and people said it was like record time! I can not believe that
women actually have second children after surviving the ordeal of the first one. I
can’t believe that the idea of having another child even enters their minds after the
agony of the first. I swear!

It’s totally unbelievable that the human race has multiplied at all considering the
pain it takes to bring just one into the world!

This has given me new reasons why I don’t have kids and why I may go through
life without attaining motherhood. I think I’ll stick to things that generally won’t
hurt like hell and try and kill me in the process. I mean, I totally missed the miracle
bit of the event. I feel totally traumatized by the entire event.
So I joined the guys for a drink – them to the toast of Moses’ bouncy son, and me
to the woe of female lot.

I am beginning to remember now why I stopped hanging around Chileshe and the
gang. They have a completely unhealthy love for the bottle. That is not saying they
don’t know how to have fun. They have a damn good time. But then again, maybe
not. I mean, it must be unhealthy, and you must have serious problems to have this
urge to constantly see the bottom on the beer bottle. Either that, or I’m growing up
and growing old.

Meriel’s back from her lunch, with a piece of spinach in her teeth and the rest of
what she had with it showing on her blouse. I think this might be a good time for
me to pull out that long memo she wrote to us on tidiness and the importance of
power dressing.