GRIOTS REPUBLIC - An Urban Black Travel Mag - Jan 2016

The morning
after my marriage
was consummated
I didn't feel like it
was something
to celebrate.
A shy smile sneaked from the side
of the clay brick structure. A round
and flawless deep brown face with
mischievous eyes that squinted
whenever she laughed at my
broken attempts at Nyanja. She
held hands with a little boy,
barefoot and eager to run with the
other little children in the distance.
He tugged on her arm and she
finally let him go. She told me his
name was Jacob.
“Is that your brother?” I asked.
Her eyes squinted and she laughed
again. “No, he is mine.”
And then it was over. When she
turned, I saw the baby- a lump
beneath red, orange and yellow
printed chitenge material. It was
asleep and all that peeked from the
cloth was a tuft of kinky hair. The
girl I took for an older sister,
somebody’s daughter, dutifully
caring for her siblings was in fact a
wife and second time mother, at 16.
This was my introduction to child
marriage, 568 kilometers from
Zambia’s capital city of Lusaka. I
was at the end of a seemingly
endless stretch of dry, brown road
that took me to Luangeni village in
Eastern Province’s Chipata District.
It is rural, with clusters of mud
brick, thatch-roof homes spread
out between kilometers of miombo
and acacia trees..