The thrill is gone: No more surprises

David Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts

These days chicken and rice, fizzy drinks and ice cream are everyday fare. There are take-away outlets everywhere and so many fowls in people’s fowl runs. The thrill is gone. What can you do to surprise anyone these days?

Every new venture tends to make the heart tremble and quiver more than is typical of it. So it was with me when I suddenly had to do this column. Of course the reasons for this phenomenon are varied and many. Willy-nilly we anticipate some kind of tribulation, and even just a little fear perhaps. We inevitably begin to question our ability to take the baton and sprint to the finishing line in order to do the whole thing again and again in the days ahead. But there’s also the excitement that goes with adventure! And when you are in that devil-may-care mode you rush into it feet first.

My initial response was to speculate about what ‘shelling the nuts’ entails and what kind of expectations go with the exercise. I tried to, but failed to avoid thinking about what kind of nuts I would be shelling. Would it be roundnuts (indlubu/nyimo)? Would it be groundnuts? Or perhaps pecan nuts for those higher up the social ladder? Lol! There is a reason why I settled for groundnuts: the ‘lucky packet’ syndrome!

When you scoop up boiled or roasted, but unshelled groundnuts there is always that inexplicable joy that comes out of the act of shelling the nut. You know what should be inside because a groundnut is a groundnut! But you really don’t know what’s inside until you see either a shrivelled little fellow quite undeserving of the majestic casing or you see a princess reclining in her natural fantasy bed.

In the olden days, a few pennies could buy you what was called a lucky packet. You never knew what was inside the tantalising packet, other than the pretence of candy. If you were lucky you got a ring, plastic of course, or some other novel trinket. Absolutely useless of course! No utility value whatsoever, just something cloyingly sentimental. Who knows, perhaps that was how we first got a dose of aesthetics, the appreciation of beauty for its own sake. But the gasps and cries of joy, excitement and surprise were unique for each person ‘striking gold’ as it were.

Something akin to what modern soccer players do when they place the ball into the roof of the net. Celebration time demands some daring and some creativity. Do you remember Julius Aghahowa and his somersaults after a goal? Today of course many adore the CR7 celebration. But I stray a little. Back to my topic: The Thrill is Gone: No More Surprises. In this global world with its high saturation levels of almost everything the cost to our ability to experience sheer surprise is often quite devastating. The pain that goes with such a loss is often quite numbing as well. What we are saying here is that surprise is not always of the pleasant type as Constance van Niekerk shows in her poem ‘The things we lost in the fire’:

The dark envelopes the habitation

Then blind passion ignites

A blazing fire

And love is scorched in the raging inferno

The charred remains of trust

Are scattered around the house

That once was home to our love

The thin line between love and hate

Now an ethereal blur in the heat

As slowly but surely our glorious past

burns into oblivion

Promises made with love’s sweet tongue

Now just charcoal and ashes

Among the things we lost in the fire

There is always another side of things as van Niekerk’s poem shows. However, growing up that side of things would not have been that important for us. We wanted to be surprised often and pleasantly too. Imagine walking around a football pitch picking up empty fizzy drink bottles, rinsing them under a running tap and then filling the same bottles with water. You then took another walk around the stands and before very long men thirsty from cheering their team would ask for the water and give you something in return. Jingling silver coins! After the match you counted your money and behold, it was enough to buy you a delicacy in the shops. Smiling from ear to ear you put your money on the counter and filled your heart’s desire. The first time you did that it was a huge surprise to discover how a bit of enterprise from you could be both fulfilling and rewarding. I am hoping that by now dear reader we are on familiar territory together.

Engulfed so much in the business of living as we are, and obsessed so much with progress and upward mobility as we have become, we have somehow metamorphosed into great believers in formulaic behaviour and in keeping up appearances and doing what everyone does.

There were times when a man would throw a party to celebrate how he had come up in the world by buying his first ever set of sofas. Friends and relatives would gather round, drink and be merry as they marvelled at his newly-acquired elegance.

Giving the missus this kind of joy was always the best surprise for her. She danced and ululated when the van with the precious articles stopped outside and the men brought in the treasure. The lady of the house made much ado about directing exactly where each piece would go and her little angels wore beatific smiles.

It would not matter so much that there might not be too much food around the house for a while until the hire purchase account was cleared. And in some nearby house the radio would be booming ‘Kweminy’imizi kugcwel’ifenisha/kodwa abantwana bayalamba (Some homes are choking full with furniture, but the children are hungry) a popular song by the iconic Manhattan Brothers from Egoli across Rudyard Kipling’s ‘great, gray, greasy, green Limpopo River.’ But on this auspicious day, the little angels would enjoy their own tasty surprises: vanilla ice cream between wafers. Hmmmmmm . . . yummy! And all for the princely sum of four pence.

For some, the radio was a mark of distinction. I was silently yearning for one although it would never have been proper to breathe a word.

Then my father brought a ‘classy’ radiogram one day. It was both a radiogram and a display cabinet and we had saucers and cups on shelves on either side of our status symbol. Now I could do what I had seen an aunt of mine do (I’m about ten years old at this point) with her radio one day. Unknown to me my aunt, though young, was an old hand at radios and she knew all the programmes and when news bulletins were broadcast. One day at lunch she said to the radio, “What time is it now, please?” and an exotic voice said, “This is the Federal Broadcasting Corporation in Lusaka. The time now is one o’clock.” Wow, you could have knocked me down with a feather. It spoke, the radio spoke! Imagine my antithetical surprise when the great new radio that my father brought home straight from the shops did not tell me the time when I asked for it. I repeated the question again and again to no avail.

The rude fellow in that box kept his distance and his silence. “Nxi!” I clicked my tongue, disgusted at this insolence. He spoilt my excitement and not even listening to Elvis Presley belting out ‘King Creole’ helped.

There were lots of other surprises like watching a man smoke a cigarette with the burning end in his mouth and releasing the smoke through his ears and nostrils. You heard me right, through his ears! That was what Kembo (Campbell I guess) the clown did effortlessly, like a walk in the park with the Young Rascals crooning on his portable transistor radio the mammoth hit song ‘Groovin’ on a Sunday afternoon.’

Travelling aboard a train was something else. How did a train go round a curve on straight rails? The world then was full of surprises. Don’t talk about television! We didn’t even know about it. When finally television made its debut in our part of the world, a young history teacher with uncombed hair was every awed boy’s hero.

He had a black and white television set and if you were lucky enough to be allowed upstairs to his lounge you could watch a bit of TV from the comfort of his flat. There were no paedophiles those days.

Come Christmas, we all got new clothes or had our turn at hand-me-down clothes from older siblings. We had chicken and rice and lots of tea with sweet white sugar and buttered bread. On Boxing Day everyone drank tea at everyone’s place. These treats were never taken for granted.

These days chicken and rice, fizzy drinks and ice cream are everyday fare. There are take-away outlets everywhere and so many fowls in people’s fowl runs. The thrill is gone. What can you do to surprise anyone these days? That is the challenge today, bringing back the thrill of surprise.

 David Mungoshi is an award-winning and renowned teacher, applied linguist, poet, novelist and editor.