The Open Air Mall in Zambia

 

It is the beginning of summer and I am at the mall buying shorts. I’ve been here for all of five minutes, and already I can feel a headache starting between my temples. The sales rep comes over.
“Are you finding everything alright today?”
I look at him and then at the selection before me and then back at him. I need a pair of shorts and I don’t really care which ones I end up with, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to make a decision. Every time I land on a pair, I think of all of the other things that I could do with that money.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
I don’t know why, but at that moment I am reminded of a trip I took to Zambia years ago. I was eleven and it was my first big trip out of the country without my parents. We spent two weeks in the bush working with local students and helping to paint a school. The last day we went to an open-air market in Livingston.
The market was set up in a field in the middle of the city. Thatch huts and colorful streamers. Local craftsmen had come from all over the country to sell their wares. An old man with white hair was playing the drums near the entrance and women walked by in the colors and patterns of Africa.
“Aha, my friend. Come in to my shop.”
“You are my good friend, I will make you special deal.”
“Please, please, come into my shop.”
It would be tempting to say that if I were older and wiser I would not have fallen for the shopkeepers’ raps. Certainly if I’d been as I am now in the mall in summer with the various demands of money pressing against my temples, I would have resisted. But in that moment in Zambia I was butter in the hawkers’ hands.
In the first shop I went into, I bought a little stone carving of a leopard standing on its forelimbs. I also bought a stone hippo and a pair of wooden salad tongs. The white teeth of the salesman grinned and flashed in his black face as I pressed dollar after dollar into his palms.
In the next shop I bought a pair of stone zebras lying on their sides. More money. I unfolded the bills without thinking and handed them over. They were the greenest things in that dry, dusty marketplace.
So it went in shop after shop. Lions, giraffes, wildebeests, I added them to my collection until all of the money I had brought with me was gone. I thought I was finished after that, but the savvy merchants weren’t done with me.
“My friend, my good friend. I want you to have this bowl so you can be happy. What have you got in your backpack?”
And so it began again. My shorts, my shirts, my socks, my pants. One by one they came out, traded for pieces of Africa in stone and wood. I didn’t think about it. There was no voice in the back of my head saying, ‘You’ll need these clothes later. Think about the future. Another stone giraffe? Be reasonable.’ I was acting on impulse and it felt great.
Back in the mall in America with a selection of shorts before me, I find myself wishing I could channel some of that careless younger self. My headache is growing louder and I can see the sales rep watching me. I pick a pair at random. Sixty dollars. That’s a weeks worth of food or my phone bill or a couple oil changes.
“Are you sure I can’t help you, sir?”
“What? No, I’m fine.”
“I’ll be right over there if you need me.”
Eventually I select a pair of shorts. I bring them up to the counter and pay for them, but there is no pleasure in the act. As I am walking out of the store, my shopping bag feels heavy with the opportunity cost of the clothes that I have purchased. I think back to that day in Africa.
I walked out of the market tired and sweaty. My bag was heavy with rocks that crunched and knocked against each other. I had traded away all but the shirt on my back and had no clothes to swaddle them in. Despite my burden, I felt light and free. I watched the sun disappear over an orange horizon. Baobab trees were silhouettes in the distance and I could still faintly hear the sound of drums.
I was young then, young and stupid. But I was also free, and happy, and living in the moment. I think there are a lot of things my older, wiser self could learn from that.

About the Author: SC Slater never forgave his parents for naming him SC. After a brief and unsuccessful career as a roofer in Charleston, Slater turned to writing as the only other occupation in which his given name would not appear entirely ridiculous.

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