The room was cream and exactly like this; A calendar from the Zambian Police, a copper picture of rhinos in relief, a plaque that wasn't a plaque but was used as such all three high up along the same wall. The plaque said that Jesus looked over the house, was a silent listener and an unseen guest. There was a large patch of peeled back paint that had been painted over and looked like a badly healed scar. An armchair in dusky pink velour and then the floor was covered with reed mats and two thin mattresses. That was it. The calendar was hung level but the rhinos were a little askew.
Inside the fuse box outside the front door, sparrows were nesting, they dropped down on occasion and picked dry grass and fibres from the porch in their staccato little way. I saw a flat-bed truck in the yard and felt impressed that they had such a thing in their possession until my eyes went to the flat tire sunk firm into the dirt and the grass growing through the fuel tank.
5 women lined up on the mattresses, sitting modestly with their legs stretched in front of them and crossed, wrapped in chitenges. Mary's was especially faded. Most of their feet were clean and pink and from the soles they looked so young and tender. We sat very quietly while Mary's aunt sorted through a small stack of papers – medical cards, school exercise books covered in cheap wrapping paper and a small photo album. Mary's grandmother sat next to Mary and had a toothpick, she used it to idly pick out the small circles on her chitenge, she then traced them with the tip or picked at some imaginary stain or other, eventually bored of this, she used it clean her toe nails. Mary's mother died of low blood pressure. We asked the aunt what happened, she told us her blood pressure dropped and she went to hospital. In the hospital she didn't get any medicine and died after five days. There was going to be an investigation. 'And what was the result?' we asked, 'We buried her so...' she shrugged. No investigation.
We left wanting to know how it was possible that the aunt seemed better educated than the niece, she spoke better English and was large, while Mary spoke so little English and was so thin. In the end we were not really sure whether the grandmother was the grandmother, or the aunt the aunt and my husband said that he didn't think it was her mother that died. We had no idea who the other women were, cousins? Sisters? Families are so less clearly divided here.
And I wondered whether there is such a concept as a needless death in Zambia.
