A night at the police station in Zambia

Above: a truck like the one I rode in.  

Weird things happen constantly on the planet earth. This makes sense in that there is after all 7 billion of us humans, and every human I know is weird in their own unique way. This is a short story of a weird event that happened while I was in Zambia. 

  The night was cool and perfect, as were all the other nights spent here at the mission compound in Zambia. It was Friday night and we just finished work for the day. We were installing new GPS units, new autopilots, and gauges into two of the mission’s three aircraft. The week was going well, and we were making great headway. The mission fed us so well, and my lack of control was starting to test the tensile strength of the elastic in my waistband. There we sat in the hangar, this night was shaping up to be just another evening of relaxing after a long day of work. 

  Then things changed a bit. A man from the local village hopped the fence and entered the compound. This was no big deal, the villagers living beside the compound could access the compound reality freely, in fact there was a football (soccer for you unsophisticated Americans) field located on the compound’s grounds just for the village. 

  What made this weird was how he barged right into the mission’s hangar, and when asked what he needed became unresponsive and stared a million mile stare. He appeared to be high and/or mentally ill, but he wasn’t expressly violent, so we acted slowly. The night guards tried communicating with him, but even in his mother tongue he was incredibly slow to respond. It was then that the night guards escorted him back to his family, and the night activities resumed. 

  Then 10 mins later he was back! He entered the hangar quietly and found his way into the office of the administrator. This was not great, and after removing him from there, we kept him outside until we could think of what to do. It was decided that we take him to his family once more. Then in less than five mins later he was back, but this time he started throwing stones at people. Getting a stone to the face makes even the happiest person cranky, and when he reached for bricks, action was needed. So we loaded him into the back of the truck, and headed for the police station. 

  I rode in the back of the truck with the other two night guards and this man to the police station. Our job was to make sure he doesn’t jump, stand up, or fall off. Sitting down on a truck bed as it traversed the “roads” was not the most comfortable thing that I ever experienced. The experience was less like driving a Cadillac on new roads, and more like getting a nasul Covid test while sitting on a jackhammer. The man stared at me the entire time, which definitely did not add to my comfort. He reached for my hand and we held hands for a while. Then about halfway to the police station, he started proclaiming loudly into the night, “I don’t like you, I don’t like you, I DON’T LIKE YOU”. I am not always the most likeable guy, and people do find me annoying from time to time, so this was not entirely a new thing for someone to say to me. The difference this time was he ended this declaration by spitting at me. To my great relief none of the projectiles landed in any open orifice, nor did they end up in my eyes. 

  The rest of the drive went well: him staring intensely into my skin, me admiring the stars and praying. When we arrived at the police station, he again was unresponsive and instead of even acknowledging the cop continued to stare a million miles away. The police decided to keep him for the night, and the following day they would take him to a mental hospital. This seemed like a good course of action so we left.

  The drive home was great! Standing on the bed of the truck was way more comfortable and getting to know the night guards while under the starry sky is a memory that will not be forgotten too quickly. 

  Unfortunately this story ends sadly. The man that we took to the police station died two days afterwards. We don’t know what caused his death, only that it was said that we became very ill at the mental hospital. My heart bleeds for his family. Sometimes we get cold when we hear of someone dying. Sometimes a death is just a statistic, just another human that we don’t know has passed. But after meeting this man, even just for the short time that I did, hearing of this death rocked me.