By Cletus Mwiinga
I had stepped out of my UNZA lectures to hussle my for weekend entertainment money, like I always did every weekend. My Dad was in Charge of the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA – Customs and Excise) Port Office on Dedani Kimathi Road.
And on the ground floor was a long queue of clients at the ZRA office who had come to clear their motor vehicles, and in that queue was Grey Zulu, and this was about 1992-4.
My Dad was pleading with Grey Zulu to leave the queue and go upstairs into my Dad’s office for special customer attention.
Grey Zulu was not taking any of the preferred customer service from my Dad, instead he engaged my Dad in talking about a close friend of his, Mainza Chona (another story for another day) and the lesson that Grey Zulu learnt from Mainza Chona, that despite being highly educated, Mainza Chona never looked down on opinion from the less educated; in fact, Mainza Chona was eager to learn from the wise but uneducated people.
And so Grey Zulu, with his quiet tone of speaking, told my Dad, “I’m learning quite a lot from this queue, these are the same Zambians we served as Government and today I’m getting feedback both good and bad. Mr Mwiinga, if I go upstairs into your air-conditioned office, all I will hear is praise, deceitful praise”.
My Dad stepped into the ZRA Cash Office and he created another queue and called Grey Zulu, as his first customer.
Grey Zulu collected all the papers from the people in the queue in front and handed them over to my Dad as he took front position in the new queue.
I sat watching my Dad sweat and panic and after Grey Zulu had been attended to, of course after the whole queue had been cleared, my Dad explained to me, “Grey Zulu was clearing a car he recently bought from South Africa, and he bought the car from his taxi business where he was a Taxi driver of the other car that made money to buy this new car”.
Years after UNZA, I had fallen into circumstances that made me realise that I could convert my Toyota Mark II into a Taxi.
And I realised that Taxi business was very lucrative especially in Eastern Province.
I proudly drove my Taxi and by mid day would make K250.
I learnt that from Grey Zulu.
And a few years ago, I met Grey Zulu at the Government Dental School in Thornpark, in quite some pain. I offered my seat to Grey Zulu, he declined and took up his position and patiently waited in the queue for his turn to be attended to, yet I could see that Grey Zulu was in more pain than anyone else in the queue.
I could not remind Grey Zulu the ZRA story nor could I relate my Taxi experiences to Grey Zulu, because of Grey Zulu, I share the story on facebook.
For Public Interest.