The Wrong Bus

A crisp evening air has crept in to the camp, swallowing the warmth of the sun-drenched day; everyone is milling around asking questions of the bedraggled stranger, a foreigner amongst their comfortable, habitual life. The stranger, who hitchhiked from Harare to Lusaka, and later got on the wrong bus, tells a tale of how he got lost in the jungle for two hours and now finds himself here. He asks them where he is they look at each other on how to explain that the stranger has found himself at a refugee settlement in the middle of Zambia.
The Congolese women who have been at Mayukwayukwa Camp for a mere year and used to the getting their way, are the first to ask questions. They ask whether the situation is improving in their country while sharing their own stories of their villages burning, encounters with rebel groups and walking through jungles for months. They say this with a smile etched on their face.
Angolan men who have been here for forty-three years lean out the window of their stalls asking questions of Canada, of India, of a world outside of their own. They share stories of war and rape, reminiscing on horrific crimes that they've witnessed happen to their siblings, parents and children; their eyes well up but their wizened old faces never lose the sparkle in them, their toothy smile never disappearing.
The sun casts a golden hue. The first of the stalls start to pack up, the day's business is near finished. Everyone is hungry and dinner awaits them at home.
Young men and women, no older than the stranger describe how the refugee camp is the only life they know, having been born and raised here. They ask the foreigner to describe Zimbabwe and Botswana, they ask him to take them away from the camp through imagination and words, but they will never physically leave, scared of the outside world through stories their parents and grandparents tell them of wars long gone. Excited to spill their soul to the stranger, an anomaly in the sea of regular faces, they feel ignored by the world, they want their stories to be shared yet the strangers' story will be the only one told countless times.
The sky has turned an inky black, the moons ethereal glow the only light afforded to the residents of the camp to make their way home. Everyone has packed up their belongings, the old men are the last to leave. No trace of garbage marks the ground. Everyone bids the tired stranger farewell, slinking back into the darkness, leaving him alone with his thoughts.