The last bus to Kabwata was still waiting.
It was well past the hour when the rank usually emptied, when conductors stopped shouting destinations and the city began turning down its volume. Chanda stood at the edge of the dust, looking at her dead phone and wondering how far she could walk before her sandals gave up completely.
Then she saw the headlights.
Two tired beams cut through the darkness.
“You catching this one or not?” the driver called.
She hesitated, then climbed aboard.
There was no conductor. No passengers. Just an old bus, the driver's cloth cap, and the faint murmur of a radio discussing tomorrow's weather.
“Everyone else gave up on Kabwata tonight,” the driver said as he pulled away.
Chanda smiled. “So why are you still going?”
He shrugged.
“This bus goes until somebody needs it to.”
The city slipped past the windows.
They talked.
She told him about her exams and the pressure of trying to finish university without disappointing everyone who believed she would become something important.
He told her he had been driving Lusaka's streets for nearly thirty years. He had watched neighbourhoods change, roads widen, minibuses multiply and disappear, and people move from one part of the city to another in search of work, school, money and sometimes simply a quieter life.
“Lusaka changes every year,” he said.
“Do you still know it?”
The driver laughed.
“Not the way I used to.”
Outside, the city looked different from the back of an almost empty bus. Streetlights stood over quiet roads. Shops were shuttered. A few people hurried home beneath the glow of roadside lights.
Eventually, they reached Kabwata.
The driver stopped near the corner close to her gate.
Chanda reached for her bag.
“How much?”
The driver waved her away.
“Consider it the last ride of the day.”
She looked at him.
“Those are always free.”
She laughed, thanked him and stepped down.
By the time she turned around, the bus was already moving.
She watched its red tail lights disappear into the darkness.
Years later, Chanda still tells the story.
Usually when someone complains about missing the last bus home.
They never believe her.
Sometimes she doesn't completely believe it herself.
But whenever she remembers that night, she remembers the old bus, the tired headlights and one sentence that stayed with her long after the engine disappeared:
This bus goes until somebody needs it to.
