Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (10 page)

However, he was a
resilient little fellow, and so far lost his fear of the natives that I
actually spotted him receiving the revivalist procession treatment one evening
on his way home from work, which he seemed to appreciate in his simple way more
happily than I did.

In the event he did
get home by the end of the month, and what a tale he would have to tell the
wife! Or perhaps he preferred to forget that the whole thing had ever happened,
like some dreadful dream.

When not fishing,
or at the pool or tennis, we would spend week-end afternoons taking walks in
the forest. We would select one of the footpaths referred to in the first
chapter, calculate the time to sunset by our watches (which fell regularly at 6
pm), and walk for half that time before turning back, having left the car at a
convenient spot on the road. Usually we would take Sally with us, who was the
darling of the station. The rest of us were bachelors, I being the oldest. All
the other white women on the station were married, long settled in the place
and, with their husbands, had long lost interest in such expeditions.

Sally was very
nervous of the forest, which brought out the protective male in all of us - all
except Ralph, who seemed to think it was funny. One afternoon, near the end of
our walk, we heard a loud garrumph! nearby in the bush, which was probably a
colobus monkey clearing its throat. Sally gave a scream and never stopped
running till she reached the car, a full five hundred yards away, while the
mean-spirited Ralph nearly laughed his un-gallant head off.

And when we would
reach the car, the evening chorus had begun. The whole forest came alive like a
great orchestra: a vast throbbing and whistling and screaming, like the opening
of
The Rite of Spring.
Weird hornbills flapped woodenly up to their
nests like creatures of the Lost World. Flocks of parrots flew in like
clockwork toys, shooting their long whistles.

Otherwise, in the
forest, at all times, one heard sounds, but saw little. One of the loveliest
afternoon sounds was the call of the emerald-spotted wood dove, which goes:
'Coo!
Coo! Coo! Coo-coo-coo-coo-coooooo!'
in a dying fall. The Zulus (for the
bird is heard all over Africa) say it is saying:
'My father is dead! My
mother is dead! My brothers are dead! My sisters are dead! O! O! O-oooooo!'
But
only in the West African forest have I heard two of the birds singing together
in falling harmonic thirds like a pair of flutes.

But as I say, we
saw little. Once a troop of colobus monkeys swinging through the trees in their
dinner jackets. Sometimes the green ripple of the forest mamba crossing a
laterite road. Returning from a friend's house in an outstation one night, I
saw a buck with stripes and spots pause in my headlights before passing on into
the opposite wall of the bush. An old hand at the club identified it as a bush
buck. There were stories of the bush cow, a smaller type of buffalo, but I never
saw one. There were stories of leopards but I never saw one either: they are
nocturnal creatures and rarely seen anyway.

Every night we heard the scream of the
tree bear (hyrax). It was said to scream to frighten other creatures, then drop
to the forest floor before climbing another tree. One day my neighbour, Andy
Astle, showed me a rhinoceros viper, his gardener had killed. It was the size
of a man's arm and had two tusks on its snout, but side by side, more like a
wart hog than a rhinoceros. Africans were afraid of snakes and killed them on
sight. But most of all, and all over the continent, they fear the harmless
chameleon.

One night, returning from the club, I
found the forecourt of my house looking like a sand table model of the Battle
of Waterloo. It was covered with columns of ants moving all over the place like
the armies of Wellington and Napoleon and Blücher's besides. It soon became
clear what they were after. All over the battlefield were nodes of concentrated
combat. These were fallen grasshoppers which were being devoured by the ants.
The globe lamp over my door illustrated the whole scene.

I leapt over the columns, fumbled for my
key and quickly opened the door. I switched on the hall light inside. A big
mistake, for now both grasshoppers and pursuing ants began to enter the house.
I ran for the spray gun from the kitchen - an old-fashioned thing you had to
pump - and turned it on the invading columns. It was quite futile: I might as
well have hoped to turn back the Chinese army with a Tommy gun. Then the penny
dropped. The cause of everything was the lights. I switched off both inside and
outside lights and waited. When after about ten minutes I gingerly switched on
the outside light again, the whole spectacle had vanished, leaving not a wrack
behind.

Jenny, who had no more race-consciousness
than she had self-consciousness or class-consciousness (or any other so-called
'consciousness' except a strong dose of good old Scots moral consciousness),
had long since founded a small multiracial social group - the only one which
existed in Samreboi, I might say - which began around the nucleus of her famous
scrabble parties - a term which excited the derisive laughter of the GM, who
was not her friend.

The group consisted mostly of unmarried
whites and the more modernistic Africans. After Jenny left they evolved into
the more exuberant Monopoly parties, certain features of which would not have
been entirely to Jenny's taste - the main such feature being the chatty hour
which preceded the actual Monopoly, when we discussed the scandal of the week.

Ghanaians are famous throughout West
Africa for their sense of humour, and the object of this humour which delights
them most is - themselves: which strikes me as a mark of high civilisation in
any people. And of all the Ghanaians I knew, the master exponent of this brand
of humour was the personnel manager, Amos Black.

Amos was a tall rangy man with a woolly
head, full of restless energy. He had piercing eyes: the eyes of a strong will.
'He's a bright boy,' Des Brennan had said. 'I wonder he doesn't go in for
politics.' 'No fear!' was Amos's comment. 'I thought Des was my friend. Does he
want to get rid of me?'

Like many Ghanaians of the south, he had
acquired his surname from one of those Caledonian vertebrae of the Empire
already referred to, either through ancestry or appropriation.

In many African countries is found a
curious pair of opposites: one tribe which has all the brains, and another
tribe which has the more martial qualities - at any rate, by reputation; on the
justice of which I will not comment. So in Rhodesia, there were the Shona and
the Matabele; in South Africa, the Xhosas and the Zulus. In Ghana, the
corresponding pair was the Fantis and the Ashantis.

Amos put it without prevarication. 'All
Fantis are cowards. I am a Fanti and I am a coward, so I know what I am talking
about.'

He questioned me more than once (perhaps
in a professional sense) about a matter which seemed to obsess him, as to
whether one could successfully feign death on the battlefield. ‘I mean, doc,
how could they tell?'

He never tired of recounting the story
of the famous coup, which toppled Nkrumah in 1966, while he was out of the
country staying with his friends in Hanoi; and how the daring deed was done by
the Ashantis. 'If it had been left to the Fantis, That Man would be here yet.'
The event was precipitated when the rumour got about that Nkrumah wanted to
send his army (or at any rate, the disaffected section of it) to Rhodesia to
fight Ian Smith - 'so he could look good at the United Nations, and get his
army wiped out at the same time,' as Amos lucidly put it.

Then he would tell how Afrifa's
battalion swept down from the north and fought a ding-dong match all day in the
capital with Nkrumah's Russian-trained guards, while the Fanti armoured
battalion stood on the touch line, waiting to see who looked like winning,
before intervening at close of play to clinch the match in favour of the
rebels.

And the day itself. 'Do I remember the
day of the coup! You must know what the country was like at that time. Talk
about a police state! If a policeman came to your house, even if you knew it
was a simple traffic offence, you sent your wife to the door while you got out
the back.

'When the news broke, at first no one
could believe it. Some people thought it was a trick of That Man to get his
enemies out dancing in the streets so he could arrest them.

'I was sitting at home when the
telephone went. When I picked it up all I could hear was funny little noises.
Then I thought it sounded like Anokye.' (Anokye was Amos's assistant.) 'Now, as
you know, Anokye is an Ashanti, but while he may not have the brains of the
Fantis, he doesn't have the courage of the Ashantis either. Finally I said,
"Look, Anokye, if you've got something to tell me, you'd better come round
to my house."

'Next I hear the scrape of Anokye's car
on the gravel outside. I opened the door and Anokye came in with his finger to
his mouth, looking over his shoulder as if the spirits were after him. He was
making funny little noises in his throat which sounded like "coo! coo!
coo!" Finally it dawned on me. I said: "YOU SAY THERE'S BEEN A
COUP?!!! - I mean, coo! coo! coo!"'

Nkrumah was succeeded by the sober
figure of General Ankrah. The general (now president) paid a visit to Samreboi,
and the managers, black and white, were lined up to receive him - a ceremony
which Amos did not find entirely comfortable. He told us without shame how when
the general got to him, Amos decided his shoe lace was undone (Amos's, that is,
not the general's) and bent down to mess about with it, at the same time, with
a deft movement of his hip, propelling Anokye, who stood beside him,
practically onto the general's bemedalled chest. The simple-hearted Anokye
found himself, to his pride and delight, shaking hands with his president, as
sole representative of his department, in place of the suddenly indisposed
Amos, who needless to say, showed no promise of speedy recovery; leaving the
general with no choice but to pass on down the line escorted by a pretty
red-faced GM - fiery Welshman at the best of times, as I have said. But at the
critical moment, as Amos had anticipated, the press cameras (which took a
particular interest in the black managers - too particular for Amos's liking),
the cameras flashed, and within a few days, very likely, a photograph on the
front page of the
Times of Ghana
of Anokye shaking hands with President
Ankrah landed on Kwame Nkrumah's breakfast table in neighbouring Guinea. Well,
while That Man was still alive, you couldn't be too careful!

Then came an outbreak of a perennial
trouble: that of illegal timber-taking. Through some obscure arrangement - a
relic of the wise but delicate principle of indirect rule, which formed the
basis of British colonial policy - the tenure of the forest lands was divided
between government and chiefs. The effective power was the government, and
negotiations, brisk at any rate by African standards, were pursued smoothly
enough with them. But there remained the indispensable discussions with the
chiefs, mainly ceremonial though these had become. And a pretty tedious time
the company's representatives had of it, according to my informant who had
served his time at the business, and whose account, which I imagine is more
colourful than strictly accurate, will do.

No such barbarism as 'hustle' is known
to any part of the African business world (except maybe in South Africa, but I
am referring to the civilised parts), and certainly not in such venerable
precincts as the chief's palace, where a working lunch, still more, breakfast,
would provoke indigestion by its very idea. In short, a great part of the
proceedings was taken up by old gentlemen walking up and down, hitching up
their togas, making very long speeches. And sometimes they would invoke the
name (in passing, but the 'passing' was to prove a very long excursion indeed),
the sacred name of the divine first king of Ashanti - Osei Tutu.

This would bring the proceedings to a
sudden stop. Documents would be taken up, a general exit made, and preparations
begun, including the slaughter of a statutory number of goats, for the
mandatory three days' celebrations due to the holy utterance.

Admittedly a good time would be had by
all, including the company's representatives (at any rate, while the thing was
still a novelty to them), and in due course all would return to the forum. As a
matter of unquestioned courtesy, the old gentleman would be allowed to take up
where he left off. And as often as not, the old fool would clear his throat and
recommence - 'As I was saying about Osei Tutu!' - and the whole three days'
business would start again.

Not surprisingly, the legal niceties
referred to rather went over the heads of the populace, who could not
understand why they were no longer allowed to cut their ancestral woods, and by
what right anyone could call them 'illegal timber-takers'. Anokye was sent to
deal with one specially rebellious village. He soon found himself in the middle
of a riot and had only time to execute a three-point turn with his Land Rover
in three feet of mud, with a speed and skill he had not known he possessed, and
extricate himself and companions from what the
Times of Ghana
might have
reported as 'an unfortunate fate'. Not that the mob would have been content
with such small fry as Anokye. Their main wrath was reserved not even for the
company itself, which to them was an impersonal abstraction, but for that
traitor to his own kind, Amos Black.

So Anokye's vehicle was chased out of
the village to a chant of 'WE WANT BLACK! WE WANT BLACK!'

As Amos concluded the tale, we commented
as one: 'Of course, you're going, Amos! - by popular demand?'

'You must be joking!'

Amos had another trouble on his hands at
this time - the return of a particular native called Mensah, with at least two
feathers in his cap: a white wife, and an economics degree from Manchester
University. He did not allow the former to 'cramp his style', as Amos put it,
with the 'local talent'; and that was Amos's problem.

Mensah was presently focussing on the wife
of Ebrahim, a clerk in the accounts department. Such liaisons have their
problems in small places, so Mensah took Ebrahim's wife out into the bush with
him in his Mini. But even that was not plain sailing, or even motoring.

'Now you must understand,' explained
Amos, 'that the bush is practically like a cathedral to us.' (And he was not
using the poetic imagery I employed in my first chapter.) 'There are so many
ancestral spirits and goblins and things that you practically can't have a pee,
and certainly not what Mensah had in mind. And Ebrahim's wife being an
old-fashioned type, Mensah wasn't getting much joy.

'But it's all right in a house, and
somehow Mensah managed to persuade Ebrahim's wife that a motorcar is the same
as a house - even his Mini.

'Only I can imagine it's pretty
difficult in a Mini, and I believe at one stage Mensah had one leg sticking out
of the right window and another leg sticking out of the left window.

'So he decided to risk it at his own
house. (Being a Fanti he was too big a coward to risk it at Ebrahim's house.)
And I believe he actually enjoyed Ebrahim's wife on the floor of his sitting
room while his own wife was asleep in the bedroom.'

Amos paused as if shocked at his own
words.

'Well, even by our standards, that's
pretty bad!'

'Well, before long Ebrahim, got to know
about it, and I knew there could be murder. I got the two of them together in
my office - Mensah and Ebrahim, I mean. I said to Mensah,"Look, Mensah!
This has got to stop. We are not living in Accra. You can't carry on like this
in a small place like Samreboi." And Ebrahim said, "I'm only a poor
clerk, but I've got my rights!" Den what you tink dat clown Mensah said to
Ebrahim? He rounded on him and said: "You ought to be proud," he said.
"You ought to be proud to get your wife laid by a graduate of Manchester
University!"!!!'

I have implied that our little
multiracial group was untypical, and that was true. The white members were
mostly young unmarried birds of passage (I was a not-so-young unmarried bird of
passage), and the Africans were adventurous individualists, like Amos, which
most Africans (who are nothing if not conventional) most certainly are not. And
most of the whites were as conventional as Surrey: Les Cady was about as
typical as Lawrence of Arabia.

In short, most people on the station (of
all classes, as well as races) kept to their own kind, as was only natural.
They were happy enough to work together, and did so happily, but at home they
preferred to be at home. They dined at one another's houses, and the dinner
parties were racially unmixed. When not at home, the managers had the club, at
which, apart from the bar, there were tennis, snooker, golf, etc, including the
swimming pool. The latter was not greatly used: in that torpid climate most
people were too overwhelmed even to 'cool off', which the tepid pool was not
very good at anyway. In fact, the pool was chiefly used by the children of the
African managers, who sprang in and out and ran about with much shouting and
laughter and uncertain knowledge of swimming, in which they had certainly
received no formal instruction. Most had started life where the only water they
had seen was the river (in a few cases the sea), which was used for washing,
drinking, fishing and other useful purposes - never for swimming, in which no
useful purpose would have been recognised whatsoever, and would rightly be
considered a dangerous form of 'exercise', if even the word or the concept
existed in their languages. And those who started life in the cities rarely did
so in leafy suburbs with private swimming pools. And another thing they never
received was any kind of supervision from their parents, even from the
tenderest of ages. As one African manager remarked to me, during a discussion
of comparative African and European philosophy at the Monopoly/Scrabble Club
one night: 'We are careless of our lives.' When Jesus enjoined us to take no
thought for the morrow (or much else in the way of safety-consciousness), our
black brethren took the words to heart more than most.