Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (30 page)

     The waiter went away. He spoke to
other waiters, and a delegation of waiters approached the manager. (Shades of
me and the latrine boys of Ghana!) The result was the manager granted them a
rise of five dollars a month - miserable enough at that.

     The revolution spread, and after we
left, the hotel managers were no doubt asking one another, who was the funny
little man who looked like Father Christmas, who had been stirring up the
waiters that festive season?

Towards the end of my time at Umtali, we
were joined by a young doctor from Argentina, who shared house with me and
Jimmy. His wife was to follow him later. This was Carlos.

     Jimmy soon found reason to reprove
Carlos, who had spoken of the 'stupidity' of the Africans.

     'Carlos, you must realise that that
is a very offensive word to Africans. Besides, they are
not
stupid. Just
because they are different from you, does not mean they are stupid.'

     'But they
are
stupid,
Jimmy.'

     'Carlos, did you hear what I said?
These people are your patients, and you will never be a good doctor unless you
learn to respect your patients.'

     'Yes, Jimmy. You are like my
father. You
look
like my father, Jimmy.'

     'I am not your father. I am just
thinking of your good, Carlos.'

     'Yes, Jimmy. You are my father.'

     One day, Carlos came running into
the sitting room with a soapstone head some man at the door was trying to sell
him.

     'Look at this head, Jimmy! It only
costs ten dollars.'

     Jimmy rose from his seat, went to
the door and closed it in the face of the pedlar outside. He returned and spoke
to Carlos.

     'Now, Carlos. Just because that man
asks you ten dollars for that thing, does not mean it is worth ten dollars. Ten
dollars is a lot of money in this country.'

     'Yes, Jimmy. You are my father.'

     'I am not your father,' replied
Jimmy, taking the head and leading Carlos by the elbow to the door. 'Come with
me.'

     Jimmy opened the door and said to
the man outside: 'Now, my friend, how much are you asking for this head?'

     'Ten dollars, sah.'

     'Ten dollars!' retorted Jimmy. 'Tell
me, my friend, which school did you go to?'

     The man was taken aback, but, in
true African fashion, quickly concealed it. 'St Michael's mission, sah.'

     'St Michael's mission!' exclaimed
Jimmy, who had taught in, or knew, nearly every school in the country. 'That's
Father Flanagan's school, isn't it?'

     'Yessah.'

     'I know him well. And what would
Father Flanagan say if he knew you were going around the country robbing
people?'

     'Yessah.'

     'What?'

     'No, sah.'

     'He'd give you a good hiding,
wouldn't he?
Maningi
shaya?
'

     'No, sah.'

    
'What?'

     'Yessah.'

     'So how much do you want for this
head?'

     'Nine dollars, sah.'

     'Did you hear what I said? Do you
want me to write to Father Flanagan?'

     'Yessah.'

     'What?'

     'No, sah.'

     In the end Jimmy got the head for
two dollars.

About this time (early 1975), we got our
first war casualties. The first three were shot by a white farmer on his own
land when he thought they looked suspicious and they refused to stop when he
called them. The country was getting very trigger-happy and nervous. Soon the
notorious Amnesty and Indemnity Act came out, waiving prosecution in cases of
action against 'suspected terrorists', which Mugabe found very convenient in
his turn, and which remains on the statute books to this day.

     The three men had been shot in the
abdomen - the worst cases to deal with. Even head and chest shots were easier:
they either died on the spot or required comparatively simple surgery. Limb
shots had their own problems, but were still simpler than abdominal shots, which
were like firing a bullet through a television set: there was so much to
damage, and sometimes so hard to get at.

     Henry had been involved with the
Lumpa troubles in Zambia, a decade earlier. Ian had spent busy holidays with
the ski-slope surgeons of Austria, where he would have learnt much about
injuries. Certainly, they were both on top of modern war surgery, and in the
next few months I was to learn much from them - and use it within a couple of
years myself, as the war spread until it involved the whole country.

     These three cases they tackled
between them, swiftly, expertly and successfully, working in two theatres at a
time. Then an even bigger order, when an African bus ran over a land mine, and
Henry and Ian did eight rapid amputations between them in an afternoon.

     Why the guerrillas (I shall use the
BBC term as the most neutral: though I questioned its accuracy at the time),
why they planted mines in the tribal areas, where the most likely victims were
going to be African buses and other vehicles, I do not know; except to try to
exclude the security forces. I asked an African doctor about it, who was
sympathetic to the nationalist cause, and he simply said: 'the people accept
it'.

Life went on despite these dark clouds.
One night a man of about fifty was brought in. A leopard had taken his eye out.
This turned out to be an occupational injury. The man was a leopard-killer. He
went about his business with a knobkerrie, hanging about the affected kraal
until the intruder appeared. On this occasion, the man took the opportunity to
announce his retirement, while he had one eye to guide him through his old age.

     As the 'war situation' developed,
the DC started recruiting district assistants to supplement his personnel.
These people had medical examinations at the hospital. In Africa, delegation is
an important and necessary principle. The doctors did the main business and
filled in the relevant sections of the forms, which they then signed. As
doctors are unworldly souls who do not read small print, few of us studied the
previous entries made by the nursing and clerical staff.

     The DC was used to taking a closer
look at things, and presently returned the first batch of forms, in which he
remarked in his covering letter, some men were marked down as ten feet tall and
others as three feet tall, who appeared to his untutored eye to be within
normal limits.

     When we re-examined the forms (if
that is the right expression), we found that it was true. Matron investigated
and discovered that the great principle of delegation had in this case been
pushed too far. The boring business of measuring heights had been passed on to
a little old man from the kitchen. When asked to demonstrate his working
method, he showed us on the machine how, when he got a measure of 5' 10",
he marked it down as ten feet, and for 5' 3", he put three feet.

In my last months at Umtali I did some
locums, which I might say are a luxury in Africa: for the recipient, I mean,
who, as I have earlier indicated, more usually shuts up shop and leaves everything
to the nurses, with instructions to transfer anything they cannot handle to the
next person who can.

     First I went to Inyanga District
Hospital, in the mountains. Inyanga was the only white-occupied place in
Rhodesia which I heard described as a 'village'. It was a spread-out sort of
place, like some places in the Scottish Highlands, nestling under the shadow of
World's View, as the nearest big mountain was called. I stayed at one of the
small local hotels.

     The DMO was Harry Knight, then
about 80, who had already made as many retirements and come-backs as Gigli; and
I had a couple of days with that delightful man before he went off on leave. He
was a cherubic figure, like Mr Pickwick, and I noticed that he had taken to
driving round his district, which was already infiltrated by guerrillas, with a
sub-machine-gun beside him in his car, looking like a country clergyman with a
fixation on Al Capone. I did not bother with weapons at that stage.

Inyanga in those days was a quiet
station. (It got busier later, with the growth in population and the influx of
refugees from Mozambique.) I used to call it an 'old man's station', and
certainly Harry managed it happily enough. Most afternoons I was free, after an
hour at his house, conducting the private surgery to which more than one
patient rarely came, and I spent most of the hour reading a book from Harry's
library. Then I would take a boat and go trout-fishing on one of the dams. The
ambulance driver, of course, could always get me for an emergency.

     The operating theatre must have had
the loveliest view of any in the world (most have no view at all), overlooking
the mountains - a solace to the straining surgeon when he looks up from his
work.

     There were two rural hospitals to
visit. One lay up the lovely Inyanga North Valley - a wide, flat valley with
conical hills on its floor, like the mountains of the moon: one of Kipling's
'great spaces washed with sun'; which looks so like the Great Rift Valley of
East Africa that I wonder if it is not the lost tail of it.

One week-end Jimmy came out to see me
and shared my room at the hotel. And I was to discover that Jimmy's charm was
visible to more than myself, especally as far as the ladies were concerned.

     As we sat with our fellow guests
round the fire one evening, that 'winter in July', Jimmy was his usual
ebullient self; sprinkling his out-going personality around him like a
life-giving fountain. And one who bathed in it more than most was a dark lady
of mature charms sitting beside him, who seemed to be with a large surly man.
We thought nothing of this until next morning.

     As the sun rose, so did Jimmy, like
another sun himself, and stood at the door of our room in the spread-out motel.
Across the cheerful beams of both the sun and Jimmy, hove the shadow of the
large surly man. This did not prejudice Jimmy any more than the larger sun
above him. 'Good morning!' called out Jimmy, in his warmest tones.

     Whether the response was unexpected
from such a source, I will not say. It certainly shook both of us.

     'Are you looking for a punch on the
jaw?'

     The large surly man took his shadow
elsewhere, without waiting for a reply. Jimmy worked it out this far, at any
rate: 'Warren, I believe that man is jealous.'

     It did not take long for Jimmy's
suspicions to be confirmed. He had not been back at Umtali two weeks before he
received an interesting letter.

     'I've got rid of YOU KNOW WHO. The
coast is clear. Love, Anita.'

We met a number of army officers at the
bar of the hotel, who had been taught by Jimmy. Jimmy had taught about half the
people in the country, white and black. When some politician appeared on
television once, Jimmy commented: 'I know that man well, Warren. I taught him.
Thick as two short planks!' He also received political pronouncements with a
device of his own which I called 'Lennon's corrector'. Eg, when Smithy or
somebody told the country he would not increase taxes, Jimmy would reply
smartly: 'He means he will!'; and the contrary to positive statements. Lennon's
corrector, of course, is a useful political tool beyond the borders and times
of Rhodesia.

     One of the officers recalled how
Jimmy would mark exercises while supervising prep - at lightning speed.
Refusing to believe in the efficiency of this speed, one boy inserted in his
exercise the message: 'I bet Eggy Lennon doesn't see this.' Jimmy's flying
pencil came to a sudden stop. 'Stand forth, Perkins minor!'

Jimmy left before I did. In some parts
of the country, convoys were already in operation on the roads between the
towns. At first, just numbers of people getting together with their own
weapons. Later, more formal convoys were formed as the towns became islanded by
the spreading bush war: a police reserve pick-up leading with a Browning
machine-gun mounted on the back, another in the middle in a long convoy, and
one bringing up the rear. These convoys assembled at fixed points, and left at
fixed times. And sometimes came under ambush and returned fire.

     People had not started forming
convoys to or from Inyanga yet (never did, I believe), but Jimmy was a prudent
man and on the day he left, organised one himself. The local police chief,
returning to the village, was surprised to see the first convoy in his district
coming round a bend, led by a stern-faced Jimmy.

After Jimmy got back to the house, he
got his name in the local newspaper. Rhodesian schools worked from 7am to 1pm.
Every afternoon there was sport, which Jimmy, who was now 60, was excused. He
would return to the house exhausted, he told me, physically and emotionally. He
would throw himself into his work whole-heartedly. He was then teaching at an
African school. He took as much as he gave, he told me. 'When I look at your
happy faces,' he would tell the children, 'I am not teaching you; you are
teaching me!' But by one o' clock, he had had enough, and the first thing he
did on getting home was to lie on his bed for a couple of hours.