Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (31 page)

     He was lying back one day when he
heard music coming from the sitting-room. He had seen no one there when he
entered. Carlos would be at work. Warren was not expected back till next day.
He got up to investigate, and found the record-player playing one of Warren's
records to itself. Then a noise from the bathroom. Maybe Warren back a day
early, taking a bath and listening to music. He glanced through the open door,
and saw a black man treating himself to a hot bath, as free as you please.

     Jimmy's first thought was one
becoming fashionable then: terrorists. (He did not seem to associate burglars
with music and hot baths.) He put his hand round the door and extracted the
key, closed the door and locked it; then telephoned the police, who, of course,
came rushing in with all their artillery. At least they didn't kick the door
in, but what they found inside was no terrorist, just a frightened black man,
who turned out to be one of the poor lunatics who haunted the bins of the
hospital, competing for food with the dogs. This one at least got a bed for the
night. All duly reported in the
Umtali News.

The reader may wonder what food was
doing in the hospital bins in 'starving Africa'. And well he might, for by the
time they were emptied, say, once a week, they not only overflowed but lay on
their sides, where the dogs had pulled them over, scattering food like the horn
of Ceres.

     I thought at
first it was because the stuff was unappetising: it was certainly coarse enough
to delicate white palates, especially the wretched ration meat. Once, in
Zambia, I had a lady patient who was reluctant to leave hospital. This was
unusual: as a rule they were into their street clothes as soon as I gave the
word. Although cured, I expect she needed rest, the poor thing, which is not
surprising among the women of Africa. I jokingly suggested she was staying for
the food.

     My joke
misfired. The woman took me at my word, silently rose from her bed and began to
change her clothes. Thank God I was able to perceive my gaffe and urge the
sister to persuade the woman I was joking! What was hard tack to me was a
banquet to her.

     But the
prodigious waste of food was universal. When I had my own hospital later in
this story, my northern English frugality rebelled against this extravagance.
The plates were certainly loaded: overloaded, I thought and ordered the rations
to be cut. It made no difference: still the bins overflowed. Fortunately, someone
explained the mystery, or I might have gone on till the patients actually went
hungry. It is good manners in Africa to leave some food on one's plate.
‘Licking the platter clean’ might seem to imply an insufficiency, and insult
the munificence of one's host.

A few days back at
Umtali, then another locum at Rusape, where the 'Baroness' was going on leave.
Rusape was another general hospital, with two doctors. The Baroness was a large
German lady: her number two was a tiny, black-eyed Polish girl, whom I called
the 'Princess'. The Rusape Club had their own names. The Baroness, who must
have weighed twenty stone, they called 'Twiggy': Stephanie, the Polish girl,
they called 'Ipi Tombi', which sounds like a fetish doll.

     The Baroness
gave me supper on the day of my arrival. (Stephanie was not present.) We were
neither of us conversationalists, so the evening was in the words with which
Trollope modestly (and unjustly, in my opinion, as regards him) described his
own performance: 'comfortable, but not splendid'.

     The Baroness,
I believe, was the doctor who performed the postmortem caesarean section
referred to in Part II of this book. She was a Bavarian Catholic. She was an
outdoor woman and once sustained a two-foot gash in her leg when out shooting.
She
bopered (tied up)
herself (in the Rhodesian phrase) and got herself
back to the hospital, where she calmly requested the nervous senior medical
assistant to, 'stitch me up, please, Mr Moyo.'

     She was said
to have played a part in the German resistance during the war. She was a
formidable lady, and I can well imagine her putting Hitler, 'that commonest
little blighter' (in Chamberlain's phrase), in his place, if she ever
encountered him.

     A third locum
at Marandellas, while the new superintendent was on sick leave, brought me to
the end of November. It was pleasant to be in this lovely spot again, but I was
already listed to go elsewhere.

     Harry Knight
had informed me that Shabani was going. This was a district hospital, plumb in
the middle of the country, in a mining town. It was over a hundred miles away
from the nearest specialists, so a good place for an independent spirit like
myself. I applied and once again, as the only applicant, and presumably passing
muster, got the job.

     I left
Marandellas and went to Shabani via Umvuma, spending the week-end there en
route. The previous DMO Shabani had left three months before, and my old
friend, Jock Scott, at Belingwe, was covering; but in the leisurely way of
Africa, a week-end between friends made no difference.

     I put up at
the Falcon, met the old Friday night crowd, and had supper. I sat up in the
hard bed in the plain room of the old hotel, with
Phineas Finn,
and was
as content as our imperfect nature can be.

     Next day, I
played bowls with my old companions. One of them turned out to be the uncle of
Ivor, the fiery physician at Umtali. The uncle asked me how I got on with him.
Being, like Samson, my 'small boy' of Ghana days, too childish simple for the
diplomatic evasion, I told them about the way he threw the notes across the
ward - with or without the clip-boards: a touch June, especially, relished; at
which the uncle laughed heartily, which told me what I knew already, that
humour was not lacking in that family.

     Next day, at
nine o' clock in the evening, I drove into the quiet streets of Shabani: an
action which, as I was to say in my annual report the following year, would
have been madness at the later date, when the tide of war had engulfed the
whole country.

In the main street I asked the way to the
hospital. I rang at the front door which was opened by a pretty white sister.
She called a maid who took me to my house in the hospital grounds - or rather,
a temporary house until my house was ready. (Meantime, and during my locums, I
had given Anderson leave.) Deborah said, 'Be sure to lock your door, doctor.
There has been a lot of pinchings from this house.' This was because it was
unoccupied: burglary was not a problem in the town.

     I had a good feeling about this
post from the first, which was not disappointed by trials ahead, including
those of increasing war: a feeling which was to find romantic fulfilment not
too far ahead.

     Next morning I woke to find myself
surrounded by little hills, like the many breasts of Diana, glowing emerald in
the strong light of summer. Shabani lay where the Highveld descends into the
Lowveld, and, at a height of 3000 feet, was already 1000 feet lower than Gwelo.
It was an up and down place, being not only surrounded by hills, but built on
them, and the usual grid pattern was missing. The main street ran downhill into
the town from Bulawayo and uphill out of the town, past the mine hospital, on
the way to Fort Victoria. A branch road ran north to Selukwe and Gwelo, and the
government hospital lay off this to the left. From these roads ran many smaller
roads, up and down, round suburbs and townships, as well as the mine itself.
There was a large township called Mandava, which came under the council and had
a clinic under me. The mine, which was for asbestos, ran a hospital for their
own people, who lived in four smaller townships with their own clinics; besides
the management, who attended a clinic at the mine hospital, and were admitted,
if necessary, to the white section of the government hospital, under their own doctors.

     The town had then a population of
27,000, and the whole district (including town), about 75,000. The mine had
three doctors, who looked after their own employees and families, and private
patients from the general public (10,000 people in all). All the rest came
under the single district medical officer.

     The government hospital had 150
beds, thirty of which were for Europeans, who were treated by the mine doctors.
There were some government whites, such as pioneer pensioners (before
mentioned) and police. All road traffic and other police cases came under the
government doctor.

     The white ward had been built
first, so the hospital (although now overwhelmingly black) was still called by
the people, the 'White Hospital', or simply the 'White'. Out in the rural areas
there was one rural hospital, which I visited once a week, and a number of
council clinics, which were then visited by the provincial medical staff. The
township clinic (Mandava), I visited every morning, referring patients to
myself at the hospital (a mile away), whom if necessary I would take in the
back of a van, delivering them to the clerk with a cry of: 'Mandava Tours!',
which he heard with an indulgent grin.

     I had a number of these stock jokes
(which I would explain, if necessary, not wishing to take advantage of anyone).
When I saw the radiographer in the corridor with one of his creations, I would
ask, ‘What have you got there, Rembrandt?’ All of which, I hope, added to the
gaiety of nations, or, at any rate, the hospital.

     My district was as big as Cheshire:
50 miles by 30, and was the smallest in the country. I managed this seemingly
impossible situation by the system and methods already referred to in the
chapter on Gwelo.

     And next to me lay Belingwe, Jock
Scott's district, which was as big as say, Norfolk, and contained about 100,000
people. It is fair to say that Jock's district was also served by a number of
mission hospitals - 'was', but not then, as will emerge.

I knew Jock was my neighbour and looked
forward to meeting him again. I did not do so until the Christmas party at my
hospital. All government departments gave Christmas parties and invited one
another's personnel and the mine management. All these parties were whites
only. The African sisters, who lived in a sisters' home adjoining and
symmetrical with the white sisters' home, also gave a Christmas party, to which
whites were invited, and I and the matron would attend. But the compliment was
not returned in those days, I am sorry to say, not through any fault of myself
or the matron: it would have been socially impossible.

     At the Christmas party, Jock and
his wife, Joyce, gave me a standing invitation to Sunday lunch, which I soon
and often took up; and occasionally (self-centred bachelor) reciprocated. Jock
had been at Belingwe eight years. He had a public health diploma and had
previously worked as assistant medical officer of health in Bulawayo. He had
served in the RAF in the war, which had first introduced him to Africa. He
abhorred the cold, so when they asked him where he would like to be posted, he
said, 'somewhere warm'. They sent him to the Gold Coast: something else we had
in common.

     The actual microscopic 'town' of
Belingwe was only fifteen miles away, and from the first it was a delightful
occasion to sit on Jock's veranda with him while Joyce prepared the lunch. We
sat with our beers and watched the louries dropping down from a big wild fig
tree in his front garden, and flapping up again, now and again uttering their
cry:
'g'way! g'way!'
, for which they are also called 'go-away birds'.
And Jock and I would talk work, books and music.

     After lunch, I would bash his
piano: a concert Bechstein, no less. I found it a heavy instrument to play:
like driving a heavy lorry without much in the way of power-assisted steering.
Jock said all grand pianos are like that. I don't believe it!

     He never played to others himself,
either on piano or violin: too self-critical, I think. He had a record-player
and a fair collection of LPs, and the house was full of books. Jock's musical
taste was pretty catholic. If he had a blind spot (or deaf ear), it was Mahler,
whom he regarded as a dangerous lunatic, and was amused that Mahler had
consulted Freud. At that time, I was developing an enthusiasm for Mahler, which
was to become incurable (as Jock might have put it), but we never came to blows
on the subject.

     I was now carrying a heavy revolver
and a cowboy belt full of bullets on my journeys out of town, in the received
wisdom that if you ran into an ambush you drove through it, but if you were
brought to a stop and showed no evidence of a weapon, they would come in and
finish you off. Jock never carried a weapon, and here I think he was wise - at
any rate, as far as his own district was concerned. Doctors were rarely
attacked where they were known, and with a weapon, one might have got into an
avoidable disaster. Outside one's district it was another matter.

     Some doctors were killed, it is
true. The guerrillas raided the clinics for drugs, which the staff readily
supplied. Perhaps those doctors actively interfered and got into trouble:
others turned a blind eye or, like Jock and me, were unaware of what was going
on.

     Jock had a sardonic turn of humour,
which he was presently exercising on the Swedish missionaries in his district -
or rather, not in his district. These people had been advised to leave by their
organisations and had gone, leaving only the African nurses. Jock assumed the
self-imposed task of supervising their medical establishments. And Jock was a
devout atheist.

     The task was self-imposed because
so far from it being expected of him, various people were becoming anxious
about the way he continued to drive all over his district as if it were not
only as big as Norfolk, but Norfolk itself. I confined my outings to his place
and our rural hospital at Lundi, seven miles out of town. Sometimes Jock would
take Joyce with him in the battered Audi when she felt like a breath of fresh
air. Joyce was a typical Cockney sparrow. Together they embodied the
expression: 'London can take it!'

     When questioned, Jock would reply
that nobody was going to put him off his job; and add, he had had a good
innings, anyway. Incidentally, as to his prospects thereafter, whenever the
subject arose, he would smile sceptically and say: 'Dr Scott's carbohydrates,
fats and proteins will melt back into Mother Earth.'

     First the police, then the DC
advised caution. Finally, the latter wrote to the secretary for health, who
wrote to Jock in similar terms. Jock kept this letter to produce for the
diversion of his friends. He did make some concessions. He submitted for a time
to a police escort, but this was impracticable: Jock and the escorting vehicle
seemed to come unstuck, or never meet - not, I fancy, without some contribution
on Jock's part. Next he agreed to check with the police if the road was safe.
Once, after receiving this assurance, he came upon a bridge, recently blown up.
It was only a short walk further to the clinic, so Jock completed his journey
on foot. When he returned to town, he told the police: 'I've got news for you!'

     Finally, he got warnings in
uncertain English from the guerrillas themselves, which he told me about but
kept secret from his wife; as I discovered when I blew the gaff, fortunately
when it was all in the past. After the war, the local guerrilla chief told me:
'We used to see Dr Scott every day, but we never shot him because we knew he
was working for the people.' When I retailed this to Jock, he laughed in
unbelief. More plausible to his cynicism was another explanation I got from one
of his clinic nurses, also in the 'aftertime' (in Churchillian term): 'We
needed Dr Scott to sign the drug requisitions' - on which, of course, the
guerrillas also depended.

     This does not explain the warnings
from them. I can only say that many of their actions seemed arbitrary. The most
rational suggestion I can make is that such policies as they had evolved
through trial and error.

Jock and I stood in for each other on
leave and other times when one was off station. Long leave (90 days) overseas
must have been a trial for him, when he had the burden of both districts: I
mean, he was then over sixty. When I was away, he would visit my hospital once
a week. If they had an emergency, he would come over, as Shabani hospital was
larger and altogether better equipped than Belingwe, which was little more than
a rural hospital. How he managed to do caesars there, I do not know: and yet
Mav had done massive bowel resections there, years before Jock; though, in the
absence of a mortuary, he used to do his postmortems under a tree. No
connection, of course!

      But I used to feel for Jock as my
long leave drew to an end. From Edinburgh once, when I had still two weeks to
go, I sent him a card: 'Hold on. The Campbells are coming!' (Heaven knows what
the Scottish postal people made of that.) He preferred me to take my leave
first, so he had something to look forward to and keep him going.

     When he was away, I would drive out
to his place once a week and do a clinic and ward round and, of course, they
would send emergencies to my hospital.

     Jock had a 'thing' with the police,
whom he called the 'Gestapo'. There was nothing political about this: he called
Smith's police the Gestapo, and later, he called Mugabe's police the Gestapo.

In 1976 Jimmy retired. He stayed on in
the house at Umtali with Carlos, but things got difficult when Carlos's wife,
Maria, arrived and Jimmy felt in the way. They had furious Latin rows which
sounded to Jimmy, lying low in his own room, like murder in the house.
Moreover, Maria had a phobia of cats and I had left behind two.

     The cats, brother and sister, had
been given me by a policeman in Umvuma after a cobra walked into my house one
night, but fortunately left when it saw me. Cats are as good as mongooses when
it comes to snakes - and less antisocial. (Les Cady in Ghana had a pet mongoose
which tried to eat his guests.) Maria had driven the cats out of the house and
Jimmy did not know what to do about it. I told him they would look after
themselves. They would find forage in plenty round the hospital bins, along
with the dogs and the lunatics. One learns to be a bit heartless in Africa.

     The last straw came when Jimmy
wrote to me: 'The Antoninis have discovered tea-bags. Now, Warren, you know how
I love my tea - but if there is one thing I cannot stand, it is tea-bags!'

     I told him to come and join me in
Shabani, and as soon as my house had been repainted and my furniture was
installed, he came. He brought his few possessions with him, the largest after
his car being his desk, which had gone with him everywhere for many years, to
which he was greatly attached.

We planned a holiday over Christmas - a
safari to Victoria Falls. Gareth came down in his pick-up, bringing a couple of
rifles, and we went in my car.

     The more you enjoy your work, the
more you enjoy your holidays. Dull work, I suppose, makes for dull holidays and
a dull life altogether. I don't know: that is one trial I have been spared,
thank God. So it was always with the greatest zest that I sat behind the wheel
and hit the high road on the first day.

     If Barchester was ‘always
afternoon’, Africa was always nine o’clock in the morning; that was its most
characteristic hour: the eternally young continent, raring to go.