Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (41 page)

     The garden fed the staff, and also
served to educate the people in what foods to grow. Western people have pious
ideas about African diet, which is supposed to prevent most of the diseases we
suffer from. It could do, but they are learning bad habits, especially in the
towns. The diet of most towny child malnutrition cases was ‘buns and Coke’,
which was thought very ‘smart’ by their young unmarried mothers. Even the
staple maize meal can now be refined out of existence, and the ‘super’ forms
are preferred by the city folk. The rough ‘straight run’ is sold anyway only in
50kg bags, which become weevily before they are a quarter used, and is fed only
to cattle. The country people grow their own maize and take it to the local
mill, where they get the good stuff.

     But only in Africa is white maize
still grown, and the people are very conservative in their habits. In the
drought years of the eighties, maize was imported, and, of course, it was
yellow. The starving people complained like finnicky children about this;
although the doctors pointed out that it contained vitamin A and would wipe out
xerophthalmia (dry eye disease, which was the principal cause of blindness);
and the commercial farmers pointed out that the yellow maize was
drought-resistant, and some brave ones even grew some themselves - and lost
money by it. Still the people were not persuaded: the government even had to
mix the yellow maize with what remained of the inferior white stuff.

     Now Zimbabwe is growing oil palms.
But will the people use the oil (loaded with vitamin A) for cooking, as in so
many parts of Africa, where xerophthalmia is rarely seen? I doubt it. The stuff
is produced to make soap, anyway
(
I have since learned that
the scheme failed, the climate too dry).

And with independence, the Swedish missionaries
returned to Jock’s district, like the swallows (who had, of course, been back
several times), and inspired Jock’s naughty humour again. There was some
confusion over the jurisdiction of the clinics; these missionaries being a new
lot. Jock described how ‘I was doing a clinic at Jeka, when this Scarwegian
bint came in and said it was
their
clinic. I said, “Look, mate, where
have you been the last three years?”’

The devolutionary changes did not please
everybody. I was driving home from a workshop on Tb with Mr Kazembe, the health
inspector. He told me that he had noted looks and murmurings of discontent
among the provincial health assistants, whose previous duties took them on
quarterly visits to Shabani at government expense, including spending money of
ten dollars a day. ‘And I happen to know that there are many unattached young
ladies in Shabani, which these chaps used to stay with. Now they will have to
stay in Gwelo with their wives.’ Mr Kazembe was such an obviously solid family
man himself, it gave the lesson added force. I was also intrigued to learn that
what I had taken as the one-horse town of Shabani was seen on another plane of
existence as the Paris of the Midlands. In fact, it suffered (or enjoyed) the
usual social consequences of an African mining town with a large migrant labour
force.

Not all Africans exhibited the charming
manners of the old lady (or, for that matter, the community sister). One such
was Mr Chipembere, who was as cheeky as his namesake, the rhinoceros. He
succeeded the dignified Mr Kazembe as health inspector in the district. Under
the new system he was supposed to send his reports through me, so that I should
at least know what was going on in my parish. (Incidentally, this included the
building of the special pit latrines and protected wells I had seen the need
for in Umvuma days, and were evidently in the pipe-line even then, only
awaiting the conditions to install them: both local inventions which
represented yet more of this country’s contributions to world health.) Mr
Chipembere continued to send his reports up the vertical channels of the old
system. To my request, he replied that I would not understand them anyway.

     He also appropriated one of our
precious vehicles to his own personal use. This he was entitled to use for his
work, but was supposed to park in its proper place outside the hospital at the
end of each day. The van was more usually parked outside Mr Chimpembere’s own
house, and on Saturday mornings could be seen outside the stores, as his wife
did her weekly shopping. I had to bring in the guns of the provincial medical
officer to get Mr Chipembere to conform, sometimes for as long as a week
together, before he reverted to his old ways again.

     Then came the school health
programme. It was planned to appoint a ‘health officer’ in each primary school,
and one of the staff was selected for training. First aid kits were supplied by
the pharmacist, but unfortunately, on the opening day, the kits were not ready.
Mr Chipembere recognised my departmental responsibility in this matter, at
least, and informed me on the telephone that such shortcomings ‘created a bad
impression’.

     Finally, he compromised in the
matter of his reports to the extent of sending me copies, at least, affording
me the pleasure of collecting his most priceless effort in my experience. This
one went to the secretary for health, no less, not only over my head, but that
of the PMO. Its contents showed that Mr Chipembere was no more overawed by the
head of the service than he was by a mere DMO. He had been to a conference of
his kind in Zambia, and informed the secretary that arrangements at the
Zimbabwean end ‘left much to be desired’ and ‘compared unfavourably’ with those
at the Zambian end (and may well have ‘created a bad impression’, for all I
remember). I wondered how the secretary (who was the man who ordered out the
pensioners, and was not known to be deficient in a proper sense of what was due
to him) received that on his desk. I was reminded of the ‘educated expressions’
of Mr Cudjo (another health inspector), in Ghana, and wondered whether the
secretary took them as coolly as Amos.

Committees sprang up like mushrooms
overnight, which held meetings - too many of both for my liking. First was our
own little government, the district health executive, of which I was prime
minister, which included the district nursing officer (another new
appointment), as well as the redoubtable Mr Chipembere. This met once a week;
and once a month, or less often, as time went by, we called a regular little
parliament: the district health team, which drew members from all over the
district, including from other government departments, and even little old men
of rural functions, who had to have much of the proceedings interpreted for
them. All this at government expense, of course, under the formula, T and S:
transport and subsistence, which with the workshops was all very good business
for the Nilton Hotel. Indeed, hotels throughout the country were doing very
well out of the government at that time: whether they are still, I do not know.
And the minutes of all meetings were taken by the hospital chief clerk, Mr
Sibanda, who always concluded his record with the ambiguous formula: ‘Having
nothing to say, the meeting closed.’

     And the next level up the pyramid
was the provincial meeting, which was called every three months or so at Gwelo,
and included an overnight stay for delegates at the Midlands Hotel, where the
conference was held. This began in generous and inclusive proportions - up to a
hundred people - but was later scaled down to DMOs alone and the main
provincial officers, and held in the PMO’s office: a much duller affair than
the earlier occasions, which had given scope to some colourful characters,
including the American lady, a sister from some remote mission, who seemed not
to have used the English language from one occasion to another, to judge by the
extent she indulged in it, like a thirsty traveller at an oasis, at the
provincial meetings. On one occasion, I heard a stage whisper from the platform,
addressed to the chairman: ‘Can’t you shut her up?’ But most colourful of all
was Dr Rossi of Gokwe.

     Dr Rossi was a priest as well as a
doctor: I believe he was priest at Gokwe until he decided to be of more
practical use to his flock, and returned to his native Argentina to train as a
doctor. Now Gokwe was the largest and poorest district, not only in the
province, but in the country. It must have been the size of Yorkshire:
certainly a hundred miles across in all directions; and the population even then
must have been nearly 300,000. I once visited Gokwe, when looking for a likely
district, and I must say it cowed even my independent spirit. The Tb officer at
the time, who read my mind only too well, informed me: ‘There’s lots of
marriageable girls at Gokwe, if you like them with rings in their noses.’ After
my visit, I described the ‘town’ itself as ‘a scout camp on the moon’.

     None of this frightened Dr Rossi:
this was what he had come to Africa for. Even the absence of electric light in
the whole town, with the sole exception of the operating theatre, did not
affect the noiseless tenour of his way: like the locals, he got up with the sun
and went to bed with it. If he wanted to read - and I imagine his reading was
confined to his medical books and his breviary, or something equally devout -
he used the operating theatre, when he was not using it for its usual purpose,
which I am sure was pretty often. There was a club in Gokwe, used energetically
by such ordinary mortals as Internal Affairs and police, but not by Dr Rossi,
who neither smoke nor drank, and in his personal habits, generally resembled
Field Marshal Montgomery.

     I once remarked to him: ‘You must
belong to the Holy Army of Martyrs.’

     ‘I am not a martyr,’ crisply
replied Dr Rossi. ‘I enjoy it.’

     But his greatest moments came when
he rose before a hundred people at the provincial meetings to plead on behalf
of his long-suffering district. I don’t know why it is that unfortunate
circumstances give rise to amusement: who can resist a smile at the name of
Hogglestock (which Trollope obviously, if unconsciously, intended to provoke)
and its perpetual curate, of whom Dr Rossi was the happier equivalent? But
there is no doubt but when Dr Rossi delivered his pleas in his passionate Latin
voice, the name of ‘Gokwe’ never failed to be drowned in waves of vulgar
laughter.

     Then Dr Rossi returned to Argentina
for a year on a sabbatical of some kind. When he came back, something drastic
had happened to Gokwe. His prayers had been more than answered: ‘development’
had taken place. There were no less than two banks, a garage, and a supermarket
in the main square (which had never been called that before). So far from the
nights being candlelit and silent, they positively throbbed with electric
light, as did the air from half a dozen discos. Dr Rossi must have thought he
had returned to Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one. A profound convulsion was
felt by his friends to take place in his soul. This was not what he had come to
Africa for. Soon after his return, he put in for and obtained a lateral
transfer to Nkayi, in the wilds of Matabeleland.

Meanwhile, the new game of
Marxism-Leninism spread its merry circle. Africans are not children, but they
do retain the happy gift of
reductio ad absurdum,
which the Irish and
Italians used to have, until they got so sad that even their trains ran on
time. This being Africa, there was going to be no nonsense about all animals
being equal. It is true that the jolly fashion, ‘comrade’, flourished like
flying ants after rain - rather sadly displacing (for a time, anyway) the
graceful old forms of
baba
-
father, or sir;
amai
-
mother,
or madam;
sekuru -
grandfather, or venerable sir, etc; whose family
origins imbued them with a respect devoid of all servility. And, as often as not,
the insultingly familiar edge was taken off the term by its transformation into
macomrade,
which roughly translates as ‘comrade sir’, as happened in
Poland with
pan towarzysz -
lord comrade (trust the Poles not to spare
the glory!). But people like our friends, the administrator and the mayor,
acquired the curious title, ‘chef’, from somewhere, apparently ignorant of its
origins in the kitchen.

     (Incidentally, ‘comrade’ took a
temporary dip in Shabani, when some wicked European spread the rumour that it
was Russian for ‘Kaffir’.)

     Then somebody got the Maoist idea
that it would be a good thing for white-collar workers to do a spot of manual
work.

     This did not go down very well with
the people concerned. ‘White collar’ in Africa means just that, and on his
first day, your African clerk turns up in white collar and tie and long
trousers. Let the
Murungu
(white man) dress as if he were out shooting
in the bundu: in town, the educated African dressed for town; and in these
garments, he does not anticipate any task which requires him to shed them. His
parents did not save their hard-earned dollars to send their little boy to
school for any pick and shovel nonsense. (Strangely enough, the women were not
included in this barbaric plan, although they do most of the manual work in
Africa - perhaps for that reason; or the experimenters were rightly afraid of
the Women’s League.)

     Nevertheless, in the first (and
last) experiment, volunteers were called for. Volunteering in Africa tends to
take a military form - the three ‘U’s’, well-known to British soldiers - and
the administrator’s people (as he was running the show) outnumbered the others.
The administrator, himself, incidentally, confined his participation to turning
up in his Land Rover and instructing Mr Sango, of the Public Works Department,
who was directing the actual work, to ‘carry on’, in an officer-like manner
(the administrator, I mean; not Mr Sango). There were only two volunteers from
the medical department: myself, probably looking for material for letters home
(or ‘England’, as I should say, as Terry was now encouraging me to call
Zimbabwe ‘home’); and Phineas, the mortuary attendant - an unpopular job,
usually held by foreigners such as Malawians or Mozambicans (like him), who
felt insecure about their position in the country. Needless, to say, we got
nobody from the private sector.