A Man in Africa

by Lara Blunte

"That's where you are!"

  I recognized the voice before I turned ─ it was none other than Chris. Well, the place was very small and it seemed that he knew Adroa.

  "You already wrangled a coke from the mzungu?"

  Adroa dimpled as he kept on drinking and Chris dimpled, looking at him.

  The doctor pulled the chair across from me and sat down.

  "I have to warn you against this outlaw. The police are looking for him everywhere. He's the coke thief."

  The boy’s look at Chris was of pure delight and love. I wondered what their relationship was. I could see that the plastic bag Chris had placed on the other chair was full of children's clothes. Maybe Adroa was his son? The dimples were alike. I realized I knew his whole professional curriculum, but nothing about his private life, apart from what Godfrey had told me.

  We made small talk, with Chris asking me if I liked my hotel and me asking what time I should be at the hospital the next day. When Adroa had finished his coke, we got up and walked outside together. There were rows of wooden shacks selling things and they accompanied me as I looked.

  When I picked up some carved wooden fertility idols and asked the girl in the shop what part of Uganda they were from, she threw a look at Chris and started laughing.

  "Oh, she would have a story ready for you if I weren't here...wouldn't you?" The girl had dissolved in giggles, lying halfway across the small counter. "In Uganda they don't have that type of work. Authentic wooden figures or idols like that most likely come from Congo. DRC, I mean."

  "So what do they make here?" I asked

  "If you see woven baskets or mats, they will probably be from Uganda."

  We did see some a few doors down and it was beautiful weaving, using many colors in the most unlikely yet striking combinations and patterns, but I didn’t think I should buy anything. Heaven knew how long I would be on the run; I sometimes wished ferociously that it would be forever, that I would never stop and never have a home again. I only bought a small basket to keep some of my jewelry.

  As we walked, we found a Batwa arts and crafts center. The Batwa were the pygmies who had been displaced from the forest because of the gorillas, years before and had been abandoned to their luck at first. They lived so badly on the outskirts of towns that their life expectancy had been only twenty-eight years. Finally, the government and NGOs had started to care for them, finding them housing and encouraging them to take up jobs, or make things.

  The two Batwa men inside were small but well-proportioned and smiled warmly at me. When they saw Chris, they ran forward to shake his hand and pat the middle of his back, because they couldn’t reach his shoulder. He stood talking to them, apparently in their language and I could hear them laughing. One hardly ever heard Africans talking without outbursts of laughter, unless they were going through something truly terrible.

  I did like what the Batwa made and bought two necklaces of seeds covered with bright cloth. They looked rather like something by Pucci and I put them on, feeling instantly glamorous.

  Chris kept on talking to the two Batwa men as he appraised the effect of the necklaces on me, then reached out and pulled a tiny price tag still tied to one. He looked again, tilting his head and smiled.

  Don't smile at me, dreamboat, I thought, moving away.

  I looked down to see that Adroa was right next to me, looking at everything I was touching with profound interest, his hands now behind his back. How on earth had he got to be so adorable?

  Eventually we left the shop. Chris said they would walk me to my hotel and Adroa sneaked in between us and took our hands. Now we looked like two mzungus who had gone to Africa to adopt a baby because Madonna had done it, but when Adroa looked up at me, his mouth opening in a smile that showed his little uneven teeth, I didn't mind walking hand in hand with him at all. I kind of loved it.

  The Hospital

  The visit to the hospital was heartbreaking as expected, except that while I could not see hope for the terminal patients, I saw the dignity and care they were being given.

  The dedication of the doctors who had founded the hospital made itself felt. Miriam and Gideon, whom I met right away, had begun a clinic a few years before: they had been colleagues at medical school and Miriam was from the area. Gideon was from Kampala, but he had wanted to get away from it and work in a smaller city. Lake Bunyonyi had seemed perfect to him.

  At the time, Chris had been taking care of the gorillas in Bwindi and had met the other two doctors when he visited the lake. It had not been long before he had started helping and then he had decided to join them full time. With his connections and his own money, he had been able to get more funds and the clinic had become a hospital with an ICU unit.

  The hospital had sadly and inevitably filled with AIDS patients, though there was a separate building that was kept as a maternity ward and there was also a clinic where they treated less serious illnesses and light trauma.

  In the main building, about twenty AIDS patients were being cared for, many of them tragically young. There were mothers who would soon leave small children behind and men with their lives cut short. Some of the patients had wasted to almost nothing and the ones in the ICU had sores all over their bodies and faces.

  The ones who were recovering from a bout with the virus stayed in rooms of three or four and they seemed to like the arrangement: community meant a lot to Ugandans and the patients helped each other through bad nights. When the families came, wearing masks and gloves, their shoes covered with plastic bags, they spoke equally to their own sick relatives and to the ones in the other beds.

  At the end of the ward, which was immaculately clean and bright with sunlight, there was a bigger heartbreak: a girl of fourteen, already looking a little bit like a woman with her small breasts, beautiful lashes and soft eyes. Her name was Eva and she beamed when Chris entered with me. She had the oxygen mask around her face, which she could sometimes remove and there were no sores on her.

  "I've brought you a lady who knows all about fashion," Chris said.

  Eva looked at me, then lowered her eyes and smiled. I remembered for a second how I had left my wedding with nothing more than a handbag and a white sheath dress, and how I had bought the few things I now owned along the way.

  "Show her your book," Chris urged.

  Eva looked embarrassed again, then she reached under the mattress and took a notebook with a hard cover. Chris put his hand on my back and pushed me forward gently. I pulled a chair closer to Eva's bed and sat down.

  She opened the notebook and it said, in big letters with drawings of flowers and birds: IDEAS.

  "She wants to be a fashion designer," Gideon said, smiling as he entered, his arms crossed over his white coat.

  "You’ll let us know whether she has any talent," Chris said. I saw him winking at Eva as he walked out. She covered her smile with a hand that had a needle secured with tape in it.

  As I started to look through her notebook I saw that she did have talent and taste. She had cut out many different photos or drawings of fashion in different times, the 18th century, ancient Egypt, the 1940s. Next to them she had made a sketch of an updated version of the clothes and the sketches were original and interesting. I kept passing the pages, seeing her writing next to some looks: a childish exclamation here (cute!) a clever observation there (stripes with flowers can be OK, see 18th century). I kept looking because I didn't want to raise my eyes and face her. How can you look at someone so young, who ought to have so much ahead and think that she might be dying?

  Tucked in the notebook, between pages, there was the cut out of a heart done in red cardboard and a wheel inside showed a text when it turned.

  "That's not finished!"

  It was the first thing she had said. I looked up at her then and she seemed embarrassed, her lips pressed together, so I left the heart where it was and kept leafing through the notebook.

  I remarked on the ones I liked the most and she was happy because she saw that I meant it, that I wa
s not just saying things to humor her.

  When the nurse came to bring her meal, I took my leave and went to find Chris. As I walked toward him I saw through the windows that there were children playing in the distance and a small building behind them.

  "Are those the children of..." I started as I got to him.

  "That's for the kids,” he told me. “Some of them only stay for the day when the out patients come and five of them live here.”

  A nursery too! I almost felt that he was ashamed of their good deeds, because he didn't explain everything at once.

  "May I see it?" I asked him.

  He nodded and walked out with me.

  We were surrounded by about six children very quickly, with the boys holding on to Chris' coat. He picked one up, turning him upside down, and lifted another one by his shirt. The girls were around me, their eyes scanning my face. Both my hands had been taken.

  They chattered, pulled me in different directions, laughed.

  "That's enough, let auntie go!" said Chris.

  They took a moment to obey him, yet they still followed us as Chris showed me a classroom, "For lazy children!" he cried looking behind him with a mock-angry face. Their laughter echoed through the room, though they were standing outside.

  He pointed out the children who lived there: Marcia, Paul, Charles, Amanya and a baby called Musiga, whose parents were both at the hospital. I saw their sleeping quarters, girls in one room and boys in the other. Everything was impeccable, the polished concrete floor, the beds tight as drums, with blankets nicely folded. In the big room where they ate, two women were stirring big cauldrons of food. They all smiled as Chris introduced me.

  "The best cooks in East Africa," he announced. "Except when they try to make pasta."

  "Pasta?" I cried and both my hands did go up, thumbs to fingers.

  Chris laughed as he turned away. "You are so Italian!"

  I followed him. "You can't make pasta like that..."

  "Wait till you taste the pizza," he told me. "It's a favorite here, but they put banana on it."

  I shook my head and he went on laughing. Once we were outside, I watched the children again, playing noisily but happily. In Africa one hardly ever heard children crying, especially in rural areas. They were constantly with other children, watched by the older ones, with no adults to take their pains or coddle them too much. Everyone was equal, everyone wanted to play and not to dwell any longer than necessary on a fall or a bruise, though either could be serious for HIV-positive kids.

  "Are they sick as well?" I asked Christopher.

  He didn't answer and my insides suddenly felt like a dish cloth that had been wringed.

  "Are they all HIV-positive? Even the visitors?"

  "I'm afraid so. They come to be medicated."

  I managed to keep the tears from my eyes; it would not be good, as a journalist, for me to cry at tragedy, as I wouldn't be able to do my job.

  "Will they all die?" I asked in a small voice.

  "No ─ they will respond in different ways to the medication. Some will never get sick and will have normal lives, or almost. Others..."

  I let his answer hang in the air. I didn't want to ask about Eva. We finished the visit and went into his office to have tea, so that I could ask him some questions and make them more businesslike: what were his challenges, what sort of things did he need? I wouldn’t photograph anything today, I felt it would be too intrusive. Perhaps I would return the next day to do it, if I stayed any longer.

  As we walked in, there was Adroa, sitting on Christopher's chair and leaning over the desk to draw. Next to him, there were many colored crayons coming out of a small rectangular basket that acted as a pencil holder.

  "How did I know you would be here?" Chris asked Adroa, shaking his head.

  Adroa showed his teeth, bottom and top, in a smile, which turned into a laugh as Chris poked him. "I've told you that you can't be here all the time, you have to play with the others and do your lessons!"

  "I like to draw!" Adroa cried.

  I looked down at the paper and thought his art was quite good. He couldn't draw within the lines all the time, but there was a crazy sense of color and drama. Maybe he was an artist in the making.

  "I like it!" I said out loud. "Very naïf!"

  "I'll give it to you," he said and bent his head to painstakingly draw two letters on the corner. He pointed at the letters AD. “Adroa Langwa," he said. "Dr. Chris says we have to sign our work."

  "When you're proud of it," Chris said. "Otherwise you let some fool take the credit."

  Adroa was still laughing as he gathered his crayons and pens and put them inside the pencil holder and took a moment to fit the lid and close it.

  "Good that you know you're being thrown out," Chris said. "Say goodbye to Miss Roberta."

  He sighed, looking at me. “It's a strange name..."

  "Call me Bobbie, then," I said.

  He came over and kissed me, then he walked away. His pencil holder had stayed on Chris's table; he must be there a lot.

  "He lives here, too?” When Chris nodded, I added, “Well, it's nice to see a healthy little boy!"

  And then I raised my eyes to Chris' face.

  It was a surprise, you see ─ though I ought to have understood it. Adroa too was an orphan; I had been told so. And, in this nursery, all the children were HIV-positive.

  I didn't have time to stop the tears rushing to my eyes, so I looked down at the drawing, which had become blurry. I saw the drops fall on them.

  "I'm really sorry, Roberta," Chris said, after a moment. "I ought to have warned you. He has a way of getting to people in five minutes..."

  All I could think of saying was, "Is this why you let him drink so much coke?"

  "The medication makes him nauseous and the coke helps."

  What I was hearing suddenly became too much. I had managed to control myself seeing all the doomed people in the ward, Eva, the children playing, but now I couldn't stop the tears running down my face. Once more I bent down, rummaging in my bag for my sunglasses, but they weren't inside. Where had I left them?

  I have always been ashamed of crying in front of others.

  "Do you mind very much if we finish this tomorrow?" I asked, without looking at Chris. I started getting up and he stood up too. "No, please, don't come with me."

  I walked out as quickly as I could and went around the building so the children wouldn't see my crazy face wet with tears, or my red eyes. When I got in the car and asked Edward to take me back to the hotel, I realized that I had been a coward. Chris ─ and Gideon, Miriam, the nurses, teachers and cooks ─ needed to stay, see all the suffering, bear the losses and keep calm. I, on the other hand, had just arrived and was running away at the first sight of misery.

  An Intimate Dinner

  I found my sunglasses in the car — the same ridiculous Miu Miu glasses with a round white frame that I had been wearing when I ran away from Clive. Their retro-fashion look was, again, completely out of place. I put them on because I couldn't stand to be seen crying by Edward or by the people at the hotel, or by anyone, but when I was in my room again I took them off and cried as much as I wanted.

  Then I picked up my mobile, because there was no point in crying, or feeling bad. I was not the protagonist of that situation, it wasn't about me at all, and I knew it.

  I had Chris's number now and dialed it, but it was busy. I thought some more, a few more tears escaped my eyes and I tried again, it was still busy. I called a third time and still got the busy signal. Finally, it was my phone that rang and it was Chris.

  "I want to apologize..." both of us said at the same time.

  He laughed on the other side. “What on earth do you want to apologize for?"

  "I acted like a stupid coward. I'm sorry! I am stronger than that, it was just –"

  He interrupted me: "I should have prepared you and I didn't and for that I am really sorry. But I called because I don't want you to be in your room all sad.
In this country we don't leave sad people alone. It's a bore at times, but you'll have to put up with it. I will come and get you, we can cook something at my house and have a calm chat."

  Thoughts were going through my mind at maximum speed: was this a move? Did I want to talk to him when I had been crying? And could I trust him?

  The thing that I hated the most from the fallout with Clive was this new confusion, this way of seeing danger everywhere, of finding bad or selfish intentions in what men did, when before I had gotten along very well with the majority of them.

  "And this isn't a cheap move," Chris said. "It's not any kind of move."

  I was relieved that he just said it. I laughed with a clogged nose. "All right, but you'll let me cook!"

  "I was actually hoping you would say that. I'll pick you up at five?"

  I found myself taking a long shower, washing my hair and then wondering what I should wear, though I did not have much to choose from. I put on jeans and a printed silk top that I had bought in a chic store in Phnom Penh. I also took a cardigan, as we were high up and nights could be chilly.

  Chris came by at five on the dot and we drove up a serpentine road. His house was a simple and modern construction in white that had an even better view than the hospital or my hotel. It also had a lovely terrace, looking out onto the lake and a small garden around it.

  I got out of the car and stood looking at the light just before the end of day, which made the lake silver and the hills almost pink. I realized it wasn't by accident that they had put the hospital where it was ─ the view would bring solace to the sick, even give them hope and speed the recovery of the ones who could be saved.

  He opened the door, grocery bags hanging from one hand, and I followed him inside. We were right away in an open kitchen that led to a living room. The place was bare except for a sofa, two armchairs and a low table. There was a big TV: I imagined he would watch football and films, as well as the news, in the little spare time he had. Some African cloths were draped over the furniture; I recognized two Maasai blankets and remembered that he had been born near the frontier with Kenya. There were drawings by children tacked to the wall, but no photos or any other personal items. It was obvious that he spent little time here, probably just enough to sleep and shower.