“Oh yes, I remember now, day and night are about the same length,” Amie interrupted.
“Yes, and you won’t notice much difference in the seasons either, except it rains more during certain months. Believe me, it can get monotonous.”
“Really?” said Amie. “But think of all the British and the other Northern Europeans who rush to sit in the sun every year.”
“True, but you can have too much of a good thing, and sometimes you long for a cold day and a chilly breeze and even some grey skies,” Diana replied.
“I really can’t imagine that,” said Amie.
“Just give it time my dear and you’ll feel the same,” Diana laughed.
“So, what are we going to see today?”
“I thought I would take you and show you the markets. Once you have a maid, then you can take her and give her the list of things to get. Keep that in mind, because if you try to buy the produce yourself, then the prices will be triple or even more.”
“Because they think we can afford more?”
“Yes, and it’s really throwing money away. Not all African countries have this multi-tier price system, but here they are so poor, they’ll grab anything they can get. They’ll assume you’re a tourist and loaded with cash and charge you accordingly.”
“Do you get many tourists here?” Amie asked.
“Very few, there’s really nothing to see, and very few facilities. There are a couple of horrendously expensive bush lodges which cater for rich Americans, and one of them caters for the hunting fraternity.”
“I hate to think people still want to kill animals,” said Amie.
“It’s big money business,” replied Diana. “They pay thousands and thousands to go out into the bush, shoot some poor, luckless creature and then have their photograph taken with one foot on the dead body.”
“Are there lots of wild animals out there?” asked Amie.
“Not as many as there were. I must admit we don’t go out of town all that often, although there are a few expatriates who take to the bush whenever they can. I’m a bit too old now for roughing it in the wild. Give me a comfortable bed, water from the taps and electricity on demand, although both of those are pretty erratic here.”
Diana had come to collect Amie in her own car, and as they walked down the front steps of the hotel, they were immediately surrounded by a group of noisy, dirty, children who all held their hands out and begged for money.
“No,” said Diana sharply, “I’ve already reserved my car guard, see that tall one over there.” As she pointed, an older boy, dressed in a scruffy t-shirt and ragged shorts got to his feet. He gave Diana a huge smile and held out his hand. Diana gave him a few coins and he bowed so low, his head touched his knees.
As they got into the car Diana said, “When you get your own car, you’ll be asked for money every time you park. Look around for the biggest boy, usually the leader, and give him a few coins. Promise him more, if the car is still there, or undamaged when you return, and always pay. If you don’t, then you’ll be lucky to get away without a broken window or two, a flat tyre, or several large scratches on the paintwork.”
“It sounds like a protection racket!” exclaimed Amie.
“That’s exactly what it is, the young learn early here. Everyone’s on the take.” Diana pulled into the flow of traffic. “First, I’ll show you the market I use, and then I thought you might like to visit one of the schools where we lend a hand.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” said Amie, though she had little experience of schools other than her own. Instead of taking the direct route through town, Diana drove past many of the important landmarks and Amie gazed in awe at the tall government buildings constructed of steel and smoked glass, each surrounded by bright green lawns and colourful flower beds. Right on the boundary, street sellers were peddling their wares. Women sat on the pavements outside these tall, elegant buildings, next to plastic sheets covered with vegetables, cheap plastic toys and wooden carvings. In turn, these were surrounded with discarded wrappings, several pieces of rotting fruit, and other general rubbish.
“That sort of lowers the tone of the place,” she remarked to Diana.
“That’s typically African,” her new friend replied. “They set up right next to the manicured gardens, and leave litter all around the place, and do you see any toilets for them to use?”
“No. So what do they do?”
“I’ll leave that to your imagination,” said Diana.
To Amie it appeared the presidential palace was a cross between a Disney fairy tale castle and an English baronial residence. “It looks well-guarded,” she remarked. There were guards at the main gates which were firmly closed and topped with razor wire and there were CCTV cameras mounted on the walls every few metres.
“Yes, no one is allowed near the place, remember, the aim is to stay in power at all costs,” said Diana. “You’ll notice all the major buildings, like those for government departments and ministries are new and very smart, but they are seldom maintained properly. The Africans seem to have a mental block when it comes to looking after things. It’s often easier to knock down the old building and start afresh. Some of these places look very smart from the outside, but look more closely and the plumbing probably doesn’t work all that well, half the light bulbs are missing, and in some cases, even the concrete cladding is beginning to fall off. The standard of building isn’t very high, especially when you see how fast they’re thrown together.”
“What are they building over there?” Amie asked, pointing to a huge construction site where there was frantic activity.
“Ah, that’s our new convention centre, to house exhibitions and shows and gala banquets. They’ve been building it for a couple of years now, but recently, they seemed to have increased the number of workers and it looks as if they will finish it after all.”
When they reached the market, Amie was amazed at the size of it, covering the space of at least three football fields. There were rows and rows of women – she saw very few men- sitting on the ground next to the familiar plastic sheets and all of them were piled high with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Most were dressed in brightly coloured cotton dresses, and matching headscarves. A few of the ladies were sitting under bright umbrellas, advertising beer and Coca Cola, and some held pieces of cardboard above their heads, but most had no shade at all.
Many of the makeshift stalls were selling the same fruits and vegetables and Amie rightly guessed that all the produce on offer was currently in season. There were meat sellers too, guarding their piles of raw flesh covered in flies which they didn’t even bother to disperse as prospective buyers approached.
“You don’t buy your meat here, do you!” gasped Amie.
“Not a chance,” laughed Diana. “You’d need a very strong constitution not to get food poisoning from eating this stuff, but then the locals boil all their meat, they like it very well done.”
Amie watched in disgust as an old woman haggled with the seller, before picking up a few pieces of stringy offal and slinging it into a plastic bag. She handed over a few coins.
“Eating meat almost daily is essential for most Africans,” Diana commented.
The fruits and vegetables looked more appetizing, but there were several Amie didn’t recognize.
“Most are members of the pumpkin or squash family,” Diana told her. “They grow in all shapes, sizes and colours. Frankly, I think most of them are quite tasteless, and the vegetables which are more familiar to us, like peas and green beans, you’ll only get in the supermarket. This market is only for food, but I’ll take you to the other markets which also sell clothing and baskets and household wares. Once you move into your own place, I’ll draw you a map so you can find your way back here, but let’s go to see the school.”
Even at the market, there was a small group of young boys, crowding round asking for money.
“Don’t start handing out coins,” Diana warned Amie, “only pay if, for exampl
e they’re guarding your car. Once you give to one, dozens more will materialize from nowhere and pester you.”
“I feel so bad not helping them,” said Amie looking at the large, round eyes and thin bodies that showed through the holes in their clothing. Some of the children had scars on their faces, others had sores on their arms and legs.
“Yes, I know it’s sad,” said Diana as they drove away, “but you do learn to cope with it after a while. You have to be tough here to survive into adulthood. None of us can put things right, they must, eventually, do that for themselves.”
Secretly, Amie thought Diana was more than a little tough herself, she knew she would never get used to the poverty she saw, and her heart ached to see so much suffering.
The school was on the outskirts of town, reached by a dirt road, that caused a large cloud of dust to rise up behind the car. On either side of the road were rows and rows of shacks, built of a wide variety of materials, tin sheeting, wood from packing cases, a few bricks, old tyres, and large pieces of plastic. Around some of the structures was an area of bare ground and a few even had makeshift fences to enclose the yard. Everywhere Amie looked, she could see piles of rubbish, old coke bottles, bits of paper and cardboard, rusty tins and old rags.
“Here we are,” said Diana as they drove up to the school. To Amie’s amazement, she saw the whole complex was surrounded by a chain link fence topped with yet more barbed wire. As the car approached, an old man carrying a large stick shuffled forward and opened the gates for them.
“It looks more like a prison than a school!” Amie exclaimed.
“Yes, but theft is rife and once the word got around that the school was given three new computers, it became a target. It often costs more to protect the equipment installed by sponsors and overseas donations, than the stuff cost in the first place,” Diana replied as they parked by the main building and got out of the car. “These donations can be a burden in their own right.”
Amie looked at the sprawling one-storey buildings linked by covered walkways. The grounds were bare earth, again, much of it covered with litter of all sorts: papers, tin cans, bottles and she even noticed a couple of used condoms. Here and there were patches of tall grass and a few bushes.
“Yes, it’s a bit of a mess, and we have suggested they clear it up, but they don’t really get the point,” Diana remarked.
Many of the windows were broken, despite the wire mesh and steel bars protecting them, and Amie could hear dozens of young voices chanting as they walked towards the principal’s office.
Amie’s feet were soon covered in dust as they crossed the bare playground but before they had even reached the veranda, a lady rushed out to greet them, her face wreathed in smiles. Amie guessed she might be the school secretary as she was more smartly dressed than many of the local people she had seen so far.
“Ah, Mama Diana,” she shrieked. “You have come to see us and brought us a visitor too! Come, come, I will bring you tea.”
Like a sheep dog with only two sheep, she herded them into a small room, assuring them the headmistress would be with them in a couple of minutes.
As they perched on the upright wooden chairs Amie looked around. The walls were covered with pieces of brightly coloured cardboard. On each of them, someone had written a phrase such as ‘Always do you’re Best,’ ‘God is Watchin You all the Time,’ ‘Always Tel the Truth,’ and the words were surrounded by pictures of flowers, birds, green grass and trees.
“You’ll think me cynical, but that last one is a joke,” whispered Diana with a smile. “If a lie serves you better, then often better to lie.”
Amie nodded nervously. She was more amused by the incorrect spelling and the interesting use of capital letters and the bold underlining of the phrases to indicate their importance.
A few minutes later the Secretary reappeared with a tray balancing cups, saucers and a plate of biscuits, closely followed by the headmistress.
Diana introduced Amie to Mrs Motswezi. She was a cheerful, plump lady, smartly dressed in a bright purple polyester suit. She was of average height, with large brown eyes and wore her straightened hair scraped back into a very short pony tail. She welcomed her visitors and ushered them into her brightly decorated office, which housed a desk, filing cabinet, three chairs and florescent red curtains. She poured the tea carefully, then added milk and three sugars to each cup. Amie gulped, she didn’t take sugar in tea, but was too polite to say anything.
“You have come to see our children?” enquired Mrs Motswezi, handing the cups across the desk.
“Yes,” Diana answered. “Amie has just arrived from England, and I wanted to bring her in and introduce her.”
“That is so nice. We are only a poor school, but we do our best, especially with the hostel.”
“The hostel?” asked Amie.
“Here there are big problems with HIV/AIDS, and so many of our little ones have no parents at all. Some of the older children are now parents to the children, but those very little ones are all alone, so we use three of the classrooms as a hostel.”
“So, they live at school?”
“Yes, even in the holidays. They have nowhere else to go. They do not know their families, especially if their parents moved to town from the rural areas. Most of them have no idea who the father is.” Mrs Motswezi shook her head sadly. “So often the men just run away when they hear there is to be a child. They know the mother will ask for money and they do not want to give money. Aiiieeee! They go and take another woman and they do not come back.”
“How sad,” said Amie. “Are there many of these children?”
“Yes, there are very, very many, but only a few we can help. The others? Who knows where they go, but they come to school many days and we teach them what we can. And,” Mrs Motswezi added proudly, “we teach them in English, we know so much of the world speaks English and this is what makes our children to be so successful.”
Amie managed to gulp down the sickly tea and crunch through a very stale biscuit, as the headmistress described the children, the staff and the facilities she had already, and the plans she had for the future. As Mrs Motswezi gave them a tour of the school, Amie was part amused and part horrified by what she saw. There were a few posters on the walls, many of the words, all in English, were misspelled and the usual method of teaching was getting the children to repeat words and sentences by rote. She wondered if most of them had any idea what they were chanting. Each of the classrooms was filled to bursting point, with two or three children sharing a desk. There were only a few textbooks to be seen and no teaching aids at all beyond a blackboard and small piles of chalk. A few of the older children had an exercise book and they copied laboriously from the blackboard, while those without books waited patiently for them to finish writing. There were no science labs, no gym, no hall and the sports equipment, one deflated football and a set of mismatched coloured bands. What a stark contrast to British schools, thought Amie, as she watched a teacher sitting under a tree with her class of children grouped around her. It was all so very different to her own educational experience.
Mrs Motswezi lead them over to the furthest building next to which was a makeshift shelter housing a row of big, black, three-legged, cooking pots, just like the ones they used in the old Hollywood films boiling the beautiful heroine. Piles of dry wood burned under each pot and three ladies were using large wooden paddles to stir what looked like porridge as it bubbled and boiled over the heat.
“We give the children vegetables for lunch,” said Mrs Motswezi proudly, “and we grow these ourselves in our own vegetable garden, come look at it.”
Amie thought there seemed to be a lot more weeds than vegetables, but she recognized a few cabbages and onion stalks struggling for survival against all odds. The garden also seemed very small for feeding so many children.
“How many children do you have at this school?” she asked the headmistress.
“Maybe six hundred, but they don’t all come every day.”
Amie turned to count the number of classrooms; there were twelve being used for teaching. “So that means you have about fifty children in each class?” she asked.
“Yes, they are large classes,” Mrs Motswezi replied, “but we have more in our pre-school, come we will go visit them next.”
Amie gazed at the crowd of small faces who turned to look at the visitors as they walked into the pre-school classroom. Some of the children smiled and jumping to their feet came to crowd round the new arrivals. As in every other classroom they had seen, Mrs Motswezi told the children that Amie was a visitor from England and as one, the children chanted “Good morning, visitor from England.”
Amie felt tears in her eyes as she gazed at the little faces. Some looked happy and eager, others looked sad and beaten, as if they knew, even at this early age, life was going to be one long struggle for survival. One child in particular caught her attention. Right at the very back was a small girl with the largest eyes Amie had ever seen. When the other children jumped to their feet, she noticed this little one was pushed to one side, falling over before scrambling to her feet again.
Mrs Motswezi saw Amie’s face and beckoned the teacher to come over and they spoke for a few moments in the local language.
“That little one has no parents and she is not thriving,” she told Amie pointing to the child she’d noticed. “Maybe one day someone will take her and give her a good home, who knows. We do not know where she comes from, she was found by the gate many months ago.”
Amie looked at the little girl again and wished she had something to give her. The child’s filthy dress was much too small for her and was torn in several places.
“Does she stay here in the hostel?” she asked the teacher, but it was Mrs Motswezi who answered.
“Yes, she has nowhere else to go. She is called Angelina, but I think God has forgotten this little angel, we do the best we can for all our little ones.”
In the car on the way back to the hotel, Amie was very quiet.
Amie in Africa Box Set 1 Page 7