by Giles Foden
‘I’m sure they try not to be,’ I said, ‘any doctor does – but it’s the same problem everywhere, I’m afraid. In my country there are terrible arguments going on about who should pay for medical care. And in America, you have to have insurance to get anywhere at all.’
I watched his expression as he absorbed this information. A furrow went across his high brow. I wondered – twisted awkwardly backwards to look at him, with his black plastic spectacles perched on his nose and his limp-collared white shirt – whether I had said something out of place.
‘Sir, I do not think you have been in Uganda very long,’ he said. ‘Even wealthy families here suffer from many deaths in a single year. When I listen to the BBC World Service or go to read the newspaper in the British Council in Kampala, I am amazed, sir. They make so much fuss in Britain when just one person is killed. In Uganda we are the world champions of death by comparison, but I never hear a single mention of this. I never see or hear a single report in all my life.’
I made a kind of sympathetic gesture with my mouth, unsure of what was expected of me at this point. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said eventually. ‘I’m sure I’ll be confronted with the worst of it all pretty soon.’
‘My family are from Mbarara,’ he informed me then. ‘So I know that place. I am shifting there to see them. My name is Boniface Malumba. You must call me Bonney. Because I know some white people who never use first names, if they ever speak to us one bit.’
He sank back into his seat – as uncomfortable as mine, so far as I could tell.
‘That’s very rude,’ I said, confused, ‘I won’t do that.’ I wish you’d leave me alone, I thought to myself.
Then he grinned sheepishly. ‘Doctor Garrigan, I am sorry for my words. It is not your fault. You are good man, I can see. You are welcome at my father’s house in Mbarara. I will send word for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be lovely.’
I turned back round, glad to be relieved of the double burden of having to conduct a conversation like that while twisted round on those torturous springs. The old woman next to me, who had a turban on her head, appeared to be the proprietor of the goat beneath the seat. It was getting restive. She gave the poor creature a kick, then smiled at me with toothless gums.
My thighs were still hurting as we carried on into the countryside, in spite of the folded jacket. We passed clumps of banana plantations by the side of the road and open lorries going in the opposite direction, most of them piled high with the waxy fruit – it’s eaten green, in a savoury dish, not yellow like at home – and belching out clouds of black exhaust. There were boys with bananas, too, the large bunches of forty or fifty balanced precariously on the back of their old-fashioned bicycles.
The towns along the way had intriguing names – Mpigi, Buwama, Lukaya, Masaka, Mbirizi, Lyantonde – but were all run down and rather dull, most of them simply a string of single-storey shops and houses along the road. Only Masaka was of any substance. We stopped there for a break and I grabbed some beef and rice at the Tropic-o’-Paradise Restaurant, where – on a crude poster of a dusky pirate clutching a struggling girl – ‘mouthwatering food’ was advertised. It wasn’t.
Near Sanga, the next village along from Lyantonde, the main incident of interest on my trip took place. There was a blast on the horn and we came to a juddering, wheezing halt – you could actually hear the driver pumping on the brakes. The goat-kicking woman tugged at my sleeve and pointed, saying something I did not understand.
Looking ahead, over the other passengers, I saw a pile of branches in the road and farther along a lorry slewed across it. The branches, I realized, were the Ugandan equivalent of traffic cones, or a danger triangle.
I leant over to get a better view. It was not a banana but a tea lorry, with the name of one of the main trading companies, James Finlay, emblazoned across the door of the cab, which had swung open. All across the tarmac in front were sacks of tea, some of them split open so that the black powder spilled out. Only it didn’t look as if the powder had spilled out, but as if the tarmac had crumbled and was climbing into the bags.
Next to the road a man, who must have been the driver, was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands. I could also see a number of soldiers, a couple of them perched on the sacks of tea, drinking beer out of bottles, and more next to a canvas bivouac under a mango tree.
The chatter in the bus fell silent. One of the soldiers had climbed in. He was wearing a shabby green uniform and a crumpled forage cap, and he carried an automatic rifle. It looked heavy, with at least three curving magazines of ammunition, one stuck in, the others taped on, side by side, ready to be flipped up. I was also intrigued to see, as he walked down the aisle, that on his feet he wore a pair of pink fluffy slippers.
The soldier said something loudly and people began to reach into their bags and the folds of their clothing, bringing out tattered identity papers. I dug around for my passport. When it came to my turn, I handed it to him meekly, keeping an eye on the end of the gun which, hung over his shoulder with the ungainly bundle of magazines banging into his hip, swung dangerously near my nose.
The soldier flicked through the pages of my passport, looked at me, closed it, and then opened it again, flicking through once more. I glanced up at him expectantly, but he obviously didn’t speak English. Then he beckoned to me to come with him, waving the passport like a reproach.
I turned round and looked anxiously at Boniface. He said something to the soldier but the soldier just snapped at him and began to pull at my clothes.
I stood up. ‘What does he want?’ I asked Boniface.
Boniface made the money sign with his thumb and forefinger. ‘He wants shillings,’ he whispered. ‘You will have to give him some. If you don’t, he will be troublesome.’
I turned to face the soldier, raising my palms in a gesture of surrender, as if he was pointing the gun at me – which he was, more or less – and nodding stupidly. Don’t be frightened, I told myself. I reached down and fumbled in the inside pocket of the folded jacket on the seat, trying to extract a 200-shilling note without showing my wallet. When I managed to get something, it turned out to be 500 shillings.
The soldier tucked it into one of the pouches on his belt, without a word, and moved along up the bus as if the encounter had not taken place. Everyone else had got their money ready by now, from the civil-servant types to the poorest-looking old women. They were all so calm (even the babies seemed to have gone quiet) and apparently inured to the procedure that he might as well have been making the collection at church.
Except for one. When the soldier came alongside the prosperous-looking man with the blue suit, he leant over him and slammed his hand down on the brown case, barking an order in Swahili – meaning, I supposed, that the man should open it.
I was surprised to hear the man reply in English. ‘I am a Kenyan diplomat doing government business in Uganda,’ he said, as if he were making a statement in court. ‘You have no right to make me open this case. I can show you my passport, I can show you my papers.’
The soldier’s face turned ugly – he let off a barrage of abuse at the Kenyan and then went to the front of the bus, shouting.
‘It is not good,’ whispered Boniface.
Two more soldiers climbed aboard. They approached the Kenyan and started to pull the case off his knee. The man bent over, hugging the case as if it were a child.
‘You have no right to do this,’ he protested. ‘What you are doing is wrong. My visas and my permits are in order.’
The soldiers kept saying something, kept repeating a word over and over again.
‘They are saying,’ Boniface explained, ‘that he is a spy.’
One of the new soldiers (this one was wearing no shoes at all, and a pair of trousers so ragged they were indecent) swung his gun round. Hard. The ugly sight sticking up at the end tore into the Kenyan’s cheek. The original soldier wrenched the case away, as the others started slapping the man abo
ut his bloodied face.
The man moaned. The long noise of it came down the bus as the soldiers clattered off with the case. I watched them walk towards their fellows under the mango tree, one of them hefting the case up on to his head.
People began to talk again, and the driver started up the engine. As we skirted the sacks of tea and the lorry, which hadn’t moved – the driver was still sitting there with his head in his hands – Boniface tapped me on the shoulder.
‘You see how we have to suffer in Africa,’ he said, ‘you see how we have a life that is very hard.’
‘Yes,’ I said, nonplussed, ‘yes.’
Feeling guilty, I reached under the seat, where my bag was (the goat, having stopped thrashing about, had sunk into a near catatonic state), and rummaged around. I stood up and pushed through with my plastic first-aid box to where the Kenyan was sitting. He was just looking straight ahead. Blood was running down his cheek, falling on to his shirt in thick globules.
The wound was nastier than I had imagined. A flap of skin hung down, raw, where the sight had caught him. I could see at once that it would need stitching. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I am a doctor. I can treat your wound.’
I leaned over him. Several of the other passengers had got up and were crowding behind me, intrigued at what the muzungu was doing. The Kenyan, as if snapping out of a trance, lifted one of his hands. He turned round to face me, the blood streaming down.
‘How dare you come to me like this?’ he said, quietly. ‘What good are you to me now? You said nothing when you should have come forward. The soldiers, they would not have harmed me, or taken money from these people if you had stepped forward. They are afraid to hurt white people.’
‘But they took money from me as well,’ I said, rather too defensively. ‘Look, let me just see to your wound. You’re losing blood.’
I pulled some lint out of the kit and moved to press it on the gash. But the Kenyan, to my surprise, hit my hand away. The watching group gave out a little gasp. Several of them started shouting at the Kenyan.
He stood next to me, great gouts of blood coming out from where the flap of skin hung.
‘I do not need help from you,’ he said. ‘You did not step forward when you had the power. You say you are a doctor but in fact I think you come to Africa to take from us, like all muzungu.’
He gave a dignified nod on finishing his speech and then sat down, oblivious to his wound. I didn’t know what to say. The heat in the bus made me feel slightly faint – the heat from the sun, from the press of the bodies behind me, and the hot uproar of the engine coming through the soles of my shoes. I stood for a moment, looking at him there, the flap of skin hanging on his bleeding face, embarrassment and confusion rising in mine.
And then I thought – I’m almost too ashamed to put it down – I thought of reaching over and pulling the damn thing off, pulling it off his face in one swift, uncompromising movement. As if I were removing a plaster.
I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t, and I don’t remember getting back to my seat, only the consoling and dirty looks for him and me from the other passengers, who had launched into a discussion. Some, I think, may have been sniggering, whether at me or the Kenyan I didn’t know.
Boniface was kind, though; he appreciated my predicament. ‘Do not be sad, sir,’ he said, rubbing my arm. ‘It is not his fault. Since the soldiers came, it has been like this everywhere.’
6
The matatu arrived in Mbarara at about four o’clock in the afternoon. It was a dusty sort of a town. Bonney, having made me promise again to come and visit his family as soon as possible, showed me to a hotel. The Agip Motel, it was called; the Speke seemed quite luxurious by comparison. After checking in and taking a shower, I tried to ring Merrit from the front desk. But the phones were down.
So I set off to find his house, asking people in the street for directions. Everyone seemed to know who he was and where he lived, but it still took me quite a long time and a number of enquiries. On the way I passed an army barracks and a group of government offices with tatty signs: ‘Central Bureau of Forestry’, ‘Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (South-West Rehabilitation Project)’, ‘Centre for Continuing Education (Makerere Outreach Unit)’. A little more imposing – ‘Local Government Court, Southern Province Kikagati/Ibanda Sub-Districts’.
As I walked, I collected a wondrous group of small boys about me, running alongside and calling out.
‘Muzungu, muzungu!’
They capered around.
‘Where are you from?’
Several of them were pushing along little toy cars, about the size of shoe-boxes, twisted out of steel wire. They bowled these along showily in front of me. The toys had an ingenious steering device, involving a bicycle spoke attached to the front axle of the toy and a steering wheel at waist height. You would never, I thought, see kids making that kind of thing at home.
‘Muzungu, are you married?’
‘No, I’m not,’ I said. ‘Are you?’
They giggled, spurring on their vehicles to ever more deft manoeuvres in the dust. The more sophisticated models had mannequin drivers made of stuffed cloth; one even with a soldier’s camouflage uniform, perfect down to the peaked cap perched on top and the deathly grinning face marked on with charcoal.
‘My name is Gugu,’ the driver of that one said. He was a snub-nosed little fellow in a grubby T-shirt, with an infectious smile. I glanced down at him, at his big eyes and perfectly rounded head, his dusty knees and surprisingly aged-looking feet. The price of going barefoot, I supposed.
‘Why do you want doctor?’ continued the boy. ‘Are you sick?’
‘No. I am a doctor. I am going to work here.’
‘I am going to be a mechanic,’ he said, proudly. ‘This is my car. It is a VW Beetle.’
‘It’s very good,’ I said, ‘but shouldn’t he be driving a tank or a jeep, if he’s a soldier?’
‘What is tank?’
‘One with a long gun at the front.’
The boy nodded sagely, and then pointed at a gated fence surrounding a group of buildings.
‘Doctor there.’
I had reached the compound. It was by now about six, and quickly getting dark. Next to the gate stood a building, a sort of military pillbox, except that it was made of mud and straw. A list of names and numbers was painted on a board, nailed into the dried mud of the hut. A hurricane lamp was hung on another nail. Its breathy roar seemed too quick, too bold, for the faintness of its light.
Waziri
–
Canova
Chiric
Ssegu
–
Seabrook
Merrit
Zach
The boys, who had stopped in a ring behind me, suddenly scampered off as I was reading.
‘Bye-bye, muzungu! Bye-bye!’
There was tinkling laughter as they tumbled down the hill. I thought of elves. Then, smelling tobacco smoke, the word Woodbine wound into my head. I realized then that there was someone in the pillbox. Wisps of smoke a-coming out of it that I could smell.
I peered inside. A boot, a fold of cloth, the glow of a pipe. There was a presence there, for certain – the sweeter smell of long occupation overlaying the harsh tobacco – but nothing was said to my intrusion. So I carried on blithely into the compound and knocked at number eight.
The man who opened the door had a moustache the colour of rust. He looked at me for a moment, startled.
‘I’m sorry …’ I began, conscious of it being too late just to turn up on someone’s doorstep.
‘Goodness!’ he said. ‘You must be Doctor Garrigan.’
I shook his hand. He was about fifty, and slightly overweight, with a bizarre white streak down the middle of his brown hair.
‘We’ve been expecting you for ages,’ he said.
‘Oh – I thought I was here on schedule.’
‘Spiny, don’t make him feel it’s his fault,’ said another voice
.
A woman in a blue dress was standing behind him. ‘The Ministry said you were coming last month,’ she explained as he stood aside for her. ‘We sent them a telegram but they didn’t reply. So we didn’t know when you were coming.’
‘Anyway, I’m Alan Merrit. Come in. Pleased to have you on board. This is my wife, Joyce. I’m really embarrassed you’ve had to hunt us out like this. Let me get you a drink, then we can sit down and talk. Sorry about the mix-up. This place is completely bloody, you know.’
The living-room was dimly lit, except for where it opened on to the veranda, through a pair of louvred doors. Insects flitted under a row of spots beyond the doors.
‘We’re out here,’ Mrs Merrit said. ‘Come through.’ She was wearing a pair of heavy lapis lazuli ear-rings that caught the light as they swung.
‘What would you like?’ said Merrit, calling from the kitchen.
‘A beer, please, if you’ve got it,’ I said.
There was the rattle and heavy clunk of a fridge door being opened and closed. Mrs Merrit motioned me to a cane chair and then sat down herself, crossing her legs. A curl of green pressed powder was burning on the table, attached to a wire stand. Next to it, a packet: doom Mosquito Coils, Van der Zyl pvt, Bloemfontein, RSA. The trickle of smoke rose directly up into the rafters. It smelt perfumed, oriental.
‘Now, I want to hear all about your trip,’ she said. ‘Where have you left your things?’
I told her about the man on the matatu, about Boniface and the Agip Motel.
‘Oh, but it’s horrible there,’ she said. ‘There’s no question. You must stay here. We’ll send the watchman down to collect your bags.’
She walked to the edge of the veranda and shouted into the night. ‘Nestor!’
Merrit came in and put a beer down in front of me, the glass foaming, with the half-full bottle alongside it, and opened another for himself. The legend on the bottle said simba, across a painted picture of a lion with its mouth open.