Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa

by Warren Durrant

  I had heard records myself, but never the real thing. There were many fado clubs in the city, and we went to one every night and heard the plangent singing, with its incomparable blend of nostalgia, gallantry and consolation: saudade, in the Portuguese - one of those untranslatable words.

  Up the coast to Inhambane, where we stayed, took an evening stroll and found a small obelisk in the square; and on a plaque, set in the ground: Aqui é Portugal. I wonder if it is there now.

  The Portuguese were there for four centuries, and always called themselves 'Portuguese'; never suffered a sea-change into 'Rhodesians' or 'Australians', etc, as the British do.

  We came to Beira, where we stayed. In the evening, Rufus and I sat in a cafe, waiting for the fado to begin at nine o' clock. That was on the upper floor, and we waited meanwhile in the bar, where were a number of tarts. One sat alone on a stool, advertising her wares, when a gang of Portuguese soldiers came in. They surrounded her, while the corporal questioned her - evidently about the price. It rapidly turned to the third degree. A slap across the face. Too much! Think again! The girl sat sullenly, saying nothing. More slaps, more demands, until finally the corporal grabbed her beads and twisted them until he nearly choked her. Still too much! Finally, he ripped the beads off and flung them across the room.

  All this was too much for the English public schoolboy in Rufus. He got up, walked over to the corporal, took him by the scruff of the neck and marched him under his brawny arm to the door, where he threw him into the street.

  I quietly removed my glasses and watch, anticipating trouble and making ready to go to Rufus's aid.

  Rufus returned to his seat. The rest gathered round us and let off a lot of steam. We stared through them with cold English stares. Presently, they gave it up and marched out after the corporal.

  Meanwhile, the girl sat like an Egyptian statue. What she made of Rufus's action, I have no idea.

  After a night in the Eastern Highlands, I took Rufus to Salisbury on his way to England. Then back to Marandellas and work for me. Anderson had taken a holiday at the same time.

  4 – Umvuma

  I had been a year in Marandellas when early in 1974 I saw that the post of district medical officer at Umvuma was advertised in the customary notice circulated to all stations. This was an established post and therefore one applied for it: government medical officers, or GMOs (the term here used in its specific sense, like second-lieutenant), were simply ordered about. I applied. As usual, I was the only applicant and was appointed. I was to stay here a year, before fate (or something) moved me on.

  I had been doing the work already at Marandellas and have sufficiently described the duties, but now I had the official title - for me, the finest medical job on earth: in that position, I would not have envied the most famous specialist in Harley Street, nor did I.

  I walked into the bar of the Falcon Hotel at sundowner time and announced myself. I was to stay there two weeks while they got my house ready. After I had been shown to my room and deposited my bag, I joined my new friends and patients in the bar. For I was the only doctor in the town and was monarch of all (medical) I surveyed.

  To be more exact, many of those present would attend private doctors in Gwelo or even Salisbury. As there was no private doctor in the town, according to regulations I could establish a private practice myself, which would have augmented my income considerably. I couldn't be bothered. They could come to me anyway, and many did for the usual government fee.

  The hotel was for whites only, like most hotels in the country then; but if race was a problem in Rhodesia, social class was not. Round the bar, which was crowded with the Friday night regulars, I found myself and Jamie, the agricultural officer, representing the professional classes; Jock, from the Gorbals of Glasgow; Bill, from the Falls Road; and Tony, the scion of a noble English house, who died recently a peer of the realm: all British and all on first-name terms, when we would probably never have met in our own country. For when in Rhodesia, the Brits did as the Romans (or 'Rhodies') did, and all white men were literally and metaphorically members of the same club.

  As well as Africans, there were Indians in the town, who owned many of the shops in the arcaded streets - the usual grid pattern being here reduced to its minimum of two streets crossing two others - and lived around the secret courtyards behind them. There was also a Portuguese cafe, whose owners kept to themselves as, like the Indians, they were not invited to do otherwise. The Greeks had made it by then to the white man's club, but not the 'Porks'. They did so later when their own colonies collapsed and Rhodesia needed them. Already, the government had scraped the slums of Naples and Barcelona in 1973 for ' a million whites by the end of the year', and had not found them. And after the war, they had sent home thousands of Italian prisoners of war who wanted to settle, because only British were wanted.

  These things you could discuss with people like Mav or David Taylor, who were part of the twenty per cent liberal vote. Most of these lived in Salisbury. Few of them lived in Umvuma, so the discussion would have been unprofitable there, to say the least - and I've hardly mentioned the black question. It serves no purpose to rub people up the wrong way: I meant to live in this town and you got on best with people by approaching them on their positive side.

  Beside the Falcon Hotel, the town boasted the district commissioner's office, the police station, post office and telephone exchange, two small churches (English and Dutch), and a swimming pool (whites only). There was the club (ditto). There was a backyard gold mine with a tall defunct chimney which could be seen ten miles away, and served as a sort of symbol of the town, which lay off the main Salisbury road to the south on a branch road to Gwelo, fifty miles to the west. There was a small leafy suburb and a small African location. There was a small ramshackle Coloured township, called Blinkwater. And there was a small railway station.

  This lay on the Fort Victoria-Gwelo single-track line. The train left Fort Victoria one day, via a 'blink-once town', Chatsworth, then Umvuma: another 'blink-once', called Lalapanzi; and so to Gwelo by evening: next day, the same in reverse order. At each of these places everyone, including the crew, got down for drinks, tempered by a bar lunch at Umvuma. One could see why the trains were restricted to a speed of twenty miles an hour, quite apart from the many dry halts in between. At Umvuma, the stationmaster himself was by no means standoffish, and while he usually received the train in his official capacity on its arrival, it was frequently flagged out by his fourteen-year-old daughter on its departure.

  The hospital was small - 100 beds - but had the usual facilities, including operating theatre, as did all district hospitals. It lay below the tracks near the location. It admitted Africans only, but had a European clinic. The only other white on the staff was June, the secretary.

  June was a tough little spinster of about fifty, with a tanned, cheery face, who lived with her old father in an old house near the hospital. She had been born and bred in Umvuma and was a pillar of local society, especially at the club where she played bowls. She was an independent spirit and was afraid of no one.

  Too independent sometimes for my comfort. She handled the mail. One day I received a letter from head office which began: 'Your offensive letter of 25 ult refers', and went on to deal with matters I had never heard about. I took it through to June, whose office lay outside mine. 'What's this about, June?'

  'O, that's some nonsense I thought you couldn't be bothered with. I just wrote back and told them if they wanted to know they should get off their fat butts and come down and see for themselves' - all over the subscription: 'Squiggle, pp District Medical Officer'.

  I would see the European patients in my office, where I had installed a couch. They waited on the veranda outside June's office and she called them through. The previous doctor had given them a very different service.

  I suppose he had engaged in private practice because he was a family man; but Dr Blood, in spite of his formidable name, was a very nice man who lived in terror of his
white patients. June told me how the week-ends, when they were most likely to have their road accidents, were a nightmare to him. I would cut up a white man with as much relish as I would cut up a black one (and I hope I treated both like the Queen of England). I positively looked forward to a juicy road accident, black or white; and to have to send a patient to a specialist was like cutting off a finger to me. I even talked of opening up a windowless store-room as a 'white ward', as if any of them would have stayed a day in that prison. But I can understand Pete's fear, as the whites were more likely to bite the hand that cut them (so to speak) than their black brethren. Years later, I went through a bout of litigation fear, myself, and I know how unpleasant it can be. Then I decided that the only thing a doctor has to fear is his own conscience, and that is bad enough, in all conscience. So I was able to separate the two, and dismiss the other. But far be it from me to give poor Pete, or anyone else, a lecture - even if I have done, as the Irishman said.

  But Pete ran a clinic at his house, which I could not be bothered with, especially as I was not charging for my services. The DC had a quiet word with me about this in the club. 'People much happier with Dr Blood's arrangement. Didn't feel at ease in the African hospital, etc.' I explained politely the inconvenience to me, and forgot about it.

  June was aware of these feelings: she knew everything that was going on in the little town. Fortunately for the DC, this particular complaint never reached her ears or she would not have hesitated to give him a plainer explanation than mine.

  Like the case of the police reservists. As the emergency developed, the local farmers entered the police reserve - voluntarily at first, I think. Wholesale conscription came later. They had to have vaccinations, so June marched them into a convenient room and instructed the black MA to get on with it.

  At the club the following Saturday night, one of them complained to me about this: 'Serving the country, etc. Expected the doc to do it.' This time the complaint did reach June's ears: she was standing nearby. I didn't have to say a word: I might have been a West African chief with a 'linguist' to do the job for me.

  June planted herself between me and the complainant: a number of fellow complainants were standing behind him, and all got the full treatment.

  'What sort of a bunch of bloody pansies are you lot then?' she opened up. 'Do you think no one can touch your lily-white skins except the doctor? Do you think the doc's got nothing else to do? The medical assistants do the vaccinations; are perfectly capable of doing them; always have done them; and always will.' And that was that. June could have been the matron, and a formidable one too.

  As Hermanus was the next to find out. Hermanus was a farmer, who called the ambulance out for a sick worker. Fair enough. But when the ambulance driver arrived at Hermanus's house, he found the 'sick worker' lying down on the ground outside, very dead. And obviously dead since some time before Hermanus telephoned. The ambulance driver explained that it was against regulations to carry a cadaver in the ambulance. Hermanus retorted: 'I'm going to check with the doctor. 'He walked into his house, walked three times round the table and came out again. 'The doctor says it's OK.' The perplexed ambulance driver felt he had no choice, but he complained to June. He knew who to complain to.

  Suffice it say that Hermanus got a very plain lecture in the club next Saturday on the uses and abuses of ambulances, and June didn't care how many other people got the benefit of the lecture at the same time.

  Another thing that 'got June's goat' was when whites, especially women, asked her if she didn't feel 'at risk', all alone in that 'Kaffir hospital', with the doctor not always at her side and sometimes out on his rounds. '"At risk"!' June would snarl in contempt. 'Why the hell should I feel at risk? They are perfectly civilised people. I've known them for years and I trust every one of them.'

  Astute as she was, even June could be deceived by the serpent of rumour. Japie van Blerk was the only Afrikaner I knew who looked like a leprechaun. He was red-haired, skinny and small. His sharp eyes stood closer to his thin nose than most other people's. His portrait may be seen as 'Sly', the goblin, in the sanitised (de-golliwogged) editions of Enid Blyton's Noddy books. He was a district officer cadet, and supplemented his slender salary by giving lifts in government vehicles to Africans at fifty cents a time: a concession to African custom (among them lifts were always paid for) in which his professional obligation to educate himself would not have excused him, because, needless to say, it was clean against regulations.

  Although born and bred in the country and fully aware of its peculiar ways of thinking, when he took over his small government house, he installed a female black cook instead of the usual male one. This led to a good deal of ribbing at the club and the bar of the Falcon.

  One night, at the latter place, he turned on his latest tormentor, a large policeman, and punched him on the jaw. Instantly regretting his rash action, he turned tail and fled from the pub. The enraged policeman followed.

  It had been raining. The policeman slipped in a puddle outside and continued his journey feet first before nearly knocking himself unconscious on the pavement; Japie meanwhile making good his escape.

  An imperfect version of this story reached June's ears, and next morning she informed me: 'That little Japie van Blerk is tougher then he looks. Did you hear how he knocked out Bertie Kriel outside the Falcon last night?'

  My house was on the edge of the town, on a hill, and overlooked the town and the green ocean of the veld beyond. Once again, as I sat on my veranda with pipe and drink and book, I thought I was looking south, until I took a look at the map and found it was the opposite.

  The house was probably the largest DMO's house in the country. It had been built for a former mine manager. The government bought it during a depression, and now the present mine manager lived at my feet almost in a mobile home, while they were building him something permanent. The front veranda, which went round a projecting front, must have been thirty yards long. There was a large dining room, sitting room and three large bedrooms. Anderson had a kaya at the back. The garden was large and I soon employed a gardener. It had a fine collection of aloes and cycads. And I wandered about in that house like a lost soul. A little white boy told his mother, 'I'm never going to be an old bachelor like the doc when I grow up and live in a big lonely house like that.'

  I had my books sent out from England for the first time. I had my record player and a good collection of LPs. Wednesday, I gave Anderson a half day and took sundowners and supper at the Falcon. They had got me playing bowls, so Saturday afternoon and evening I spent at the club, where a light supper was served. Sunday, I had drinks and a bar lunch at the Falcon. Sunday afternoon, I usually spent fishing with friends, ending with sundowners and supper at the hotel. A regular life but, as the little boy said, 'lonely' - and in the celibate way he meant.

  The reader may wonder how I had reached the ripe old age of forty-six without getting caught. All I will say is, I had met women I wanted to marry, and women who wanted to marry me, but until I met my wife, a few years later, they were never the same ones. And I would have been a less melancholy soul if I had known about the bright day that was not too distant.

  As I say, I went fishing - first with George. He was often to be seen at the bar of the Falcon, or with his wife and sister at the tables outside. He always wore an old shirt and pair of trousers held up with braces, a punched-out trilby hat like the Africans and again like Africans, sandals made of old car tyres. He was then about sixty. Like June, he had been born and bred in this little town - called a 'dorp' by those who did not live in it, and by some who did. He had worked on the mine and lived all his life in Umvuma except for five years away in the army in East Africa during the war. Now he was retired. He was short and fat. He and his skinny womenfolk lived in a dilapidated house near the station, which smelt of the sixteen cats they kept. In South Africa, he would have been called a 'poor white'. Nobody thought that way in classless Rhodesia or used that term (not quite true). He would bu
y the future earl a drink in the bar, and the earl-to-be would buy him one. And George had wealth of another kind, which I envied him.

  He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the veld: every tree and flower and their seasons, every bird and animal, every fish in the rivers. And he could speak fluent Shona, the main African language of the country. Most of the white people spoke Fanagalo: 'kitchen Kaffir’ - a sort of corrupted Zulu which is the native lingua franca from Cape to Congo and very useful. Africans, however, find it degrading and 'colonial' (though they would use it among themselves when they had to, as in the mines): white Shona speakers are rare and respected by the Africans because they imply respect. Shona is a difficult language. George never learnt it from books - which is practically impossible anyway, say I, after a dozen failed attempts. George learnt it by running about barefoot in the veld as a child with the black children: something not so uncommon among the white countryfolk, at least for the boys. The girls were kept away from the black children in case of 'moral contamination'. Nevertheless, the farm language tended towards Fanagalo, and as I said, true Shona speakers were rare. Town whites barely spoke either.

  George showed me all the local dams, where we caught bream and the universal barbel; and the Canadian bass on the specially stocked farm dams. There was no angling society in Umvuma as there were in the larger towns, but we were welcome to the farm dams and that at the Catholic mission at Driefontein. George always gave notice of our arrival, nevertheless, to farmer or father: a polite but not strictly required formality I and my later friends usually dispensed with. George was very particular about Ian McArthur's dam, which according to George, had problems with the 'railway people'.

  'Ian doesn't mind his own workers fishing in his dam, doc; but he doesn't want those railway people coming here.'