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

by Warren Durrant

  As The Boy in the folk play said, in my Ghana days: WHEN YOU DO GOOD, YOU DO IT TO YOURSELF.

  One day, Lilian told me she had heard from the new matron on the telephone: ‘A nice young voice,’ she said. And a few days later, Terry arrived.

  It is a widespread belief among men that women are materialistic little marital calculating machines from the age of two, thinking of only one thing: the great prize, Man; while men, the poor things, are innocent as the wild deer, until the luckless day they are brought down by the huntress. Bernard Shaw has written a lengthy play on that very proposition. I don’t know about other men, but my own thoughts were as marital-materialistic as the proverbial frustrated spinster’s.

  I was due to go on long leave soon after Terry’s arrival. Quite shamelessly, before she came, I calculated that if this new matron looked like promising material I would postpone my leave and concentrate on her.

  I first set eyes on her when Lilian brought her to the duty room of the European hospital. She was a tall dark woman of about thirty, no particular looks, and rather shy. Over the next days and weeks, I studied her. She had intelligence and force of character, but I did not fall in love with her.

  I did, however, show her operations: I took her to Jock’s hospital (he was then on leave) - things I had not done for previous matrons. But I did not postpone my leave.

  When I was in England, I sent her postcards (which I had never done for matrons before), but while I climbed the hills of my beloved Lake District or swam in the coves of my beloved Cornwall, and sojourned in all my other habitual leave places, including the bricks and mortar of my native (and more mundanely beloved) Merseyside, I did not think often of Terry.

  When I returned, I thought it would be polite to call on her at her house. I did not have a gift: there was no reason why I should, but I took her crumpets and a pot of jam, which my Cornish cousin had given me.

  Terry gave me tea, but had little time to linger, as she had a squash date at the club. The scales fell from my eyes: I saw her beauty, and felt sure then and there that I wanted to marry her.

  Then I got a shock. She said: ‘I’m leaving, Warren.’ And she didn’t mean for the club.

  My heart fell. I didn’t ask her where she was going. I asked her what she was going to do. I hope I don’t have to explain what I meant by that.

  She said she was going to Salisbury at the beginning of the new year to study for the matron’s diploma.

  I almost laughed with relief. It was now October. That gave me three months to do my stuff.

  I gave her supper. We sat on my balcony with sundowners. A flamenco record was strumming on the record player downstairs. Terry liked this. She had made a long tour in Europe with a girl friend, and worked in London for a time. Otherwise, she was a second generation Rhodesian, brought up on a farm near Gwelo. She had three older sisters, all married. It was not a big farm, and her parents had never been rich. Terry had been brought up quite hard. But she had been to a good state boarding school in Gwelo. She had trained as a nurse and midwife in South Africa.

  We talked about marriage - I mean in a general way. Terry said: ‘It’s not a tragedy, Warren, if you don’t get married.’

  This struck me with the force of a revelation. I hated my celibacy and thought about marriage with the obsession of the proverbial old maid. Yet here was a vital young woman who seemed to regard the subject with indifference. What she showed me was a freedom of the spirit, without which true love is impossible.

  I exploited the limited resources of the little town. Fishing and country walks had been curtailed for some time by the war. There was the mine club and the golf club, where I enrolled Terry in the hackers’ section, where I already belonged. We gave each other supper and we had music: LPs, or when I played the piano. It was the music that softened her most. Her eyes would grow liquid, and I thought she was beginning to love me. After three weeks I had told her I would marry her.

  Long ago, I used to write poetry. Now I broke a silence of years for Terry.

  Softly as a leopard, you come down

  The path behind my house,

  Your feet pausing, balancing on the ground.

  I look, and you are there, where the path was empty

  just before:

  Electric as a leopard in the evening.

  How often shall I stand on my balcony, after you have gone,

  And look for the leopard presence, and see the ghost of it:

  The electric, silent presence in the garden?

  Terry’s feelings for me fluctuated, I could see it, between involuntary tenderness and a fearful withdrawal. For there was one barrier, or rather gap - the gap of twenty years between us.

  One night, as I left her house, I took her in my arms and kissed her for the first time. She said, ‘O, Warren, don’t let’s get too involved!’ I took no notice. As I walked home, I felt again the joy of youth after years in the desert.

  The time came for her to leave, and it seemed I made no progress:

  I get ready

  For your going away.

  My soul sinks

  In resignation,

  Then rouses up

  For one last fight for you.

  Some memories will be hard to lose:

  Your way of looking at me sometimes, with all your

  Sweetness on tip-toe, as if

  You half began to love me.

  No matter, it is written somewhere,

  One way or another,

  And will soon enough be read.

  Terry went away. In her first letter, she said she would never be so foolish as to marry a man so much older than herself. But other letters sounded different, and in one: ‘Come if you want’.

  So, of course, I went up to Salisbury, and stayed in a hotel near the nurses’ home, where she was convented. I went up as often as I could, at least once a month. But Terry was wayward: to and fro with me, caught between attraction and fear. We must have parted and come together half a dozen times.

  Then one day, it seemed final:

  In the fair modern city where you live

  Are lodged my last lancing memories of you:

  The purring handsome cars in the luminous evening,

  The wide streets clouded with blossom-dripping trees;

  And the new day opening like a flower in the city like a flower,

  The great sun standing in the panorama of the sky,

  Between the tall flashing buildings that rode like ships above

  the trees;

  Evenings with you in velvet restaurants,

  On terraces above the streaming-lighted street:

  City where you never felt at home

  In your alienating flat, where the traffic banged outside;

  Where yet we spent

  Afternoons in a cell of curtained light like a yellow flower.

  Feminine city, with a glamour of living, which was you!

  I was back at home in Shabani. I had not heard from Terry for two weeks. Then one evening, I was sitting on my balcony, reading, when the telephone rang. It was Terry. ‘Warren, we could get married...’

  That was September. We planned to get married next year, when Terry had finished her course. Even then there was a difficulty. She was committed to give them three years’ service in return for her grant. She decided to give them six months. That meant she had to pay $5000 reimbursement. As that was by then practically from our joint account, I always told everyone I paid $5000 bride price for my wife: lobola, as the Africans call it - about fifty cows in those days, and mightily were the Africans impressed. Alas, if only her poor father could have received it!

  Terry proposed a Christmas holiday for the two of us, after her studies. This was now October. Terry wanted beaches and the sea. I made enquiries. Everywhere was booked up - Mauritius, Seychelles, Kenya, even South Africa. Then I remembered. In Ghana there were beautiful beaches. No chance the white man’s grave would be booked up. In fact, booking didn’t seem to be on the cards at t
hat time. I made plans to get there on our own.

  I discovered that to get to West Africa, one had to travel through Kenya - much further in all and more expensive than Europe. It would have been cheaper and easier to go to Greece; but who wants Greece with the barbaric splendour of Africa to choose from?

  So to Nairobi we went, spent a night, and took another flight for Ghana via Lagos. Once again I saw the green ocean of the rain forest, and we were soon above the round green tops as we dipped into Port Harcourt. Terry, the daughter of Africa, was thrilled.

  It was December, the dry season; but something was different. A lot of dust, or cloud, in the air. I realised I had seen nothing of the forest for cloud over the Congo; nothing, until these tree tops emerged from the yellow fog below. We might have been dropping into London in the days of the pea-soupers.

  On the ground they told us. We met a white man on his way to Lagos, who came with us on the next leg. It was the harmattan, the north wind off the desert. Tens years before, this had been a breath of fresh clean air: now it was something foul and sinister.

  In that ten years, the Sahara had marched a hundred miles to the sea: the harmattan now brought a smog of sand. When the plane landed at Lagos, the passengers (the previously half-empty plane having filled up with Nigerians at Port Harcourt) all cheered, as if we had had a perilous deliverance. And on the ground, visibility was down to a hundred yards.

  At Lagos, we asked for the transit lounge, telling them we were on our way to Ghana. We found ourselves in a large hall, with our luggage beside us.

  Huge crowds in all the colours of the rainbow. Southerners in smocks and caps, with fat wives draped in gaudy dresses and turbans. Fulanis in jelabas, with trains of veiled wives. All milling for tickets and struggling through the entrances. Terry was stunned by what she called ‘culture shock’.

  I spotted our friend from Port Harcourt with some expats at the bar and joined them, soon quaffing beer and swapping Africa talk. I turned to ask Terry what she wanted.

  For she was dragging behind, her face now clouded with more than culture shock. ‘Warren,’ she urged, ‘this isn’t the transit lounge. Where are we?’ She was always more switched on than me, which may not be saying much.

  It was the arrivals hall. ‘We haven’t had our passports stamped,’ insisted Terry.

  I thought no more about it. I enjoyed my drink and the chat. Terry sat with us, not joining in the conversation, looking more and more anxious.

  Then it was announced that as the conditions at Accra were even worse than Lagos, the onward flight there had been postponed until next day.

  Our new companions invited us to spend the night at their place. They worked for a dredging company, and had been at the airport to see off one of their friends to UK. We went off with them. They gave us bed and board at their hostel, and next morning, dropped us off at the airport - rather hastily, I thought, like hot potatoes. By then, the news of our illegal entry had got through to them.

  We approached the barrier and asked for the transit lounge, as we were en route for Ghana, etc. We spoke to a little woman who kept us waiting at the barrier while she went in search of her superior. Presently, a male official in a grey uniform and peaked cap returned with her.

  We explained again. He was not impressed. ‘I don’t understand. What are you doing here? I see you have no stamp in your passports.’

  No, we were in transit to Ghana. A certain woman had led us to the entrance hall. It must be a mistake.

  ‘I know nothing about that. You had better come this way.’

  They opened the barrier. But help was not at hand.

  ‘You see, I find you here in an illegal situation. You could go to jail.’

  He let that sink in.

  ‘Unless I fix it.’

  West African memories flooded back. I said to Terry, ‘He wants a bribe.’

  Terry had all our Nigerian money, about seven pounds. Now frightened, she thrust it into my hand. ‘Give him all of it, Warren.’

  I wasn’t disposed to be so liberal. Official was now walking away in a contemplative mood, while we meekly followed him. I selected five notes and handed them to him. He continued his contemplative walk, without looking at them.

  ‘I thought you were going to offer me something reasonable.’

  What he meant by ‘reasonable’ was a hundred pounds - a quarter of our joint holiday money.

  Terry recovered her courage with her indignation. ‘Tell him, Warren, we want to see the airport manager.’

  Official did not wait for my intervention as a ‘linguist’.

  ‘The Big Man!’ he laughed. All this time he walked and looked ahead. ‘He will want three hundred pounds.’

  So we had to go to the exchange. ‘Tell them to put it in an envelope,’ added Official.

  ‘Aren’t they vile!’ I exclaimed to Terry, as we walked away. She made no reply. She was white and trembling. Well, there was nothing for it: we were over the proverbial barrel.

  All the time this was going on, they were giving us Hark! the Herald-angels Sing on the piped music.

  When Official received our present, he stamped our passports with a seven-day visa for Nigeria, as our flight was still postponed. He became positively friendly, led us to the airport entrance, and secured a taxi. He wished us a pleasant stay in Nigeria. We did not reply. Terry looked as if she could murder him.

  After that, we needed a drink. In a bar, I consulted with some more British expats. The tale did not surprise them. I asked them to guess the ‘dash’. ‘About fifty pounds.’ I felt doubly swindled. ‘Don’t worry,’ they said. ‘The price doubles during the season of good will.’

  Autres lieux, autres moeurs! I expect he spent our money on Christmas presents for his kids.

  After a night in a Lagos hotel, we decided to try and get to Ghana by road. We took a three-tier Peugeot, a popular form of transport, crowded in with about seven other people, at £5 (naira) for 100 miles. We passed the mangrove swamps of the coast, and reached our first hurdle: the border with Benin.

  This used to be Dahomey, where life was played out, in Conrad’s words, like ‘a sordid farce acted out in front of a sinister back-cloth’. After the days of the slave trade, Amazon warriors, etc, the tradition of sick humour was carried into independence with the annual institution of the Christmas Coup. Every year, in the festive season we were then enjoying (in its special West African form), the president of Dahomey would be sitting in his office, writing his Christmas cards to what he thought were his friends, when the door would be kicked open and his successor to be would burst in and knock him off with a Tommy gun. Next year, the successor would be sitting in his office, writing his Christmas cards, etc, when his successor, etc. This comedy ran for about nine successive years. I cannot remember how or why it was taken off.

  At any rate, the next comedy for Terry and me was when the border official informed us that we would need a visa to get into Benin. If he stamped us out, we would be left in some dreadful limbo between the two countries - and he didn’t even add ‘unless I fix it’. We had actually stumbled on an honest Nigerian official. I even saw him refuse a bribe for some purpose from a Dutch priest. I expect the poor man (I mean the official) is there yet, at the bottom of the promotional ladder.

  So we had to take a taxi back to town, which cost us more than the Peugeot, which was going on. Incidentally, I noticed that the traffic in Nigeria was now driving on the right. It must have been changed on the Devil’s birthday. It would not have required the old expat joke: ‘in order to break you in slowly, for the first week, only the buses will do it’.

  By now, we despaired of the beaches of West Africa. I suggested to Terry we use our return tickets for Kenya, and complete the rest of our holiday there.

  After another night in Lagos, we repaired once more to the airport. We now had a lot of useless Nigerian money to get rid of. We went to the exchange in the arrivals hall, and while the man was half-way through changing our money into pounds s
terling, Dutch guilders, and whatever else he had in his piggy bank, he informed us that he had run out of foreign exchange and the office was closing down for the duration, which left us with ninety useless Nigerian pounds as a souvenir of the country.

  But we were luckier than a young Englishman we met. Not only had he failed to convert his money; he had had his air ticket thrust back at him at the barrier - not once, but for the third time in as many days. He wanted to get back to England in time for his wedding, no less. Now, the planes for Europe were fully booked; nay, they were overbooked - systematically. In order to secure a seat, it was necessary, not only to purchase a ticket in the usual way, but to bribe some official to kick someone out of the seat. 350 into 300 won’t go, even on a jumbo jet, and the surplus 50 was the staple of a thriving local enterprise. The ‘dash’ could rise to £1000: it was like a game of snakes and ladders, with loaded dice; and unless you were prepared to pay for the dice, which our proud English friend was not, you slid down a snake, and he had already slid down three. The poor fellow was still trying to get married when we left him.

  We had no difficulty getting into the transit lounge, thanks to Official’s stamp and the low demand for planes to Kenya. We duly declared our wealth, including the ninety naira to the grinning officials at emigration. With such plentiful sources of humour, no wonder they are a laughing people. But our adventures in this fabulous country were not yet over. In the transit lounge, yet another official approached us. Nothing threatening about this one, not even his smile. And his first words were: ‘Aren’t you Doctor Durrant?’

  There were even then eighty million people in Nigeria, and it was ten years since I was on the Coast. But this was Timothy, the former barman at the Samreboi Club, now working at the airport.

  We told him our adventures. The trick with the transit/arrivals lounge, he told us, was a regular one. The ‘certain woman’ was working with Official, who must only have been surprised at the time we took to resurface in his net.