by B. Nyamnjoh
***
“Everyone is served now, and I can sit with you for a couple of minutes before duty calls again. Here are a couple of Mim-Wandas and a bottle of Mim-Wata for your flying comfort,” said Yoyette, taking the empty aisle seat next to Lilly Loveless.
“Thanks,” said Lilly Loveless, opening a can of Mim-Wanda.
“Did your research go well? Did you learn much?”
“You’d be surprised, Yoyette, to learn how much playing around there is,” said Lilly Loveless, turning to her.
Yoyette smiled and said, “Lilly Loveless, you may know what happens on the ground, but I know what happens up here in the skies.”
“Really?” asked Lilly Loveless musingly, thinking she had completed her fieldwork and deserved a restful flight and in the same instant realising it probably doesn’t end until you submit your thesis and move on to another project. “So what happens up here that would surprise me?”
“Probably the same thing that happens down there, just that no one would suspect it happening up here.”
“Tell me,” said Lilly Loveless, sipping her Mim-Wanda.
“People who like danger, spontaneity and the risk of discovery indulge themselves fleetingly during the freedom of flying,” began Yoyette. Staring straight at Lilly Loveless, she suggested, “Look discretely at the couple just behind us in the four middle seats. You can’t see much because of the blankets, but I know from experience that something will soon be happening there.”
Lilly Loveless, saturated with stories, thought she had heard all there was to hear about these things. On second thought, she was acutely aware of the fact that some of the most valuable information in research came from the most unlikely sources, times or places. So she gave Yoyette the benefit of the doubt.
“You’d be surprised by how much non verbal communication happens during the flight,” Yoyette continued. “A man or a woman may even fondle a complete stranger. And more than once I’ve seen a woman stand to go to the toilet. It doesn’t take long before the fondler follows.”
Lilly Loveless was sceptical. Scanning her memory, she couldn’t recall even once waiting for the toilet on the plane, seeing someone come out to shut the door behind him or her, and hearing it relock from within.
“Hmm…” said Lilly Loveless, “they must do it when the toilets are not in demand.”
“You seem to know something about it,” chuckled Yoyette. “Don’t tell me you’re a member of the Mile High Club. They start early and rise as we gain in elevation,” she concluded jokingly.
“Some kind of levitation!” rejoined Lilly Loveless.
“Be Loveless as you may, you really are lovely Lilly,” said Yoyette. She stood up, retrieved the empty coffee cup from Lilly Loveless and sauntered back up to the mini-kitchen across from the toilet.
Lilly Loveless wondered what Yoyette would have said if she had yielded to the urge to ask her if she had ever been approached by passengers hungry for quickies in flight. This was a missed opportunity, as Lilly Loveless was well aware that informants sometimes shared their own stories as if these were the stories of others and the stories of others as if these were their own.
Lilly Loveless fell asleep soon after lunch. The Mim-Wanda was what she needed to digest the thoughts raising in her mind from reading Bobinga Iroko’s story. In her sleep she dreamt of Ndolo… of Bobinga Iroko… of Britney…
***
The touchdown at Bruhlville International Airport was on time, despite the delayed takeoff from Mimboland. It was wintry weather, and Lilly Loveless hoped that her Mom was there with a coat to fetch her, as she promised she would be. Lilly Loveless was looking forward to the reunion, and to sharing some details of her beautiful experience of Mimboland with her mom.
When she came through arrivals it wasn’t her mom she saw waiting for her.
“What are you doing here,” she asked Martin, after ignoring his words of welcome and attempts to embrace her.
“Your mom asked me to come for you in her place”, Martin tried to explain, almost running after Lilly Loveless who was walking very fast towards the train.
“You should have told her no,” Lilly Loveless protested.
“I tried.”
“Not hard enough.”
“You know what your mom is like…”
“And you know what Lilly Loveless is like…”
“I can live with that.” Martin paused for a while, then added: “Count me out as you may, I simply refuse to be knocked out.”
“Dream on.”
“As they say in Mimboland, the fact that the teeth occasionally bite the tongue does not mean that they cannot cooperate,” said Martin.
Lilly Loveless looked at him with questioning surprise.
“The nose and the mouth are too close to be enemies,” added Martin, quoting yet again from Time Heals Even the Deepest Wounds, the Mimboland novel he had just finished reading.
They were just on time to catch the train to Bruhlville.
31
Three weeks after her return to Bruhlville, Lilly Loveless sent Britney this email:
Dear Britney,
This is to say an awful lot of things at the same time: Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and thank you for being my friend. You have been a real inspiration and it is wonderful to be so close to you. I do hope that you will enjoy Puttkamerstown and its contagious warm and charm without me. I am very happy that I met you and there is no doubt in my mind that you will always be with me whatever or wherever I am.
In Mimboland I learnt so much about food processors, blenders and blending for love and desire. What I desperately need now is a word blender to make word pulp that my supervisors can recognise and relish… Have you ever known someone who only takes notes and never writes anything? I’m beginning to fear I’m that person… Let me not bore you with my academic headaches.
I am snuggled up in bed, with a cup of warm cocoa and rum, emailing you while I try to warm up a bit before sleeping. I am cold through to the bone: the weather has changed from warm and sunny (relatively speaking) to real winter, with snow (which ‘brings a touch of purity to a rather dirty Muzungu world,’ in the words of Bobinga Iroko – how is he doing, by the way?) and hale and icy winds, in only a few days’ time. I have been racing through all of it on my bicycle, on my way to various appointments and am very glad indeed to be where I am right now. If you come to Muzunguland in wintertime, I will spoil you with all kinds of warm drinks (– do you like cocoa? mine is very good – lots of chocolate and lots of rummmm, but no Mimbo-Wanda) – cold winters can be very cosy, too, and fun: snow, ice, plenty of light...
As I read the last bits of Time Heals Even the Deepest Wounds, one of the Mimboland novels you advised me to buy and take back with me, where the author whines lyrical about Africa and its beautiful and humanising night noises, something snapped in me in a sneaky, longing kind of way to remind me that I am not home at Puttkamerstown. It’s quiet at night here... no animal noises – dogs barking, owls hooting, birds chirping in the morning. One forgets how these noises are tied with one’s routines until they are not there. Damn I miss that. No, I am not all tears... not yet anyway. I have to make-do with emergency sirens and student party noises or the police checking them out because some discerning neighbours complained. Oh and the intercom when some flatmates get late night visitors. Can’t have it all in this life. It’s only now I get the full meaning of the saying that home is where the heart is. I am sure your dreams are at that point when they are sweetest as I write. Enjoy…
Love
Lilly Loveless
Some three months or so later, despite vigorous objection by Martin who felt that, if anything, she should be inviting a female academic, Lilly Loveless emailed Bobinga Iroko as follows:
Dear Godlove,
I hope this email finds you well.
I will never forget the warm welcome I received in Puttkamerstown during my fieldwork, although my Mom still can’t fathom why I’m so drawn to Africa, “de
spite its many dangers.” Not to mention my Bobinga Iroko: How could I ever forget you – especially when you are not grumpy? You’re nicer when you’re lively, happy, laughing, dancing, and tickling me intellectually.
My dissertation is in a lamentable state, due probably to my confusion over the wealth and gaps in data on certain aspects, and my lack of a suitable framework for making sense of things. For months, I have wanted to contact you to seek your advice and wisdom, only to find myself increasingly disappointed with what I have managed to achieve, which prevented me from making this step before.
I hate to have to write to you with such desperate urgency, but the situation over here has become agonising. Not wanting to sound like a sycophant, the truth is that you are the most inspiring person I have ever met. I find Muzunguland academics arrogant and contemptuous. I didn’t get along with my supervisors, and have been without supervision for some months now.
To cut a long story short, my supervisors criticized me for inadequately documenting male sexuality, for focusing too narrowly on infidelity and on relationships between married men and younger women, and for overly relying on anecdotes and the opinions of my research assistant and a handful of others. I found the criticism too harsh, and I tried and failed to convince them to let me redefine my research topic to suit the data I had collected. They insisted that even if I did, there was little guarantee the work would satisfy the minimum requirements for the award of the PhD. I don’t want to see all the work go down the drain, so I appealed to the faculty research committee, and have been granted permission to complete my writing and submit the thesis for examination by a specially constituted committee of experts in the field. If I can complete the work in timely fashion and am lucky, it is possible Dr Wiseman Lovemore could be invited as the external examiner from Africa, as I have been asked for a list of African experts in the field. You can well imagine how much I am praying and have added my voice to advocates of academic freedom mobilizing the international community for his expedient release from prison. But let’s cross that bridge when we get there.
First, I must hand in my dissertation in a couple of months, to stand a chance of it being examined this academic year. I take courage in what you told me in your car on our way back from Nyamandem, that writing, like driving in difficult terrain, must never be a one person show. I would do anything to have you help me (plane tickets, a hotel in Bruhlville, and all other expenses on me!). I have attached the document on which I am currently working. Again I must apologise for all the holes in it. Do you think you would be able to spare some time to help me with this as soon as possible? Please. A positive response from you would be like sunshine on a gloomy day. I will be forever in your debt.
Love,
Lilly Loveless