Ed screwed up his face, ‘I don’t understand,’ and Dad replied, ‘Me neither, Ed. But you better lock up your kids because it’ll be like Madonna in Malawi soon, celebrities flying in with sacks scooping up your beautiful babies and taking them away.’
Ed looked even more confused then Bel shouted, ‘Everyone, Truth, guys, Wayne: back in the bus, we need to get to the hotel, we’re on a super-tight schej, guys. Safari then soundcheck. Let’s go, go, go!’
The children waved goodbye, singing as we left, and I overheard Truth say to Bel, ‘It’s so good doing something real, you know, really making a difference.’
Jack
Fantastic woke me up and handed me coffee in a tin cup. It tasted of mud and metal. When we headed into the bush, I wanted to run, drop the rucksack, run and never return. But two things kept me walking. I needed the money. Also I knew that this continent worked with the swiftness and rage of a small village. He’d track me down soon enough and he’d hurt me, or worse. A man crazy enough to be smuggling a gun like this around meant business. Just one more night, I kept thinking, and I’d be shot of the whole thing. We walked until we arrived at a filthy spot called Port Tembo. The water was low; ghost-lines on the rocks described how high it had once been. There was a cracked dirt road, baked dry as elephant hide, with shoddy wooded shacks on one side and a bar full of drunks on the other. Fantastic told me we had to wait for a boat, so we sat in the street. As the day grew hotter, the men got drunker and became increasingly interested in my backpack, which I held in a tight vice between my knees. I heard fear in my voice when I asked, ‘When can we go?’ and Fantastic shrugged that African shrug that said, The world will decide in its own sweet time. But the bums at the bar had more immediate plans. As afternoon darkened to dusk, two men came. They didn’t draw their knives but they made sure we could see them, stuck in their shorts. Pointing at my backpack, they shouted at Fantastic. The nasty scars on the face of one of the guys suggested he’d used his knife a few times before and weighing up the situation I realised it wasn’t in our favour. Fantastic was wiry and I was strong but no match for knife-wielding drunks. With weary predictability one of them pulled his knife and I froze. Never taking his eyes off the man, Fantastic said to me, ‘Mr Jack, give them money.’
It was right then – right after I’d handed him the cash – that I knew I’d made a bad move. The men in the bar had seen the transaction; now more men would follow and I’d be handing out cash until my pockets ran dry, then what? Pay with my blood? A sick joke occurred to me: as my slow brain caught up with what was happening, I remembered I was armed. I had a gun. A bloody big gun, wedged against my balls. Yet it was useless to me. I’d no idea how to put it together and not the time or nerve to take the risk of pulling it out, snapping it together and . . . then what would I do? Intimidate them? Shoot them? It seemed ludicrous to die here fully armed. And I was lost in this thought when the two men started to quarrel over the money, then they started to fight and a few sloppy punches were thrown. The men at the bar gathered around the fighting men, snatching at the cash spilling to the ground, and I was completely absorbed in this when Fantastic shouted, ‘Mr Jack, the boat.’ We skipped around the scrum, down to the water, jumped in and pushed off. Watching the squabbling drunks from the safe distance of the boat, they seemed unthreatening and daft. Fantastic smiled and I raised my hand and he slapped it. ‘High five, Fantastic! Shit, that was close, man.’ And something about the way he nodded made me realise just how close it had been.
Charlie
Click!
‘Ed, did you know lions sleep twenty hours a day?’
‘Well did you know ants never sleep and I’m the busy ant getting the bus ready for safari, so you must leave me to . . .’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know but, Ed, so listen, if Tafumo dies . . .’
‘Shhh, Charlie. You can’t say this. Gods don’t die.’
‘Yah but Mum says if he does die we’ll all be up poo creek without a paddle. Mum says he’s the rust holding the wreck together.’
‘Eh but, bwana, no. Tafumo has brought education and freedom to Bwalo, he is a lion, a warrior, the great Ngwazi.’
‘Yah, OK, sure, but can you at least tell me what a whore is?’
‘You’re like a baby with a gun.’
‘Stop teasing, Ed. What is it?’
‘A woman who gives too much for too little.’
‘Stop talking in riddles.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Final question: what’s a coop?’
‘A house for the chickens.’
‘Why’s Mum scared of a chicken house?’
‘Go and ask your mother.’
Click!
Josef
I woke up on the floor of the wardrobe. With frozen blood and bones of stone, I couldn’t summon the energy to stand. I let my tongue stab the raw nerve of my tooth, causing pain to flash through me and jerk me to my feet. I was out the door before anyone was awake, even before the sun was up. Ezekiel saluted and opened the gate. Driving the grey streets, my tooth humming like a tuning fork, it wasn’t long before a car appeared. I turned to see what might have been the outline of Jeko’s hat. He imitated his idol, wearing the Homburg hat long after Tafumo himself had abandoned the affectation. When a man makes himself look ridiculous and people are still too scared to ridicule him: that’s a sign of a man’s authority. I could read the faces of most men but not Jeko. His smooth face possessed an animal fixity, an unreadable blankness. Jeko was an outsider. Not one of us. Never an uMunthu member, or even a Bwalo man. Tafumo chose an outsider as his weapon. Wise move in a small nation of mixed blood.
I drove to my sing’anga. When Hope failed to give me a child we came here. But Hope didn’t believe, she didn’t let the muti work, and it tore us apart. Years later, when I’d made a wife of my mistress, Rebecca, I returned to the sing’anga. This time for Rebecca’s cancer. We weren’t ignorant; we’d consulted doctors. Even flown to Switzerland where a specialist, like all the doctors before him, shook his head. But Rebecca wasn’t afflicted with Hope’s cynicism. She didn’t care that the woman lived in the township, that her sign was childish: Good-Cheap Muti. The sing’anga granted Rebecca time to see Solomon grow; bought us time to prepare for her death. And when it came near, when her bones jutted like blades, the sing’anga brought relief from the pain.
The sing’anga didn’t dress her home in the paraphernalia of her idiotic counterparts, witch doctors and mutimen. It was a whitewashed house with deep-red concrete floors. She wore green-gold chitenges that hid the bearing of her body, and her skin absorbed so little light it disguised most of her features in its darkness, with the exception of her smile, which shone out of her face. She gave me a fresh bottle of tonic and I left by the back door; wouldn’t be right for a minister to be seen here. Though I knew many ministers consulted sing’angas.
I drove to work early, hoping to catch up with the latest reports before David hounded me. It was the principal reason I’d kept my university office long after I could have moved into the Ministry. It allowed me distance from the noise, and from David. No such luck today: he was waiting outside. I mumbled good morning as I unlocked my door. I was unsure if it was the sewage problem that plagued the university, or if it was David, but something stank, a disturbingly human smell.
He sat and came straight to the point. ‘It’s the Irishman.’
We were wary of our expat community, especially teachers and reporters, and this man was both. But in a place as small as Bwalo it took only weeks for either my men, or more often than not, the restless expats, to weed out spies. British agents usually drank at the Mirage for a month, had an affair with someone’s wife, then their cover was blown. Secrets have short shelf lives in Bwalo. But this Irishman had lived here for decades. He was no spy. For a start he was Irish, not English, something David, who’d never been outside of Bwalo, couldn’t grasp. He couldn’t appreciate that the English had treated the Irish more maliciously than they’d ever
treated us. It mattered not. As was so often the way, logic played no part in this witch hunt, this obsession of David’s.
David was a devoted follower of Tafumo; he was a relentless and pious person but not a clever man. Weeks earlier, he had run into my office, placed a postcard on my desk and I’d joked, ‘A card for me, you shouldn’t have.’ David didn’t smile; the righteous are a humourless bunch and I pity the man who falls under David’s cold focus.
I read the postcard:
Mad-hot here, Mum. Drought’s in full swing but my tan’s coming along. How’s that new Pope? Seems a nice enough fella? Book’s coming great, pouring out like water. Big Day’s tearing round the corner and this year we’ve celebrities. None of the Irish crew, though Colin Farrell may come. He’s your man with one eyebrow you liked in that movie about Bruges. Stella is well, her volunteer work with the orphans is eating into her PhD studies but it’s all in a great cause. Love, Seanie
I’d said, ‘Look, David. It’s time you stopped with this man. There’s nothing here.’
‘But he’s lying,’ David replied. ‘This Stella is no PhD but a common woman; this is a code. He is a spy!’
‘You’re losing it!’ I shouted, my voice breaking as I scolded him. ‘You’re becoming paranoid! You need to get a grip!’ I calmed my tone a little. ‘David, look, you’re right in one way. He is lying but he isn’t lying to Tafumo. He’s just lying to his mother. Which may be the worst sin of all. But that’s not our department.’
‘Nothing’s worse than lying to His Excellency the Life King N Tafumo.’
He gave Tafumo his full title every time he mentioned his damn name. Fanatics make icons of mortals.
‘David, do you think a spy would send codes on a postcard?’
Predicting my question, David replied quickly, ‘But the wording is strange.’
‘It’s just the way the Irish talk. This man’s an idiot but he’s not a subversive. As far as I know we’ve yet to draft a law against idiots. Great shame though that is.’
But today it was clear that David had more than just a postcard; he had something worthy of my time.
He placed a book on my desk and I said, ‘Where did you get this from? You shouldn’t have it.’
‘It’s not mine,’ replied David defensively. ‘It belongs to your students, from your university. The Irishman is teaching it . . . And there have also been sightings of the Irishman in the university library during the holidays, acting suspiciously and . . .’
‘And what do you advise we do, David?’
‘Kick him out of the country immediately. But hold his woman for questioning. He’s stirring up student insurrection and the woman is a vital source. She is weak and will crack. I will question her myself and . . .’
‘No, no you won’t. You will do no such thing; you need to calm down. It’ll start an international incident if you interrogate expats; you leave him alone. He’s not what you think. You are, as always, wrong about this, David; you need to stop this craziness, stop wasting my time. This is ridiculous paranoia.’
David didn’t mask his disappointment. He glared at me. Another black mark in my file, I’m sure. Concerned that he wasn’t going to let it go, fearful that he’d pursue it and blunder into some incident, I said, ‘Get a grip, David. First you’re telling me the Rhodesian hotel manager is plotting something, now you’re on about a drunk Irishman.’ I heard the anxiety in my voice, as if warning myself rather than David. ‘So calm down and do your job, stop being paranoid and leave the Irishman to me. I’ll deal with him.’
Sean
I avoided Stella last night. I was too tired to face her again. She owned the house, not me. So after a big argument, there was some unspoken rule that I should find somewhere else to sleep until things cooled off. Luckily Stu had once again let me crash on his sofa. But I barely slept, twisting the night away like a rotisserie chicken.
Slipping out of the house, I walked to the first tee to watch the sunrise. I came loaded with a spliff but my head was so full of the booze and fights of the night before that the weed failed to work its mellow magic. Weed hadn’t been the same since Jack left. Nice guy, feckless as me, who brought in Malawi gold. Nothing major. Just enough to keep the country calm. Then, as is the nature of these things, one day I popped in for my usual sack of gold and Jack was gone.
Hearing footsteps, I crushed the spliff into the grass and lit a less illegal Life cigarette. Puffing it like a bugger, I turned and shouted with relief, ‘Oh Christ, it’s only you, Willem. Thank God. I thought Stu had caught me smoking green on the green again.’
‘Hey, no problems, Sean, I won’t tell a soul. What you doing here so early?’
‘Insomnia. What’s your excuse?’
‘I like to walk the course before playing,’ and he sat down and we watched the sun float up the blue-bowl sky.
‘So tell me, Willem, what was Eugene like as a kid? Got any dirt for me?’
‘He was skinny as a twig, eh. Took him years to get as fat as he is today. Dad used to call him skinnymalink and piccaninny, bullied him rotten for being weak.’
That cracked the first laugh of the day out of me and I asked, ‘You going to the Big Day festivities?’ pointing down at the stadium below us.
‘Nah. I’ll be playing golf. The course will be quiet.’
‘Careful,’ I warned. ‘Tafumo banned all sport on the Big Day. It’s in honour of the previous Bwalo leader. Tafumo’s very sensitive about the last guy.’
‘Yah, what happened to the last guy?’
‘Tafumo shot him in the head.’ Willem laughed but I warned him, ‘Really, be careful, though. The sports ban is the Big Man’s way of spring-cleaning dissidents. Even if you’re caught playing tiddlywinks they use it as an excuse to boot you out.’
Staring down into the mouth of the stadium, Willem said, ‘I’ll be careful.’
‘So you miss Africa?’
‘Like crazy. This is home for me. You miss Ireland?’
‘No, no. Been away too long. Home isn’t home any more.’
Willem nodded, distractedly looking over the course, plotting his golfing strategy. I thought it best to leave the big man to his thoughts, so I said goodbye and walked up the fairway, the pool winking in the dawn light, calling me to the bar. I considered settling in but, with the sun not yet detached from the horizon, I realised it was a little early, even for me.
Instead, I went on my mission. My heroic – some might say idiotic – mission. Warm telephone lines hung in slack smiles between poles, grinning as I rode to work. When I parked up I saw people inside the Ministry of Communication, a grey block of a building, like a Rubik’s Cube peeled of its colours. But the neighbouring university was empty, eerie without people, this concrete slab, run on a pittance and ruled by a tyrant.
We had fifteen librarians working in an almost empty library. More librarians than books, was the joke. They were comically useless and I was convinced they were illiterate but all were friends and family of ministers, so I was careful what I said. I unlocked the door and snuck in. The library was a pure tragedy, bookshelves full of blank spaces like so many missing teeth. Hundreds of books were banned and the few we had were in dreadful condition, ancient paperbacks with broken spines and faded pages. The sun sucked sentences clean off the paper. The Bwalo sun is a famished one; she’ll eat everything in the end. I’ll be next. Be nothing left but a hank of beard and nicotine teeth. If you want to see where the big-haired hope of Live Aid ended look no further than here. The saddest indictment of good intentions gone awry. Never have so many given so much for it to go to so few. Geldof did his best, a great Irishman and a hero who convinced me I could change the world. Won’t hear a bad word said against Sir Bob. He filled their bellies – which was the only thing to do – but what of their minds? This library is the answer. Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to think and he’ll build a nation. But I suppose that lurid brand of 1980s hope was better than what followed. The worst thing to happen to Bw
alo was the fall of the Berlin Wall in ’89. Until then Bwalo was economically robust, as Tafumo cashed cheques from both sides: from capitalists pouring in cash to keep out reds; and from reds pouring in roubles to keep out capitalists. Robbing from Peter and Paul. But the fall of the Wall brought an end to such profitable duplicity. As the Cold War thawed, the rivers of cash dried up, leaving Bwalo with barely enough to keep ministers in Mercedes. And corrupt currents redirecting the meagre streams of charity that remain will ensure the next generation will be less educated than the last, as the cradle of man sinks back into the womb of abject poverty.
I realised the futility of what I was doing. I came to save the world, to educate a generation, and yet now here I was tiptoeing about trying to toss out a bookcase. However, the disorder of the place, its outrageous corruption, the frustration of teaching sixty students with one textbook, had all boiled down and distilled into this one object. A wonky bookcase: chest high with shelves so rotten they were no longer capable of holding books. The librarians had placed it by the door where, every time I walked into the library, my big toe would find its way to smashing into it, leaving me buckled over, howling, ‘Toss it out! Just toss it out!’ To which the doe-eyed librarian would tut, ‘Eh but, bwana, this is government property, we cannot throw this away until the proper paperwork says we can throw this away.’ As my toe throbbed, the Nazi and I would work our way through a Beckett-like dialogue, the pattern of which never varied, in this tragedy wrapped in farce. ‘Christ almighty, man! Just toss it out!’ The librarian would then stare at it, terrified, the bookcase having taken on a voodoo quality; it was government property, untouchable, possibly even fatal. It could take years of paperwork before we could toss it. And I was more than aware of the fact that I’d allowed it to expand into a disproportionate fixation. But in the humid nothingness of Bwalo, small things overpower reason and proportion. And anyway, it was more than a bookcase. Every time I saw it, each time I thumped my toe into it, the bookcase broke my heart because it stood for everything about this wonderful, beautiful country, bursting with so much potential and greatness that I knew would never be realised. So, with the calm precision of a man who had spent a restless night rehearsing the moment in his mind, I placed my shoulder under one of the shelves and awkwardly shuffled out.
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