So Who's Your Mother

by Tarquin Olivier

  Even where the countries did not have their own mints, which meant most of them, the sight round the edges of a different-coloured metal put people off, despite the example of the US. The Royal Mint pooh-poohed the idea for the coinage of the United Kingdom.

  In Dhaka the main excitement was a visit by Senator Edward Kennedy. I went with tens of thousands of Bengalis to see his plane land. Such was his glamour that, despite the downfall of his reputation over the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, his reception almost equalled that of their national hero, the Father of the Nation, Mujibir Rahman, their President.

  I started writing a novel, based on Kilombero and Mr Wevers, whom I changed into a heroic American called Wurzley. Every evening I wrote in my room, and between meetings in the daytime I would lie in the garden and write in my swimming trunks. The manuscript smelt of sun lotion. I was pleased with the opening lines, spoken by the African Minister of Industries to the English chairman of the sugar company, about the newly appointed general manager: ‘So, he’s never been to Africa before, this American?’ Every journey I finished a chapter and Riddelle would read it. When I got back from the office and we were having our evening bath, supervised by the cat, she would tell me what she thought. She was an intelligent critic and this engendered lively discussions and reminiscences of our days in Tanzania.

  The proofs of the Swazi banknotes were ready. As a courtesy to our High Commissioner in Mbabane I went to show them to him. He was most surprised. No one had reported seeing me. He appreciated my visit so that he could advise the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the new currency before the story was in the newspapers. At lunch, apart from a kitten under his arm, there was a large nondescript Englishman whom I remembered as an officer cadet from Eaton Hall, a hackle in his beret. He was now in the Secret Service. I asked how many other secret agents there were in Africa. He said only two, just then, for the whole continent. All the rest were focused on the industrial unrest Arthur Scargill was engendering in Britain.

  The Finance Secretary had been asked by the South African Reserve Bank to estimate the amount of rand currency circulating in Swaziland, due for replacement by the emalangeni. After consulting with local banks he had came up with a figure of nine million rands. To help them, the South Africans had offered to pay one year’s interest on that volume. I put it to him that he should pressure the banks into justifying as high a volume in circulation as possible, to increase the payment of interest offered. Not only that, he should convince the Reserve Bank that after all those years they had been profiting from the interest Swaziland had paid for the use of their currency, they should pay at least five years of interest back.

  My next visit was after we had air-freighted their banknotes and they had been released across the nation. The Finance Secretary was triumphant. The Reserve Bank had agreed to pay three years’ interest on fifteen million rand. This yielded the equivalent of five pounds for every Swazi man, woman and child, giving the national accounts an unexpected budget surplus. My banknotes and coins were in every market stall, every distant tea-cosy hut, spreading into the distance to the borders of Mozambique, with their wonderful portrait of King Sobhuza II, and the uniquely shaped coins. This had done good to millions of people and enhanced pride in their sovereignty, apart from the cash bonus for the nation.

  The two-day drive across Southern Africa was as pleasurable as ever. Quill Hermans and his Botswana colleagues were excited when I showed them the proofs of their pula banknotes and thebe coins. ‘Pula’ was on their national crest meaning ‘Let there be rain’. ‘Thebe’ meant ‘shield’. This was just after the success the new currency had had in Swaziland. I was able to explain the strategy I had suggested there and the most generous response of the Reserve Bank of South Africa. They could look forward to the same advantages.

  It was time for President Sir Seretse Khama to approve the proofs. He had of course approved the designs at Cabinet. Quill took me in a small plane to the middle of nowhere, dry and barren, halfway to Fran-cistown and the fertile game reserves in the north. We landed and plod-ded up a little hill with corrugated iron housing. At the top Quill left me on the terrace and took the proofs inside. Seretse Khama came out, the strong interesting face we had engraved. He shook me by the hand, put an arm round my shoulder and said in a fatherly way: ‘So you have found another way of making money.’

  He was due to leave for a conference in Salisbury on Rhodesian Inde-pendence, with our Prime Minister Jim Callaghan and leaders of the African Front Line States. Like everyone else he knew Rhodesia’s eco-nomic success was mostly thanks to the white settlers and European-led government. There was nevertheless unlegislated social separation between the races which had somehow to end. That irreconcilability was the foundation for disaster. He said there was no compromise in sight anyone could believe in. Then he approved the proofs.

  The tenth anniversary report of the Bank of Botswana, dated 1985, makes interesting reading:

  PLANNING BOTSWANA’S NEW CURRENCY

  Some difficult decisions had to be made concerning the denomi-nations, design, name, metallic content and the quantities of the initial orders of Botswana’s new notes and coins. Foresight and intelligent guesswork played their part in the process. For exam-ple, a representative of the British banknote printing firm of Thomas De La Rue happened to have a longstanding appointment with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning officials on the same day that Cabinet resolved to leave the [South African] Rand Monetary Area. By amazing coincidence – or brilliant plan-ning – he had brought with him some sample Botswana ban-knotes, created by his firm’s art department, to illustrate what local currency notes might look like if Botswana ever decided to issue its own currency. Not only was the timing of his visit remarkable, but De La Rue correctly anticipated the name ‘Pula’, which was subsequently suggested by a majority of Botswana by means of a nation-wide poll, as well as the denominations, sizes, colours, watermark and many other features of Botswana’s notes. Not sur-prisingly De La Rue won the order to print the first batch of Pula notes and has retained the business of printing Botswana’s ban-knotes ever since.

  Off the east coast of Africa lay the thousand-mile-long island of Madagascar. Le Monde newspaper indicated that its relationship with the Banque de France was becoming sour. The doyen of our sales force, Alex Napier, accompanied me to Antananarivo. We became good friends on that trip. He had served in the Coldstream during the war, the Guards Armoured Division. We went first to the British Ambas-sador. He was, like everyone else, absorbed when turning over the pages of our hefty album of specimen banknotes. He made an appointment for us with the Governor of the Bank of Madagascar, Leon Rajaobelina.

  On our way we caught a glimpse of the new Head of State who had led some kind of coup. He was in a general’s uniform, an insignificant little man in a big peaked hat. The Governor was alert and decisive. He had formed an excellent impression of De La Rue after visiting us a few years before. He gave us a clear go-ahead. Alexis agreed that I had read the situation correctly and gave me the amiable task of gathering design material.

  This had an added pleasure for me. Not only did the country have baobabs, it had lemurs. None of these lovely creatures survived in Africa because monkeys had killed them off. Madagascar had no monkeys. When my mother had lost a baby, Larry had given her a ring-tailed lemur to help fill the emptiness she felt. Tony was just over a foot tall, had a yard-long ringed tail, a black pointed face, big all-seeing eyes, and the most delicate black hands. At dinner he would sit on people’s shoulders, lean forward, hands on the table, and sip from a wineglass. Then he would jump to another shoulder and do the same again. After a bit of this he used to miss his jumps. When the sun shone outside he would face it, hands spread wide and give a little purr. They both grew to adore him. Unfortunately he was irreconcilably jealous when I was born. He attacked my mother and was a threat to me in my cot. They gave him to the London Zoo where there was a lady lemur, but they never got on and he died of a broken he
art.

  Antananarivo was on high ground, crowned with a great wooden palace with a square spiral staircase and imposing rooms all around. The atmosphere was redolent of Java. Extraordinary. The prominent tribe, the Merina, could still be taken for Indonesians, who had colonised the place nearly a thousand years before. The palace overlooked a green lake surrounded by jacaranda trees bursting with mauve blossom. Nature was at its most profuse with the jungles, vanilla vines, and lemurs. There was a mass of reference material for our design artists.

  A serious problem had arisen in Tunisia over our quality control. Some of our banknotes had tiny black dots over the watermark. The usual regional manager, Edwin Eggins, was struggling elsewhere, Burundi, so I took his place in Tunis with three lady banknote examiners from our Gateshead factory. In charge was Betty, their elderly supervisor, a good-hearted constant figure, married to one of the porters and earning more than he. Dorothy was married also, in her early thirties. Hilary was in her early twenties with a boyfriend called Trev. We stayed on the outskirts of the capital by the sea, near the remains of Carthage. Within hours of our arrival the attractiveness of the two young Geordie girls had spread round Arab males.

  In the Central Bank they taught the local girls the techniques for examining banknotes, flicking through piles one hundred thick from various angles, so that any deviation would leap up, as movement, from the persistence of perfection, be visible at once, and culled. The French-trained currency officer was a M. Damaque. With him there was never any possibility of compromise. Should there be ‘le moindre défaut’ he read from his guide to currency examination, even a tiny dot, then the banknote was to be rejected. That was his raison d’être. He was grid thinking personified. Il faut l’accepter.

  I kept my little team company at meals, and over the weekend took the two girls sailing in a dinghy, while Betty stayed in the lounge with her knitting. After dinner they were taken out by local Arabs who treated them like goddesses, they said. I could hardly prevent that. Yet, out of concern for them, I had the receptionist telephone my room to tell me of their safe return, usually around midnight. Dorothy kept wondering if her husband was up to anything during her absence and if so why shouldn’t she. Hilary was the most fun. ‘Eee,’ she said with her Geordie accent, ‘when I was yung with my thick lips no boys would dunce with me, so I ended up with some grot with a runny nose. But now, with Mick Jagger’s squashy lips, they think I’m sexy.’ Which she was. Couldn’t help it. The slightest breeze would lift up her mini-skirt and show her flowery panties.

  Our only competitor active in Tunisia was Finland, which printed the top value, using the same image of President Habib Bourguiba. They had seized the opportunity which our quality problems had offered them. They bid to print our values at a much reduced price. I immedi-ately said to M. Damaque that their prices were obviously political. (Whatever that could mean.) This worried him. I am sure that he was scrupulously honest, but he seemed to fear the compromising character of the word ‘political’. Meanwhile our Geordie girls’ continuing presence, training his girls, made him feel his authority over them was reduced the more they learned. He felt his bank was occupied. It became a psychological pitch between us. I filled in time writing my novel.

  De La Rue had a Tunisian agent, a handsome Arab. The two girls were fascinated watching the two of us speaking French to each other. They gossiped about how sexy he was. I had him make an appointment with the Governor, who agreed that it would be reprehensible to accept the Finns’ offer. Yes, he would stay with our company in view of the immense goodwill he felt towards us for correcting our errors. This was not surprising because a change of a long-standing banknote printer would require justification to the President, who might well consider it suspect. He also said he would prevail upon Damaque to overlook any really tiny dots.

  All was well. I paid the hotel bill. Before I left, the manager asked to see me in his office. He said it was highly personal. Please proceed, I said. He said he had been advised that every night, without exception, his receptionist had to tell me as soon as my two young girls returned. So every night, every night it would seem that I had had both of them. This was beyond his understanding of the English character. I said my behaviour was beyond reproach, and left him wondering how I could be such a ram.

  I had to go to Guinea-Conakry. Through us, the Royal Mint had won a tender to purchase the country’s withdrawn coinage for its metal content. Unfortunately quite a tonnage had been lost on the way to England, was still missing, and nobody knew what to do, least of all the insurers. They wanted evidence, from Conakry. The only place to get a visa for that seldom-visited country was Rome, so while waiting for the consulate to process my visa application I went to St Peter’s and lay on my back, gazing at the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

  In 1958 France had formulated the neo-colonial system for its previ-ous colonies of West Africa and Madagascar. One country had refused to comply: Guinea-Conakry. Their dictator Sékou Touré said a resounding ‘Non!’ They had the most vibrant and artistic culture in Africa, plenteous natural resources: a quarter of the world’s bauxite, plus gold, diamonds and iron ore, with a huge potential for hydro-electric power. They preferred total independence from France, in banking, economics, politics, jurisdiction, culture, everything.

  In revenge the French, under President de Gaulle, behaved almost as unforgivably as they had in the early 1800s under Emperor Napoleon, when independence was won from them by Haiti. They left Port au Prince only after inflicting massive destruction on the sugar factories, and murder. In Guinea it was also pretty bad. They tore out all the telephones and equipment, gathered together all the government files, tax records, future plans and burned them. They destroyed the country’s memory, leaving it nothing. This reduced the former potential wealth to penury, under a barely trained civil ser-vice, no conseillers techniques left behind to help. In the mounting chaos and resurgent tribalism Ahmed Sékou Touré became more and more autocratic and vicious. Stupidity and ignorance came to per-sonify the regime. They had their banknotes printed by East Germany. A container fell off the ship delivering them and millions floated down the coast. More Guinean banknotes were collected on the shores of Liberia and Sierra Leone than the Central Bank had actually ordered. They were stuck.

  From the airport to the capital was an hour’s drive through magnifi-cent jungle. The taxi driver was garrulous, delighted to meet an Englishman, highly but confidentially critical of the government. He pointed out a tree from which, only the previous month, half a dozen men had been left hanging. Not a good impression for visitors, he said. As a town, Conakry reminded me of the most run-down places in Java after the Dutch had been expelled. The whitewashed buildings had three feet of splashed mud stains all round them, eaten away with mould, the windows grimy, the streets soggy and pot-holed; but the people, no matter how poorly dressed, held themselves erect, especially the women in their exuberantly piled headdresses.

  The one hotel barely deserved a single star. It was filthy, every item of fabric grubby, the food atrocious, and even the china plates were stained. In the dining room was an English ship’s captain, drunk in front of a nearly empty bottle of champagne. There was a flash of recognition between us as coming from the same tribe but he was too far gone to talk to. I hoped he would sober up before putting to sea. He seemed to reflect the hopelessness of the hotel, its staff, everything.

  At the Central Bank the chief cashier was solicitous and companion-able. He said there had been a series of terrible mistakes. He knew that much of the withdrawn coinage had disappeared but there was no evidence to establish liability. We agreed that the Royal Mint should only pay for what it had received. By way of compensation he placed an order for twenty-eight million high-specification cheques. In the evenings he took me to see the national ballet. Never have I seen such dancing. They moved in African ways I could never have imagined, alluring grace interspersed with astonishing speed, arms and legs seem-ing to bend in impossible directions, to thrilling Guine
an music, with stories about mystical birds and sacred forests. Each performance was preceded by a badly made propaganda film featuring their dictator. In his African robes Sékou Touré looked wild and wonderful, but in ill-fitting western jacket and trousers he could have been a stowaway. He was all-powerful and everyone suspected he had received a substantial bribe from the East German printers of their banknotes.

  The next flight out was by Aeroflot in an Ilyushin turbo-prop. First class was at the back end, a single row of seats wedged under a ceiling sloping down behind them and a floor rising up underneath. The stew-ardesses were Soviet superwomen, bloated and used to getting their own way with mere passengers. I engaged one of them with what remained of my never-tested Russian and this made her more consider-ate. She even brought me a glass of water.

  When it came to lunch I decided to rebel. It was a plate of cold spam and beetroot. I told her categorically that as a first-class passenger I would never eat that. She was taken aback, vulnerable for so huge a bully. I asked if their airline were a member of the International Air Transport Association. Of course, she said. Then the three flight officers would, I said, have to have their own different sorts of food. Naturally, she said – regulations: to prevent multiple food-poisoning. What are they having? The flight engineer was having chicken, the co-pilot fish, and the pilot steak and chips. I said she should bring me the flight engi-neer’s chicken and he could have this cold beetroot and spam, which I handed to her. There were no other first-class passengers. How could she refuse, she obviously wondered. It was easy to read the thoughts in her troubled face. She grabbed my plate. I got my way. Never has plas-tic chicken tasted better.

  One of the countries I visited routinely was Cameroon. At its inde-pendence there had been a referendum which had decided that a chunk of Nigeria should be ceded to it. So there was a sizeable minority of Cameroonians who spoke English, including their ambassador in London. He was convinced they should break away from French influ-ence. He even accompanied me to the French-speaking capital of Yaoundé and obtained permits for me to take photographs of govern-ment buildings, as well as an array of lovely brass sculptures created by the lost wax method, and their intriguingly carved beads and hard-wood panels.