Dizzy Worms

by Michael Holman

  “What does Charity say?”

  “Comes up with a bloody local proverb . . . ‘Good fruit cannot grow on a tree planted in bad soil.’ Claims that Nduka’s plan for Kireba will eat itself – whatever that means. And bangs on about the need for decent toilets. Except now she’s as mad as a snake. She phoned me this morning saying that cement prices have soared since the announcement . . . No cement, no toilets. The truth is, everything we do seems an act of faith.”

  The rest of the journey passed in silence.

  Lucy had indicated that “hanky hanky” was out of the question. She had to attend a press conference on nomads, followed by a briefing on the results of a survey on obesity and child abuse in Africa, and then a lunch with the Dutch ambassador.

  “I’ll try and rearrange, but it won’t be easy. You could stay at Borrowdale,” she offered, the green and pleasant suburb where WorldFeed was based. “But I’ve had to find room for that woman from Nomads. Barking mad, absolutely bonkers.”

  The prospect of having to be polite to her house guests was demanding; and the thought of being caught between the dogma of Promoting an African Diet and the zealotry of Spare A Seed For Nomads filled him with horror, and quelled his ardour.

  Pearson had no hesitation in opting for a room at his favourite hotel, The Outspan.

  “See you at Harrods,” he said as they arrived, and was rewarded with a kiss on the cheek.

  “Love ya,” she called out as she drove off.

  But Pearson was not sure whether the sentiment was directed at him, or at the concierge, who had allowed Lucy to drop him at reception. On balance, he reflected as he made his way to his room, it was more likely to be the concierge.

  He looked at his watch: it was just seven. Time for a nap before heading for Charity’s bar.

  7

  Charity usually set the alarm clock early, giving herself a delicious extra ten minutes in bed. She liked to ease herself into the world, a process that included counting her blessings. How fortunate she was, Charity reminded herself, to have a roof over her head that did not leak when it rained, to have blankets that kept her warm while she slept on a mattress without bed bugs, protected by a mosquito net that kept her safe from malaria. And as she shook off sleep, Charity took pleasure from looking round her white-washed room in the slum’s only clinic, rented from its staff nurse, Cousin Mercy.

  This morning, however, no sooner had the alarm gone off than she had been up and about, washing her face at the white enamel basin, which she had filled with water the night before.

  Although the sun had yet to break the horizon, the heat was already building up. Only rain would bring relief; but with rain would come mud. The crude hole-in-the-ground latrines that dotted Kireba would overflow, and human waste would join the rest of the filth that made up the black stream that ran through the slum.

  She was brushing her teeth with a stick when an unfamiliar rumble began. She cocked her head, paused and listened attentively. There was no mistaking it – a new unwelcome sound among the everyday noises that marked dawn in Kireba. It could be heard in the background, behind the call of returning night watchmen, the ring of bells on hawkers’ bicycles, the rich variety of coughs that marked the end or the start of sleep, the rattle of pots and pans as breakfast was prepared, the low growl of the buses that packed the roads leading from the slum to the city, the strident calls of the matatu boys soliciting passengers.

  The new intrusion was the deep grumble of the massive bulldozer signalling the start of a process that, if President Nduka was to be believed, would lead to the transformation of Kireba into an inspirational model of low-cost housing.

  The enormous mechanical beast was to begin cutting a swathe through the blood-red earth, digging the trench that would carry huge water pipes that would serve the blocks of low-income flats which would replace the shacks and shanties that were home to half a million souls.

  While Charity got dressed she compiled the day’s menu in her head, before chalking it on the blackboard, propped against the steel side of one of the three shipping containers that made up the bar.

  Perhaps this morning she would begin with a Coke and bun – which she termed a “bad sticky” – or fruit juice and cornbread, the “good sticky”.

  She had thought long and hard about selling sweet sodas. Water, filtered water, was cheap and it was far better for you, that was obvious. But even people who were poor had a right to waste their money on sugary sodas.

  “People must be able to choose,” she had told her old friend Mildred Kigali. “Choose in politics, choose in food.”

  “Good sticky – 20 ngwee

  Bad sticky, same price,” she wrote.

  Charity paused, rubbed a dab of Vaseline into her cheeks, and prepared to face the world and the bulldozer. What would her late friend, Anna Nugilu, have done? Anna, who had been a rare woman politician in a business dominated by males, had died in a car crash, like Charity’s dear husband. And like David’s death, there were rumours that it had been more than an accident. If the intention had been to discourage opposition to Nduka, it had succeeded. Certainly nobody put their head above the political parapet.

  Meanwhile other matters were on Charity’s mind, including a decision for too long put off. What should she do about her persistent suitor, Edward Furniver, that pink-faced overweight Englishman who was burrowing his way into her heart? To call him overweight was perhaps unfair. He weighed no more than a Kuwisha man of the same age. But a local carried the extra pounds proudly and efficiently, equally distributed between his belly and his butumba, the one providing a counterweight to the other.

  Not so with Europeans: as their stomachs grew, bulging over their belts, their bottoms seemed to shrink, and become two miserable, scrawny flaps of flesh at the top of their shanks . . .

  Sooner rather than later, she had to tell Furniver whether she believed they had a future to share.

  She wished yet again that she could consult her father, the late Harrods Tangwenya and in particular her dear husband, David Mupanga, bishop of central Kuwisha. Although the raw pain of David’s loss in the car accident some four years ago had eased, she missed his benign presence every day.

  Charity tied a green apron around her waist and smoothed down her hair. It was still dark, too dark to make out the shape of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot), even though the bar was barely fifty paces away. But she knew that in five minutes this would change. As the sun brought the early morning light, the shacks and shanties would emerge from the soft dawn that made the slum look almost attractive, and reveal the brutal reality of life in post-election Kireba.

  For a while, the violent outcome of the December poll had catapulted Kireba and the East African state of Kuwisha into the international headlines, although foreign journalists based in the country were caught by surprise. This was not supposed to happen. How could Kuwisha, the African model of successful development, the reliable ally of the West, the region’s safe base for the aid agencies; how could this country prove so rotten and so fragile?

  Had not Kuwisha, under the authority of founding President Nduka, paid its dues to the all-powerful West, allowing Western warships access to Indian Ocean ports? Did not a million holidaymakers enjoy its golden beaches and glorious game parks every year? And did not the development organisations make progress in efforts to end poverty? And in a regional sea of privation and conflict, was Kuwisha not a reliable rear base for the international media?

  But the foreign correspondents were nothing if not adaptable, postponing their New Year holiday plans, attending briefings by WorldFeed and other agencies, and taking Western diplomats to lunch, where together they pondered the strange ways of Africa.

  The resulting insights soon rained down on unsuspecting readers: news stories and columns lamented the triumph of blood-lust, the supremacy of savagery, the sheer unpredictability of Africa; and described how rabbles were roused, condemned the firebrand politicians who fanned the flames of unrest; ki
llings were senseless and brutal, and civil war and genocide were said to beckon, with the spectre of Rwanda ever in the background.

  Charity had been lucky. She and Edward Furniver, who had been invited to her shamba on the strict condition that there would be no hanky hanky – “never before marriage” – had left Kireba before voting had begun. They had taken a matatu to her small-holding in the green hills, a two-hour drive from the city, where she cast her ballot.

  But the peace she had left behind was illusory.

  Within hours of the polling booths closing and the early results suggesting an opposition victory was probable, the onslaught orchestrated by the ruling party had begun. The devastation that followed changed the face and the nature of Kireba.

  Harrods escaped the worst of the violence, partly because of its location on the edge of the slum, and partly because Cousin Mercy, who had taken refuge in the nearby clinic, had the presence of mind not only to lock the steel doors of all three shipping containers that made up the bar, but to set fire to some old tyres piled alongside. The resulting plume of black, oily smoke created the impression that the mob had already done their worst . . .

  Other residents of Kireba were not as fortunate as Charity.

  “The noise was dreadful,” said Philimon Ogata who had remained behind, watching with horror from an old water pipe in which he had taken refuge. After the mob had passed, he had picked through the ashes of his Pass Port to Heaven Funeral Parlour, in the hope that he would find some of his tools, abandoned when he fled the advancing gang.

  “It was like a train coming from down the track, getting louder and louder, as it got closer,” he told Charity.

  The sound had been distant at first: whistles that pierced the night, accompanied by the yelping of dogs; and then a crumple of collapsing sheets of corrugated iron, mixed with the cries of women, cut off in mid-shriek, creating a brief silence that was all the more chilling. All this blended in the liquidiser of chaos. But as the commotion drew closer there were other sounds that emerged – the calls of parents seeking their children, and the throbbing grunts that came from the bellies of the young men in the mob, under orders from local politicians, bearing flaming torches aloft and illuminating white teeth or capturing scenes of horror: a panga raised above a cowering figure, but so briefly that the consequences of the blow had to be imagined, for the sharp-edged tools were enveloped by dark as they descended on the cowering victims.

  The gangs of youths, paid by the hour, chanted the ruling party’s campaign slogan, Kuwisha Kwanza (Kuwisha First), as they led the pillaging. Decent people driven by desperation and despair did unspeakable things to other decent people, all clinging to a visceral sense of identity which dominated their lives, beginning with the village in which they had been born, spreading in a series of concentric circles to embrace clan, and district and province, all on a bedrock of tribal affiliation.

  Then Kuwisha’s plight slowly dropped down the world news agenda, until it was out of sight, allowing the foreign journalists to resume their tales about the horrors of Darfur, or Zimbabwe, or the Congo. Kuwisha’s citizens were left to bewail their circumstances, while foreign non-government organisations rallied round and promised to repair the damage: houses and schools and clinics to be rebuilt; stalls and shops to be restocked; empty bellies to be filled. Children were recalled from school, and put to work for pittances. Only the clever and the fortunate went back to the classroom, carrying on their bony shoulders the hopes of their families and their siblings.

  At the best of times, to send one child for education in a family of several children was akin to buying a ticket in Life’s lottery, an achievement bought through sacrifice, and hard work. The outcome was awaited eagerly, though the benefits of schooling could take years to materialise.

  But these were the worst of times.

  For many, even this slim chance of climbing on the coat tails of a successful child was dashed by a plague called Aids. It left behind an army of orphans, who had nowhere to go but the streets of Kuwisha. This lost generation suffered twice: first as casualties, cannon fodder for the plague itself; then, even if they were spared, they found themselves deprived of their parents and grandparents, the former dead and the latter dying.

  Bands of feral children roamed the cities, uncounted victims of the carnage in Kireba.

  The sheds and plastic shelters and corrugated iron shanties which had been put to the torch could be rebuilt, and the black fire-torched gaps in the slum’s alleys, like missing teeth, were filled. But many of the original residents did not return. Not necessarily because they were dead, though that was often the case. The living no longer trusted their neighbours, because they were from the south, or the east or the west – and the days when the Okot and the Ulu, the Kiyu and the Dere, could live as neighbours were over, perhaps forever.

  8

  “Mo’ningi, mo’ningi . . .”

  The sound of the common mo’ningi, named after its familiar call, could be heard just outside Pearson’s hotel room. How he had missed the cries that so often marked the start of his day in Kuwisha.

  “Mo’ningi, mo’ningi.”

  The cry of a shy visitor, traditionally associated with the start of the day, came again, but a little louder and a little closer. If he lay still, quite still, under his duvet, he might with any luck spot the mo’ningi’s traditional companions, notoriously shy and masters of the art of concealment.

  “Mo’ningi.”

  Again it came, with an interrogative note, as well as a touch of the diffident, almost apologetic tone that marked their cry. Pearson was tempted to turn over, and go back to sleep, but he knew he would regret it if, after coming all this way, he failed to make the most of the climate. After all, he could lie abed – should he choose – in grey, miserable London; to do so on another blue-skied African day was to be indifferent to one of the glories that made the continent so special.

  How he had missed Africa!

  He stirred, slowly, carefully, so as not to alarm the mo’ningi, and straightened a leg, opening his eyes, absorbing the traditional sounds of Africa awakening.

  “Mo’ningi.”

  The call was straightforward now, as if it was a signal to others who would follow in the mo’ningi’s footsteps, demonstrating that it was safe for them to come out. Pearson lay still. He could not see the mo’ningi, or any of its companions. But they were there. Somewhere. All his experience of the continent and its many moods told him he was not alone.

  How many times had he been proved right?

  One was never truly alone in Kuwisha, no matter how desolate and remote it might seem. He recalled how in the north-east of the country – surely as bleak a region as could be found – he had been caught short on a long journey. After choosing a spot for its isolation, in a landscape that showed as much life as the surface of the moon, he responded to a call of nature, made urgent by a meal of dodgy goat stew and rancid milk.

  He had parked his car on the side of the track, gone several unnecessary yards into the rocky terrain, lowered his trousers, and enjoyed the blessed relief – only to look up and see a herd boy watching with curiosity and sympathy.

  What was more, when he had finished there was a man who turned out to be a teacher wanting a lift, waiting patiently by the car . . .

  The washingi, low on nature’s pecking order, notoriously shy, made a characteristic nervous foray, watched through the half-closed eye of Pearson, still concealed by the duvet.

  Soon the washingi was joined by a cleaningi, and both engaged in their ritual dance-like movements, breaking out into their familiar songs.

  Any second now, and the teesuh would knock on the door. Pearson gave himself the luxury of a five-minute lie-in, confident that the teesuh would wake him, with the sound of the gentle clink of cup and saucer he had got to know so well during his years in Africa.

  It was in this environment that Pearson felt truly at home. And when his day ended, with the stewardi bringing him drinksi, li
fe had nothing more satisfying to offer.

  Every now and then, they would all gather round, at the end of the day, to entertain the touristi.

  Who would believe that, without their traditional attire, one was watching the mo’ningi, who had set to one side her housekeeping duties, or the washingi, without the identifying bundle of clothes for the laundry, or the teesuh, hardly recognisable without his tray and tea cup, while the stewardi, a nocturnal creature, was a different man altogether when not bearing a gin and tonic, or any other type of drinksi. Pearson had seen them perform often, but never failed to be moved by their display.

  Bowing and stooping, cheerful and cheering, they moved in unison, as they paraded in a time-honoured ritual. This was Africa in the raw, and Pearson felt privileged to be privy to it.

  “Tea, suh.”

  Pearson must have drifted back to sleep, because when he next opened his eyes and looked around the hotel room, there was not a mo’ningi, or washingi, or cleaningi to be seen, although they had left behind traces of their presence. Clean towels, soap and shampoo. There were even tubes of shower gel, cotton buds and a shower cap.

  He reached for the phone, and dialled room service. Outside, muffled by the plate-glass windows, and masked by the hum of the air conditioner, he could hear the rumble of early morning traffic. Room service rang back: there were no mushrooms for his breakfast omelette, and he would have to make do with honey rather than maple syrup with the waffles.