Monkeys in My Garden

by Valerie Pixley

  “I’m going to crack if you don’t do something,” I threatened O’D.

  At last, he drove off to Macate and reported Nora Swete for noise pollution. Sainete’s young assistant didn’t go for that but instead fined her for not having a licence to hold a Nippa party in the forest.

  The music stopped at last and a few days later, Daringua wandered back to work as if nothing had happened. He had divorced Nora Swete, we were told, and she had packed up all her possessions and moved to a spot six kilometres away, near the turnoff where the forest track joins the road to Chimoio.

  One day, the American missionary Kirby Jennings paid us a visit. He was showing the ‘Jesus’ film to the villagers in Macate. White haired and an old Africa hand soon to return to his own country, he had seen it all. Taking the opportunity of his wide experience, I asked him for his opinion concerning Nora Swete’s terrifying metamorphis.

  Visibly shaken by what I told him, Kirby Jenning’s face paled a shade and grew very grave. “I’ve seen this before in Africa,” he told me softly. “It’s demon possession.”

  And staring intently into my eyes with a warning that chilled me, he added “You must be careful. Very, very careful.”

  Arrojela, behind the hill and in the middle of the flames

  Me, 1992

  O’D

  Caetano, in the red shirt - 1992

  Biasse

  Caetano, again

  1994 - Home in the Nhamacoa!

  The cook hut, with Alberto our gardener

  1996 - Our workforce

  Fo’pence and Zerouso crossing the tranquil Panda river on the Ford tractor

  Children helping Caetano to lay down mats to drive over mud

  Gaz 66 - our Russian lorry with unbelievable 4 wheel drive - crossing a river on a makeshift plank bridge

  Loading logs the Mozambican way in 1995

  Daringua at the saw

  Fernandinho and crew, transporting logs on the MTZ tractor

  O’D repairing the MTZ in the forest

  Me in the forest

  Azelia

  Black Kitty - a formidable hunter

  Grumpy, before being kidnapped

  Me, starting off our indigenous tree nursery to replace the trees we felled

  2008 - Home in the Nhamacoa Forest

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE DROUGHT BREAKS

  Visitors started coming to the Nhamacoa. Other foresters, like Will Scholler and Andre Swanepoel. They came to see what we were up to and whether there were any opportunities to be had by getting to know us.

  Scholler, who was white haired and tough, was originally from Namibia but now lived in Pietersburg, a city in South Africa that had once been a bastion of apartheid. Despite this, his partner and close friend for many decades was an Indian called Sabir and together they had set up a company with a high-ranking Mozambican government official to cut timber in the region of Quelimane.

  Although I thought we were living rough, Scholler soon disabused me of this notion when he, Sabir and Izzy their mechanic, whose left eye disconcertingly stared off to the side instead of straight ahead, tramped into our house for coffee.

  “Nice set-up you’ve got here, O’D,” Scholler said, his steely eyes roving over the grass roof and the Fred Flintstone furniture in our sitting room.

  “Oh, do you think so?” I asked, disbelievingly.

  “You’re living in luxury compared to us,” he assured me. “We’re sleeping in tents … cooking over the coals ... and wallowing around in mud now that the drought’s broken.”

  We weren’t long into the conversation when Scholler said,“I see you’ve got the same problem we’ve got, O’D.” He nodded his head at the west-facing window and the plume of smoke we could see rising up in the hills. “People moving into your area, chopping down trees and burning everything in sight. It’s worse around us, though. Real devastation. We’re inundated with people. The other day I asked them what they’d do when we moved camp and they laughed and told me that they’d move with us.”

  Andre Swanepoel arrived soon after Scholler. A short, slim man who chainsmoked and hid his eyes behind dark glasses, Andre lived in Zimbabwe. Felling timber to supply wood to his father’s door-manufacturing factory in Pretoria, Andre had it in for the BBC. The population had also invaded his area and while they were chop chopping away at the forest around him, he had heard the BBC telling the world over his shortwave radio that it was people like Andre who were to blame for deforestation.

  “I don’t like the way they lump us all together,” he grumped, “telling the world that we’re the ones destroying the environment and cutting down all the trees. They should get their facts right instead of spreading misinformation. We’re LEGAL foresters, paying for our licences and keeping to the rules. If they really knew what was going on – which they obviously don’t! - they’d know that it’s the people who are doing all the destruction to the forests, not us.”

  Wet and stormy weather now set in with a vengeance and work in the forest became hard and uncomfortable. Time and time again, rain drenched O’D and our workers and made them shiver. The country didn’t have rain gear. The forest tracks ran with water and became slippery and dangerous and if you weren’t a good driver, a loaded lorry and trailer could easily overturn.

  O’D was still in the depths of the forest late one evening when I heard the commotion.

  It came from the direction of two huts hidden in the bush not far from the back of the house, huts that housed our fearsome foreman Nunes and Mauricio, a pleasant old man who was our new mechanic.

  The loud shouts and screams I now heard coming from Nunes’ and Mauricio’s huts were quite frightening and although I really didn’t feel like going to investigate, I picked up my torch and went down the back stairs.

  It had rained on and off all day long but now at last the heavy downpours had turned into a misty drizzle and through this drizzle, the beam of my torch picked out the figure of Mauricio. He was stumbling up the path towards me, crying and moaning and holding his hands over his mouth. Walking up to him, I shone the torchlight on his face and got something of a shock. His hands and his mouth were red and shiny with blood!

  “Mauricio,” I said, my heart beginning to thud fearfully in my chest, “what happened to you, Mauricio?”

  “Nunes,” he told me, through great, gulping sobs. “Putas. Three in his hut.”

  “Putas!” I exclaimed, angry that Nunes was harbouring prostitutes in his hut. And so close to my house! How dare he?

  “They hit me,” Mauricio cried pitifully. “They hit me … and broke one of my teeth!”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why did they hit you, Mauricio?”

  “They wanted to get into my hut … and I wouldn’t let them ... and so they hit me!” he wailed.

  Another figure appeared out of the night. Steven, with his lantern.

  Thankfully I turned the problem over to him. “Go and tell those prostitutes that they have no right to be here on sawmill property, Steven. Tell them to get out of here, NOW!”

  Steven’s eyes lit up in the lamplight at the thought of some action.

  “Can I hit them?” he asked me eagerly.

  “No!” I exclaimed. Steven was a strong man and the last thing I needed was for him to injure the women and then tell everyone I had told him to do it. I could just see the headlines in the Mozambican newspapers. ‘ZIMBABWEAN WAR VET MASQUERADING AS MOZAMBICAN NIGHTGUARD BEATS UP MOZAMBICAN WOMEN ON THE ORDERS OF WHITE FOREIGNER’. “No, just tell them to get out of here, right now. Okay?”

  Steven disappeared down the path and I was left with the still blubbering Mauricio. He made a pathetic picture and so I gave him a sympathetic, consoling pat on his shoulder. “Wait here, Mauricio,” I told him. “I’m going to get you some painkillers. You’ll feel better in no time after you’ve taken them.”

  A few minutes later, while Mauricio was putting two Paracetamol pills into his bleeding mouth, we heard the sound of blows and some blood
curdling screaming. My heart stood still. Now what? Steven emerged out of the long grass and strode towards us. His lantern had gone out.

  “I had to hit them,” he told me with some satisfaction. “They refused to leave. Then they kicked my lantern and broke it and so I gave them all something to remember.”

  On the way back to the house, I stopped off at the cook hut to pick up the pot Biasse had left simmering on the mud brick stove. How fortunate the trouble had been something I’d been able to handle on my own. Why did things always have to happen when O’D wasn’t around?

  In the sitting room, I sat down at the table and filled a soup bowl with Biasse’s vegetable soup. It had pasta in it and made a substantial, warming meal on this wet and windy night.

  The room was brighter and warmer too because we had replaced our black plastic blinds with some sleeping mat blinds. These were not only better at keeping the wind and rain out but improved the look of the house, giving it a nice cozy bush look on the inside and a nice casual bush look on the outside.

  The day’s wind, though, had blown some grass off the roof and it had sprung several leaks. Over the drip drip drip of water dripping into buckets, I listened to my static-filled radio. Sleep would be impossible, I knew, while O’D was in trouble somewhere in the forest.

  It was about half past eleven when I heard the distant sound of a vehicle driving slowly along the forest track towards the house. I walked over to the east-facing window and, peering out through a gap in the sleeping mat blind, I saw a strange glowing light wavering down the track towards me. Something huge and lumbering seemed to be following behind it. Puzzled, I shone my torch in the direction of the peculiar light.

  A running man wearing soaked and filthy clothes came into view. Holding a smouldering branch up in the air, he ran slowly down the track in front of the green Gaz. A Gaz loaded with logs and workers and that had no lights ... No lights on a black, moonless and starless night like this!

  No one bothered to unload the logs. The moment O’D hit the brakes, everyone abandoned the Gaz and vanished into the night. They were wet and freezing. They were hungry. And they were tired.

  In the sitting room, O’D rubbed his wet hair dry with a towel and drank a steaming cup of coffee.

  It had rained so much in the forest during the day, he told me, that it had turned the ground into a sea of mud. On the way out, both lorries had sunk down to their axels and they had spent hours trying to dig them out.

  In the end, they had succeeded in freeing the green Gaz, but they had had to leave the blue Gaz behind. Then, on the way home, the lights of the green Gaz had failed and as they had used up the torch batteries earlier on, O’D had had to think of other alternatives to light his way home.

  Determined not to spend an uncomfortably soggy night in the forest without food and warmth, O’D’s ever inventive brain had come up with an idea. He had turned to Nunes, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

  “Give me your cigarette lighter, Nunes,” O’D had ordered.

  By now, the rain had stopped and so O’D had comandeered one of the workers to run down the slippery, slidey forest roads and to hold Nunes’ cheap plastic throwaway cigarette lighter and its tiny flame up in the air so that he could follow it. It hadn’t exactly been easy driving behind the lighter, O’D told me. For some reason, the worker holding the lighter had irritatingly been unable to run in a straight line down the middle of the road. Running from left to right and then from right to left again, the tiny flame had weaved all over the place.

  “He really confused me,” O’D said, “and if I hadn’t been careful, we would have been off the road and into the bush!”

  When the lighter had run out of fuel, they had stopped near some huts and had asked for a burning branch or a glowing stick of wood to help them on their way but the villagers had refused to give them anything. According to local superstition, they believed that giving strangers a glowing coal or a burning branch after dark might result in their spirits being stolen from them.

  Eventually, they had found a man who knew one of our workers. Reassured by a familiar face, he had parted with a small smouldering stick and this had been the strange wavering light I had seen coming towards me.

  The rains stopped for a while and the sun came out. In the forest, O’D dug out the blue Gaz and brought it home.

  Then, two days before the end of the month, O’D gave me some very bad news.

  “We won’t be able to pay the wages on Saturday,” he told me. “We’re broke. Flat, stony, broke.”

  We were in the sitting room at the time and I sank back in my chair, feeling panicky. No money! Just what I had always dreaded.

  “How much do we actually have?”

  O’D put his hand into one of his trouser pockets and pulled out a couple of coins. Five meticais! The only money we had in the world. Not even enough to buy a shoelace!

  How ironic it was to be penniless while we were sitting on an enormous pile of valuable hardwood planks and beams!

  “But there must be someone out there who wants to buy planks, surely!” I cried. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” O’D said. “Caetano and I have tried everything.”

  After hearing the dreadful news about the state of our finances, I went into the bedroom and closed the door. There was only one thing left to do now, I knew, and that was to speak to God and ask Him for help. This was not something the Anglican Church had ever told me we could do, but O’D and I were desperate and He was our last hope.

  I sat down on the chair next to the window. “God,” I begged, “God, we need money to pay our workers their wages. Help us, please! You’re the only One who can do it.”

  The next morning, at around about ten o’clock, I heard the sound of a car driving slowly down the forest track towards us. My heart gave a little leap. Could this be a customer? The answer to my prayer? I peered out of the sitting room window but when I recognised the plump driver sitting behind the steering wheel of the white pickup as it drove slowly past the house, my spirits fell again. Oh, it was only Mendonca …

  Teofilo Mendonca was from the Department of Labour in Chimoio and something of a special friend of O’D’s, although I couldn’t understand why. Smooth, plump and softly spoken, like most Mozambicans he was always wanting things from us. Things like whisky … or money … and once, O’D had even given him my old computer notebook and printer.

  Disappointed, I turned away from the window. A ‘wanting’ person was the last person we needed in our situation. I didn’t even bother going out to greet Mendonca, but picked up a book and began to read.

  An hour went by before I heard the sound of Mendonca’s vehicle starting up again and driving down the track. “Goodbye, goodbye,” I muttered, as the sound of the pickup grew fainter and fainter.

  O’D came into the sitting room, rather jauntily, I thought. I looked up from my book.

  “I suppose Mendonca wanted some free wood from us and you gave it to him … for nothing,” I said accusingly.

  “Yes, he did want some wood,” O’D told me. “Quite a lot of wood, in fact. He’s building a house for himself.”

  Beginning to fume at the thought of such an expensive freebie while our workers went without their wages, I opened my mouth. But before I could say another word, O’D got in first.

  “And he gave me this,” he said.

  He pulled some large bundles of meticais notes out of his trouser pockets and put them down on the table.

  Amazed, I stared at the bundles. “Don’t tell me he actually PAID for the wood!”

  “Yes,” O’D said and a great big grin lit up his face. “He got some money from somewhere … and … it’s the exact amount we need to pay the workers!”

  Awestruck and thrilled by this evidence that God had actually heard my prayer - and had answered it so speedily - I began to laugh. “A miracle! It’s a miracle!” Imagine God answering my prayer! Imagine God using someone like Teofilo Mendonca
to rescue us from the crisis we were in! If ever there was an unlikely tool … but then God didn’t have much to choose from in a country like Mozambique, did He?

  In the bedroom, I sat down on the chair next to the window. Relieved that another crisis was over and overwhelmed by God’s quick response, all I could say was “Oh God, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  In some strange way, Mendonca’s visit and purchase of wood from us acted as a catalyst and released us from the terrible financial limbo that had held us in a stranglehold for so long.

  A few days later, we had another visitor. This was a small man called Mr. Pasos who came on foot from Chimoio to buy planks from us. Then, when O’D went to Chimoio to buy fuel, he bumped into Clive who ordered some planks to make new decks for the Tabex trailers. Not long after this, Maciel, who was building a new house for himself, saw the timber Clive had bought and ordered wood for his kitchen cupboards.

  Things were looking up a little - at last!