Our empty larder hadn’t worried me, as we had intended to replenish our food stocks in the morning, by driving across the border to Mutare and to TM Supermarket. But now …
“They can’t spend the NIGHT!” I hissed. “There’s nothing to eat and there’s nowhere for them to sleep! Tell them to go away!”
“I can’t tell them to go away,” O’D said, the peculiar look on his face intensifying and confirming my suspicions that he had invited the Chinese to supper and then had forgotten all about it.
With a sinking heart, I went outside. For a moment, I had the faint hope that the Chinese had brought some food with them, as one usually does in Africa, when visiting in the bush, but this hope faded when I saw that the only nourishment they had in the 4 x 4 was a crate of beer - which they had already started drinking.
“Ah!” Mr. Ying said, dark brown eyes beaming at me through his spectacles as he pumped my hand up and down vigorously.
“Mr. Ying,” I began, giving him a weak smile in return. “I’m afraid that there’s been some kind of mistake. We have no food in the house to give to you. And I’m sorry, but there aren’t any beds for you to sleep on, either.”
My bad news did not seem to deflect the Chinese from their determination to spend the night in our house and it also seemed that they did not understand what ‘no food’ meant either.
Mr. Deligong, who was quite muscley and could have passed for a Triad if he had worn a red bandana tied around his shaggy midnight black hair, gave me their order for supper, as if I were a restaurant owner. “We like chicken very much,” he beamed, “FRIED chicken.”
“Ah! FRIED chicken!” Mr. Ying repeated happily, rubbing his hands with anticipation. “I like very much FRIED chicken!”
I turned to O’D who, so far, had been of no help in getting us out of this dilemma into which he had put us. From the expression on his face, I could see that his brain had seized up for the moment and that it would be up to me. I wracked my own brains for a solution and the names “Jethro” and “Daisy Commercial” popped into my head.
I turned to O’D. “I think the best thing to do,” I said, “is to go to Macate and buy some cans of tuna and sardines from Jethro’s shop.”
My culinary suggestions wiped the smiles off the Chinese’ faces.
Mr. Chang’s pleasant schoolteacher face lost its smooth inscrutability. “Fish … Cans!” he cried, aghast at the prospect. “We buy … CHICKENS!”
Having once bought a Macate chicken, which had resembled a rubber imitation of a chicken rather than the real thing, I thought this was a bad idea. However, in the face of such strong opposition when it came to eating anything else, I knew that any warnings from me would be brushed aside.
Mr. Chang opened more bottles of beer and they all piled into the dusty Toyota, with O’D in the front to show them the way to Macate.
“Soon! Back soon!” Mr. Ying shouted cheerfully, with a wave of his beer bottle at me through his open window.
And then they jolted off down the forest track, drinking and driving and talking and laughing.
After they left, I went into the house and gloomily sat down on the sofa to wait for them to come back from their trip. I remembered the last time Mr. Chang and Mr. Deligong had visited us to talk about buying our timber. On that occasion, they had irritated me immensely by running around excitedly with their cameras and taking photographs of our dilapidated grass-roofed house and glassless windows with their reed sleeping mat blinds … behaving as if O’D and I were a primitive, prehistoric caveman couple whom the world had thought was extinct, but whom they, Mr. Chang and Mr. Deligong, had discovered was alive and well … and living in the Nhamacoa forest in Mozambique.
They were all in a merry mood and emanating strong beery fumes when they came back. This was a consequence, O’D told me, of sitting in Jethro’s bar for over two and a half hours while they waited for an old villager to catch two chickens, to kill them, pluck them, clean them and then charge 200 per cent more for them than the shops in Chimoio would have charged for them.
“Chickens!” Mr. Deligong triumphantly brandished the two large chickens at me. “Oil! We need oil!”
As the only oil I had left was my precious unopened bottle of olive oil, I balked for a second, wondering why they hadn’t bought oil in Macate.
“Forgot,” O’D told me and added knowledgeably, “They won’t need much,”
“Oh, alright,” I said, knowing I had no option.
When I grudgingly handed the precious bottle over, I forced myself to ask another question. “Do you need some help with the chickens?”
Mr. Deligong’s teeth flashed a sparkle of white in the paraffin lamplight. “No. I expert chicken frier!” he told me.
I was relieved to hear this. It took away any guilt I might have felt when I watched him walk down the back stairs and into the fiery furnace of the cook hut, followed by Mr. Chang and Fernando.
Left with the company of the non-English speaking Mr. Ying, O’D and I were at a bit of a loss for a few seconds. However, Mr. Ying soon put us at ease. Drinking down two thirds of his bottle of beer all in one go, he beamed expansively at us and asked “Opera? You like opera? Ah! Western opera good! Very good!”
Flinging his arms out wide, he threw back his head and drew in a long, deep breath that expanded his blue-shirted chest. Then, he opened his mouth and in a loud, emotional and dramatic operatic voice, sang a snatch of song in Chinese. “Aida,” he informed us, pausing for breath. “You like?”
O”D and I nodded our heads, smiling. “Yes,” we told him. “Good. Very good!”
Flinging his arms out wide again, Mr. Ying treated us to another snatch of song, which sounded exactly like the first. “La Traviata,” he informed us, stopping for another breath. “You like?”
“Yes, very nice! Very good!” O’D and I nodded and smiled politely again.
Although I was beginning to feel like some kind of head-nodding doll, our appreciation encouraged Mr. Ying and for the next ten minutes he treated us to more songs which all sounded identical to us but which he told us were excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen, Puccini’s Madam Butterfly and La Boheme.
When at last his singing came to an end, I said “Aaah…” and clapped my hands in applause. This pleased Mr. Ying and he bowed several times, as if he had been performing on a stage instead of in a ramshackle house in a Mozambican forest.
Opening another bottle of beer, he took a long swig to moisten his dry throat and then turned his attention to his surroundings. His bespectacled and inquisitive eyes flitted up towards the ceiling, taking in the dry yellow grass; they moved down to the windows and examined the sleeping mats hanging from our glassless windows; they rested on the two paraffin lamps strategically placed on the bookcase and the table to light up the dim room; they drifted interestedly over the enormous spider web woven from window to ceiling and occupied by our fat resident golden orb spider.
He gave a loud laugh. “Ha haaa! You! English bushman!” he exclaimed exuberantly and clapped O’D so hard on a shoulder O’D staggered. “English bushman!” he repeated and gave O’D another powerful clap on the shoulder. “I make you rich,” he promised, beaming at us, “RICH! I invite you to house in Beijing. Beijing good! House good!”
Although it was nice to hear that Mr. Ying intended to make us rich and was inviting us to visit his house in Beijing, I was beginning to feel a little drained. There is nothing so exhausting as trying to carry on a conversation with someone who only speaks a few words of your language while you don’t speak their language at all.
Fortunately, rescue was at hand. Black Kitty padded panther-like into the sitting room and Mr. Ying gave another loud exclamation, this time not of amusement but of delight. “Aaaah, cat!” he cried. “CAT! I like cat very much! Very much!”
He knelt down on the carpet in front of Black Kitty and, pinning him down onto the ground, began to stroke him with long, hard strokes. Irate at being squashed almost flat down onto his stomach
on the floor by a stranger, Black Kitty reacted with a loud, fierce hiss and struggled free, giving Mr. Ying a long scratch in the process. Mr. Ying started back from him and without another look at our Chinese guest, Black Kitty jumped up onto the windowsill and began to lick himself clean of Mr. Ying’s fingerprints.
Mr. Ying stood up, rubbing his arm. He seemed a little hurt by Black Kitty’s unfriendly behaviour towards him. “I go see chicken,” he told us and promptly left the room to cover his loss of face.
Taken by surprise at his quick exit and as a result forgetting to give him a torch to light his way in the dark, O’D and I listened to Mr. Ying walk down the back stairs and onto the crumbling, uneven brick path. When we heard a shout … AAARRGH! … and the sound of a body falling over, we looked at each other speechlessly, fearing the worst. What NOW?
Mr. Ying came hobbling back into the sitting room a few seconds later. With agony etched all over his face, he sank down onto the carpet with a moan of pain and began to massage an ankle.
My heart also sank. This unwelcome and unexpected visit by the Chinese was fast lurching towards disaster! First, no food and now, perhaps a broken ankle!
O’D knelt down beside Mr. Ying and together they carefully examined his sock and trainer-encased ankle. “Probably just a sprain,” O’D muttered. “Pity we haven’t got any ice. A cold compress would probably help.”
Mr. Ying tightened his lips bravely and allowed O’D to gently massage his ankle. After a while, he rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet with O’D’s help and limped over to a chair. A sprain, only a slight sprain. Despite this, Mr. Ying’s cheerful mood dissipated and a glittery look replaced the pleasant, friendly look in his brown eyes. We were no longer amusing and had changed from being English bushmen into English barbarians.
Mr. Deligong’s arrival into the sitting room instantly lightened our dark moods. He came in triumphantly, holding aloft a large plate piled high with beautifully golden, crispy-fried chicken and with a flourish, placed this onto the table.
His sore ankle forgotten, Mr. Ying’s eyes shone with anticipation behind his spectacles. He was starving! Mr. Deligong filled each plate with a portion of his exquisitely cooked birds and, sitting down at the table, we picked up our knives and forks.
As I had feared, the Macate chicken lived up to its reputation. Despite all the care and attention lavished on it from Mr. Deligong sweating away in the cook hut, it resisted all our efforts to penetrate its tough meat with our eating utensils. Within seconds, chicken portions were skidding around our plates … bouncing rubberly onto the tablecloth and … oops, sorry, Mr. Ying! … into each other’s plates … as if we were playing a game of tiddlywinks!
As I stretched out my fingers to retrieve my chicken from Mr. Ying’s plate, Mr. Chang’s chicken leapt across the table and knocked over the salt cellar and then Mr. Deligong’s chicken bounced out of his plate, off the table and onto the floor. He bent down and scooped it up and then, ignoring the dust and Black Kitty hairs now coating it unhygienically, sank his teeth into it.
Mr. Ying’s eyes grew annoyed and when Mr. Chang also discarded his knife and fork and grabbed hold of his chicken with his hands, tearing at it with his teeth, he decided to follow their example. Unfortunately, his old teeth weren’t up to it and after a few fruitless bites which left no impression on its tough skin, he threw his chicken disgustedly back down onto his plate and glared at it. Supper with English bushmen - hah!
“Beer!” he demanded. Then, while Mr. Deligong, Mr. Chang and Fernando determinedly gnawed their way like wild animals through their chicken, my chicken, Mr. Ying’s chicken and O’D’s chicken, Mr. Ying sat in his chair, drinking beer after beer and sulking.
There were no more songs or laughs and as soon as the chicken was gone, the Chinese went to sleep, without washing or even brushing their teeth.
Mr. Deligong, Mr. Chang and Fernando curled up on the carpet without pillows or blankets and a hungry Mr. Ying threw himself grumpily down onto the narrow camp bed O’D put together for him. Unlike the others, Mr. Ying slept under a mosquito net O’D had suspended from a beam of the sitting room’s grass roof. After what Mr. Ying had been through, we knew it would be just his luck - and ours - for him to get bitten by a mosquito and laid low with malaria of the worst sort if we didn’t do something to protect him.
The Chinese left early the next morning and we never saw Mr. Ying, Mr. Chang and Mr. Deligong again. A few weeks later, Caetano told us that a Mr. Luke Chen was taking charge of Ying Investments and that Ying Investments was now called Chen Investments.
And although we never saw Fernando again either, we did hear news of him.
It seemed that Fernando had gone on to work as Mr. Chen’s interpreter and one day, when he’d been left alone in Mr. Chen’s office in Beira, he had noticed that Mr. Chen had carelessly left some keys lying around. Deciding to use the keys to explore the contents of the drawers of Mr. Chen’s locked desk, his searching fingers had alighted upon Mr. Chen’s chequebook, a chequebook even more carelessly containing a blank cheque … and signed by Mr. Chen himself!
By the time Mr. Chen had returned to his office, Fernando had been long gone … after cashing the cheque at the bank for the sum of U.S.$4,000.
Mr. Chen had put a reward out for the capture of the renegade Fernando, adding the private threat that when caught, he was going to rip Fernando’s head off. The Chinese obviously took a very dim view of anyone cheating them out of their money.
Then, when we started selling logs to Mr. Chen at the port of Beira, we made the interesting discovery that this dim view only applied when the Chinese were being cheated and that they were quite happy to cheat us if they could get away with it. Far from making us rich, they were enriching themselves at our expense!
It was Caetano and his sharp eyes who picked up the Chinese scam. When our logs were being measured in Beira, the real volume of each log was deliberately and sneakily being decreased so that we ended up losing two cubic metres of logs and the Chinese gaining two cubic metres every time we sold a twenty cubic metre lorry load of timber to them!
Back at the sawmill and aghast at the way we were being cheated, Caetano’s voice rose higher and higher with indignation as he described this Chinese double-dealing to us.
We wondered what we should do. Should we tell Mr. Chen the game was up and remonstrate with him? Or would it have more effect if we told Mr. Chen that we were going to rip HIS head off?
Caetano was silent for a while. Then, suddenly cheerful, he said, “We won’t say anything to Chen because I’ve got a much better idea. We won’t get angry, we’ll get even … the Mozambican way.”
The next time our wood went down to Beira to Mr. Chen, Caetano had a quiet word with Mr. Chen’s Mozambican cubicador. Some money changed hands. And the volume of the wood we sold to Mr. Chen increased dramatically, to much more than we had transported down to him!
Even the wily Chinese, it seemed, were no match for the Mozambicans when it came to trickery!
In the middle of the year, Caetano contacted the IFC and made an appointment with them to find out if our project for the financing of a furniture-making factory had been accepted. Then, leaving me at home in the Nhamacoa, O’D and Caetano drove off together in the pickup to Maputo.
Their visit to the IFC didn’t take long. No sooner had they stepped inside an office and sat down in some chairs, than they found themselves outside the IFC office again and in the street ... in the pickup … and driving back home.
The IFC, it seemed, had made them drive a round trip of 2,200 kilometres - all for nothing!
They were tired and angry when they arrived back in the Nhamacoa with their expensive and rejected project. The IFC man hadn’t really explained anything properly to them, except to say that the IFC didn’t lend funds to a company whose partners had a 50-50 share in their company!
We weren’t the only ones to find our bright ideas rejected by the various International Development Funds organized by Don
or countries and the World Bank.
In Harare, Caroline had begun to make beautiful duvet covers out of unbleached calico, hand-painted with brilliantly coloured ethnic designs. Needing funds to develop her idea further, she approached her bank. They in turn pointed her in the direction of another International Development Fund, set up to help entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe. The Fund, according to Caroline’s bank manager, was bulging with money, just waiting to be given away to people like her.
Although her samples were stunningly beautiful, she also came across a brick wall with her small project. This time, no reason at all was given for the refusal to help provide finance for twelve sewing machines, an interlocker and start up money to buy bolts of cloth from David Whitehead Textiles.
We were in Harare when a despondent Caroline told us the news of her fiscal rejection. Unlike the International Development Fund who didn’t appear to know a good idea when they saw it, I was sure Caroline was on to a good thing and offered our help. We didn’t have enough money to set up a furniture-making factory, but we did have enough to set up her duvet business.
Within no time at all, Caroline’s little factory took off and soon she was supplying thirty shops all over England.
Spring came to the Nhamacoa. Trees, which had lost their foliage and had grown bare and skeletal over the dry winter months, now began to sprout tender, tiny green leaves … and Black Kitty got restless.
We had never taken Black Kitty across the Zimbabwean border to be neutered by a Mutare Vet and so we weren’t surprised by his reaction to all the budding and blooming that was going on around us. In the evenings, he would stand quite still outside the house, his tail stiff and quivering and his emerald eyes fixed on the forest track leading off to the south of us. Then he would pad off down the track and we wouldn’t see him again for two or three days.
As Black Kitty always returned home to us, I harboured the hope that despite his wanderings he would continue to live with us permanently. But one evening, this hope was dashed.
Monkeys in My Garden Page 30