Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (12 page)

It is true the men were happy at their
work. The money was good, but it would have held neither the others nor myself
but for the challenge of the work. For in Africa, where skilled men (and women)
are so thin on the ground, everyone's job undergoes a certain elevation of
responsibility.

This must be obvious even to the lay
reader in my own case. How many family doctors in England do caesarean
sections?

And it was true for everybody else.
Mechanics became engineers, bookkeepers became accountants, general managers
only fell short of deities. And this went down to the grass roots also, to
one's subordinates. I have already said how the maternity assistants delivered
breeches (something a GP no longer does in England) and the medical assistants
were mini doctors.

In short, as well as aspiring upwards,
one had to delegate downwards. And sometimes one delegated things which one had
done once but had come to forget. And one such sad case was Sam's, the chief
engineer.

As he grew older and the climate weighed
heavier on him, Sam saw fit to delegate. He delegated the entire telephone
system to his most promising technician, whom we shall call Kwasi. Now I should
explain that one's responsiblities expanded outwards as well as upwards. Just
as I ranged between surgery and public health, besides the more usual
engineering tasks of road-making and bridge-building, Sam embraced the
telephone system too. But as he felt the strain he leaned more and more on
Kwasi until he rather lost his touch with the technical side of telephones.
(For I might say that later, in my general enthusiasm for my job, I once got a
radiographer to teach me to take X-rays; but never having kept it up, for the
life of me, now, I would not know where to start.)

This would not have mattered, except
that Sam had a northern directness, which was sometimes felt in those southern
climes as downright rudeness. At any rate, that is how Kwasi felt it.

Kwasi downed tools. He did not sulk in
his tent, or even his house. Why should he? Africans, as D H Lawrence said of
the Italians, are not creatures of the home like the introvert denizens of
northern lands: they are the outgoing citizens of the street, the forum and the
tavern.

In Kwasi's case it was the tavern; and
there, although he was not Sam's true love, he sat him down.

And the telephones in Samreboi fell
silent. And what is more, Sam could not get them going again.

This did not please the GM, who as a
Welshman did not take kindly to silence, telephonic or otherwise. He told Sam
to do something about it - quick!

Sam, in his Gaullist fashion, issued a
command to Kwasi in his tavern (by special messenger, of course) to get back to
work - or else! Kwasi replied (by return of messenger) that he required an
apology first. Sam's reply to that may be imagined.

And this is where Amos came in. I never
inquired into the full details, but I gather that it ended with Sam eating
rather more humble pie than Kwasi. As I have hinted before, the paradoxical
obduracy of the African can wear down what Kipling called the 'granite of the
ancient north'.

West Africa in those days was run by
gentlemen amateurs, white and black - or at least, competent amateurs (and in
my experience, most of them were gentlemen); for I might say, even the great
United Africa Company was not a charitable instititution, and would not carry
duds for long. Qualifications were considered, and looked for, but what counted
was not so much what you knew (still less, who you knew), but what you could do
on the ground. There was no room for duffers, and there was no room for
funkers.

(In passing, I might add that it was not
surprising people had called the UAC the real government of West Africa: it was
greater than most people knew, and in its house were many mansions; not only in
British but French and Belgian Africa too. And the company had one great
commandment: THOU SHALT NOT BREAK A CONTRACT. You would not actually be nailed
to a tree for this offence, even in the Northern Territories, but sure as
heaven or hell, you would never get a job in West Africa again - and I mean all
West Africa. One awful example will serve.

Finding life a bore on his particular
station, a certain Mr A N Other applied for what seemed a more sexy job,
advertised in the
Times of Ghana,
with a French company on the Ivory Coast.
Perhaps he was attracted by the name:
Société Heureuse du Soleil de l'Ouest
Africain,
or perhaps he remembered the famous
filles de joie
he had
met on short leave in Abidjan. But apply he did, not imagining for a moment
that the Happy Society had the remotest connection with the dull old African
Water Closets, where he felt he was wasting away his young life.

Unfortunately for Mr Other, there was a
connection - the UAC, which owned both companies. His application, in his best
fifth-form French, landed on his own manager's desk a month later, with no more
than a polite
pour votre attention estimée
and the stamp of the
Société
Heureuse
to realise Mr Other's hopes of a French connection.

Needless to add, Mr Other's next and
last journey, as far as West Africa was concerned, was to London; unless he
ever returned on a sentimental journey at his own expense, which I rather
doubt.)

I was saying that performance carried
more weight with the company than qualifications, and this was never more true
than of John Reith, a small Scot, who, though his financial attainments carried
him no farther than two stripes in the Pay Corps, he nevertheless managed the
entire accounts of the great West African Timber Company at Samreboi.

A charming miracle happened to the Reiths
late in their marriage. They had practically reached the despair of Zacharias
and Elizabeth, when they were similarly blessed by the Lord, not through an
angel but through a small quantity of West African beer (for they were both
practically teetotal), which they consumed one jolly night at the club. And the
miracle did not end there, for the angel of the bottle went on to give John the
managership of the great Lagos Brewery itself: in which the company recognised
not only his competence but, no doubt, his fiscal and spirituous probity. They
knew he would syphon off neither the profits nor the products.

Nevertheless, when John left, the
company thought it had better join the twentieth century and engage a 'real'
accountant - with a CA after his name - and duly found one in London. I know
nothing of accountancy, but I understand it is no more a seamless robe than
modern medicine; and, as one of my old professors might have said, has been as
much ruined by specialisation. I don't know what kind of accountant Mr
Flappering was, but I understand he felt himself as a skin specialist might if
suddenly required to take over the entire functions of Harley Street: (a simile
which I might say John Reith had been sustaining up to then, as I was
sustaining the reality at the hospital; but neither John nor I was handicapped
by specialisation, which an old friend of mine had described as like taking a
razor to chop wood).

In short, in less than three months, Mr
Flappering had a nervous breakdown, and was carried out of town, kicking and
screaming and clutching a whisky bottle.

I have every sympathy with Mr Flappering.
I know what a dreadful thing a nervous break-down is from both objective and
subjective experience (though he never actually consulted me). And I too have
been a funker; but managed to pick myself up again, as I hope he did.

Ghanaians, I have said, are a droll
race; but their humour can take a sharper edge than what has been called (no
doubt, by an Englishman) 'that purest of the metals, the English laugh'.

For some months after his departure, the
locals took to using Mr Flappering's name as an enigmatic formula of their own.

One would throw up his hands and
exclaim: 'Flappering!'

'What's dat mean, man?'

'Dat means, "I give up!"’

Les Cady had a sardonic, even cruel,
sense of humour. He had fairish hair, but brown eyes, and once told me it was
only people with brown eyes who had the real killer instinct. He told me
proudly of a genuine Italian-type
beffa
(a word unknown to either of us
at that time, or he would have made a lasting mental note of it) he played on a
former GM.

The managers lived in one-, or
two-storey, houses; the second, which are unusual in spacious Africa, for the
senior managers, who included myself. My ground floor, besides the kitchen
(which was nearly as big as James's house in the garden), comprised dining and
sitting rooms, divided by a sliding screen, left permanently open, giving me a
living space, between my sofa at the far window and my dinner table, as long as
a cricket pitch. The GM lived in a palace, surrounded by a small English park,
which would not have been despised by the Duke of Westminster.

Once a year the GM gave a party to
senior management and ladies at the great house. This particular GM was an
upwardly mobile type, in the social as well as other senses, before the
practice had received the name: especially the social sense. Though his
provenance did not equal his aspirations, he did not mean to end up half way.
In the meantime, his life's study, apart from what the company paid him for,
was the habits of the upper classes - and Les Cady had him sized up to a tee.

Needless to say, dinner jacket was the
order of the annual party: (the GM might have gone as far as white tie). The
ladies left the gentlemen when the port came on, etc; and in due course all
were reunited, not only in the spacious drawing room, but on the even more
spacious lawn.

Late in the proceedings, when people
were thinking of drifting away, Les came up with a jolly proposal, restricted
to the gentlemen. 'Let's all go for a swim in our dinner clothes!'

He knew this would chime in with some
weird superstition in the aspiring mind of the GM: the sort of thing that might
wind up a jolly Guards officers' evening in Birdcage Walk. The GM was not a man
of reckless outgoing temperament, but while the idea would never have naturally
occurred to him, he was driven by his devil.

With a joyless smile on his
undistinguished face, he said, in a strangled voice: 'Er, yes. What a jolly
idea!' and Les went ahead enthusiastically with his plan. He seemed to whip up
an amount of enthusiasm in the others which should have made the GM suspicious,
but didn't; for Les disclosed rather more of his plan to the others than he did
to his superior.

Drinks were laid aside and the male
section (or a sufficient number of them; the more sober members remaining
behind to look after the ladies, who must have wondered what was going on)
piled into cars and led by Les (who, of course, assumed the privilege of
driving his leader), drove uncertainly along the laterite roads to the club.
Here they lined up on the long side of the pool. At the usual signal from Les -
'One, two, three, jump!' - nobody jumped except the GM.

After he had sat on the throne about
three years, President Ankrah decided that the country had behaved itself well
enough to deserve a little 'democracy'. Elections were held and the people
chose as their new president, Dr Busia, a nice little man with an Oxford degree
or a dog collar or something or all three, who inspired the sanguine people who
lend money to places like Ghana with rather more confidence of getting some of
it back than his erratic predecessor bar one.

The GM, who had some conversation with
him when he came to Samreboi shortly after his election, predicted that he was
too nice to last more than six months in African politics. I cannot remember
how accurate his prediction was, which doesn’t sound optimistic.

The UAC also thought it might be a good
thing to encourage the nation to believe that it ruled itself, and the GM was
instructed to make preparations for the forthcoming elections at Samreboi. The
job was delegated to Amos.

I remember attending a meeting which
comprised such local dignitaries as a troubled-looking Father Adeloye, and Mr
Sackey, who might have been wearing a tribal mask for all his face gave away.
Politics, as Amos had hinted, was viewed by most people in West Africa rather
as rock-climbing is by people without a special enthusiasm for it.

Amos, who had at any rate a genuine
theoretical interest in the subject, tried to strike a spark from the stony
faces around the large committee table. For this was the election committee,
designed to educate the people as to their rights. As most of those present
seemed content to listen to him without comment or the suggestions he called
for, Amos finally burst out: 'Good God! What's the matter with you people? This
is our country we are talking about. We are its rulers now. What are you?
Ghanaians or Gold Coasters?' The obstinate silence which prevailed failed to answer
his question - or perhaps Amos thought it did.

(As I did not have the vote myself, I am
not sure what I was doing at this meeting. So simple a creature as myself was
not there to represent the company as a disinterested observer: even in a token
sense I might have put my foot in it. Perhaps I was there to stand by against
any cases of psepholophobia - or election fright - in which case I might have
added not only a new name to the medical dictionaries but my own to a new
eponymous syndrome.)