Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (18 page)

I got up. An embarrassed Boniface
introduced himself, somewhat unnecessarily, and I de-activated the machine.
Billy, of course, lay slumped in the arms of Morpheus.

It was a cold night. I spread a blanket
over him, put some clothes on myself, and drove Boniface home.

Life with Billy had never a dull moment.
He was due to go on long leave - to UK, of course. We threw a party the night
before. Billy's plane would leave Ndola at 7am: an internal flight to Lusaka,
the international airport, but a vital link in the chain, whose strength lay in
its weakest link, etc. At any rate, Billy had to be at Ndola airport at 6.30am
or all was lost.

The party was the usual such party, and
sank in the same drunken stupor and chaos. I woke up next day with the sun -
which was rather too late. Billy's alarm clock had failed, or not been heard,
or more likely not been set. For Billy was none of your sober,
taking-thought-for-the-morrow type of Scot. He had more of the wild Hielander
in him.

The usual wreckage lay around me:
bottles and dirty glasses, dirty plates, the remains of food scattered about,
the furniture all over the place, the record player still clicking, a number of
bodies that had fallen at their posts, a pair of legs sticking out from under
the sofa, doors and windows left open - and no dog to guard us now. Yes! - we
discovered a burglar had been and lightened us of a few watches and wallets.

When I returned from the toilet, I
glanced at my own watch which fortunately still lay at my bedside - 6am. We
needed an hour to get to the airport. Should have left half an hour ago at the
latest - up at most at five to pack. And there was Billy, still snoring like a
pig.

I shook him. 'Billy! Billy! Wake up!
It's six o' clock!'

'What! What! What's happening?' Then it
dawned on him. 'O, my God! What went wrong?'

'Never mind. Let's get cracking!'

Billy leapt out of bed. We both threw on
our clothes, for I had to take him to the airport. Billy packed his suitcase as
fast as he could, looking for passport, money, etc, crying out all the time,
with a sob in his voice like Gigli. Finally we were in some state to travel.

'Gimme the car keys, Warren!'

He thought my careful driving would
never get us there.

'You're never driving any car, Doughty,'
I insisted. 'You're too emotional.'

Suffice it to say that we got to Ndola
airport about five to seven. We could see the plane on the runway, with the
doors already closed, and some men about to remove the steps. The propellers
only had not started to turn.

Billy leapt out of the car with a rapid
'Thanks! Good-bye, Warren! See ye!' He was aye the gentleman! Then he tore into
the airport building.

God! I thought. How long would it take
him to get through there? I was rapidly enlightened. Billy simply smashed
through all the barriers, and immediately after, I saw him charging out of the
other side of the building like a runaway bull in the market, clutching his suit-case,
with two little men in peaked caps and smart uniforms running after him.

Then Mwari, the Rain God, clapped his
hands. There was a sudden tropical downpour. This did not deter Billy - Mwari
had done this for him! The two little officials thought about their smart
uniforms and ran back for umbrellas. And that was their big mistake.

By the time they re-emerged, still
struggling to open their umbrellas, Billy was at the plane. But the men there
had removed the steps.

Billy dropped his suitcase, shoved the
handlers aside and pushed the steps back to the aeroplane door himself, grabbed
his suitcase and ran up the steps, where he banged on the door so hard the
surprised people inside opened it for him - and the props already turning, for
the pilot, naturally, was unaware of these events. Such is the force of
personality!

The last I saw of Billy was when he
disappeared inside the plane and they hastily closed the door.

I once said to Andy, 'Billy has all the
passionate virtues.' The remark reached Billy who reflected, 'Ay, and nane o'
the ither kind!' I don't know, but if we can't have everything in this world, I
know which set I prefer.

I compared us to David Balfour and Alan
Breck: Billy, of course, in the character of the dashing, if erratic,
swordsman. One night, we sat on either side of the fireplace, reading; Billy
re-reading
Kidnapped
from the Kitwe library in the light of my
statement. He looked up. 'He doesnae gie me a very guid write-up, Warren!'

I last saw Billy when I left for UK at
the end of my contract. I wrote to him, but never got a reply. This was no bad
sign. Correspondence was not one of his virtues.

I heard later he had become a pastor in
the Church. Best wishes to him! He would make a bonnie fechter for his Master.

In August 1971 I went with Piet and
Margriet on a car journey through East Africa for one month.

They were a Dutch couple, he a doctor
with the mine, she perhaps a nurse, I do not remember: at any rate, she did not
work in Zambia. They were both tall and blond, and there the similarity ended.
Piet was a thin, highly-strung type, liable to panic attacks, or, at any rate,
bouts of excitement, like a disaster on a submarine. Margriet was a buxom,
pretty girl of cow-like placidity (if the comparison with such a beautiful
creature is permissible, which I do not see it is not) and was the perfect
counterpoise to Piet.

We went in an old car of mine: a
ten-year-old Victor. (I reckon the Vauxhall people should pay me something for
this.)

This was not the first car I owned in
Zambia. I started off with a BMW, second-hand, it is true, but still the most
ambitious car I ever had in my life. Then one night I lent this car to Billy,
like Davie Balfour lent the money to Alan; and like Alan, he blew it all in one
night.

Coming home along Second Avenue, the
great suburban artery of Kitwe, at five in the morning, Billy fell asleep at
the wheel. At least, that is what I told the insurance man, and I am sure I was
right. In fact, he must have been or he would never have survived the next
series of events, even if he had been a professional stuntman.

First he jumped a ditch, missed a
concrete lamp-post by six inches, knocked down a tree, did a somersault into
another tree, slid down it, landing upside down, and after taking a short breather,
crawled out with a small scratch on his face.

Somehow he got himself to the management
hospital, and there I found him later in the day, sitting up in bed and looking
as sorry for himself (or me) as Alan on the said occasion.

'Sorry about the car, Warren!'

I remember being worried about him,
about a party we were supposed to be giving that night, and about the car not
at all.

After making sure he was all right, I
asked: 'Did you remember to order the glasses from the club?'

'Listen to him,' chuckled Billy, for
other friends stood round the bed. 'The show must go on!'

Meanwhile, Piet drove to work down
Second Avenue, recognised the wreckage of my car at the roadside and believed
that Warren could no longer be in the land of the living. He ran into the hospital
with tears streaming down his face, the dear boy, crying: 'Vere's Varren? Does
anyone know vot has happened to Varren?' He was pleasantly surprised to find
Warren in one piece, happily at work.

I had a look at the car in the garage.
It was a write-off. The garage owner informed me that when he found the
vehicle, the radio was missing. He was an Afrikaner. Most of the garage owners
on the Copperbelt at that time were Afrikaners.

I called in to see Billy again later and
told him about the missing radio. Billy was furious.

'I don't believe him, Warren. The lying
bastard! The bugger's pinched it himself. That's just the kind o' trick those
Japie bastards are up to. Ye're too soft, Warren! Let me handle it. I'll soon
have it oot the bugger.'

I do believe he would have left his
hospital bed there and then and caused a very unfortunate incident, if another
visitor had not timeously arrived and informed us that he had found the radio
missing before the garage people got to it.

'By Christ! These black bastards are
like ants,' commented a somewhat mollified Billy. 'They're on ye afore ye're
even deed.'

(It will be seen that Billy was
politically incorrigible, thank God. His stock was humanity, not correctness.)

As soon as he got over his fright,
Piet's mind, which moved as fast as Billy's in its own way, jumped to the next
question.

'Vot about our safari, Varren?' Piet had
done all the planning, but my car was to be used. I had to find another one
quick.

And so it came about that a person in
the Long Bar, a smooth-talking little man from Newcastle, negotiated the sale
of the Victor, which belonged to a friend of his, for 400 dollars. (I got 2000
dollars on the BMW.) He said it was an old car, not a fancy car, but as a
mechanic himself, he would guarantee it was a sound car. With the cosiness of
an old family doctor he assured me: 'That car will take ye onywheer in Africa
ye want to go!'

As the reader will discover, in a manner
of speaking, he was right.

We loaded up the old Victor, an estate
model; or rather, I put my suitcase in and Piet proceeded to load it. There was
going to be no British muddling through: we had Dutch muddling through instead.
Half the mysterious boxes Piet loaded in (I wondered if he was doing some
gun-running on the side) were never opened. We had no room for extra drinking
water, and the overweight caused eventual shipwreck. But I run ahead of my
tale.

We drove down to Kapiri M'Poshi, where
we found the Great North Road. This was the most notorious road for skidding in
the rainy season and losing your bearings. At least it was well metalled but
otherwise the most boring road in the world, unless the Sahara or the steppes
of Russia have something to offer in competition. The same low Bushveld for
hundreds of miles. Eventually we came to Chilonga mission, near Mpika.

Piet had been a flying doctor (full
time) in East Africa, so knew many missions. They took guests without charge,
but one was expected to leave a donation: two dollars per person per night was
usual. A country hotel would have cost five dollars. But there you would have
got a hot shower. The servants of the Lord spurned such luxuries, or could not
afford them; so we coined a phrase: 'as cold as a mission shower'. We got plain
beds in plain rooms, and three square meals a day.

We must have covered about 400 miles
first day. And same next day, which carried us over the border into Tanzania,
where the tarmac road immediately disappeared and the 'hell run', as the lorry
drivers called it, began.

It knocked hell out of our old car, at
any rate, and we barely limped into Mbeya. Here the mission was full, so we
stayed at the hotel. Piet got the mission mechanic to work on our car, which
they kindly allowed at voluntary rates.

The hotel was the usual lovely African
inn: large airy dining room, lounge ditto, with battered armchairs and old
magazines, thatched roofs and a wide veranda for drinks and chat, which in
itself is one of the best pleasures of Africa.

When he heard at the mission of our
arrival, Father Philippe Morin turned up and joined us in the sitting room. He
was an old friend of Piet's. A tall lean sunburnt French Canadian, he looked
more like a white hunter than a priest, and in fact told us with gusto about a
buck he had recently shot. He invited us to join him at his own mission
station, fifty miles away over the hills, at Lake Rukwa.

I think it took Brother Thomas a day to
fix the car, so we killed time in the hill town of Mbeya, and after another
night at the hotel, set off for Saza next day.

Here we saw for the first time the strange
baobab trees, basking like fat giants in the hot sun. Someone described them as
'upside-down trees, with their roots in the air', for the bare crazy branches,
hung with heavy fruits, are like that, and their bark is the grey hide of an
elephant.

Philippe took us out on the lake in an
outboard motorboat. We landed at an island where fishermen were camping. Their
canoes were drawn up on the bank. They were curing barbel over a slow fire.
Some of the barbel (which can live a long time out of water) were still
writhing. Margriet made the fishermen knock them on the head, to the surprise
of the fishermen, and Piet vigorously backed her up. Even then, some were still
writhing, so Margriet kept them at it. Philippe and I said nothing. We weren't
about to change Africa that day. And I do not know what fish feel: these were
half-dead, already. I was getting harder since the fish eagle business at
Ndola.

We visited the hospital, where there was
a young Dutch doctor and his wife. Piet, the pig, persisted in speaking Dutch
to his compatriot, who courteously insisted in his turn on replying to Piet in
English for my benefit. It was a one-sided conversation as far as I was
concerned, but I appreciated the other doctor's attempts to drop heavy hints on
Piet.

While we were in the doctor's house, a
young man in a bush-shirt and a hat with a leopard-skin band knocked on the
door. He looked liked the blond hero of a South African film.  He was not any
kind of African. He came from Russia. He was an engineer working on some
project in the neighbourhood, and was making a friendly call.

After we had all sat down with drinks in
our hands, I raised mine to the Russian and said:
'Shchastlivo, tovarishch!'
I had learned some Russian in the army. Now I am a born mimic. People think I
am good at languages. I am not, but I can get accents perfectly. And by the
look on his face, I knew this young man, for a second at least, wondered if he
was listening to a foreigner.

A shadow fell across his bronzed
features, in which you could practically read the letters: 'K-G-B' - 'the
shadow of the autocracy', in Conrad's words.

'Vi russki?'

'No, I am English,' I reassured him,
unnecessarily, in view of my next stumbling sentences in the same language. 'I
learned Russian in the British Army in Trieste, after the war. There were many
Russians in Trieste at that time.'

'Tourists?'

'Refugees.'

He looked solemn. I explained to him
about the 'victims of Yalta' and how those in Yugoslavia were not returned to
Russia. (These people were the original refugees of 1917 and their children.)
Feelings between the two tyrants had already soured, and Tito was only
interested in killing his own people. When they fell out altogether in 1948,
Tito indeed expelled the Russians, but to the West. All this of course was
complete news to Sergei. Much of it was news to other people too.

We had planned (or rather, Piet had
planned) to move on to Tabora, where there was another mission. This meant
crossing the Pora - a hundred miles of desert. They got a young seminarian, called
Oswald, to go with us as a sort of guide. One was recommended to carry five
litres of water per person in case of breakdown. We had one squash bottle
between us. In the event, we got through without difficulty, though we were
stuck in deep sand several times and were glad to have Oswald to lend muscle,
as well as for his company and knowledge of the country. Then, as we approached
Tabora, the road 'improved' to rock-hard corrugations - the typical dirt road
of Africa, wrinkled by the sun.

Piet had a theory, derived from the
practice of the East African Safari drivers, he told me. Instead of limping
along at our usual twenty miles an hour (when the going was good), you should
drive at fifty over these ribs, while rocking the steering wheel from side to side.
This way you 'skated' over them. I tried this, and it was a very rough skate.
Whether it helped the car, I do not know.

After staying at
Tabora, we ran across the Highveld of Tanzania, wide, hot and open. For miles
we passed hundreds of baobab trees, which looked like Don Quixote's windmill
giants. This was the country where Williamson, another Don Quixote, but a
sadder one, found a diamond and became thereafter the prisoner of his treasure,
immured in solitary confinement for the rest of his life at the nearby mine,
which bears his name. We did not try to visit this place, not wishing to be
shot on sight.

We came to another
mission near Mwanza, where we stayed with another young Dutch doctor and his
wife. One night here and we moved on, catching an unsatisfactory glimpse of
Lake Victoria. This lake is so surrounded with marshes that I have never had a
decent look at it except from the air. And in the same day, we entered
Serengeti.

When we were well
and truly inside the great game park, there was a tremendous bang, and the car
started taking a series of great leaps on its hind legs, like a giant kangaroo,
as if it had completely forgotten what continent it was on. After about three
such leaps it came to a stop. Piet, who was driving, went into his submarine
disaster routine, and even Margriet said: 'O!' I, as usual, said nothing.
Nobody can beat the British at a time like that.

When we got out,
the car's guts seemed to be hanging out, from what we could make out by peering
under it. We had thoughts of a night among the lions. It was about four in the
afternoon: not the best time of day for a breakdown in Serengeti.

Just then a Land
Rover drove up from the opposite direction, and a guardian angel in the shape
of an Indian garage owner stepped out. He quickly diagnosed the complaint. The
U-bolt on a back wheel spring had snapped (under the weight of Piet's kitchen
sink or whatever), dislocating the prop shaft, which had acted like a vaulting
pole. He could send his men out from his garage in Mwanza, now 100 miles away,
to fix it next day.

We locked the car
and got into his vehicle. We dropped off Piet and Margriet at the entrance
lodge, and he invited me to stay the night with him in Mwanza, to pay the bill
next day.