Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (25 page)

The air is changed,

The brassy sky of summer gone high
and soft, standing like

water behind the emerald hills.

The earth stands still and clear like
a heaven:

Almost one could touch the leaves on
the distant trees.

The dainty feet of the donkeys and
the wheels of their little carts

scarcely ruffle the white soft powder
of the roads.

The evening air is sharp with the
scent of wood fires.

So, even Africa pauses!

Even she receives this cleansing
bath!

And so into winter, when the soft light
hardens into the 'dry white season', and sometimes the south-easter brings grey
weather and even a drizzle of
guti
, and it is very miserable. The men
huddle in their greatcoats and balaclavas, the women in their blankets and woolly
caps. And the children in similar headgear and such extra rags as their parents
can give them.

But the winter is mercifully short. In
the single month of September the brief spring has exploded in the high summer
of October.

First, in the cold days of August, the
scarlet flowers of the kaffirboom appear on the bare branches. Then the white
clouds of the knobby thorn, the yellow shower of the wild pear. And then the
whole country changes as the msasas 'burn red to green'. Yes, the commonest
tree of the Highveld does the opposite of its northern cousins. The new leaves
are red as an English autumn; but they are not about to fall: they soon turn
green, and the false autumn to spring.

In the towns the exotics bloom: the red
fires of the flamboyants, the mauve clouds of the jacarandas, the ivory petals
of the frangipanis; in all the avenues and gardens.

And then the long anxious wait for rain:
the thunders and torrents of November.

Always in Africa one was close to
nature. The hot smell of the earth. The rain crashing down like Victoria Falls,
after a preliminary bombardment with atom bombs. Once I was caught in my car on
a dirt road and had to stop with visibility down to zero in the downpour: at
least one is safe from lightning in a car. The thunderbolts fell around me like
depth charges round a submarine.

And above all, the sun. I was returning
in the small hours from a late night party in Salisbury, when the sun came up
quite suddenly over the veld. I stopped for a leak: when I finished I walked
towards it. It was so glorious, I found myself in tears. It was like an
ultimate revelation. I had companions in the car, or I would have opened my
arms and breast to him and cried aloud, like an Aztec or Inca of old. But it
was enough: I had seen the glory of the sun, and it stayed with me many days.

By November I had been employed by the
ministry for twelve months and was entitled to leave. I decided on a safari to
South Africa and Mozambique.

I set off on one of those cold grey days
which even in the Rhodesian summer could remind an Englishman of home, and by
late afternoon had come to Fort Victoria, where I put up at the hotel.

Here some horrible woman was abusing the
old waiter. 'You are stupid! You 'ave always been stupid! What are you?' The
waiter said nothing but went on with his brushing. The other people in the
lounge looked embarrassed, but buried it in their newspapers or their
conversation. This was definitely not the Rhodesian way: or at any rate, the
Anglo-Saxon way. The Affs came in for more of it from the Dutch breed, to which
this woman probably belonged.

It was a folksy belief among both
Anglo-Saxons and Afrikaners that the Africans preferred the Dutch brutality to
the Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy; and indeed, an African once told me so himself. I
don't think the matter is as simple as that.

There is a bond between master and
servant, as there is between husband and wife, which will take a lot of abuse;
but if there is no bond, or it is betrayed, then real hatred can fill the gap.
It was these cases that got targetted later in the Civil War. But again, life
is not so simple. A lot of good people got targetted too. But I must not run
ahead of my tale. I will only say, one felt no such bond in the present case.

Next day, across the border, and to a
town in the northern Transvaal, called Warden. This was solid Boer. I booked
into a hotel. I put my foot in it right away when I thought the barman had an
English accent, and with all the simplicity of Noddy, asked him if he was
English. He served me without another word.

After the usual hearty supper, I retired
to the lounge, which was soon taken over by a lot of men and women in their
best clothes, who proceeded to execute an ungainly sort of folk dance to a
record player, in which I was not invited to join. If a sore thumb can take an
armchair and pretend to read a book, that was me. I took myself off to an early
night with Churchill's
Second World War
: that other prisoner of the
Boers!

Next day, Johannesburg, where I stayed
in a small hotel, and the day after, had great difficulty getting myself off
the famous ring road that runs round that city. I was heading for the
Drakensberg. I ended up in some Coloured area. Thank God, it wasn't Soweto, or
I might not have got out alive.

Then I came, on a dark wet afternoon, to
the Wagnerian mountains of the Berg, and put up at the hotel Mont au Sources
under the shadow of the Amphitheatre.

This magnificent terrace of the giants
was glowing in the evening sun as I contemplated it with the young man who
worked at the hotel as guide.

'What about doing it tomorrow?' I asked
brightly.

'How far away do you think that mountain
is, sir?'

'About five miles.'

'Actually, it is twelve miles, and takes
two days to climb it; that is, if you are young and fit:' with a glance at me.
'Otherwise, more like three, or even four days.' One loses all sense of scale
in the vastness of Africa.

'What I suggest, sir, is a gentle walk
up to the foot of the cliff and back. That makes twenty-four miles, and will
take us all day.'

Which we did. A party was made up next
day, and he led us up the valley of the Tugela river, higher and higher, with
the landscape opening up, with its enchanting views, wider and wider around us,
in the glowing light of the summer morning. And soon it was hot work. We were
happy for the cool of the gorge, where we had lunch by the river. Further up,
we swung on a chain ladder across the gorge. Until finally, we were under the
towering crags that sailed in the moving sky. Then the long, pleasantly tired
slog homewards.

I spent a few more days here on the
lesser slopes, then on to Durban, from where I took the road to Swaziland and
on the way picked up a young Englishman, Rufus. He was an agricultural student
who had been gaining experience on a South African farm. He was a big country-bred
lad and a public schoolboy.

We saw little of Swaziland, before
coming to Mozambique, where we crossed the Motola river and were in a different
world: the lazy, decadent, Latin world of Portuguese Africa.

Lourenço Marques was a beautiful
Mediterranean city with handsome streets and pavement cafes. We also noticed
the astonishing beauty of the mestizo women: one in a government office, behind
her typewriter, I could not take my eyes off and thought about for days: sort
of Sophia Loren, only more tropical. And I introduced Rufus to the
fado
.

I had heard records myself, but never
the real thing. There were many
fado
clubs in the city, and we went to
one every night and heard the plangent singing, with its incomparable blend of
nostalgia, gallantry and consolation:
saudade,
in the Portuguese - one
of those untranslatable words.

Up the coast to Inhambane, where we
stayed, took an evening stroll and found a small obelisk in the square; and on
a plaque, set in the ground:  
Aqui é Portugal.
I wonder if it is there
now.

The Portuguese were there for four
centuries, and always called themselves 'Portuguese'; never suffered a
sea-change into 'Rhodesians' or 'Australians', etc, as the British do.

We came to Beira, where we stayed. In
the evening, Rufus and I sat in a cafe, waiting for the
fado
to begin at
nine o' clock. That was on the upper floor, and we waited meanwhile in the bar,
where were a number of tarts. One sat alone on a stool, advertising her wares,
when a gang of Portuguese soldiers came in. They surrounded her, while the
corporal questioned her - evidently about the price. It rapidly turned to the
third degree. A slap across the face. Too much! Think again! The girl sat
sullenly, saying nothing. More slaps, more demands, until finally the corporal
grabbed her beads and twisted them until he nearly choked her. Still too much!
Finally, he ripped the beads off and flung them across the room.

All this was too much for the English
public schoolboy in Rufus. He got up, walked over to the corporal, took him by
the scruff of the neck and marched him under his brawny arm to the door, where
he threw him into the street.

I quietly removed my glasses and watch,
anticipating trouble and making ready to go to Rufus's aid.

Rufus returned to his seat. The rest
gathered round us and let off a lot of steam. We stared through them with cold
English stares. Presently, they gave it up and marched out after the corporal.

Meanwhile, the girl sat like an Egyptian
statue. What she made of Rufus's action, I have no idea.

After a night in the Eastern Highlands,
I took Rufus to Salisbury on his way to England. Then back to Marandellas and
work for me. Anderson had taken a holiday at the same time.

I had been a year in Marandellas when
early in 1974 I saw that the post of district medical officer at Umvuma was
advertised in the customary notice circulated to all stations. This was an
established post and therefore one applied for it: government medical officers,
or GMOs (the term here used in its specific sense, like second-lieutenant),
were simply ordered about. I applied. As usual, I was the only applicant and
was appointed. I was to stay here a year, before fate (or something) moved me
on.

I had been doing the work already at
Marandellas and have sufficiently described the duties, but now I had the
official title - for me, the finest medical job on earth: in that position, I
would not have envied the most famous specialist in Harley Street, nor did I.

I walked into the bar of the Falcon
Hotel at sundowner time and announced myself. I was to stay there two weeks
while they got my house ready. After I had been shown to my room and deposited
my bag, I joined my new friends and patients in the bar. For I was the only
doctor in the town and was monarch of all (medical) I surveyed.

To be more exact, many of those present
would attend private doctors in Gwelo or even Salisbury. As there was no
private doctor in the town, according to regulations I could establish a
private practice myself, which would have augmented my income considerably. I
couldn't be bothered. They could come to me anyway, and many did for the usual
government fee.

The hotel was for whites only, like most
hotels in the country then; but if race was a problem in Rhodesia, social class
was not. Round the bar, which was crowded with the Friday night regulars, I
found myself and Jamie, the agricultural officer, representing the professional
classes; Jock, from the Gorbals of Glasgow; Bill, from the Falls Road; and
Tony, the scion of a noble English house, who died recently a peer of the
realm: all British and all on first-name terms, when we would probably never
have met in our own country. For when in Rhodesia, the Brits did as the Romans
(or 'Rhodies') did, and all white men were literally and metaphorically members
of the same club.

As well as Africans, there were Indians
in the town, who owned many of the shops in the arcaded streets - the usual
grid pattern being here reduced to its minimum of two streets crossing two
others - and lived around the secret courtyards behind them. There was also a
Portuguese cafe, whose owners kept to themselves as, like the Indians, they
were not invited to do otherwise. The Greeks had made it by then to the white
man's club, but not the 'Porks'. They did so later when their own colonies
collapsed and Rhodesia needed them. Already, the government had scraped the
slums of Naples and Barcelona in 1973 for ' a million whites by the end of the
year', and had not found them. And after the war, they had sent home thousands
of Italian prisoners of war who wanted to settle, because only British were
wanted.

These things you could discuss with
people like Mav or David Taylor, who were part of the twenty per cent liberal
vote. Most of these lived in Salisbury. Few of them lived in Umvuma, so the discussion
would have been unprofitable there, to say the least - and I've hardly
mentioned the black question. It serves no purpose to rub people up the wrong
way: I meant to live in this town and you got on best with people by
approaching them on their positive side.

Beside the Falcon Hotel, the town
boasted the district commissioner's office, the police station, post office and
telephone exchange, two small churches (English and Dutch), and a swimming pool
(whites only). There was the club (ditto). There was a backyard gold mine with
a tall defunct chimney which could be seen ten miles away, and served as a sort
of symbol of the town, which lay off the main Salisbury road to the south on a
branch road to Gwelo, fifty miles to the west. There was a small leafy suburb
and a small African location. There was a small ramshackle Coloured township,
called Blinkwater. And there was a small railway station.

This lay on the Fort Victoria-Gwelo
single-track line. The train left Fort Victoria one day, via a 'blink-once
town', Chatsworth, then Umvuma: another 'blink-once', called Lalapanzi; and so
to Gwelo by evening: next day, the same in reverse order. At each of these
places everyone, including the crew, got down for drinks, tempered by a bar
lunch at Umvuma. One could see why the trains were restricted to a speed of
twenty miles an hour, quite apart from the many dry halts in between. At
Umvuma, the stationmaster himself was by no means standoffish, and while he
usually received the train in his official capacity on its arrival, it was
frequently flagged out by his fourteen-year-old daughter on its departure.

The hospital was small - 100 beds - but
had the usual facilities, including operating theatre, as did all district
hospitals. It lay below the tracks near the location. It admitted Africans
only, but had a European clinic. The only other white on the staff was June,
the secretary.

June was a tough little spinster of
about fifty, with a tanned, cheery face, who lived with her old father in an
old house near the hospital. She had been born and bred in Umvuma and was a
pillar of local society, especially at the club where she played bowls. She was
an independent spirit and was afraid of no one.

Too independent sometimes for my
comfort. She handled the mail. One day I received a letter from head office
which began: 'Your offensive letter of 25 ult refers', and went on to deal with
matters I had never heard about. I took it through to June, whose office lay
outside mine. 'What's this about, June?'

'O, that's some nonsense I thought you
couldn't be bothered with. I just wrote back and told them if they wanted to
know they should get off their fat butts and come down and see for themselves'
- all over the subscription: 'Squiggle, pp District Medical Officer'.

I would see the European patients in my
office, where I had installed a couch. They waited on the veranda outside
June's office and she called them through. The previous doctor had given them a
very different service.

I suppose he had engaged in private
practice because he was a family man; but Dr Blood, in spite of his formidable
name, was a very nice man who lived in terror of his white patients. June told
me how the week-ends, when they were most likely to have their road accidents,
were a nightmare to him. I would cut up a white man with as much relish as I
would cut up a black one (and I hope I treated both like the Queen of England).
I positively looked forward to a juicy road accident, black or white; and to
have to send a patient to a specialist was like cutting off a finger to me. I
even talked of opening up a windowless store-room as a 'white ward', as if any
of them would have stayed a day in that prison. But I can understand Pete's
fear, as the whites were more likely to bite the hand that cut them (so to
speak) than their black brethren. Years later, I went through a bout of
litigation fear, myself, and I know how unpleasant it can be. Then I decided
that the only thing a doctor has to fear is his own conscience, and that is bad
enough, in
all
conscience. So I was able to separate the two, and
dismiss the other. But far be it from me to give poor Pete, or anyone else, a
lecture - even if I have done, as the Irishman said.

But Pete ran a clinic at his house,
which I could not be bothered with, especially as I was not charging for my
services. The DC had a quiet word with me about this in the club. 'People much
happier with Dr Blood's arrangement. Didn't feel at ease in the African
hospital, etc.' I explained politely the inconvenience to me, and forgot about
it.

June was aware of these feelings: she
knew everything that was going on in the little town. Fortunately for the DC,
this particular complaint never reached her ears or she would not have
hesitated to give him a plainer explanation than mine.

Like the case of the police reservists.
As the emergency developed, the local farmers entered the police reserve -
voluntarily at first, I think. Wholesale conscription came later. They had to
have vaccinations, so June marched them into a convenient room and instructed the
black MA to get on with it.

At the club the following Saturday
night, one of them complained to me about this: 'Serving the country, etc.
Expected the doc to do it.' This time the complaint did reach June's ears: she
was standing nearby. I didn't have to say a word: I might have been a West
African chief with a 'linguist' to do the job for me.

June planted herself between me and the
complainant: a number of fellow complainants were standing behind him, and all
got the full treatment.

'What sort of a bunch of bloody pansies
are you lot then?' she opened up. 'Do you think no one can touch your
lily-white skins except the doctor? Do you think the doc's got nothing else to
do? The medical assistants do the vaccinations; are perfectly capable of doing
them; always have done them; and always will.' And that was that. June could
have been the matron, and a formidable one too.

As Hermanus was the next to find out.
Hermanus was a farmer, who called the ambulance out for a sick worker. Fair
enough. But when the ambulance driver arrived at Hermanus's house, he found the
'sick worker' lying down on the ground outside, very dead. And obviously dead
since some time before Hermanus telephoned. The ambulance driver explained that
it was against regulations to carry a cadaver in the ambulance. Hermanus
retorted: 'I'm going to check with the doctor. 'He walked into his house,
walked three times round the table and came out again. 'The doctor says it's
OK.' The perplexed ambulance driver felt he had no choice, but he complained to
June. He knew who to complain to.

Suffice it say that Hermanus got a very
plain lecture in the club next Saturday on the uses and abuses of ambulances,
and June didn't care how many other people got the benefit of the lecture at
the same time.

Another thing that 'got June's goat' was
when whites, especially women, asked her if she didn't feel 'at risk', all
alone in that 'Kaffir hospital', with the doctor not always at her side and
sometimes out on his rounds. '"At risk"!' June would snarl in
contempt. 'Why the hell should I feel at risk? They are perfectly civilised
people. I've known them for years and I trust every one of them.'

Astute as she was, even June could be
deceived by the serpent of rumour. Japie van Blerk was the only Afrikaner I
knew who looked like a leprechaun. He was red-haired, skinny and small. His
sharp eyes stood closer to his thin nose than most other people's. His portrait
may be seen as 'Sly', the goblin, in the sanitised (de-golliwogged) editions of
Enid Blyton's Noddy books. He was a district officer cadet, and supplemented
his slender salary by giving lifts in government vehicles to Africans at fifty
cents a time: a concession to African custom (among them lifts were always paid
for) in which his professional obligation to educate himself would not have
excused him, because, needless to say, it was clean against regulations.

Although born and bred in the country
and fully aware of its peculiar ways of thinking, when he took over his small
government house, he installed a female black cook instead of the usual male
one. This led to a good deal of ribbing at the club and the bar of the Falcon.

One night, at the latter place, he
turned on his latest tormentor, a large policeman, and punched him on the jaw.
Instantly regretting his rash action, he turned tail and fled from the pub. The
enraged policeman followed.

It had been raining. The policeman
slipped in a puddle outside and continued his journey feet first before nearly
knocking himself unconscious on the pavement; Japie meanwhile making good his
escape.

An imperfect version of this story
reached June's ears, and next morning she informed me: 'That little Japie van
Blerk is tougher then he looks. Did you hear how he knocked out Bertie Kriel
outside the Falcon last night?'

My house was on the edge of the town, on
a hill, and overlooked the town and the green ocean of the veld beyond. Once
again, as I sat on my veranda with pipe and drink and book, I thought I was
looking south, until I took a look at the map and found it was the opposite.

The house was probably the largest DMO's
house in the country. It had been built for a former mine manager. The
government bought it during a depression, and now the present mine manager
lived at my feet almost in a mobile home, while they were building him
something permanent. The front veranda, which went round a projecting front,
must have been thirty yards long. There was a large dining room, sitting room
and three large bedrooms. Anderson had a
kaya
at the back. The garden
was large and I soon employed a gardener. It had a fine collection of aloes and
cycads. And I wandered about in that house like a lost soul. A little white boy
told his mother, 'I'm never going to be an old bachelor like the doc when I
grow up and live in a big lonely house like that.'

I had my books sent out from England for
the first time. I had my record player and a good collection of LPs. Wednesday,
I gave Anderson a half day and took sundowners and supper at the Falcon. They
had got me playing bowls, so Saturday afternoon and evening I spent at the
club, where a light supper was served. Sunday, I had drinks and a bar lunch at
the Falcon. Sunday afternoon, I usually spent fishing with friends, ending with
sundowners and supper at the hotel. A regular life but, as the little boy said,
'lonely' - and in the celibate way he meant.