Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (38 page)

In your alienating flat, where the
traffic banged outside;

Where yet we spent

Afternoons in a cell of curtained
light like a yellow flower.

Feminine city, with a glamour of
living, which was you!

     I was back at home in Shabani. I
had not heard from Terry for two weeks. Then one evening, I was sitting on my
balcony, reading, when the telephone rang. It was Terry. ‘Warren, we
could
get married...’

That was September. We planned to get
married next year, when Terry had finished her course. Even then there was a
difficulty. She was committed to give them three years’ service in return for
her grant. She decided to give them six months. That meant she had to pay $5000
reimbursement. As that was by then practically from our joint account, I always
told everyone I paid $5000 bride price for my wife:
lobola,
as the
Africans call it - about fifty cows in those days, and mightily were the
Africans impressed. Alas, if only her poor father could have received it!

     Terry proposed a Christmas holiday
for the two of us, after her studies. This was now October. Terry wanted
beaches and the sea. I made enquiries. Everywhere was booked up - Mauritius,
Seychelles, Kenya, even South Africa. Then I remembered. In Ghana there were
beautiful beaches. No chance the white man’s grave would be booked up. In fact,
booking didn’t seem to be on the cards at that time. I made plans to get there
on our own.

     I discovered that to get to West
Africa, one had to travel through Kenya - much further in all and more
expensive than Europe. It would have been cheaper and easier to go to Greece;
but who wants Greece with the barbaric splendour of Africa to choose from?

     So to Nairobi we went, spent a
night, and took another flight for Ghana via Lagos. Once again I saw the green
ocean of the rain forest, and we were soon above the round green tops as we
dipped into Port Harcourt. Terry, the daughter of Africa, was thrilled.

     It was December, the dry season; but
something was different. A lot of dust, or cloud, in the air. I realised I had
seen nothing of the forest for cloud over the Congo; nothing, until these tree
tops emerged from the yellow fog below. We might have been dropping into London
in the days of the pea-soupers.

     On the ground they told us. We met
a white man on his way to Lagos, who came with us on the next leg. It was the
harmattan, the north wind off the desert. Tens years before, this had been a
breath of fresh clean air: now it was something foul and sinister.

     In that ten years, the Sahara had
marched a hundred miles to the sea: the harmattan now brought a smog of sand.
When the plane landed at Lagos, the passengers (the previously half-empty plane
having filled up with Nigerians at Port Harcourt) all cheered, as if we had had
a perilous deliverance. And on the ground, visibility was down to a hundred
yards.

     At Lagos, we asked for the transit
lounge, telling them we were on our way to Ghana. We found ourselves in a large
hall, with our luggage beside us.

     Huge crowds in all the colours of
the rainbow. Southerners in smocks and caps, with fat wives draped in gaudy
dresses and turbans. Fulanis in jelabas, with trains of veiled wives. All
milling for tickets and struggling through the entrances. Terry was stunned by
what she called ‘culture shock’.

     I spotted our friend from Port
Harcourt with some expats at the bar and joined them, soon quaffing beer and
swapping Africa talk. I turned to ask Terry what she wanted.

     For she was dragging behind, her
face now clouded with more than culture shock. ‘Warren,’ she urged, ‘this isn’t
the transit lounge. Where
are
we?’ She was always more switched on than
me, which may not be saying much.

     It was the arrivals hall. ‘We
haven’t had our passports stamped,’ insisted Terry.

     I thought no more about it. I
enjoyed my drink and the chat. Terry sat with us, not joining in the
conversation, looking more and more anxious.

     Then it was announced that as the
conditions at Accra were even worse than Lagos, the onward flight there had
been postponed until next day.

     Our new companions invited us to
spend the night at their place. They worked for a dredging company, and had
been at the airport to see off one of their friends to UK. We went off with
them. They gave us bed and board at their hostel, and next morning, dropped us
off at the airport - rather hastily, I thought, like hot potatoes. By then, the
news of our illegal entry had got through to them.

     We approached the barrier and asked
for the transit lounge, as we were en route for Ghana, etc. We spoke to a
little woman who kept us waiting at the barrier while she went in search of her
superior. Presently, a male official in a grey uniform and peaked cap returned
with her.

     We explained again. He was not
impressed. ‘I don’t understand. What are you doing here? I see you have no
stamp in your passports.’

     No, we were in transit to Ghana. A
certain woman had led us to the entrance hall. It must be a mistake.

     ‘I know nothing about that. You had
better come this way.’

     They opened the barrier. But help
was not at hand.

     ‘You see, I find you here in an
illegal situation. You could go to jail.’

     He let that sink in.

     ‘Unless I fix it.’

     West African memories flooded back.
I said to Terry, ‘He wants a bribe.’

     Terry had all our Nigerian money,
about seven pounds. Now frightened, she thrust it into my hand. ‘Give him all
of it, Warren.’

     I wasn’t disposed to be so liberal.
Official was now walking away in a contemplative mood, while we meekly followed
him. I selected five notes and handed them to him. He continued his
contemplative walk, without looking at them.

     ‘I thought you were going to offer
me something reasonable.’

     What he meant by ‘reasonable’ was a
hundred pounds - a quarter of our joint holiday money.

     Terry recovered her courage with
her indignation. ‘Tell him, Warren, we want to see the airport manager.’

     Official did not wait for my
intervention as a ‘linguist’.

     ‘The Big Man!’ he laughed. All this
time he walked and looked ahead. ‘He will want three hundred pounds.’

     So we had to go to the exchange.
‘Tell them to put it in an envelope,’ added Official.

     ‘Aren’t they vile!’ I exclaimed to Terry,
as we walked away. She made no reply. She was white and trembling. Well, there
was nothing for it: we were over the proverbial barrel.

     All the time this was going on,
they were giving us
Hark! the Herald-angels Sing
on the piped music.

     When Official received our present,
he stamped our passports with a seven-day visa for Nigeria, as our flight was
still postponed. He became positively friendly, led us to the airport entrance,
and secured a taxi. He wished us a pleasant stay in Nigeria. We did not reply.
Terry looked as if she could murder him.

     After that, we needed a drink. In a
bar, I consulted with some more British expats. The tale did not surprise them.
I asked them to guess the ‘dash’. ‘About fifty pounds.’ I felt doubly swindled.
‘Don’t worry,’ they said. ‘The price doubles during the season of good will.’

    
Autres lieux, autres moeurs!
I
expect he spent our money on Christmas
presents for his kids.

After a night in a Lagos hotel, we
decided to try and get to Ghana by road. We took a three-tier Peugeot, a
popular form of transport, crowded in with about seven other people, at £5
(naira) for 100 miles. We passed the mangrove swamps of the coast, and reached
our first hurdle: the border with Benin.

     This used to be Dahomey, where life
was played out, in Conrad’s words, like ‘a sordid farce acted out in front of a
sinister back-cloth’. After the days of the slave trade, Amazon warriors, etc,
the tradition of sick humour was carried into independence with the annual
institution of the Christmas Coup. Every year, in the festive season we were
then enjoying (in its special West African form), the president of Dahomey
would be sitting in his office, writing his Christmas cards to what he thought
were his friends, when the door would be kicked open and his successor to be
would burst in and knock him off with a Tommy gun. Next year, the successor
would be sitting in his office, writing his Christmas cards, etc, when
his
successor, etc. This comedy ran for about nine successive years. I cannot
remember how or why it was taken off.

     At any rate, the next comedy for
Terry and me was when the border official informed us that we would need a visa
to get into Benin. If he stamped us out, we would be left in some dreadful
limbo between the two countries - and he didn’t even add ‘unless I fix it’. We
had actually stumbled on an honest Nigerian official. I even saw him refuse a
bribe for some purpose from a Dutch priest. I expect the poor man (I mean the
official) is there yet, at the bottom of the promotional ladder.

     So we had to take a taxi back to
town, which cost us more than the Peugeot, which was going on. Incidentally, I
noticed that the traffic in Nigeria was now driving on the right. It must have
been changed on the Devil’s birthday. It would not have required the old expat
joke: ‘in order to break you in slowly, for the first week, only the buses will
do it’.

     By now, we despaired of the beaches
of West Africa. I suggested to Terry we use our return tickets for Kenya, and
complete the rest of our holiday there.

     After another night in Lagos, we
repaired once more to the airport. We now had a lot of useless Nigerian money
to get rid of. We went to the exchange in the arrivals hall, and while the man
was half-way through changing our money into pounds sterling, Dutch guilders,
and whatever else he had in his piggy bank, he informed us that he had run out
of foreign exchange and the office was closing down for the duration, which
left us with ninety useless Nigerian pounds as a souvenir of the country.

     But we were luckier than a young
Englishman we met. Not only had he failed to convert his money; he had had his
air ticket thrust back at him at the barrier - not once, but for the third time
in as many days. He wanted to get back to England in time for his wedding, no
less. Now, the planes for Europe were fully booked; nay, they were overbooked -
systematically. In order to secure a seat, it was necessary, not only to
purchase a ticket in the usual way, but to bribe some official to kick someone
out of the seat. 350 into 300 won’t go, even on a jumbo jet, and the surplus 50
was the staple of a thriving local enterprise. The ‘dash’ could rise to £1000:
it was like a game of snakes and ladders, with loaded dice; and unless you were
prepared to pay for the dice, which our proud English friend was not, you slid
down a snake, and he had already slid down three. The poor fellow was still
trying to get married when we left him.

     We had no difficulty getting into
the transit lounge, thanks to Official’s stamp and the low demand for planes to
Kenya. We duly declared our wealth, including the ninety naira to the grinning
officials at emigration. With such plentiful sources of humour, no wonder they
are a laughing people. But our adventures in this fabulous country were not yet
over. In the transit lounge, yet another official approached us. Nothing
threatening about this one, not even his smile. And his first words were:
‘Aren’t you Doctor Durrant?’

     There were even then eighty million
people in Nigeria, and it was ten years since I was on the Coast. But this was
Timothy, the former barman at the Samreboi Club, now working at the airport.

     We told him our adventures. The
trick with the transit/arrivals lounge, he told us, was a regular one. The
‘certain woman’ was working with Official, who must only have been surprised at
the time we took to resurface in his net.

     Timothy offered to change our naira
for us. In the afternoon, he met us again, with a secretive-looking friend who,
in some obscure corner, took our naira in exchange for forty American dollars,
then quickly slipped away.

     Our plane was due to leave. We
passed a policeman. Terry had no money to declare. She was walking to the plane
while the policeman, with a surly face and a pistol on his hip, searched my
wallet.

     ‘Have you declared all this money?’

     ‘Yes,’ I lied. I was getting
acclimatised to Nigeria.

     ‘Because if you haven’t, I will
arrest you.’

     Pointless remark. I said nothing.
He would have to drag me back to emigration to prove anything, when I would
have offered him the forty dollars, like Pierre in the Congo, ‘for the police
ball’. No doubt, he was trying to shake me, and his remark was not so pointless
after all.

     At any rate, we breathed a sigh of
relief when the Pan Am jet took off for Kenya.