Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (39 page)

Terry and I had ten uneventful days in
Kenya, which after our Nigerian adventures, was all we wanted. As neither Dante
nor Milton succeeded in making Paradise as interesting as Hell, I will not try
to surpass them.

Terry got her DNA diploma and was now a
matron grade III, which was too high-powered for Shabani. She therefore applied
for and received the matron’s post at Chiredzi, in the steaming south-east of
the Lowveld: another long hop from Shabani - 200 miles.

     We planned to marry in June, when
she would retire from the service. We shared many delightful week-ends together
at one or the other’s places.

     A girl friend of Terry’s came to my
house. Terry came to me in the garden, where I was taking the evening air. ‘How
would you like to get married in Que Que?’ she asked me. That (pronounced
Kweck-Kway) was where her friend’s husband had a farm.

     And so we were. It was a small
wedding, limited to our hosts and Terry’s immediate family. I had met my new
parents: now I met my new sisters and brothers for the first time. At last, the
lonely exile was a member of a large and happy family again, and the country of
my willing exile I was invited to call home.

     We all foregathered at the farm,
and Terry and I were married in the church of St Luke in the town, whose were,
of course, the proper auspices for a medical couple.

     We had a week’s honeymoon at the
Troutbeck Inn. This time, we ran to the Lake wing, the most luxurious. One of
Terry’s friends had advised her to ‘get Warren to spend his money’ (Terry, as I
have explained, had already spent hers, and paid husband-price rather than
bride-price), and from the start, I discovered that two cannot live as cheaply
as one.

     We woke in the crisp winter air of
the mountains every morning, with hoar frost on the ground, and on the heather
- for the African heather, taller than the Scottish kind and always white in
frost and flower, covers the hills not planted with pine trees.

     We did all the usual things, and
one afternoon climbed Mount Inyangani. This is 8500 feet, but as the veld at
its foot is 7000 feet, it rather takes the rise out of it, so to speak, and so
the climb itself is but a pleasant afternoon’s stroll.

     But the mountain has an evil
reputation, and few Africans will climb it, even if most of them saw any sense
in climbing hills at all, except for some practical purpose. It is the abode of
spirits, and it is true that people have disappeared on it without trace.

     I had climbed it once before, on
another winter day, with Graham Lee, the medical student. We reached the summit
easily enough: it is a long hill, standing like a long barrow or ship against
the sky, an easily recognised landmark from all quarters, and makes a fine
ridge walk. But when we tried to come down this seemingly simple mound, we lost
our way. We had to return to the summit no less than three times before we
could find the way down, and then only got off the mountain as the swift tropical
night descended. Tropical or not, it would have been a bitter spot to spend a
winter’s night, well below freezing.

     But now, this day, the path was
clearly marked with cairns, no doubt, by the Mountain Club, and we had no
trouble - at least, about direction. But Inyangani had another trick up his
sleeve.

     When we neared the peak, which
stands alone at the head of the ridge, we found it occupied by a troop of
baboons, who got very excited when they saw us. They began running about among
the rocks, barking, and seeming to organise themselves.

     Which they did. For the next thing,
we confronted a cavalry charge of the barking brutes, as they came across the
heather towards us.

     I clasped my new wife with rather
more courage than I might have felt on my own, and we instinctively stood our
ground. Which was, of course, the right thing to do. To run away might well
have been disastrous.

     Suddenly, all together, they came
to a stop, about fifty yards away. Their leader gave a final bark, and they all
ran off to the left, leaving the peak vacant to our possession.

     We climbed the last few feet, and
found ourselves on the top - under the violet sky, in the blinding white winter
light, looking a hundred miles to the west, across the veld, the ‘great spaces
washed with sun’; and to the east, on the valleys plunging into Mozambique. A
world of the eagles.

     We came down easily, following the
conspicuous cairns. We found a rock pool - a small perfect bath. I stripped and
slipped naked into the icy water. Terry contented herself with sitting on a
rock, watching my gambols.

     At the end of our week, we left for
home. On the way, Terry made me stop while she gathered some of those dry
flowers from the roadside, that stay in the house, seemingly for ever, like
artificial flowers, but natural and wholesome.

     We stayed with Terry’s parents in
Salisbury, and went on to Shabani next day.

     When we arrived, we found a
surprise party prepared for us by the staff, in African custom, to which we as
great folks had to foot the bill for much food and drink. First, we had to
change into our wedding clothes and appear on the balcony like royalty, to the
hearty cheers of our loyal and loving subjects. We had to sit in state in the
same costume on the veranda below, taking part in the feast, while our subjects
proceeded to tear the house apart and smear it with mud (sic).

     This is all part of the custom. The
resulting wreckage is supposed to break in the new bride to her duties, and
stop her straying for the next few weeks.

     In the midst of the festivities, a
Land Rover drew up outside - not the police, but Koos Bezuidenhout, the only
other white in town besides ourselves who would have attended an African party.
When he had eaten and drunk, he stood on the wall of the veranda and led the
crowd in a rousing rendering of
Ishe Komberera Afrika,
the great
southern African hymn, which even the British reader must know by now.

     Then came a crash as Anderson, who
was supposed to be waiting, fell over with a tray of drinks, whose sources he
had obviously been conscientiously testing. He could not be roused. Koos threw
him over his shoulder and carried him to his
kaya
, where he tossed him
on to his narrow bed, and he was no worse in the morning.

     By the time all had gone, we were
left to contemplate our new nest - emptied of food and drink, completely
knocked about, and filthy from top to bottom.

The year before I married, Gareth and I
took a New Year break at Inyanga, just after the cease fire, 1980. Jock had
taken the Christmas holiday. We were driving home when we saw files of
guerrillas trekking to the assembly points, manned by British and Commonwealth
troops. The guerrillas were loaded with weapons and festooned with machine-gun
belts. They looked half-starved, as lean as whippets.

     ‘Look at that!’ crowed Gareth.
‘They’ve been fighting for nothing.’

     African politics was not one of
Gareth’s main interests. I knew very well they were not giving themselves up
for nothing. (They were not giving themselves up at all, for they retained
their weapons in the assembly camps.) But no whites in the country and few
people outside knew what Mugabe and Nkomo had up their sleeves;  because for as
many of the guerrillas as came to the assembly points, as many more stayed in the
tribal lands to complete the political education of the people in preparation
for the forthcoming elections. And most whites were surprised and horrified at
Mugabe’s victory, having expected Muzorewa to win, after his sweeping victory
in the elections of twelve months before. But Muzorewa was unable to stop the
war: how many divisions had he got? So deluded were we by the internal
propaganda of the country, that these consequences, which were obvious to
everyone outside the country, surprised us.

     Then came the elections,
‘monitored’ by the British bobbies, who must have felt like Alice in
Wonderland. Most of them returned home without their helmets (through no fault
of their own), which still grace many a Zimbabwean wall, like other trophies of
the chase.

In the new year, we admitted two cheeky
characters, calling themselves ‘freedom fighters’, who had each received a
gunshot wound of the forearm, some months before. Their forearms looked very
bent indeed, and as there was no urgency and the cases might have presented
difficulties, I decided to transfer them to Bulawayo on the next ambulance in
due course. Any sympathy I might have felt for them, they rapidly forfeited.

     To say they treated the place like
the Ritz would be inaccurate. The Ritz would soon have asked them to leave.
They allotted themselves a private ward without reference to doctor or matron,
and treated the staff like their slaves, ordering fancy meals at any time they
fancied, etc. They drank beer and smoked with I imagine more freedom than was
usually allowed (though I was always vague on points like that). At any rate,
under pressure from the nurses, one day I gave them a telling off.

     They complained about me to Comrade
‘Soft Guy’, the political commissar of the local brigands. I received a message
from Sister Mutema that he would like to discuss the matter in the duty room.

     Our two guests were present, still
smoking energetically. I opened the proceedings myself by telling them to put
their cigarettes out. They glanced at their superior, who nodded, whereupon
they pinched out the offending articles and dropped them out of the window.
‘Soft Guy’ was the so-called
chimurenga
name of the officer: all who
joined the ‘armed struggle’, or
chimurenga,
gave up their original names
for the duration for
chimurenga
names, for all the world like entrants
to a religious order. He was a tall thin man with a quietly-spoken manner which
seemed to justify his sobriquet.

     He asked me why I did not treat our
two ‘comrades’ with more respect. ‘They don’t deserve respect,’ I burst out, as
much from nervousness at my entirely novel situation as anything else. ‘They’ve
been nothing but a nuisance to everyone since they’ve been here.’

     Comrade Soft Guy glanced at Sister
Mutema who was with us. Sister Mutema nodded and Comrade Soft Guy sharply
ordered the two culprits out of the room. He assured me he would look into the
matter, and the meeting broke up.

A few days later, Comrade Soft Guy’s
luck ran out. He developed toothache and needed an extraction. I entered the
ward one morning to find Jock dealing with him just inside the door. I have
said Jock’s piano-playing lacked finesse, and I think the same was true of his
dentistry. At any rate, Comrade Soft Guy was rolling about on a chair, under
Jock’s head-lock and an evidently imperfect local anaesthetic, bawling like a
sick cow, while Jock was saying, ‘No wonder they call you Comrade Soft Guy!’

     There was nothing vindictive about
this. I am sure Jock had as much simple faith in his local as he had in his
dental skill.

Then I got an invitation to an
independence party at the house of one of our sisters, about five miles out of
town. When I told Terry over the telephone I was going (she was then in
Salisbury), she said I must have rocks in my head. I was the only white
present. Sister Mushaya’s husband ran a store and tavern, attached to their
house, and sitting on the bar was the local guerrilla capo, Comrade ‘Bee-Gee’.

     It was then he told me how they had
spared Dr Scott. Comrade Bee-Gee was built like Mike Tyson, and moreover had
the cold eye of one who knew how to aim a rifle, instead of waving it about, as
his subordinates were cheerfully believed by the whites to do. All this made me
glad for Jock’s sake that Comrade Bee-Gee approved of his activities; though he
could have looked like King Kong and shot like Dead-eye Dick for all Jock would
have cared.

     Comrade Bee-Gee also told me that
the two naughty boys had been ‘dealt with’ - which made me feel sorry for them
for the first time and hope they were still above ground, or that Comrade
Bee-Gee had not anticipated the surgeon in the matter of re-setting their
fractures.

     Comrade Soft Guy was also present -
with a towel wrapped round his face, for some reason.

     A succession of youths came in,
carrying home-made imitation rifles, which they handed over to a stern-eyed
Comrade Bee-Gee, which he dropped on a growing pile behind the bar. These were
evidently the
mujibas,
previously described. They looked very sheepish,
but were allowed to join the party.

     Then a privileged number of us were
invited into the house itself to watch Prince Charles on the telly lowering and
raising flags (lowering anyway). And suddenly there was a call for the doctor.

     A man in the tavern had had an
argument with another man, who had struck him. The first man had a friend who
was a deaf-mute, as devoted to him as a dog. The deaf-mute, a skinny little
creature, possessed surprising strength, or spirit, because he sprang to the
aid of his friend and knocked down the second man, who was much bigger than
him, with a single blow. The second man fell backwards and hit his head on the
concrete, just outside the door. When I examined him, he was unconscious with
fixed but constricted pupils.

     We threw him into the back of my
car and I took him to the hospital, where I ordered the usual half-hourly
observations. After three days, he was the same. There were no indications for
surgery, but I ordered him to Salisbury for specialist management. There, after
a few days, he died.

     There was an inquest at Gwelo. I
spoke my piece. Then the pathologist’s report was placed before me - brain
laceration - and I was asked to elucidate. No verdict is reached at a
magistrate’s inquest in Zimbabwe. The matter was not further referred.

It was a year or two before the new order
made itself felt in the health service. I have said the hospital was divided
into white and black, the white section (with the exception of the pensioners)
being private and used by the mine doctors for their private practice. In 1979
(before independence), when Muzorewa became prime minister, the last official
racial barriers fell away throughout society. The private wards were now open
to all races, and educated middle-class Africans (as in hotels and other places
their tastes inclined them to use) were no longer subjected to insulting
exclusion: something which most whites by now realised should have happened
years before. It would not have solved the country’s main problems, but it
would have done much to help.

     But the new government was still in
the first flush of its Marxist-Leninist enthusiasm. It was not only concerned
with race: it was concerned with class.

     To be sure, the boss class took
good care of itself: the first practical (as opposed to theoretical) principle
of a Marxist state is, of course, the
Nomenklatura
- which is Russian
for jobs for the boys. But private beds in government hospitals were out
(except maybe in the capital for the more equal animals).

     I was sitting in the dressing-room
of the theatre with Percy, when I received a telephone call from the secretary
for health - not the one who arranged my marriage, who had gone long ago - but
a black socialist one.

     ‘I hear you still have private beds
in your hospital.’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘Didn’t you know that private beds
had been abolished in government hospitals?’

     ‘No’ - nobody had told me. Our
wide-awake hospital secretary, a little highly conscientious old man, called
Peter Reynolds, would certainly have shown me any such directive, if only out
of high indignation, even if I had missed it myself, which was more probable.

     ‘Are there any private patients in
your hospital now?’

     I reflected. As it happened, there
were two - two little old ladies who happened to be pioneer pensioners.

     ‘Yes, there are two pensioners.’

     ‘What sort of pensioners?’

     ‘Pioneer pensioners.’

     ‘What are you talking about?’

     I explained. The bit about people
whose ancestors arrived before 1900 may have peeved him, but that was not my
fault.

     ‘Get them out!’

     ‘Shall I wait till they are ready
to be discharged?’

     ‘No. Get them out today!’

     Well, by regulation, they could and
should have gone to the old African ward, which would have been a cultural
hardship, to say the least. It was a cultural hardship, as I said, to people
like the secretary himself, and was not the sort of thing he was used to in
Salisbury.

     An order is an order. I put the
telephone down.

     ‘What was all that about?’ growled
Percy, whose antennae, as well as his ears, were in good working order.

     I explained. Percy was now
superintendent of the mine hospital. He offered to take the pensioners under
his wing. In anticipation of such changes, the mine had built a new managerial
and private hospital, small but gleaming. Percy offered the pensioners
permanent accommodation there.

     Well, these two old ladies were
under Jock’s care, and he didn’t appreciate their premature discharge and
transference to other hands on non-medical grounds at neither his nor their
expressed wish. Nor was there any reason why he should, or reason why he should
not be furious - which he was. Needless to say, his fury in no way included
Percy, to whom he was duly grateful.

     This still left the problem of
outpatients. The ‘white’ hospital had a small outpatients department, still
used by ‘government whites’ - ie, police and pensioners. Jock continued to see
the pensioners in this outpatient department. (By now there were few Europeans
in the police service and they had all gone private - as had the African police
officers.) I could see trouble in this. (I should say that the previous secretary
sanctioned the conjunction of our two districts on the condition that each of
us should have the last word in his own area.) Of course, I sympathised with
Jock. It was outrageous that a doctor should be separated from his patients, or
they from him, against the wishes of both. But I had a family to raise in this
country, and it behoved me to keep my nose clean.

     I explained this to Jock, and
pointed out that Percy had undertaken the total care of the pensioners. It
really would be better for them that way: if Jock wanted to admit them, he
would have to surrender them to the mine hospital, anyway, unless he intended
to treat them in the ‘African’ wards.

     ‘We have no right to expect Percy
to take them,’ protested Jock, with an irrelevance I did not choose to argue
with.

     Then he took to seeing them in his
own house. As this was government property, he was still breaking the rules;
but I was not going to make an issue of that.

     Now I had thirty empty beds to
dispose of. In fact, we needed them. The ‘black’ maternity ward was
overcrowded, so I moved these ladies into the old white hospital, and formed a
new lying-in unit (this, in fact, was the solution adopted in similar
situations throughout the country), where they were delighted with their
improved accommodation. The old maternity ward became a children’s ward: the
children previously being admitted to the female ward.

     And now also we had an empty
outpatient department, which itself became a source of bitterness. I proposed
to turn it into a secondary outpatient department for patients referred from
the clinics, including the township clinic of Mandava. (I hope the reader is
still excited by all these administrative events, which I wish I could make
even half as interesting as Trollope made the similar invidious business of
The
Warden:
indeed, I was beginning to feel like the Reverend Septimus Harding,
myself, and Jock was beginning to loom like Archdeacon Grantly. At any rate, if
the reader is not excited now, he soon will be.)