Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (47 page)

     I did not offer this lad
antidepressants. I tried to offer him comfort. Prospects were better for
further education since independence (so I hoped more than I believed): he
should read anything he could lay his hands on - books, newspapers - advice
hardly necessary, as said, to any African who can read. But I was sorry for the
lad. What can be sadder than the unsatisfied hunger for education? Think of
Jude the Obscure!

     Teachers going to Africa will
rarely have unruly pupils to contend with, any more than doctors will find
litigious patients, in a continent where health and education are regarded as
privileges, not rights. There are some sad exceptions to this rule: the demo at
our hospital, a local school burnt down. But these are uncommon and usually due
to failures of communication and other misunderstandings.

     Schizophrenics we did see, probably
because they caused the most social disruption, and the witch-doctor was less
successful with them. And I am sorry to say our methods of dealing with them
were necessarily crude. When they came in raving, we quite frankly chained them
to the bed, until the massive doses of Largactil took effect. Then, after a day
or two, they graduated to shackles and shuffled about the premises, while the
nurses tried to keep an eye on them. They were nursed in the general wards,
and, unless so restrained, with the limited staff available, could easily have
wandered off into the bush, and the next we saw of them might be when the
police brought in a box of bones, described on the form as ‘found in the veld’.

     When the lunatics were tranquil, we
let their relatives take them home, where an African village was more adapted
to ‘community care’ than a British inner city. Thereafter, they would be taken
to their local clinic for monthly injections. Alas, some of them came into the
bus terminus category, and gave the same recurrent problems.

     Some of the schizophrenics were
highly intelligent and well-educated. It almost seemed as if the culture clash
in their brains had been too much for them. One in particular was called the
fundi
(student, or expert), who always had a book in his hand. One day, he challenged
me on the ward.

     ‘What’s a beldam?’

     I hesitated.

     ‘Come on!’ he bullied. ‘It’s your
language.’ The neighbouring beds sat up and took notice.

     ‘It’s an old woman,’ I ventured.

     ‘It means a
wicked
old woman;’
coming down on me with the severity of a schoolmaster. Big grins all round.

     When I consulted Collin’s
dictionary, I found we were both right.

The reader may ask about snake-bites,
and I suppose a little lecture is in order. They rarely give much trouble in
Africa, or at any rate, cause death.

     They divide into two main kinds:
adders, whose venom attacks blood and tissue, causing swelling and internal
bleeding; and cobras and mambas, whose venom attacks the nervous system,
causing paralysis. Serious, or systemic, effects (as opposed to local effects)
rarely occurred; so our policy was to set up a drip, in case the antivenom
(which has its own allergic dangers) was required, give a shot of penicillin
(for infection and to reassure the patient), and observe. Six hours would
decide the matter.

     For there are two kinds of bite:
the ‘business bite’, intended to kill prey, when the snake actually injects the
poison; and the defensive bite, intended to deter a larger animal (such as
man), when the poison is not injected, but the victim receives accidentally
what the snake has on its fangs. This was the usual case with humans, and
naturally, less dangerous.

     The antivenom was kept in the
fridge, and I had to remember to renew it yearly, even though it was used but
once while I was in Zvishavane - by my colleagues from the mine on a white man
whose whole leg turned black from an adder bite (internal bleeding), and who
was very ill indeed. His haemoglobin fell to five grammes (one third normal),
and he was in shock. They transfused him and gave him 50ml of antivenom - half
our stock. He made a good recovery, and he was lucky.

     If that cobra had bitten Michael, I
would have been faced with more than one doctor’s dilemma. First, whether to
treat one of my own family, which is always inadvisable, as one’s judgement is
swayed by personal emotion; call in a colleague, with whom I might have
disagreed; or take him to Bulawayo, a three-hour journey. And if I
had
treated
him, whether to give him the antivenom right away, with its own risks, or wait
for signs of paralysis. In a child, all the dangers are greater.

     The cobras also spat - a syringeful
(10ml) of venom into the eyes, which means a timely and copious wash-out. I
only had to do this once - on a dog, when a woman brought in her little terrier
with his eyes screwed up. This was before independence, after which we were
forbidden to treat animals (see the chapter on Zambia); when I would have taken
him to my garden and put him under the tap.

     I had
treated other animals
- one or two dogs, stitched up under ketamine (hope vets approve) - but gave it
up even before independence, as the African nurses were not happy about it. For
one thing, they were afraid of getting bitten, or said they were. I think it
offended their dignity, really: a feeling one must always respect.

As at Umvuma, at Zvishavane I had at
least one distinguished patient: the sister of my neighbour, the former prime
minister, Garfield Todd. True to the liberal principles of the family, she was
content to be admitted to the common ward of the government hospital, but I got
her into a side ward, if only because she was so ill.

     There was some difficulty about the
diagnosis; while I was thinking about it the lady died.

     Sir Garfield (as he now was) proved
as perfect a gentleman as Dr Mazarodze. His sister would probably have died
anyway, and it might have been difficult to carry an action against me - which
would not have stopped many people from trying, if rather fewer in Zimbabwe
than elsewhere.

     ‘I am not very proud of this case,’
I confessed to Sir Garfield, in my office.

     ‘Don’t worry, Dr Durrant,’ he said.
‘Edie had had many operations before and would not have consented to another.
Nor would we have wished it. She came to this country forty years ago from New
Zealand for her health. She has had forty happy years here and she was only too
grateful for that - and so are we.’

     Terry’s father was also an admirer
of Mr Todd, as he was in his day; at any rate, as a performer. As to his
politics, I am not sure. Bill’s politics, I should guess, consisted of an
enlightened fatalism. He recalled how an Irish candidate of Todd’s party tried
to make headway against a Rhodesian audience. ‘You can’t frighten me,’ he
boasted. ‘I’ve fought elections in Ireland.’ Before long, he was forced to
change his mind and give up in disgust. ‘You said you’d fought elections in
Ireland,’ they jeered. ‘Yes,’ he retorted. ‘But in Ireland, I was talking to
gentlemen.’

     Garfield, who was supporting his
candidate, then stepped forward, took his jacket off and threw it over a chair.
He was a big man, as well as a distinguished-looking one. He rolled his sleeves
up, and pitched into them. ‘Now!’ he retaliated. ‘We’ve heard what you’ve got
to say - now you’re going to hear what I’VE got to say!’

     As Terry’s father commented, his
candidate didn’t win, but Garfield shut them up.

     I could hardly connect this with
the Christian gentleman who sat in my office; but, of course, he wasn’t the
first of his kind to put down the mob.

Behind the hospital was a
kopje
,
Zvishavane Peak, the highest hill in the neighbourhood. Before the troubles,
the white nurses would hold
braais
(barbecues) on the top. Later, it was
considered dangerous: the guerrillas could be ensconced there (or at any rate,
mujibas
),
watching the town. After independence, I often climbed it. About 500 feet high
from its base, it gave wide views over the green sea of the veld. One could see
the slag heaps of the next asbestos-mining town, Mashava, forty miles away, the
road running north to Selukwe, and the toy town, sprawling widely and untidily
below.

     On certain nights, when I was
called to the hospital, this hill took on a strange appearance, which was not
shared by the other hills around the town. It was unique, like a magic
mountain. It had to be a clear night under the stars. With cloud or with moon
the effect was not seen. On the right nights the hill glowed white, less like a
hill in tropical Africa than a hill in England at night, under the snow of
winter. Terry’s nephew, Hugh, the geologist, saw it; had never seen anything
like it, and thought it must be a high load of quartz in the soil. I think it
meant something to the Africans, as Inyangani did, and so many hills and rivers
in the country. I regret that I never asked them. Perhaps they would not have
told me. It loomed, on its special nights, a disturbing and ghostly apparition.

Then came sad news from Umvuma (now
called Mvuma). The owner of the Falcon Hotel, John Holland, was killed in a car
crash. The place was bought by a Canadian, who appointed the head waiter,
Nelson, an excellent man, as manager. Nelson had a brother, who became head
waiter. The brother was not an excellent man. The new owner conspired with the
bad brother (who may have been called Satan, or Poison - both popular names for
boys in a mythology which carries different values from ours, in which the
Devil may, indeed, be accorded the status of a gentleman) - conspired with
Satan to burn the place down and collect the insurance money.

     Unfortunately for his scheme, he
did his conspiring over the telephone, and he had insufficient knowledge of the
operation of small town telephone exchanges in Africa.

     During the often empty and tedious
hours of her duty, Mrs Van Oysterbar would vary the reading of her novel with
listening in on private conversations on the line, and in one of these, she
overheard the final exchange of the plotters. She telephoned the police, who
arrived to find Satan setting fire to a quantity of petrol in the lounge. I
don’t know how they got the fire out: I never heard of a fire engine in Mvuma.
But the place was badly damaged.

     The bad brother was arrested. The
Canadian fled the country. Nelson got a job at the Enkeldoorn Hotel. The mine
bought the building and turned it into a hostel for their male staff. The jolly
days of the Falcon were over.

One day, Percy and his wife, Marguerita,
added to the gaiety of nations, or, at any rate, Zvishavane, by laying on an
expensive entertainment in the main street.

     Percy had bought a new car - a
Mercedes with automatic gears - and Marguerita went shopping in it. She parked
it outside Toni’s cafe, in the way permitted by the broad streets of Central
Africa, that is, tangentially, with its boot pointing into the street. When she
attempted to drive away, she did something to the unfamiliar gears, and shot
the car backwards across the street. A Mercedes, of course, is built like a
Tiger tank. Marguerita killed three ordinary cars, before ram-raiding the
Parthenon cafe, on the other side of the street; admittedly, boot first, but
ram-raiding was in its infancy then anyway, and this was Marguerita’s first
attempt. (Now, I understand, this mode has been widely adopted, so it seems
Marguerita was ahead of her time, after all.) In the startled bowels of the
Parthenon, she fiddled with the gears again and took off on a second voyage of
destruction, killing three more cars and ram-raiding Toni’s in turn, this time
in the conventional way.

     By now, the main street looked like
the battlefield of Kursk, with wrecked cars all over the place, some on their
backs, wiggling their legs in the air, like immobilised beetles. In the whole
affair, nobody was hurt, or, at any rate, the only one to appear at the
hospital was a badly shaken Marguerita, with a scratch on her cheek.

     But then it turned out that Percy,
in his leisurely old-fashioned way, had not got round to insuring the vehicle.
Percy was not a poor man and his wife was said to be a South African
millionairess. All the same, it was voted a most munificent spectacle.

One morning, a little girl was brought
in, bitten by a hippopotamus, on her way to school. She had a big hole in her
left upper abdomen. When we gently turned her over, there was another big hole
in the back of her chest, on the same side, in which the collapsed lung was
plainly visible, ineffectually trembling. She lay panting and grey on the bed
in deep shock.

     We resuscitated with fluids and
blood, gave antibiotics, and when she was fit for surgery, got her to theatre.
We started anaesthesia with a tube down the windpipe. When I was scrubbed up, I
was able to make a closer inspection.

     There was little damage to internal
organs: some bruising of the lung, an abrasion of the stomach, and a six-inch
tear in the diaphragm. The hippo had, in fact, performed what is called a
thoracolaparotomy, an incision designed to open abdomen and chest at the same
time. There was really little left for me to do but close up, like a registrar
after a somewhat perfunctory chief.