Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (8 page)

One's European informants on these
matters would offer explanations (as if they thought they were Professors
Frazer or Malinowski) in terms of such nonsense as chimpanzees and the lianas
which hung from the trees: but that is the kind of thing
Brunis
would
say, wouldn't they?

But most dreaded of all was Tano, the
spirit of the river (which bore his name) who had certainly placed a number of
people on my mortuary slab. Amos (who was taking a bit of risk himself in doing
so, when you think about it) would use the 'Tano' test (though he was never so
facetious as to call it that) in extracting the truth from people he suspected
of concealing it.

'You swear?'

'Yes, massa. I swear.'

'You swear by Jesus?'

'Yes, massa. I swear by Jesus.'

'You swear by Tano?'

'Ah - Massa!'

Nobody was going take Tano's name in
vain.

The forest formed the perpetual backdrop
to all our lives, and surrounded the square mile of Samreboi like a green wall.
Two roads ran out of town, one north, one south, passing through the
outstations on their way to other places. The northern road ran over the river
by a Bailey bridge about a mile beyond the town.

What the forest is like now I dare not
think. Even at that time the Sahara was marching to the sea at the rate of ten
miles a year. This was not due to the work of the timber companies - at least,
at that time. Since then the local governments have driven them to cut down the
forest as quickly as possible - a fast buck for now and devil take the future!
At that time the chief culprits were illegal timber cutters and the growing
mass of the population, who cleared the forest to make farms. Short-lived
farms, alas! because the soil that supports the forest giants and all that
teeming vegetation is thin and fragile, as was demonstrated dramatically when
one of the big trees fell. Guess how deep the roots went! - about three feet.
Their support came from the buttresses I have described and the interlocking of
the canopy.

And the denuded soil was drastically
washed away when the rains began and the sluggish brown rivers rose thirty feet
and turned into boiling torrents.

The timber companies at that time
actually preserved the forest through the system of forest reserves and
incremental cutting, whereby only a part equivalent to the annual wastage was
taken, so the forest was called the Perpetual Forest in a beautiful book of that
name (long out of print) by a colonial forest officer - Collins, I think - a
mine of information on every last treasure of the forest.

Once a week as I said I visited one of
the outstations. I was driven by a chauffeur. It was well known that doctors were
not mechanics, and there was little traffic on the laterite road in case of
breakdown, which moreover turned to mud in the rainy season, when the car might
get stuck. If that happened, the doctor of course was pressed to remain in his
lordly back seat, while the chauffeur did his best or got some help from
passing pedestrians, who were never too infrequent.

Sometimes we passed tiny villages where
naked children dashed out of huts shouting: 'Docketa! Docketa!' or men and
women waved: the women at their duties, the men sitting around with their
cronies smoking or drinking palm wine. But though I travelled those roads
scores of times, to the last the sudden appearance of the outstation was always
a surprise to me. It was the same on the river when a lad would take us fishing
in a canoe. Never did I guess which wind of the brown water through the green
walls would bring us back to the Bailey bridge, where we were to alight. Such
was the monotony of all that featureless beauty.

Sometimes a tree would fall across the
road, necessitating a return journey either to town or outstation. Out would
come a team with chain saws, and a section would be cut out of the giant trunk
(whose thickness was the height of a man) and rolled aside to let us through. I
had a photograph of a friend of average height standing against the
cross-section of such a log, which must have been near the base for, so far
from his equalling its diameter, he came no more than half way up it, like the
minute hand of a clock at half past the hour.

At the clinic I would see cases that the
medical assistants there had screened for me over the previous week: a hernia,
a baby with malnutrition, an old person with heart failure - patients often
needing admission to hospital. The ambulance would be sent for them on my
return to the hospital. Urgent cases arriving at the clinic in office hours
would be transferred to the hospital, after calling for the ambulance on the
station telephone. But most of the urgent cases got themselves to the hospital
direct. And they came either to clinic or hospital by many means: in the local
headmaster's car or contractor's van, if they were lucky; by canoe down the
river, or slung on a bamboo hammock, carried by a couple of strong and devoted
friends; and when available the more regular service known as the 'mammy
lorry', the main bus service - fleets of such vehicles run by those pillars of
West African trade, the 'mammies' or market women.

And I never failed to educate the MAs at
the clinic through the cases presented, which I early recognised as the most
important purpose of such a visit.

After the clinic I would drop in on
friends, usually for a cup of coffee; but at Wadjo I had a standing invitation
to lunch. John, the mechanic, lived with his African mistress, and while she
prepared the fufu (which I was learning to relish, especially with a delicious
palm oil stew), he would play his only record: Beethoven's Violin Concerto.
Sitting in the cane armchairs with our beers, listening to that utterly
incongruous music, with the gloomy forest pressing in on all sides, we felt we
were keeping some sort of flag flying.

Walter was the mechanic at the northern
outstation, which was called Brudjo. He lived with his wife Maria and their two
little girls. They were an Italian family. He was an exuberant little man as
well as a clever mechanic. He had fitted up his car to play
'We were all in
the garden playing leapfrog'
(or whatever the Italians call it), with which
he announced his arrival on his visits to town.

Walter's Mediterranean logic sometimes
clashed with the local culture.

'Massa, dee tractor never fit.'

'So!' retorted Walter. 'Why don't you
take him to the witch doctor?'

'Ah, massa, he never savvy him proper.'

'But he savvy your mammies, your
pickins, no?' Which was a kind advertisement for me.

No reply.

I had served in Trieste with the British
Army, and had a fair knowledge of Italian. Walter and Maria came from the same
city, so we had something to talk about and in. One day he invited me and an
English couple to lunch.

Most West African lunch parties went on
all afternoon: people usually served curry or palm oil stew. There was much
liquor provided, in the West African fashion: they asked you what you wanted
and simply placed bottle and glass (even a full bottle of whisky) beside you
and left you to help yourself. Needless to say there were no problems with
drunken driving, or at any rate with the police, though cars and their owners
sometimes spent the night in ditches. For when I say afternoon, it was often
midnight before they wound up, the main course being usually served about four
o' clock.

Walter's repast started at a more
civilised hour. Incidentally, when we pulled a bottle of Beaujolais out of the
car, as the common British contribution to the feast, Walter would not hear of
it and made us put it back. I think he was right: hospitality should be freely
offered and freely accepted.

Now, I was ten miles away from the
hospital. There was no telephone at Walter's house. There was one at the office
and a 'boy' had been told off to sit by it in case of any messages for the
doctor. As in many African stations I was on call all the time, night and day,
year in year out. My only chance of being off duty was to leave the station - a
long way! Even at the Yam Festival at Mango, or any other event within thirty
miles, I was still within reach of the ambulance and a written message conveyed
by Samson.

When I expressed concern that the 'boy'
might be bored and did he have a book to read, my remark occasioned much
amusement. An afternoon spent sleeping by a telephone was no hardship to the
average African worker.

I soon had the laugh on Andy and
Barbara, however, at least. Spaghetti was served, which my experience in
Trieste had taught me was merely an
antipasto
to an Italian meal. Andy
and Barbara enjoyed the genuine Italian article so much they called for second
helpings. Maria's look of surprise escaped them, but not me. When the main
course appeared, of which I only remember it was pretty substantial, it was my
turn to laugh at my friends.

One Sunday afternoon I took my umbrella
and went for a stroll as far as the river. It was early days but I was already
kitted out in the standard white shirt, shorts and stockings of the manager's
uniform. I rarely wore a hat, although I am a pretty bald red-head, but never
took much harm from the sun. When outdoors I was mostly in a vehicle or used my
eternal umbrella equally against sun or rain, and was never far from the shade
of the trees. The sky was rarely blue except in the dry season, when sky and
air were cleared by the Harmattan, a fresh northern wind from off the desert,
which was annually looked forward to as a refresher, the way the rains are
eagerly panted for in the drier regions of Africa. Otherwise at most times of
the year the sky was as steamy as the planet Venus. But let no one be fooled:
you can get very sunburned under even a cloudy sky in Africa.

If one ever did such an eccentric thing
for a white man as to take a walk, you had continually to refuse people
stopping their cars to give you lifts, but eventually I got to the river on my
two pins.

There a remarkable sight met my eyes. It
was interesting enough even to the locals, as a large crowd had gathered at the
point where the road ended and the bridge used to begin: for now the road ended
indeed in a stream of muddy water which slid past at about five miles an hour;
and of the bridge there was no sign, except the upper rails, where a fallen
tree lay trapped like a stranded ship. There was a number of canoes, manned by
small boys, and one of these presently approached me and asked me if I wanted
to cross the river. No, I didn't. So would I like a trip - there and back for
one cedi?

Well, I was a reckless bachelor then:
nowadays, as an old married man with wife and children to consider, I would
certainly refuse. Thus age and marriage doth make cowards of us all. But I
thought to myself, the lad knows his business (I expect my patients thought the
same about me!) so gingerly stepped into the craft, which had been half dragged
out on to the muddy bank. Some bystanders, who looked as if they were enjoying
themselves, gave us a hearty shove-off.

I did not know it then, but anyone
falling into an African river in spate was likely to end up on the mortuary
slab.

The canoe was a hollowed-out log about
fifteen feet long, and the lad managed it with a paddle. The vessel drew very
little water and skimmed like an arrow over the sliding surface. Even so the
current bore us downstream in a great bow, which we made up in the shallower
water near the opposite bank, so managing to beach where the road took up
again. Then about turn and in another great bow, which the grinning little
fellow controlled so skilfully with his paddle, we arrived back where we had
started from.

Innocent me! The new doctor had become
an instant hero. There was a great clap and cheer. One man shook my hand and
assured me heartily: 'You are very brave! I would never have done that!'

I later discovered that Walter and
family had been content to remain cut off for a week until the waters went
down. They were all right for supplies. The only problem was Walter's hair. Our
usual barber was one of the managers, who had acquired a dab hand at the
business. Now Walter was forced to resort to Maria who, he later complained,
when they reappeared in town, had cut it 'in steps'.

I turned about to walk home. But this
was Africa. Not only was I a hero but it would have been the height (or depth)
of unfriendliness to leave the new doctor to walk away alone. Some people
attached themselves to me. ('And how are you liking Samreboi, docketa?') In
Africa things have a tendency to grow, and presently the group grew to a crowd
and the crowd to a procession of about a hundred. Now, all together, in jolly
good companee, what more natural than to sing? And being Africa the song turned
to a hymn, so at the head of the column swinging my umbrella I felt like Dr
Livingstone in a B-movie. This was bad enough but my way lay past the club and
by then the hymn had become Onward Christian Soldiers. A number of my
countrymen appeared on the veranda with beers in their fists and merry grins on
their faces to witness the revivalist activities of the new doc.

Well, we are British after all!

Marriage may make cowards of us all but
it can also make us brave. I recall the story of my old colleague, Johnny de
Graaf Johnson (a family famous on the Coast), who was my surgical registrar in
Birkenhead. He married a white girl and took her and their child back to Ghana.
Johnny was appointed provincial surgeon at Tamale, in the Northern Territories.
Soon they had more children. One day they were crossing a river on a chain
ferry. Johnny's wife and the older children sat in the car: Johnny stood beside
them, holding the youngest child, a baby. When the ferry landed, something gave
way, and the car and its occupants were pitched into the water. Johnny just had
time to step ashore and hand the baby to a bystander before plunging without
hesitation into the swollen river. He well knew what his chances were. He and
his loved ones were all drowned.

Les Cady, my fishing friend, spent most
of his time in the bush, as far away from offices and officialdom as possible.
He was a tall rangy man, a born colonial, who would have been as morose as a
caged lion in an English suburb. He had a petite blonde Polish wife, Maria,
whom he had met in India during the war.