Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (9 page)

Les and I would go to spots on the river
system known to him, in his Land Rover. Sometimes we fished from the bank, when
we employed perforce more than the number of ghillies usual to places like
Scotland. Custom required one small boy to dig the worm, another to stick it on
the hook and a third to remove the fish, if necessary. And I mean this number
for each fisherman. All the great White Man had to do was cast the hook into
the water and wind it in again.

The only fish those rivers seemed to
contain were barbel, a primitive-looking scaleless creature with long whiskers
from the days when the earth was mud. Indeed, the barbel can live a long time
in the mud when the rivers dry up (which they seldom did in that part of the
world) and even it was said cross country to find water. Certainly, if you left
one on the bank it would wriggle its way back to the river. Europeans did not
like eating them, so we gave them to the ghillies, and they were much
appreciated by them and their families.

Once I tried eating one myself. Someone
told me, although tasteless, they went down well cooked with lemon juice. First
you have to leave them in the bath overnight to get the mud out of their
systems. This I did, and heard things go bump in the night several times as the
fish leapt out of the water onto the bathroom floor. Finally the penny dropped.
I filled the bath high enough to satisfy the creature, and it settled down.
Next day James did his best with it, but lemon or no lemon, it tasted like
rubber.

There must have been other kinds of
fish, even if I never caught any, as a merry item in the station's folklore
featured a cruel trick played on one of the white managers - the sort of thing
I think Italians call a
beffa
. Harry was the keenest fisherman on the
station, equipped with every kind of tackle, which might well have secured more
difficult prey than barbel. Harry was on long leave in England. Some of his
droll friends made a cut-out fish from ply-wood (which was one of the station's
products) - a very large fish. They hooked it on to a rod and line and
photographed it, held up by one of Harry's smiling friends. They sent the photo
(which was naturally less perfect than it would be nowadays) to Harry with the
message: 'Look what we are taking out of the river just now!' Harry promptly
cut short his leave, and caught the next plane back to Ghana, where he was
naturally disappointed on arrival. Whether his wife accompanied him or not, and
what she had to say on the subject in any case, was not told me; nor as a
bachelor did it occur to me to inquire.

At the end of the afternoon's sport we
would pay off the ghillies, as well as distribute any fish we had caught among
them. But by then the ghillies, like all things in the tropics, had multiplied
considerably. This did not fool Les, who had marked out the genuine ones with
his eagle eye well in advance. But we inevitably ended up with a crowd swarming
at the open windows of the Land Rover before we left.

I well remember one such scene, near a
bridge. Les sat silent beside me while the little hands pushed through the
windows, and the little bodies tussled and crushed one another around the
doors. Suddenly, even to my surprise, Les sprang up in his seat with the roar
of a lion. I have mentioned before the strange telepathy of a crowd of
Africans. All at once the little creatures shot off and onto the bridge, like a
herd of impala, where half-way across, just as suddenly, they all stopped
together and turned round. Les glowered at them through the windscreen like the
Lion King for some seconds, then his features relaxed into a grin. Immediately,
all the little bodies leapt up and down and screamed with delight.

We also fished from a canoe when the
river had settled later in the rainy season, or in the dry season itself. This
simplified the employment situation, as one little boy served as boatman and ghillie.
Mostly we just drifted, usually near to the banks, and it was as lovely as a
dream to while away the afternoon on the still brown water in the shade of the
great trees. Les told me much about the country and its people - of the chief's
daughter, who was sent down from Edinburgh University for getting herself
pregnant
(autres temps, autres moeurs!),
and her father's mystified
appeal to Les: 'But Mr Cady, I ask you! What is a woman for?' A question which
nowadays, of course, would give rise to trouble of another sort. He told me of
the day when the cook threatened Maria with a fate worse than death, when she
was alone in the house, and she defended herself with the famous Afridi sword,
not actually using it but pointing it at the man's chest and marching him
backwards out of the house and down to the workshop of the outstation they then
managed. And when they got there perhaps the would-be rapist wished Maria had
done a proper job for the fate almost worse than death that he met at the hands
of the workers.

Les asked me about my future intentions.
My contract was for eighteen months, and I had a vague idea of going to
Australia after that. We speculated about Australia, which neither of us had
visited, and whether it might contain such beautiful scenes as then surrounded
us. Les thought maybe in the Northern Territories. The conversation was idle in
more ways than one. Though I did not know it then, Africa had entered my blood.
I was not to leave it (and then only reluctantly) for the next twenty years.

I went fishing and canoeing with others
besides Les, but he would only go with me. He was a loner, and I was flattered
to be selected by him as a friend. Another companion of mine was Ralph, the
large Swiss who had catechised his cook on the ethnic nature of Jesus. There
was usually some competition among the canoe boys for our custom. One of them
was Kwame. Then one day Ralph's shirt went missing from the line outside his
house. It is hard to go undetected in the African countryside (whatever
Sherlock Holmes may have said about the English ditto), and we were soon
informed that the thief was Kwame. I imagine Kwame returned the shirt or Ralph
would never have forgiven him. At any rate, this being the south of the country
he was not nailed in the manner of Sisera to a tree; but Ralph, without any
Anglo-Saxon nonsense about him, organised among his friends a three-month
boycott of  Kwame's canoe, which was not lifted till the day itself.

Les asked me if I would like to visit a
local chief - that is, one of them, for there were two in our neighbourhood -
the chief of the Brudja tribe at Bongo. Of course I did. So Les arranged an
appointment for a Sunday afternoon. Off we went in his Land Rover. Les told me
it was customary to take a present so we stopped at a store and picked up six
bottles of beer: the large West African bottles, not the miserable things of
politer climes.

We entered the chief's palace, announced
ourselves and were conducted by an attendant to an awning at the top of a
courtyard. Chairs were brought for us. In the centre of the awning stood the
'stool'. This was made of wood and shaped rather like an anvil. It was a sacred
object as it contained the soul of the tribe and, of course, no one but the
chief was allowed to sit on it, on pain of pretty dire penalties, I should
think. The most famous stool in the country, the golden stool of Ashanti, was
let down out of the sky to the feet of the divine first king of Ashanti, Osei
Tutu. Our chief was the one whose death shortly after gave rise to the strange
happenings related in an earlier chapter.

Presently he entered, attended by two or
three more officials, the chief dressed in a kente, or toga, made up of squares
of coloured silk sewn together, a magnificent garment. He took his seat on the
stool, while the attendants stood behind him, except for one who stood at his
side. This was the 'linguist', for the chief does not speak directly to anyone
in public, only through the linguist, who likewise conveys messages to the
chief. This is not a matter of interpretation: I doubt if this old man
understood English; but whether or no, it was a matter of ceremony, which his
Oxford-educated successor would certainly continue in his turn.

We presented our six bottles of beer,
which were received with due expressions of appreciation; and by coincidence
were presented ourselves with six identical bottles of beer, at which of course
nobody showed any signs of embarrassment or amusement. Les, who appointed
himself as my linguist, so to speak, introduced the new doctor; and the chief's
linguist informed us that the chief was delighted to meet him, and said how
much his services were appreciated in the land.

There was more polite conversation,
which I tried to enliven in my fatuous way by expressing a wish to marry six
Ghanaian ladies before I was another year in the country. Both linguists (that
is, Les and the official one) fell silent at this remark, and Les informed me
on the side that the occasion did not call for humour.

After about half an hour we got
ourselves out, with every sign of mutual appreciation and gratitude, and no
further breaches of protocol on my part.

It was nightfall before we got back to
Samreboi. When we reached the bridge some sort of altercation was going on. Les
made inquiries. Now the bridge, or rather the river, divided the territories of
the two tribes: the Brudjas and the Wadjas (based on Mango). It turned out that
a member of the Wadjas (a degenerate lot in the opinion of their neighbours)
had been using the river for a purpose of nature and had narrowly escaped some
dire fate at the hands of some Brudjas who had caught him in the act. The river
was sacred to all right-thinking people, but especially to the Brudjas. At any
rate, before we went on the parties had separated, if not peaceably, without
bloodshed.

A sequel followed (I mean to our meeting
with the chief) when Sally, the new matron, and I were introduced to the new
chief, not by Les, but by Adam, one of the African managers, shortly after the
death of the old one. Succession is hereditary, but the office is by no means
despotic, and a chief can be removed by process of the elders - all males over
forty. (An old Coaster was fond of recalling a famous headline in the
Times
of Ghana
: 'DESTOOLED CHIEF LOSES MOTION'.)

The new chief was a very polished young
man who sat with his attendants in a sort of levee while people filed past him.
Sally and I shook hands with him, a greeting he cordially received. Afterwards
Adam informed us that no one was supposed to touch the chief in public, but not
to worry: everything the white man (or woman) did was all right.

Another curious fact is that a chief
apparent must have no mark on his body. There is a touching novel by a Ghanaian
writer, which ends with the death of a chief's son when the young man develops
appendicitis and refuses operation, not only to protect his succession (which
is obviously doubtful), but through the demands of custom.

One who was certainly no uncaged lion in
the jungle was Ernie. One evening I came upon a new face in the club. New faces
were an event in Samreboi: at any rate, new white faces, of whom the usual
number including the ladies was about fifty. 'Ee, doan't you get fed up wi' the
same old faces?' complained the old Coaster referred to above, who had spent
most of his career on a larger station in Nigeria. An occasional recurrent
addition was Leo, the 'snake man', a herpetologist, who spent most of his time
camping in the forest, and was always a welcome guest. Ernie, alas, was no
herpetologist, nor was he likely to find any other comfortable diversions in
his new surroundings except possibly the one he had been brought out for.

Something had gone wrong with the
'ERFs', as the locals called the logging vehicles, for an obvious reason, and
Ernie had been sent out from England to fix them.

It had come like a summons from the
Angel Gabriel, or some darker spirit. One Monday morning he had been sitting in
his Manchester office, minding his own business, when he was plucked out of his
cosy nest, not by any angel, but by his boss, who announced: 'Ernie, lad, ye’re
going ter West Africa!' and no argument about it. I doubt if Ernie had been any
farther than Blackpool in his life, and certainly he kept bleating: 'Me and the
wife have never been separated before!' He made no mention of children. He was
no older than twenty-five, a sad little shrimp in navy blue shorts, an
unmemorable shirt, and navy blue socks (not stockings), round his ankles. And
he was very nervous. Even the beer, which his kindly hosts had placed in his
hand, failed to reassure him.

'Will ah catch malaria?' he whined.
'Will we get attacked by natives?'

Neither of these questions actually
deserved the hearty laughter they provoked. He had been sent out without
antimalarial tablets ('On t' next plane, lad! So be quick about it!') - a
deficiency at least I was able to repair next morning. But the others would
have laughed the other side of their faces if they had forseen the answer to
the second question. For two years later (after I had left), the place actually
was attacked by natives. There was a strike, which in the common way of Africa,
turned quickly to rioting, in which as many people were shot as at Sharpeville,
but naturally received less attention in the world press. Black bites black!
That's not news!

Meantime the crowd at the bar did their
best to cheer him up. 'Don't be downhearted, Ernie. We have a great time here
at Christmas.'

'Christmas!' squeaked Ernie. This was
September. 'I expected to be 'ome at the end of the month. The wife and me -'