NF (1957) Going Home

by Doris Lessing

  ‘My hedges need cutting.’

  Thomas says with dignity: ‘I will come to you on Sunday afternoon and cut your hedges.’

  My friend hesitates. ‘I can do with a good boy, Thomas.’

  Thomas says: ‘Ah, baas, but now that the Government is shupaing me, I must be with my wife in the kraal. But because you ask me I will come and cut your hedges next Sunday afternoon.’

  And with this he departs.

  Going back in the car my friend says, half-admiringly, half-annoyed: ‘Damn the old bastard. It’s all very well, but did you hear that? Mkiwa, Mkiwa—the white man. It used to be Mlungu, which is a term of respect, but now it is just “white man”. All the same, I don’t see how we could have him back really, even though he can cut a hedge. He can do all kinds of work, lay bricks, do metalwork and carpentry. He used to live in the compound with his wife. Then she had a still-born baby, and we had to find her another hut because she said her baby had died of witchcraft. Another baby died, and now she said she could not live on the compound at all, because the evil eye was on her. So she went back to her kraal. So Thomas took to going home every week-end. It’s 50 miles. Then he took to coming back at lunch-time on Mondays, and I didn’t say anything. Then he came back drunk. Then he started smoking dagga. I gave him fair warning. I said to him if he didn’t stop smoking dagga, I’d sack him. But he started coming back Tuesdays or even Wednesdays, drunk or sodden with dagga. So I sacked him. But for all that, he can cut a hedge. He can really work, that boy. Perhaps, if I don’t push him, I can talk him into coming back when he pitches up on Sunday.’

  My friend and I have many discussions about the colour bar.

  ‘The trouble with you,’ he says, ‘is that you’re out of touch with our problems. You don’t understand our problems.’

  ‘But I was brought up in the same way as you.’

  ‘But you’ve been out of the country for six years and you’ve lost touch.’

  ‘But all my childhood these feudal baas-and-boy conversations went on; and I come back, and they are still going on.’

  ‘The boys I work with, they are the real natives, not those agitators you mix with.’

  ‘After all that’s happened,’ I said in despair, ‘you can talk about agitators! Any minute you’ll have another Kenya on your hands, and all you farmers will be heroically defending your isolated homesteads and, I may add, feeling very sorry for yourselves.’

  ‘I do not see,’ said he, after thought, ‘that there is anything heroic about doing your duty. And besides, it won’t happen here.’

  ‘Partnership will save you from it?’

  ‘Partnership? Oh, old Todd’s racket. Well, he’s sincere enough I expect, but the boys I work with would not know how to spell Partnership. I wish you’d understand, they’re primitive people.’

  At this point a message arrived that one of the men wanted him in the workshop, so together we went to the workshop.

  ‘Baas,’ says a young man, ‘when you have time I wish to speak to you.’ This is not an old and dignified man like Thomas of yesterday, but a young man with a keen, sharp, intelligent face.

  ‘Speak.’ My friend settles down on the table, one foot propped on a chair, while the other faces him. It is a palaver.

  ‘It is a question of that old car you are selling.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you lent me £100 I could buy it.’

  ‘Why do you want to buy it?’

  ‘So that I can use it to take my vegetables in to the market.’

  ‘You earn £6 a month, and when will you pay the £100 back?’

  ‘From the money I earn from selling my vegetables.’

  A silence. ‘And now listen well, for you are being very foolish.’

  ‘And how is that?’

  ‘That car is nearly dead. That is why I am selling it.’

  ‘I can mend that car.’

  ‘No, you cannot mend a car that is nearly dead.’

  ‘But, why do you not wish to sell me that car? Who, then, will you sell it to?’

  ‘I shall sell it to a white man who has the money to mend it.’

  ‘But if you lent me the £100 I should have the money.’

  ‘Now, listen, if I were your enemy, if I wanted to kill you, then I would sell that car to you for £100. For inside one year, the car would be dead and you would owe not £100 but £200, £100 to me and £100 to the garage for repairs. And you would have nothing.’

  ‘But I would have the money I had earned from the vegetables.’

  ‘When I go into Salisbury, all along the roadside there are dead cars lying, the dead cars that foolish natives have bought from bad white men who know the cars are nearly dead. And the Nkoos Pezulu’ (The Chief Above—God) ‘only knows what happens to these foolish natives.’

  ‘Baas, the Nkoos Pezulu may not know, but I know.’

  ‘How is it, then?’

  ‘They have made money out of the cars before they die and so they can buy another car.’

  ‘Sometimes they have made money and sometimes not. If not, then they owe the money.’ A long silence. ‘You would owe me the money if the car dies. And is that good?’ The young man looks straight at my friend and waits. ‘But now this is very serious, a very bad thing that I should hear you talk like this. You talk like these bad and foolish white men who have no sense.’

  ‘But how can such a thing be, baas?’

  ‘Do you know what goes on at the station? The butcher, the store, the garage—they tell me they are owed thousands of pounds. All the tobacco farmers owe them thousands of pounds. That is credit. That is what you are asking me for. It is a bad thing. And the Nkoos Pezulu only knows what will come of it.’

  ‘Baas, I do not see that the Nkoos Pezulu is involved in this matter. The storekeepers know that the farmers will get money from the bank on the very day that the tobacco is sold. And that it why they get credit.’

  ‘This credit is a very dangerous thing. It is money that is not there.’

  ‘Yes, the money is there. It is still growing in the earth, where the tobacco is. Where my vegetables are.’

  ‘You do not understand this question of credit and money.’

  ‘It seems to me that I understand it well.’

  ‘But if there is a slump, what will happen to the farmers?’

  ‘Then they may sell some of their land, for they have so much, or the Land Bank will give them credit.’

  ‘But I am not the Land Bank. I am a man, only.’

  ‘But now I grow my lettuce, I grow my tomatoes. And because I have no lorry I cannot take them into the village to sell them, and so they go bad.’

  ‘So now I will explain to you where you do wrong. It is because you grow vegetables like lettuces and tomatoes. You must grow potatoes or onions that do not go bad in a few days. Then you must put the potatoes in a hut and keep them and sell them a little bit by little bit.’

  ‘But the Mkiwa do not pay so much money for potatoes as they do for the vegetables like lettuces and tomatoes. On my small bit of earth—no, that is not for potatoes. Potatoes are for big farmers, with plenty of land. I would make no profit.’

  ‘But I cannot lend you the money.’

  ‘Then, baas, there is nothing further I want to say.’

  “Morning, James.’

  “Morning, baas, go well.’

  We went back to the house.

  ‘That boy has a hard life. The trouble with him is that he is always wanting to make some more money. Of course, we cannot blame them for wanting to make money when we are all so money-minded.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘He is a very good worker. He can do all kinds of work. He came to me and said he wanted some more money. He earned £6 a month. I said I knew he deserved to earn more, but I could not pay more. I have a certain amount set aside for wages and that’s that. But I said if he liked I would give him a couple of acres of soil and he could grow vegetables and make up the extra.’

  ‘Bu
t surely that is against the Land Apportionment Act?’

  ‘What? Oh, don’t be silly. And besides, the Native Commissioner knows all about it and about this native. He is a native with a record. When he came to me he told me, fair and square, that he had been in prison for forging a cheque. I talked it over with him, and it was perfectly obvious he had had no idea what a cheque was. He thought it was a kind of magic device by which white men get money for nothing out of banks. Or at least, I hope so. But I took him on, and the next thing was old Smith from across the river came to say, did I know that I had a man with a prison record working for me? I said to Smith, I thought that was a dirty trick; and in our law once a man has served time, he has paid for his wrong-doing. Old Smith was upset. He meant it for the best. The next thing was, James started smoking dagga and the Lord knows what. But I talked it over with him, and found that once he was a Christian, because he was at a mission school once for a couple of years before his father’s money ran out and he had to stop his education. I got him back to going to church, and he took an oath not to drug any more. Or drink. But it didn’t last long. He could hardly stand up on a Monday morning sometimes. So I got him in front of the padre to swear a solemn oath on the Bible to give it up, and he was forgiven on condition he gave the names of his drug-ring to the Native Commissioner. So at the moment he’s in the clear. But probably not for long, because he’s heavily in debt.’

  ‘You could pay him another couple of pounds a month?’

  ‘I can’t. I’m only the manager here. I have a certain sum given me for wages. Besides, he’s lucky to find anyone who’ll take him on. Though he’s a good worker and he really works. Not like most. The trouble with these natives is they are too backward to understand the simplest things in modern life. Only yesterday I had to talk to a new lot I took on last month. There they were, loafing around. I had them up and I said to them: ‘Now look. I will explain to you this business of a contract. When I take you on, I say I will pay you £2 a month. I pay you £2 a month in return for your labour. Do you understand?”’

  ‘And do they?’

  ‘They say, Ah, ah, ah, baas!—as if I were cheating them. I say to them, very well then, go. But if you stay, you work. £2 a month for your work. That’s a contract. And please…’ And with this he turned to me, ‘please do not tell me that £2 a month is not enough. They have good brick huts. I give each of them a plot of land for their wives, because they like to have their women kept out of mischief. I give them proper rations. And I pay a teacher for their kids. All the kids on this place go to school, and they go to school properly all day, Government inspected, not this hole and corner business that goes on on the big farms. What do you want me to do? Well, go on, tell me. I know it all stinks. I know it. It’s all a bloody mess. But is it my fault that the poor damned savages aren’t £10-a-week skilled workers with semi-detached houses, filling in their football coupons, all nice and tidy like Britain? Well, is it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it isn’t. But tell me, what do you think is going to come out of all this?’

  ‘I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that unless the Almighty steps in and takes a hand there isn’t any solution to anything. The whites are as bad as the blacks. It is a case of the blind leading the blind.’

  About two years ago I was visited in London by an old friend from Salisbury, who told me it was time I came back home to see how things had changed, how out of date and unfair my books were since Partnership and Federation. ‘Natives are doing very well now,’ he said. ‘In towns they have to be paid £4 a month, and the employers have to pay for the accommodation. Everything is being done for the natives and nothing for the Europeans. And they aren’t grateful.’

  I felt bad about this. The reason that I felt bad was that this man had had the advantage of four years’ solid Socialist education in our Left Club; and it was hard to admit that this wasn’t enough to insulate him against becoming so rich. For his story is a familiar one: a refugee, he arrived on the shores of Africa before the last war with not much more than the clothes he stood up in. Now he owns shops, farms and enterprises of one sort or another in large quantities.

  In Salisbury he at once demanded that I should go out to his place, or one of his places, to see how well the natives were being treated these days. I was naturally anxious to do so.

  On a fine afternoon, then, we drove out to the grading-sheds, 30 miles through the beautiful green countryside of an African autumn, for the grass still stood high and green, undimmed by the dry season, and the skies were high and fresh. There are two Africas, and I do not know which I love the best: the green, lush, bright country when the sap is running and the earth is wet; or the dry, brown-gold wastes of the drought, when the sky closes down, hazy and smoke-dimmed, and the sun is copper-coloured and distorted. Hard to imagine, on an afternoon in April that in two months, this expanse of green and soft-coloured earth will have been beaten by the sun into the colours of metal; and how every lungful of breath will taste of veld-fires.

  All the way out we talked about Partnership and gratitude and how unjust journalists are to Federation.

  The grading-shed was familiar to me, a great, high barracks of a place, sultry and rancorous, with the strong breath of tobacco.

  It was five in the afternoon: the men had left their work, but the women and the children were just finishing theirs of tying the tobacco into bundles.

  They sat in two lines on the brick floor. The women sat on one side, some with their babies tied on their backs, some with small children playing beside them. On the other side were the children, aged from six years to about twelve years, boys and girls.

  My host said that as this enterprise was some distance from town, too far for these workers to travel in and out, they lived here in a compound he had built for them. There were about 160 men, some with their wives and children. The men earned £2 10s. a month, which with overtime came to about £3 10s. a month. The women earned from 15s. to £2 a month. The children earned 15s. to £1 a month.

  They worked from six in the morning until twelve; and from one until four or five.

  ‘And I am not unreasonable,’ he said, ‘for I let the women go off at eleven to cook the porridge for their men and the children.’

  The air, in spite of the ventilators, was oppressive, and I could not have borne it for long; but my host said one gets used to it. The women and children were coughing all the time.

  ‘And in addition to this, I give them rations and accommodation.’

  ‘And what rations do you give them?’

  ‘The rations laid down by the Government.’

  I quote, then, from a handbook printed by the Government designed to attract settlers to the Federation, and it is called: A New Life in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

  This is from the section on how one should feed one’s servants:

  (a) 1½ lb. of mealie-meal a day.

  (b) ½ lb. of meat a day. This used to be the usual ration, but although the native still looks upon it as his right, the meat position no longer allows it. Other protein foods will then have to be substituted.

  (c) Vegetables at least twice a week. This will be found difficult as the African does not understand the meaning of vitamins. He usually likes the more pungent vegetables. Onions, potatoes, cabbage and spinach in limited quantities are recommended.

  (d) 1 lb. of sugar per head per week.

  (e) 1 lb. of dried peas or beans. These the African does not like. He will always prefer ground-nuts, which are usually obtainable. For some months green mealies are available and could be provided.

  (f) As much salt as required.

  (g) Slice of bread and jam and tea or coffee remaining from the table.

  As these workers were not domestic servants, slices of bread and jam and tea or coffee remaining from the table would not be available; and what they actually lived on, it seemed, was mostly mealie-meal.

  Then we took a walk around the accommodation.


  There were three of us, my host, one of his farm managers and myself. On a couple of acres of soil were crowded a hundred or so tiny mud huts, roughly thatched. The floor was of damp earth, with blankets lying directly on it, cooking pots stacked up beside them, bits of clothing hanging from nails. In one hut there was a bed made of strips of cowhide laced on unbarked tree-trunks stuck direct in the mud floor and a very small deal table but no chairs. My host said: ‘Look, you see they are doing themselves well.’ Among and around the huts were planted mealies; and chickens wandered in and out of the hut doors. The huts were very small and so low that a full-grown person could not stand upright in them.

  A broken-down motor car was settling into its parts among the mealies. ‘You see—they are getting rich—they have motor cars these days.’

  I have seen many bad compounds, but never one as bad as this; and when my host said: ‘They are picturesque, aren’t they?’ I said I didn’t think they were picturesque.

  Whereupon he said that this was the first time he had actually taken a look at this compound; and if one had farm managers one expected them to take the responsibility; one had to see to everything oneself these days, or nothing was done. But perhaps some brick huts would be built here—yes, it was time there were some brick huts.

  The farm manager looked a little quizzical at this, but said nothing.

  In front of the compound, between it and the grading-shed, were a big water-tank and a water-tap, which was the sole supply for all these people; and the women and the children were standing in the mud puddles around the tap waiting for their turn to draw water.

  The whole place smelt bad and wet; it smelt of heavy, damp vegetation, of chicken droppings, of souring porridge. There were no latrines or showers in the compound.

  I asked the boss-boy privately if there was any one thing that the people of the compound wanted more than another, and he replied with simplicity: ‘Higher wages.’ So I said, ‘Yes, but apart from that?’ He said: ‘We want the doctor to come, because our children cough all the time.’

  In the meantime my host was urging me to go and see how the children were being educated. For he was paying a teacher £6 a month so that the children could be taught.