by Paul Theroux
‘The first time I met him I asked him for a whisky. He said disapprovingly, “A woman doesn’t drink whisky at lunch.” But I did. And he brought me whisky for the next forty-eight years. I wanted a son and a bulldog. He gave me both. He was my lover, my friend, my supporter. He had a wonderful respect for the privacy of my work. We shared a strong political commitment against racism and apartheid. When the first free elections were held, we went together and voted.’
A measure of how the struggle for political freedom had penetrated people’s lives was Nadine’s speaking of how the act of voting freely together could be one of the tenderest memories of a South African marriage.
‘Attending funerals has become a way of life in the townships,’ one of the African speakers said. ‘I have attended a lot of funerals lately.’
‘We felt we were part of the family,’ another man said.
That was how this funeral seemed, like a family affair. The long political struggle had made a family of all South Africans – a forgiving if sometimes unruly family. The mourners were all sorts, every color, all ages, rich and poor, listening to Mozart during the interludes.
Nadine invited everyone back to her house for lunch. And so later that morning I was standing in her garden, drinking wine among the mourners, part of the family. Some people commiserated with me about my theft, even Nadine. ‘I’ m so sorry about your bag.’ But the funeral of this much-loved man, at which everyone was so gracious and philosophical, had shown me that the loss of my possessions was insignificant.
Traveling light, I thought I was returning home with nothing but my notes. I stopped in Ethiopia to break the long return journey and in those few days, I ate something poisonous. The morning I left Addis Ababa my bowels exploded, not simple squitters but an infestation. And so I arrived home Africanized - robbed and diseased.
‘Parasites,’ my doctor said. And, ‘Let’s treat them empirically.’ For months, nothing seemed to work on easing my aching guts. I was inert, weak, with the odd debauched nausea of an extravagant illness. I felt like the cursed explorer in Edmund Lucas White’s horror story ‘Lukundoo’, who falls ill in Africa, and breaks out in carbuncles, each septic bulge containing a plum-sized African head, ‘hideous, gibbering’, with ‘wicked wee eyes.’ Throughout the writing of this book I have had the reminding motion and gassy gurgle of my parasites within me – Africa stirring inside me for almost as many months as I was astir in Africa.
But it is so much worse for Africans. The most civilized ones I met never used the word civilization. The wickedest believed themselves to be anointed leaders for life, and wouldn’t let go of their delusion. The worst of them stole from foreign donors and their own people, like the lowest thieves, who rob the church’s poor boxes. The kindest Africans had not changed at all and even after all these years the best of them are bare-assed.
* In January 2002 the WHO reported that 60 percent of the patients in Malawian hospitals suffered from AIDS, and that as a result of the AIDS epidemic there were 2 million orphans in Malawi.
* The whole grim story of my involvement is described in my essay ‘The Killing of Hastings Banda,’ in Sunrise with Seamonsters.
* Condé Nast Traveler, January 2002.
* Orvis clothing catalogue, spring 2002.
* South-West African People’s Organization, which in 1990 provided Namibia with its first president, Sam Nujoma.
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First published by Hamish Hamilton 2002
Published in Penguin Books 2003
Copyright © Cape Cod Scriveners Co., 2002
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ISBN: 978-0-24-195864-3
