by Mike Coony
After I changed my clothes I went looking for Gerry. I found him in the bar…looking uncomfortable and ridiculous. He’s surrounded by eight fat, middle-aged women talking loudly in Lancashire accents, and batting their false eyelashes at passing African waiters. Gerry looks like an actor from a 1920s’ Hollywood movie in his silly jungle print shirt and tropical length shorts. I left him to his lardy ladies and ambled out to the beach.
Walking towards a lean-to grass hut on the beach, I hear voices speaking in Swedish, and I can make out the sound of ice cubes clinking against glass. It’s a primitive bar, with three high stools, a white-shirted barman, and two blonde women drinking from tall cocktail glasses.
I introduced myself to the blondes in basic Swedish, and offered to get them refills. They accepted the drinks and told me they’d arrived two days earlier on an ‘environmental exploration and conservation safari’. They’re going to the Tambi wetlands in the morning in search of butterflies. Recollecting the small studio apartment I stayed in with Anna when the owner was away looking at butterflies in Africa, I asked them if they’re school teachers.
“Why do you ask such a question?”
“Do we look like school teachers?”
I’d forgot how direct Swedish women are. I decided to deflect the conversation away from my apparently insulting question with my rudimentary Swedish. “Ingen jag någonsin träffat,” I replied, as diplomatically as I could.
“Mycket bra, talar du lite svenska….Ja? Bra. Men din accent inte engelska tror jag?” said the first woman.
“Nej, irländska. Jag är en irländare, men vi bör tala engelska, min svenska är fattiga,” I said.
They bought me an orange juice and we talked in English about conservation and the African wetlands. Then I was informed of their shared opinion of the ‘hideous British women’ who come to the Gambia in search of sex. They think it’s disgusting that these ‘fat, ugly women’ pay young African men to pleasure them.
I didn’t comment on the sex tourists from Britain, but neither did I tell them about the middle-aged Swedish women I’d met as a teenager in Las Palmas. These women tore hundred kronor notes in half, left one half under their coffee cup and took the other half to their rooms. If you picked up a half note and followed a woman to her room you could leave with the other half of the hundred – but only after you’d satisfied her sexual fantasies. The barman at the café we hung around had a roll of adhesive tape ready to stick the notes back together. Those Swedish mammas wintering in the Canary Isles guaranteed that I had money to see me through to the summer. It was no hardship to shag a svelte Swede, unlike the situation for the African lads trying to shag fat Lancashire women…I imagine.
The enormous African sun is falling in the sky, turning day to night in the blink of an eye. I bid good evening to the svenska flicka and made my way back to my bungalow. After a cool shower I dried off under the ceiling fan and put on fresh clothes.
Around eight o’clock Hussein sent a street boy into the hotel to tell a porter to tell us that he’s waiting outside. As Gerry and I stepped out of the hotel we were surrounded by women, children and hostile lads begging for money. Or rather, demanding money.
“You give us dollars now…yes. We have no money, you are rich white tourists.”
“Give us your change…give it now.”
“I like that shirt….Give it to me….Please mister, please mister.”
“No food, no school. Give me money for food mister, money for school.”
“You American, plenty dollars, give us dollars, we let you go. Good?”
I saw Hussein sitting in his Range Rover across the road, and I pushed my way through the throng of beggars. But when I looked back towards the hotel entrance I saw Gerry under siege from three of the biggest lads. They’ve surrounded him and they’re jabbing their fingers in his face and pulling at his flowery shirt.
Feck this for a game of soldiers, I said as I crossed back over the road. I kidney punched the lad nearest me and he sank to the ground without a murmur. A swift, hard kick just below the second lad’s kneecap took care of him. And the third fellah got a very unfriendly kick to the groin. Grabbing Gerry’s arm, I pulled him across the road.
The lads lost interest and backed off, yelling threats to cut off my prick and boil my balls. At least that’s what Hussein told me they were yelling as they hobbled off down an alleyway. Anyway, Gerry and I climbed into the Range Rover and we took off in a cloud of red dust.
Hussein brought us to a small café run by a Lebanese friend of his from school. We discussed our business arrangements over a meal of kibbeh and Lebanese flat bread.
“So, Hussein, after you get the cheques, what guarantees do we have that you’ll make sure the timber gets on the ship and is sent to Japan?” Gerry asked.
“Gerry my friend, it is no problem, no problem. I am a Muslim, a man of honour. My word is my bond. My word is good enough for my European business associates in Holland. Do they not send me expensive vehicles many months before receiving their African bush marijuana?”
“What do you think Finn? Can we trust this guy with a hundred thousand dollars?” Gerry asked.
“Gerry, there’s no need to take his word for it. My friend here knows that if he tries to rip us off I’ll forget my manners and blow his feckin’ head off. Now, isn’t that right my little Lebanese rascal?” I said.
“Yes, my Irish friend,” said Hussein, with a sheepish grin.
Hussein excused himself from the table and went out to his Range Rover. He returned with six neatly planed pieces of wood, each with a sticker identifying its species.
We finished off our pot of strong Turkish coffee, and I asked the café owner to call a taxi to take me and Gerry back to the hotel. “Meet us at Box Bar Road and Marina Parade tomorrow morning at nine,” I told Hussein before we left.
Sitting in the back of the taxi, watching me feeling the wood samples, Gerry seems more than a bit uneasy.
“Surely you were kidding about blowing the guy’s head off Finn? It’s not like we’re at home here in darkest Africa. You were kidding. Right?” he asked, with more than a hint or two of panic in his voice.
I didn’t respond to Gerry’s question with as much as a grin. I stuck to explaining that I want to meet Hussein at the local woodworkers’ yards where they store timber. This is where we’ll be able to find out more about the samples, and to get an idea of the true buying prices.
———
I knocked on the door of Gerry’s bungalow at six thirty a.m. When I walked in I found him lying beside one of the Swedish women I’d met at the beach bar. He isn’t too eager to leave the bed, and he’s wondering about the early start since we aren’t due to meet Hussein for another two and a half hours.
I apologised to the svensk flicka and reminded her that she’s supposed to be looking for butterflies in the wetlands. She slid out of Gerry’s bed and gave me a long, slow look at her naked body. I got the message – see what you missed!
We skipped breakfast and sat into the back of the first taxi in the queue lined up in the driveway of the hotel. I spotted the African lads from last night in an alleyway across the road, but they turned their heads away, pretending not to see me. So much for chopping off my balls and boiling my prick, or whatever it was they threatened.
Before we turned right into Grant Street – off Independence Drive – I told Gerry why I wanted to make an early start. “If we visit the woodworkers’ yards before Hussein has a chance to spread around a few dollars…to guarantee we get the answers he wants us to get…we’ll end up far better off. Hussein can’t help himself…he has to look for an edge, a little extra on a deal. But I’m wise to that built-in tendency, and I frustrate him whenever I can.”
Sweet-smelling timber and the scent of bougainvillea fill the air in the first timber yard we walked into. There’s a pretty young girl with spindly legs and ebony skin in the yard; she’s taking a billycan of boiling water from a wood fire. We waited while she cautio
usly poured the boiling water into an oversized Queen Elizabeth II coronation mug. She added thick, yellowish condensed milk from a Nestlé tin and gave the mixture a stir. Then she handed the mug to a very old man and fled into the timber store.
The man’s once handsome face is now wrinkled and covered in sun spots and scars, and even the oversized mug is lost inside his gnarled hands. He took a sup from the mug, smiled a toothless grin, and beckoned the spindly legged little girl to join him.
I handed him the wood samples. He ran them through his fingers, held them up to the sun and smelt them; then he spoke to the girl in Manding.
“What do you want to know about the wood?” she whispered to us in English.
The old man gave us the answers we need, so I have an idea of what the wood is worth. I gave the little girl twenty dollars for her help, and in return I got a smile that only an innocent African child can reveal.
There doesn’t seem to be any point in visiting other timber yards. Anyway, the sun is blazing and the temperature is forty degrees Celsius in the shade – and there isn’t any shade.
I hailed a taxi and we drove to Box Bar Road and Marina Parade; we waited in the air-conditioned vehicle for Hussein. We passed the time watching the long-legged teenage girls on their way to Saint Augustine Senior Secondary School. Somehow, it doesn’t seem a voyeuristic thing to do. The girls are waving, passing incomprehensible comments, and laughing at us – a healthy response, I think.
When Hussein arrived we paid our taxi off and got into the Range Rover. As he turned towards the timber yards I told him there’s been a change of plan. A puzzled Hussein drove to the UPS office located between the Six Gun Battery and the State House. I sealed the timber samples and prices into a pouch and sent it to my office in Wyndham Street, Hong Kong.
“Right Hussein, shipping agent,” I said, as I got back in the Range Rover. The shipping agent gave us a quote to send forty-foot containers to Yokohama, Japan. When he asked if we need any help with Customs clearance I said that we’d let him know.
Our next stop is the post office, to collect the American Express traveller’s cheques. After we got the cheques I asked Gerry to take a look around the market across the road from the post office and pick up some souvenirs…so I can have a talk with Hussein.
“Hussein, I know you’ll try to make a little extra on the side for yourself, and that’s to be expected. But we have all the prices, apart from the local costs for moving the timber to the port and packing it in the containers. I guess this will be between fifty and eighty dollars a day for thirty men and two lorries,” I whispered across the front passenger seat.
Hussein just grinned, he didn’t put up any argument. I gave him half the traveller’s cheques and told him to get things rolling this afternoon.
I looked across the road for Gerry. He’s in front of the market holding a large pair of carved female figures in his hands, and he’s surrounded on all sides by a crush of begging kids. For feck’s sake! Darting out of the Range Rover, we ran to his rescue; Hussein threw a fistful of coins to scatter the kids and I grabbed Gerry.
When we were all safely back inside the vehicle, Hussein asked if we want to get something to eat. I’m hungry, but I told him to just drop us back at the hotel.
———
Three days of lounging around the pool is enough for me. I cancelled my last night at the hotel and settled my bill. I gave the rest of the traveller’s cheques to Gerry, so he can give them to Hussein, and I took a taxi to the airport.
Gerry has a few more packaged holiday days to suffer before he can return to England, and then onwards to Hong Kong or Macau. Between the fat Lancashire biddies and the svelte Swedes I know he’ll keep busy and, hopefully, well away from black fellahs with kidney trouble, a painful knee injury, and swollen balls.
Screw them, I thought. I can’t conjure up any sympathy for the lads I walloped. They tried to intimidate Gerry, and in my book that’s bullying. I don’t like bullies…never have, never will.
26
THE GAMBIA
When I was sure that Finn Flynn was on his flight back to Hong Kong, I made a few plans of my own. I saw the way he smashed up those giant African dudes, and I don’t want to get on the wrong side of a crazy son of a bitch who can do that shit, but if there’s money to be made….I have to give the rest of the traveller’s cheques to the Lebanese guy anyway, so I called him and asked him to meet me for a drink. Hussein arrived at the hotel an hour later, dressed up and ready to go out on the town, but I have other ideas.
We sat on the veranda of my bungalow, watching the women baking themselves under the African sun and splashing in the pool. I’m concentrating on the toned Scandinavian babes, but Hussein the weirdo is ogling the fat-assed ladies from England. I guess Hussein likes more cushion for the pushin’ – which would definitely be a stroke of luck for these foul-mouthed broads with double and triple spare tyres. He especially has an eye for the snow-white ones, doesn’t matter if they’re fresh off the plane and glow in the dark or are turning bright red like lobsters. Unfortunately for him, these gals aren’t interested in medium-sized, light-skinned Lebanese guys. These ladies are in the market for six foot black men – the bigger an’ blacker the better – at least that’s what I overheard on the plane.
In three days I’ll be on the plane full of leathery-looking broads going back to England. The ones that get lucky will be worrying in case they’re still young enough to get knocked up. They’ll be shitting themselves, worried about carrying a little black foetus back home to Birmingham, Bradford or Bridlington. Fuck them. These broads aren’t worried about that when they hand out British pounds for young black guys to screw them. Some of the randy ole gals want two studs in the bed with them at a time. Paying to live out their fantasies in poverty-stricken Africa is cheaper than a night of bingo back in Blighty. To me, it’s exploitation, pure and simple. Us Sicilians, we know a thing or two about exploitation – if you know what I mean.
I let Hussein – the good Muslim – have two drinks before I started in with the questions. “So Hussein, tell me, how did you meet my buddy Finn?” I asked kind of offhanded, like I’m just making conversation.
“It’s been a long time you know, years. My brother Mustafa lives in Angola, he trades the blood diamonds with Finn’s friends in Ireland….Hey Gerry, what do you think of that blonde there? Big balloons ha, big balloons! Lots of fun with them bags, eh brother!”
I can’t believe the broad he’s pointing at would interest anyone but a short-sighted hippo. Her jugs are falling out of a teeny weeny bikini that’s struggling to contain so much flesh.
“So, Finn’s friends are into smuggled diamonds, eh? Very interesting…tell me more buddy. Here, have another brandy,” I urged him, while pouring another shot from my duty free litre bottle of Martell cognac.
“There, Gerry, right there…look there. I’m going to jump on her tonight, insha’Allah. I’m getting horny just looking at them,” he jawed on.
Hussein is not divulging another thing about Finn Flynn, or their connection. But I’ll give it one last try.
“Hussein, buddy, Finn tells me you’re the kingpin around here in the African bush grass business. Is that right?”
“Gerry my friend…what can I say?”
Hot damn! His face is lighting up…I hit the jackpot! Hussein’s wariness has gone right out the window with a little ego stroking. He might not say another word about Finn Flynn, but it looks like he’s the man I need to talk to.
“I have the most excellent African bush grass available to mankind,” he claimed.
I think that might be going a little too far, but I sense a lucrative sideline coming from Gambia. It may not come from this bragging hyena, but I’ll find a source before I leave.
“Really? That good?” I asked.
“Every bale is triple-picked by my own women…no stalks, no seeds, no shake…only fresh buds dried in the sun.” Hussein’s voice is rising to a crescendo and the fat-assed Lancashir
e ladies, who wouldn’t give him the time of day before, are paying attention from across the pool. “The Dutch smokers can’t get enough of it,” he bragged.
I happen to know that the Dutch prefer their home-grown skunk. Still, there’s no profit in bursting the buffoon’s bubble.
“How do you get the shit on a ship to Rotterdam?” I asked, while filling Hussein’s glass with more brandy.
“Five thousand American dollars to my friend in Customs and Excise turns a twenty foot container of vacuum-packed African bush grass into a twenty foot container of ground peanuts destined for a nut roaster in Utrecht. I’m meeting my friend for a drink later. Come along, I’ll introduce you.”
We hopped in a taxi and met the Customs and Excise guy at a bar in Banjul.
“Farhani my friend, I present another friend, this is Gerry. He works for our very dear friend Finn Flynn…the Fearless One.”
Damn! What I’m planning isn’t supposed to include Finn Flynn. And what the hell does Hussein mean the ‘the Fearless One’? I mean, that makes sense and everything with what I’ve seen, but the crazy Irishman is actually known in fucking Africa as ‘the Fearless One’?! Goddamn!
Farhani wasn’t as forthcoming with information as Hussein, but I’d be worried if he was. Of course, Hussein’s typical flowery African introduction didn’t do me any favours either. Anyway, it took very little persuading to get Hussein to agree to drive me up-country tomorrow, to where the marijuana farmers grow their crops.
———
Hussein arrived at the hotel in his Range Rover before eight a.m., and we took off on dusty red roads pitted with potholes. As we leave Banjul far behind I notice the skeletons of trucks every few miles or so – with their engines, shafts and wheels long gone. These expensive rust buckets are an unmistakable testament to the treacherous driving conditions.
