Amie in Africa Box Set 1

by Lucinda E Clarke

  They drove up and then down the main street to allow Amie to record the destruction. They then drove past the large open-air market the vendors were still there sitting under the blazing African sun with their wares spread out on plastic sheeting in front of them. Apart from the piles of rubble and burnt out vehicles here and there, life in the market was carrying on as usual; everyone had to eat.

  Amie squirmed in her burka when they recorded the prison ruins. It looked as if no one had even tried to repair the building.

  Next, they headed out to the Club, which had been very badly damaged. It was deserted and there was no one they could talk to. They decided it would be unwise to get out of the car, so a few shots of the exterior of the least damaged part of the building would be sufficient for the programme. Amie could see that the once sparkling pool was now a sludge brown, and the tennis courts were unusable. The nets had gone, and the once smooth surface was full of large potholes. In one corner were the remains of fires which had been lit, probably for cooking.

  When they cruised slowly past Spring Glen Primary School, Amie could see it was still being used as a school, but it now resembled the orphanage. There were children everywhere, none of them in uniform, and the fencing had been removed. The once pristine playground, sports fields and gardens, were now strewn with rubbish, there was graffiti daubed on most of the walls, and many of the windows had been broken. Amie sighed, how could such a well-run place deteriorate so quickly? Did no one have any pride in their surroundings?

  Nothing had changed at the orphanage at Tamara, it had been left as a waste land, covered in litter, and ruined buildings. Amie had to shake herself out of her despondency before she began to roll the camera. Everywhere they went, Amie kept a sharp look out for Angelina, but the chance of finding one small child in a city this size, even if she had survived, was remote. So too, were her chances of finding Jonathon. She shut her mind off to that; she wouldn’t let herself think about it.

  When they reached Spring Glen Mall, they decided to take a chance on getting out and wandering around inside. There were very few people shopping, but the Mall itself seemed to have escaped any damage. Only half the shops were still open and Amie looked wistfully at the vacant corner cafe where once she had enjoyed so many morning coffees.

  There was one destination left, and Amie had been saving that for last. She had this ridiculous, wild hope she would walk back into the house in Spring Glen and find Jonathon, William and Pretty carrying on their lives as normal. They cruised slowly down the street. It looked as if there had been very little fighting in this suburb, and suddenly, there was Amie’s old house. It was not exactly as she remembered, the paint was peeling off the walls, the gates were wide open, and one of them was left hanging by a single hinge. The garden had grown wild, but it looked as if someone was living there.

  “Drive round the block,” she told Neil. “I can jump out and get to the back wall.”

  “I don’t like that idea at all,” he complained. “We’re relatively safe in the truck I can always make a quick getaway. Can’t you film from here?”

  “I’ve already run the camera from this angle and I’ll only be a moment,” Amie replied. “I just need to see who’s living there.”

  “You’re mad,” grumbled Neil, but he obligingly drove round the block and stopped outside the back of the neighbouring house. Amie jumped out, falling headlong as she tried to hitch up the unwieldy burka which wrapped itself round her ankles. She untangled it and crouching low, crept along until she was level with her old back garden. She peered through the holes in the ornamental bricks in the wall. There were two small children playing in the back yard, and then a couple who were obviously Togodian, appeared in the doorway and called them inside. For a heart-stopping moment, Amie thought they had seen her, as the man glanced up at the back wall and frowned. Then he turned away and walked back inside the house. Amie was frozen to the spot, but a stage whisper from the truck snapped her into the present, and she climbed back into her seat and they set off back to camp.

  Amie was bitterly disappointed. Her common sense told her this was all a wild goose chase, and she felt unreasonably angry with Dave for conning her into this trip. He, along with everyone else knew it was impossible to find one lone white man in the middle of an African war-torn city. Amie had dreamed up so many scenarios, each more fantastic than the last. They had met up with Alfred the Fixer and he would know where Jonathon was. Work had even started on the desalination plant again. President Mtumba was back in power and everyone was happy, and so on and so forth.

  But Togodo was not the same, and she should have realised it. There must have been months and months of killing, looting and raping. The economy would have been put back decades, and all the new, uplifting projects put on long-term hold. She had just been blinded with an unreasonable hope, and now she needed to face the truth.

  Sandy and Neil had taken shots of the now-abandoned desalination plant on their first recce into town, so there was no need to drive out that way again. Work had ceased and the little that had been built was now in ruins. As they bumped and swerved around the potholes on their way back to camp Amie held back her tears, pleased for once that the voluminous burka covered most of her face. She was so angry with herself. Why, why, she wondered did hope still linger long after all reasonable possibilities should have been snuffed out?

  She was morose that evening while they prepared their dinner on the last night they were going to spend near Apatu; tomorrow they would be turning back south.

  They had chosen a well-concealed dip in the land to camp. They had lit no fires, nor used lights after the sun went down, and so far, their presence had not been noticed. Amie couldn’t help thinking that before the revolution, there were always people wandering around in the outlying areas, but now, most of the citizens she had seen today, seemed to be subdued, scurrying along looking fearful. It made sense to be wary in the aftermath of a tribal war, after all, who knew who the enemy was? Everyone belonged to one tribe or another – it was an accident of birth – but it could make enemies of those from the other tribes.

  Early the next morning, they pulled out just after the sun came up. Amie travelled with Neil and Dave in the front vehicle, while Sandy kept Bill company in the one behind. They would stay off the road for as long as possible to avoid any confrontation. As they bumped along, driving around low scrub and termite mounds, the dust blazed a trail behind them. They saw no animals, not even the odd buck, and the African savannah stretched ahead as far as the eye could see.

  Once the sun began to sink low in the sky, they turned off the veldt and continued along the road, making better time on the hard while still taking care to avoid the enormous potholes which had not been repaired in months. They had been travelling for about an hour, when Bill suddenly said, “I can see vehicles behind us. We should get off the road!” He nudged Dave, who didn’t argue, but immediately turned left and they bounced over the uneven ground as quickly as they could, but when they doused the lights it slowed them down even more until they rolled to a stop.

  “Keep going, keep going,” urged Bill, dying to put his foot hard on the accelerator.

  “It doesn’t make sense, we can hardly see where we’re going in the dark, and if we hit a tree or a boulder, we’re in big trouble. We’ll just sit tight until they’ve gone past, they may not even be soldiers, maybe just ordinary people travelling south,” Dave sounded a lot calmer than he felt. Everything had gone smoothly until now, was it all going to fall apart as they were leaving?

  Looking back to the road in the distance, they saw two large trucks come to a stop close to where they’d driven off the road. Several figures with torches jumped out and walked along the edge of the road looking for tracks amid the now settling dust. Their shouts echoed faintly across on the wind.

  Amie held her breath as she watched the lights sweep over the ground, blurred by the dust kicked up by the Land Rovers when they left the road. No one spoke, no one moved, as
they watched the lights come closer and closer. Is there still a price on my head? Wondered Amie in a panic, trying to decide if it was wiser for them to get out of the trucks and hide further away. Time seemed to stand still as the voices grew louder. Neil tried to ease his legs as they began to cramp up, and Sandy was clenching her hands to stop them from shaking. Quietly Dave reached under the seat and brought out the gun. He had no idea if he would have the courage to actually fire at anyone, but the feel of the cold metal in his hands was reassuring.

  Suddenly there was a loud roar and the dark figures froze. Cries of “Simba! Simba!” went up, and a couple of shots were fired into the air. There followed another roar and then a short silence, before their pursuers made a run for the trucks still parked on the road, jumped inside, and raced off into the distance.

  “What was all that about?” asked Neil.

  “There’s a lion somewhere close by,” said Amie. “I guess they weren’t going to hang around if they couldn’t see where it was, and there may be more than one, possibly a whole pride.”

  “And you walked this on foot!” exclaimed Neil. “You were so brave!”

  “Not really,” murmured Amie, “just desperate.”

  They discussed whether they should sit tight and wait until it was light, or press on. Bill, Amie and Sandy thought the soldiers, if they were soldiers, might return in the morning and search for tracks in the daylight and were in favour of moving on. Dave thought it unwise to drive too far without lights, while Neil argued that if they drove slowly using only side lights it was the best of both worlds. A suggestion to walk in front of the trucks with a flashlight to make sure the terrain was safe, was vetoed immediately, as everyone remembered what was out there.

  “I didn’t think lions hunted at night,” said Neil as they inched their way forward.

  “They hunt from late evening through the night and into the early morning,” replied Amie. “They’ll stop if they make a kill large enough to feed the pride. They may also have disturbed hyenas or jackals that invited themselves along to share in the spoils,” she added. “We could be in their territory for quite a long time, as they cover a vast area. To be safe, we should light a fire, then they’d keep their distance …”

  “… but that’s not an option right now,” Dave cut in. “We’re safe as long as we stay in the trucks.”

  They crawled along at a snail’s pace for the rest of that night. Twice they were forced to get out and use one vehicle to winch the other out of a deep rut, or a soft, sandy, dry river bed. Although they kept a sharp look out, there was no further sight nor sound of the lions, and by the time the sun rose again, Dave reckoned they were about fifty kilometres from the city.

  “Not very far,” observed Bill gloomily.

  “No, but we can make faster progress now, and maybe after we’ve had a bit of breakfast, we can get back on the road and hope to get almost as far as the border before nightfall.” Dave’s suggestion was approved by everyone, though it was nerve wracking driving over the rough terrain and exhausting hauling the vehicles out of trouble. Even though the wide gravel road hadn’t been graded in years at least they were not going to get lost.

  Even Amie’s spirits lifted a little as they made good progress south, bumping over the ridged and rutted surface. They had a tense few minutes when another vehicle approached, but it was only an ancient pickup truck overloaded with water melons and pumpkins. As it went past without slowing down, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was late afternoon before they saw a sign for the border post ahead.

  “Time to turn off,” said Dave. “Does any of this look familiar to you, Amie?”

  “No, I must have been a long way east from the main road. I was trying to keep closer to the sea. I thought that would make sure I wouldn’t get lost.”

  “When we came north a couple of weeks ago,” said Dave, “I didn’t think to notice how far from the city we were.” He tapped the GPS, but the screen stayed blank. “Damn thing has given up on us as well.” As he was speaking, he turned down a side road looking for a gap between the bushes wide enough for the vehicles to go off road and still stay parallel to it so they wouldn’t get lost. They travelled on for a couple more hours until they found a small grove of trees which provided some camouflage.

  While Sandy and Neil opened cans of meatballs and baked beans for supper, Dave and Bill studied the map to see if they could work out where they were.

  “Sorry, it’s going to be cold fare – again.” said Sandy as she dished up the plates of food, “but better to be safe without a fire.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” chuckled Amie as she took her plate. “I feel more of a criminal now, than when I was on the run from prison.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t be too thrilled if they found all the camera gear,” said Bill. “We could get into real trouble for having that, and what about the gun, surely that’s illegal as well?”

  “I think they’d be more upset by the cameras than the gun,” remarked Amie.

  “And driving into Togodo without going through the border post?” asked Sandy.

  “We could just as easily pretend we were lost and thought we were still in Ruanga,” replied Neil.

  “And if our captors don’t speak English, and if they just blow us away without talking to us …?” whined Bill.

  “Cheer up, Bill, we’ll face that if and when it happens,” said Dave. Bill was getting on everyone’s nerves; and his fear was contagious. Dave made a mental note never to include him on a shoot again. I’ll suggest he hone his editing skills, he decided, then he can sit in a safe, air-conditioned studio at home.

  After the tension, and the bumping around, and keeping a lookout for danger all day, everyone was exhausted and as the last of the twilight sunk into darkness, they all settled down for the night. They had only put up the tents once or twice the whole time they’d been in Africa. By unspoken agreement everyone felt safer sleeping in the trucks, not only because it took a long time to erect the tents, but they could speed away from danger if they were ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

  Amie couldn’t settle, even though it was her turn to have the back seat to herself. She turned one way, then the other, but although she was exhausted, she just couldn’t sleep. First one leg then the other cramped up so, as slowly and as quietly as she could, she opened the back door and slipped out. She was bending and stretching to gain some relief when she thought she heard voices whispering close by. She froze. The whispering stopped, leaving a deafening silence. Then she heard a soft crack behind her and she felt something brush against her arm. Amie swung round and was about to shout a warning, when a strong arm closed tightly round her chest and a hand covered her mouth to cut off her screams.

  There was chaos in both vehicles as the rest of the crew woke and leapt into action, but they were too late – they were already surrounded. The pale moonlight glinted on the barrels of the guns, and barely breathing, they all put their hands up. There was a long silence while their attackers assessed the situation. There were at least five of them, and two more dark shapes were just visible in the shadows. For several moments, no one moved. The crew held their collective breath until a voice said,

  “Good God, what are you doing here?”

  The crew were too stunned to say anything. Neil’s mouth fell open, Dave gasped, Bill whimpered and Sandy looked shell shocked. Amie couldn’t say anything at all, her mouth was still covered.

  “Amie? Is it Amie?” a voice came from behind Dave. “I don’t, don’t believe it! Is it really you?” Jonathon stepped out of the shadows just as Amie fell into a dead faint.

  By the time she came round everyone else had the full story and Amie had a lot of catching up to do. When the revolution was at its height, Dirk and Helen had left Nkhandla Lodge to the looters and had taken refuge in one of their furthest bush huts. Since Dirk’s family had been in Togodo for so many generations, he had nowhere else to go, and Amie remembered Helen telling her that once sh
e had come to love Africa, she didn’t want to live anywhere else.

  The hired help at Nkhandla were all from the north, and they remained loyal to Dirk and Helen helping to protect their employers, ferrying in supplies when needed from a nearby village. The rebels had taken over the government, but whether they would do any better than Mtumba and his bunch was doubtful, but things did seem to be getting back to normal.

  Amie already knew that Jonathon had returned to look for her, but she didn’t know that Charles had come with him. They, too, had flown into Ruanga, hired a vehicle and driven through the unmanned border on a dark night. They had bumped into Jefri and Kahlib on the road and been brought back to the camp. They had made three trips into Apatu to try and find out what had happened to their wives and the other missing people, but with no success. When they received word there were strangers in vehicles close to the bush hut they came to investigate.

  “It’s like a fairy tale,” exclaimed Amie, hugging Jonathon. “I’m never going to let you out of my sight again,” she said happily. Then she remembered, “I’ll have to tell Charles I was with Kate when she died. I don’t think she suffered at all, but the shop we were in was bombed and the walls simply collapsed on top of her. It was so awful, poor Kate. She had just tried on this gorgeous evening dress and I was telling her how good she looked, and the next moment, she was gone.”

  Jonathon rocked her to and fro as she wept. “I think Charles had a feeling she didn’t make it. Most people were on the last plane out, but not everyone has been accounted for. But all the time I had a feeling you were still alive. I just couldn’t give up hope.”