Bush Vet

by Clay Wilson

  I went into self-preservation mode. That night I did not sleep at all. I tensed at every rustle and watched the shadows for the movement of the man who might be on his way to gut me or slit my throat with a shiv.

  The next morning, just before 6.30 am, everyone began straightening their blankets and stuff, and making their improvised beds. Each of the guys had his own little pile of possessions – Vaseline, toilet paper, soap, shampoo, a towel, perhaps a book; I noticed a lot of religious texts and Bibles. Their few possessions seemed inordinately important to them. I wanted to smoke, but couldn’t inside the cell. I couldn’t wait to get out.

  Two guards opened the doors and we filed out. As we emerged I heard shouting from the other side of the high wall and some of the men from my cell called back in Tswana. “It is very overcrowded over on that side,” a man said to me. “There are many more people than here and they are worse off than us.” It was hard to imagine being worse off than these conditions or what the unseen men on the other side could have done that was worse than child molestation or murder and deserved poorer standards than I had experienced.

  As at Kasane, we were made to kneel while the guards did a head count. Chores were then done – cells were swept out and some of the inmates washed their blankets in big sinks with wedges of Sunlight soap. I felt an itch under my arms and scratched it. I put on my reading glasses and examined the skin of my arms and legs.

  Lice.

  “Shit.” I lit a cigarette, inhaling and feeling the nicotine hit soothe me just a little. Sure, smoking will kill you, but in there I fast learnt that cigarettes were the currency of life inside. Within moments of my first puff, I was surrounded by a clutch of onlookers. When I had half finished, I handed the remainder of the cigarette to one of the guys. He was very grateful, and the others disappointed. I hoped I’d given it to the right guy.

  Breakfast was served at eight and I skipped the mealiepap again in favour of brown bread and sweet tea. That mug of tea picked me up and got me going, and was all that would keep me going during my days of incarceration.

  There was an open storm-water drain that passed under the wall between our courtyard and the overcrowded one next door. Water flowed through it from the washing sinks and the cons had made what resembled a little boat by cutting a plastic Clorox bleach bottle in half. A long line of string was tied to one end. Guys were breaking off some of their pap and bread and putting it into the half bottle. When it was full, a man set the half bottle down on the water flowing along the drain. When he let it go, the current took the craft under the wall to the less-fortunate men on the other side. When a shout told them it was emptied, the man who had released it hauled on the string and pulled the empty boat back to our side. It was kind of touching, really, that hardened criminals were caring for those less well off than themselves.

  But it was not all kindness and empathy in Gaborone Prison. As I took my food back to our cell to eat, my way was barred by a couple of guys who blocked the gateway out of the courtyard.

  “You have to pay to walk through this gate,” one said to me.

  “Fuck you. I’m not paying anything.” I pushed them aside and they backed off. I guessed it was some kind of test, and I hoped I had passed.

  I noticed in the daylight that one of the guys in my cell had a swelling on the side of his face that was so bulbous it had forced his eye closed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked him.

  “I have a pain in my tooth.”

  The poor guy had been in pain for about a week. I gave him some Amoxicillin – penicillin – and a painkiller called Aleve. The next day his swelling had reduced considerably, to the extent that his eye was now open, and he greeted me with a huge smile. I prescribed him a course of five days’ more medication and went to the office to ask for “my” daily allocation of pills, once more palming some extras in the process.

  That evening another prisoner came to me and asked if I could do something about his eyes. I could see he had cataracts and I explained that there was an operation he could undergo that would help him. He was very interested and asked for more information. He was meek and mild, to the point of being obsequious, and he insisted on bringing me a Liqui-Fruit juice in a small carton every night. For some reason, he called himself TJ Hooker, after the old show about an American cop.

  Despite his demeanour, or perhaps because of it, I think he may have been a fixer or supplier of some kind. Every day he wanted to talk to me about his cataract operation and while I wanted to get away from him for a smoke, if I tried to I would be encircled by a new group of hangers-on. When I was with TJ Hooker the others left me alone – which could have been because he was a pain in the ass, of course.

  There was no hot water, but I had to try to do something about the lice that were infesting me. The showers were all open – no stalls – and I felt vulnerable there, this slightly flabby old guy washing in cold water among all these hardened bad asses. It was the stuff of nightmares.

  Chapter 15

  In the shadow of the gallows

  I survived the weekend without being bashed or raped. Kgomotso took his sweet time getting to me, rolling up to the prison at 11 on Monday morning. He brought me a carton of cigarettes, some fruit gums and two newspapers that carried stories about my detention and imminent deportation.

  I quickly scanned the articles and threw the second newspaper down. “This is all nonsense. There’s nothing in these stories that says why I’m being kicked out.” One of the articles didn’t even get my name right; they referred to me as Doctor Wilson Clay.

  “We are going to put up a strong defence for you. I am going to the court to say the president is in contempt of the law because he is forcing this to happen while we still have a court case pending,” Kgomotso said. The thrust of the defence was that it was unconstitutional of the president to interfere with the judiciary, which should be independent of the government. It made sense.

  Kgomotso told me he had spoken to Laura and that she was okay, all things considered. Apparently my friend Les had shown up at the prison, demanding to see me, but they wouldn’t let him in.

  “We’re going to court on Wednesday,” Kgomotso added.

  There was nothing I could do now but wait. The other guys in my cell had seen how the man with the toothache was making a miraculous recovery, and as a result I took on the role of de facto cellblock doctor. One inmate had gonorrhoea and another had a stomach ache, and I medicated them as best as I could. I gave an inmate with gastric reflux some antacid I had also smuggled in, and told him to eat smaller portions of food, six times a day. He followed my instructions to the letter, like they were some kind of ritual, and would present himself to me, six times a day, so I could supervise his eating and tell him exactly how much he should consume. It passed the time for me and within a couple of days he was feeling much better.

  I was putting myself at some risk by smuggling far more than what anyone would think was my daily quota of pills from my bag into the cell, but then again it was not like we were being constantly monitored by the guards. The warders seemed to come in twice a day to open and close up, but I never saw them inside the jail. They reminded me of some of the National Parks staff at Chobe; this was just a job for them, opening the entry gate to let the tourists in and take their money at dawn, then closing the gate at dusk. Some of them cared as little about what went on inside the park as these jailers did for the inmates of their prison.

  I think helping the other prisoners with their ailments was what saved me from harm inside Gaborone Prison. I was left alone, apart from TJ Hooker’s regular discussions about his cataracts, the indigestion guy making me watch him eat and another guy who brought me tea in return for bumming my cigarette butts.

  Some Christian prisoners talked me into attending a Bible study class one day, but I lasted only one session. All I wanted was to be by myself and to sleep as much as possible. The November heat, however, made sleep nearly impossible during the days, and difficult
at night. Adding to my discomfort, a radio blared from a speaker mounted high on the wall, playing music until lights-out.

  Prison life was the same every day and I, like all the others, looked forward to any distraction. On the Tuesday, Les was allowed into the jail. He brought me a novel set in Zimbabwe, called African Dawn, by the Australian author Tony Park.

  Les knew I’d read some of Tony’s other novels and that Tony and I had been collaborating on this book, Bush Vet. When we started writing the book, it was going to be a heart-warming and moving tale about me treating animals in the wilds of southern Africa, but it was fast turning into a tragedy. Neither Tony nor I had expected things to go the way they had. The novel had me mesmerised for two days and helped while away a little of my time inside.

  On Wednesday, the day of my court appearance, the warders put me in leg irons and handcuffs, all linked by a chain. I hadn’t been in irons before and they chafed at my wrists and ankles, scraping away some of the skin. They were bloody painful. It was about an hour’s drive to the court and the ride was hot and uncomfortable, but I had high hopes that the judge, who had ruled in my favour previously, would see this had all been a terrible mistake and say, “Hey, let this guy out.”

  When we arrived, my cuffs and leg irons were unlocked and I was able to walk, rather than shuffle, into the courtroom. I looked around and saw Kgomotso and some other guy who was assisting him, and another man who I assumed was the prosecutor in the case. The lawyers wore wigs and robes.

  Behind me were about eight reporters, with notebooks at the ready, and a man and a woman I recognised from the us embassy in Gaborone. I had met them, briefly, when I had travelled to Gaborone after receiving my marching orders and they had been absolutely useless. They basically told me there was nothing they could do for me. All they did was give me a list of lawyers, but I already had Kgomotso by then. Les was there as well, and he smiled at me.

  The judge, the same one who had ordered the stay on me being kicked out, asked Kgomotso to speak first. He did so, eloquently, mentioning the work I had done in Chobe, and laying the grounds of his defence, that the president should not be allowed to kick me out while there was still a court case pending.

  The prosecutor said maybe 10 words, I don’t really recall what, and then the judge adjourned so he could deliberate on his decision. It had all been very quick. The prison guards put my chains back on so that I could leave the court and meet with Kgomotso without running away. It was all so ludicrous.

  When I emerged from the court there were a couple of newspaper photographers who said they wanted to get a picture of me.

  “No! You do not take a picture of me in chains!” Of all the privations that had been heaped on me, this was the one that broke me. I didn’t want Laura or my enemies – whoever it was who had orchestrated my fall from grace – to have the satisfaction of seeing me trussed like a common criminal. To their credit, the photographers agreed not to take my picture. It was a result, but it also showed me that the media in Botswana was anything but free, and lacked courage.

  I said a couple of words to the embassy people, but they didn’t seem to be in the least bit concerned about my case or my welfare. This was just a job for them, too.

  I do know that others outside the country, especially my friend in the States, Patrick Webb, were calling the embassy on a daily basis to ask after me and plead for some intercession. I thank those people for their courage and support and have nothing to say for those who abandoned me, including the American representatives in Botswana.

  The court resumed and I was once more released from my shackles and led inside. The judge came out and basically said that President Khama had done nothing wrong and that the head of the country was within his right to kick me out.

  I couldn’t believe it. How did the judge feel, I wondered. He had ruled in my favour previously because the government had made no case for my deportation. He had given the government 45 days to reply to the case that Kgomotso had initiated and they had failed to do so. The government and the president had made a mockery of their own court system and this judge, and here he was saying there was nothing he could do.

  I was disgusted. I was put back in chains again and taken back to prison, where I was told I would be leaving Botswana in two days’ time, on the Friday. It seemed I had no avenue of appeal and that my time in this part of Africa was coming to an end. By this stage my anger at the unfairness of my treatment was being eclipsed by my desire to get the hell out of this place. I began to allow myself thoughts of a hot shower, a cold drink, of the home in Florida I had left behind.

  Kgomotso came to the jail the next day, on the Thursday. “I’m sorry, Clay, but they now say that you won’t be leaving Botswana until next week, because the immigration department can’t afford the price of tickets at such short notice, and there isn’t time to organise the us visas for the men who will have to escort you home.”

  I couldn’t take any more. I just wanted to get the fuck out of this place.

  I surrendered to the drudgery of the prison’s routine. I walked in the courtyard, smoking a cigarette, staring up at a leaden sky, which in the bush would bring new life. But mine here was ending. The colour of the massing thunderclouds and the rumble of far-off thunder matched my alternate moods of depression and anger.

  I noticed again the tall tower I’d first seen when I had entered the prison. “What is that?” I asked the con tailing me, patiently waiting for me to hand him the rest of my cigarette.

  “That is where they hang people.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. We still have the death penalty here in Botswana. There are three on death row, in the cell next to the kitchen.”

  I had seen these guys often, through the bars. They were locked in their cell 24/7 and I hadn’t asked why. I guess I thought they had infringed some prison rules.

  “When there is a hanging we can hear the rope snap at six in the morning,” the man beside me said. We both looked up at the tower. “For a week after that the whole prison is very quiet. People get very depressed.”

  I’m not against capital punishment; I’m for it, in fact, in cases of particularly heinous crimes where the offender has confessed or guilt has been proven conclusively. But the way these men on death row were being treated constituted unreasonable cruelty in my book. All three of them were forced to stay inside together all day and all night. Botswana’s neighbouring countries in southern Africa had eschewed the death penalty but here it was, with the condemned already living in hell.

  I scratched at the lice bites that still covered my skin, passed my half-smoked cigarette to my companion and walked away to try to find some peace.

  Monday came and went and the government still hadn’t organised the tickets for me and my escorts. The next day, however, on Tuesday, 6 December, they came for me.

  I had survived my 12 days in prison. I said goodbye to the men who had intimidated me in the bathroom, telling me I had to sit down to pee. Five more prisoners had come and gone from our block in the time I was there and the newcomers were all taken into the ablution room for the same talking-to. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed these men were terrified when they re-emerged into the cell. Perhaps they had gone easy on me. I wasn’t sure if they had decided to lay off me, or if my treatment of the inmates’ aches and pains had eased the way for me. In any case, I was leaving.

  I said goodbye to my cellmates and they seemed happy for me. The guy whose tooth I had treated thanked me profusely and TJ Hooker said he was sad to see me go, but this place was a hell hole and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  I was collected by a warder and taken to the office where I had to go through all my stuff. “When you go to the States can you get me a shotgun, Doctor Clay?” said the guard as he watched me account for my belongings. I held my tongue about what he should do with any shotgun I gave him.

  At last I walked free, the gates closing behind me. Gaborone was the same as always, a venee
r of civilisation and order in a country where journalists were muzzled and anyone who had the temerity to suggest all was not rosy was deported.

  I was taken to the immigration department offices in the capital and allowed, under supervision, to have a smoke outside and then go inside and have my first hot-water shower since being arrested. I was fingerprinted again and my mug shot was taken. At about three in the afternoon a policeman in plain clothes arrived and, together with a male immigration officer, my other escort, we drove to the airport. From then on things became kind of casual.

  The two minders and I walked into the international airport terminal and checked in for our flights. Kgomotso was there and the four of us sat down and had a Coke at a small kiosk. I ordered a hamburger, which was the first Western food I’d eaten in 12 days. It might have been the worst burger in the world, but it tasted great to me. Bizarrely, I paid for the cop and immigration officers’ Cokes. Kgomotso felt bad about how things had panned out, but I couldn’t blame him any more than I could the guys who were taking me home. The system defeats everyone, I guess.

  When it was almost time to board we went to the departure gate and I put my bag through the x-ray machine. As I passed through, a horde of reporters came running up the corridor, calling my name. I had already gone through and I wondered who had tipped them off about what time I was flying.

  I broke down. I started crying for the first time since I’d left Laura. It suddenly dawned on me, as the flight attendant waited to scan my boarding pass, that I was leaving the country I’d thought I would live in for the rest of my life.

  I had sold nearly everything I had to come here and to try to do some good for this country’s wildlife. When I should have been strong and dignified, I could no longer continue the act. It was all too much.