Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa

by Warren Durrant

  At these places, first we would do a ward round - the bare wards, the rough beds, the ragged people. We would do the usual things, sometimes advise referral to the government hospital. Except for emergencies, patients would have to make their own way. Afterwards, we would see outpatients: men, women and children, the latter with their mothers. Not many, as we saw only the more difficult cases selected for the doctor. At one place I saw the rubbery faces of leprosy: at another, a woman with the scaly, burnt-looking skin of pellagra - vitamin B deficiency, seen in districts where maize was eaten, unsupplemented by other foods. To finish, there would be minor operations; nothing requiring more than local anaesthetic or a whiff of ether.

  An Italian sister informed me: 'We 'ave some extractions.' I found a number of people, sitting hopefully, with badly rotten teeth. The sister handed me a syringe, a bottle of local - and a screwdriver!

  This same sister had a problem, which appeared to exercise her Catholic conscience. If a woman died in labour, should she do a postmortem caesarean section? (The original caesarean, of course, by which Julius Caesar was reputedly delivered.) I advised her against it, remembering the legalities of Europe, and also uncertain of the feelings of the local people. Years later, I heard of a Catholic doctor in Rhodesia successfully performing such an operation.

  The people showed their feelings in no uncertain fashion at this mission on one occasion. A party of white men were fishing in a nearby river, when they were attacked by a hippo, and one of them grievously wounded. He was brought into the hospital, but died before the plane arrived. The body was removed. But what about the ghost?

  The locals were well used to dealing with their own - by means of ceremonies lasting up to a year - but a white man's ghost! That was a problem beyond them. The whole black population of the mission who could use their legs or had relatives to carry them, including the nurses, took off more or less into the bush, leaving only the terrified remainder and the white staff. The father superior (the white witch doctor) had to exorcise the place before they could get them to return.

  Flying home on one occasion, we saw a large herd of elephant, surging across the plain. The pilot flew low to get a closer look. There we were, alone in the vast solitude, with this noble sight.

  'People come and go in Africa,' said Graham Greene, 'as though the space and emptiness encourage drift.' This is no more true of most parts of Africa than it is of Europe, but it certainly applied to the Copperbelt - and, for that matter, Samreboi. In both places there were long stayers (Mr Hunt was one), but less of them in Zambia. On the other hand, in the latter country there were the English-speaking primary schools I had suggested in Samreboi, and therefore more family life. Otherwise it was true, people came and went.

  The first new doctor to follow me was Sean, a tall handsome Rhodesian, who might have been his namesake in When the lion feeds. He was a first class doctor, and fate eventually recognised the fact, for he did well: but fate, or what was known locally as the 'Party', did not treat him kindly at first.

  One day, as he entered the hospital, the matron (who, as fate would have it, was also Rhodesian) asked Sean to have a look at her dog, which had something wrong with its ear. Being a thorough-going sort of chap, Sean asked her to bring it out of her car and into the plaster room (not the operating theatre, as the Times of Zambia said, which got its information, or its approval anyway, from one sole source, which the reader may guess). The plaster room was used by the medical assistants for removing or changing plasters, and was not, or intended to be, squeaky clean. Sean took a look at the dog's ear, and saw immediately that it had ticks.

  But the eyes of the Party where everywhere, even in the plaster room, and next day, a deputation from the Party bore down on the medical superintendent, or rather the luckless man who was standing in for him while he was on leave. Bob Speirs was a canny Scot, and anyway, had been too long in Zambia to ask daft questions like what was the Party's constitutional connection with the matter, as he already knew the answer was nil; and that was also as much as the answer counted for in the great 'humanistic' (‘Humanism’ was the doctrine of Kenneth Kaunda, a philospher some have compared to the microscopic Mao). democracy of Zambia. When Louis Quatorze said, 'L'État c'est moi', his imitators would include even 'KK' (Little Ken Kaunda), the humble schoolmaster of Zambia.

  In case the reader does not understand, the actual charge was treating a dog in an 'African' hospital (a thing which did not officially exist, as all hospitals and everything else were supposed to be non-racial; but law was not the Party's strongest point, which it generally regarded as a damn nuisance, inherited from colonialism; except for the new 'humanist' laws, with which it dealt with difficult humans), and therefore equating Africans in some way with dogs. It is interesting to speculate what would have been the reaction if the dog had been treated in the (white?) management hospital.

  In short, the local gauleiter (or district governor, as I think he was called) ordered Sean out of the country, and the matron too for good measure. And the great Anglo-American Company was shown to be a lesser thing than the great UAC of West Africa was always believed to be, for it bowed the knee. In fact, they found Sean a job at another of its hospitals in South Africa.

  But Sean had the last laugh. In Kitwe he met and fell in love with a very nice Finnish nurse, and one day these lovers fled away out of the storm, and Zambia lost two able young servants it could ill afford to lose.

  Soon after they left Zambia, Sean and Rita invited me for a holiday in Rhodesia. They took me to Victoria Falls and the Eastern Highlands - the Trossachs in the tropics. In Umtali I met up with an old friend from Liverpool, Jimmy Lennon.

  He was a schoolmaster, then in his late fifties, and lived alone at Brown's Hotel. I knocked on his door while he was enjoying his afternoon nap. He called 'come in' and leapt out of bed at the same time, stark naked, as he always slept in the tropics, searching for his shorts. 'Good afternoon, father!' he said, not recognising me at first after many years and unaware that I was in Africa. We soon made up for that.

  Jimmy was a short bald man with a clipped military moustache and all the charm of the Liverpool Irish. In twenty years in Africa he had not lost his Scouse accent. (I had met him on his long leaves.) He would have taken the Queen by the elbow and got away with it. Someone once saw him in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall following Sir Malcolm Sargent off the platform, clapping all the way - Jimmy below the platform, of course.

  He came out (with some more clothes on) to meet my friends. Sean's sister was with us, a girl of about eighteen, as handsome as her brother. Jimmy took her by the elbow as we crossed the street to his favourite cafe. 'And what is your name, my dear? Tamara! That is a very lovely name, but then it is only like you, my dear!' sounding as if he meant it, which he did.

  Unfortunately, he was not on holiday, and we were unable to see more of him then. The reader will see much more of him later in these pages.

  Next came Andy and Liz, a Northern Irish couple. Andy was half-way to being a gynaecologist: Liz was a nurse but was not working. Andy was a balding Irish gnome (bigger than a leprechaun): Liz was a laughing little Irish pixie. They sang Irish folk songs together to professional standard and appeared on Zambian television. They organised many a 'come-all-ye' at their house and attended many others, for there were many Irish in the town. And it was wonderful to see how Catholic and Protestant sank their differences so far from home (the Crookes were Protestant but were never partisan) and even sang each other's songs. Newcomers were often astonished and even disapproving of this, especially the song swapping, even English people. 'You should see what's going on at home!' Of course, they were getting it every night on telly. Alf Garnett, it will be remembered wanted to solve the 'Irish problem' by towing the country into the middle of the 'Hattalantic Hocean and torpedoing the bladdy plice!' It would be wonderful to transplant the North at least to the healing air of Central Africa for a time and see if it produced the same results on a general scale - even if Alf
Garnett said 'and leave it there!'

  Andy did everything with the skill of an artist. He accompanied the couple's singing on the guitar. Once he painted a mural of a Roman feast on one wall of his sitting room (wall paper is unknown in Africa) for a party. Even his handwriting was the hand of an artist and not the scrawl of a doctor. And he was a deft operator.

  He more or less took over the obstetrics and gynaecology. He was not backward at coming forward. The GDMOs were allowed to do a certain amount: I did hernias, for example, as well as caesars. Now Andy had never done a hernia, which was not surprising for a gynaecologist in European practice, and asked me to show him one. It must have been half way through the first one I showed him that he practically took it over. (In my teaching method, which I had scarcely evolved, I allowed the pupil to take the knife at the second operation.) Thereafter he pinched hernias from under my nose, as they arrived at the operating theatre if I wasn't quick enough off the mark, to the great amusement of everybody but me.

  But in return, he taught me much himself, and by the hands-on method too. And the most important thing he taught me was the subtotal hysterectomy, as will appear later.

  And then came Harry Bowen, who was half way to becoming a surgeon. He had a round face, glasses and a fringe and looked about sixteen. He was as keen as a schoolboy about life in general and surgery in particular.

  One morning, Sean and I came out of the operating theatre to help out with the last of the outpatients. Harry had been in this sweat-shop, not the most popular place in the hospital, since he finished his ward round.

  'Where have you chaps been?'

  'In theatre.'

  His face fell, like the little boy who missed out on the party.

  'It's all right, Harry. It's your turn on the speedboats tomorrow.'

  Harry overlapped the Crookes, and made his debut in polite Kitwe society at a folk-singing party - of the rather more serious kind than a come-all-ye.

  He turned up late. Indeed, the first we knew was when an old African gentleman arrived at the house on a bicycle with a note addressed to the host requesting the writer (Harry) to be rescued from a ditch. He had given the man a dollar ('Was that enough, chaps?'), where a less trusting soul would have requested cash on delivery by the note. Harry was no fool, but that was his way.

  When he had recovered from his experience and been given a beer, Harry looked around him with his owl-like gaze: if ever an owl looked bright and eager for fun, that is. Perhaps he had not been forewarned, but he took it in (or something like it) fast enough.

  'Folk-singing? I love folk-singing.'

  He was standing on the rug before the fire place - an Afghan rug, the expensive pride and joy of the lady of the house. He put down his pint of beer beside him on this article, perhaps with a view to conducting a chorus, which never in point of fact materialised, and began:

  'Cats on the rooftops. Cats on the tiles -'

  gently waving his hands like Sir Malcolm Sargent. I may say he was a keen rugby player, and that is how he learned most of his 'folk songs'.

  The bearded faces drooped painfully over the guitars which, needless to say, remained silent: faces and guitars. Even when Harry kicked over his beer on the Afghan carpet. The lady of the house simply left the room and her husband followed solicitously after her.

  Presently he reappeared alone, tapped Harry on the shoulder - 'A word, Harry!' - 'Certainly, Ivor,' from the ever eager Harry. Ivor led him to the door, opened it, thrust Harry outside, and closed it after him.

  An hour later, when Andy went outside for a breath of fresh air, he found Harry standing in the middle of the lawn with tears and moonlight streaming down his face. When he discovered what was going on, with all the passion for justice of his race, Andy led a meek Harry back into the house; and now it was Andy's turn to have a word with Ivor.

  A very ugly scene followed, in which the lady of the house, who had recovered from her own tears, took a conspicuous part, with language which made us wonder where she had spent her impressionable years. Her performance was only stimulated by the persistence of Harry (who had shed his meekness by now) in calling her 'sunshine'.

  'Don't effing call me "sunshine"!'

  At this stage no one was in a mood for folk-singing, and the party broke up by general unspoken agreement - or general spoken disagreement.

  I took Harry on an afternoon trip to Ndola zoo. A zoo in Africa has always struck me as rather amusing - at least it does not matter if the animals escape. On the way we saw what appeared to be a strip of metal, half bent upward, at the side of the road. We were almost upon it when I realised.

  'That's a snake!'

  'Christ! Look at it!' shouted Harry, with an excitement it did my jaded nerves good to hear. 'Get a photograph, Warren!'

  There was no time. The snake, all six foot of it, snapped like a whip and shot off into the veld. I thought it was a black mamba and said so.

  'A BLACK MAMBA!!!' shouted Harry, his eyes popping out as he strained in vain to get a view through the rear window.

  It was certainly more impressive than anything we saw at the zoo, except perhaps an elderly crocodile, at which a group of black children had to be restrained by a keeper from throwing stones. Zoo or no zoo, they knew all about crocodiles: the keeper must have been told off specially to protect the unfortunate old fellow.

  Then we saw the fish eagle with his white head, brown wings and trousered legs - caged in Africa, dear God! Another keeper was coming up from the dam, carrying a large barbel he had caught there. 'I'm going to give this to the fish eagle,' he grinned.

  He opened the cage and flung the fish into the water trough, where it twisted about, then settled motionless. The fish eagle appeared not to notice, staring off at nowhere with its mad, unseeing eye.

  Then it became restless. It moved up and down on the branch, on its claws and trousered legs, stooping and flapping its large wings, like a big hungry dog.

  Then it pounced. It grabbed the fish with both claws and got itself and prey back onto the branch again. With the fish under its foot, it stared once more into space.

  Then it proceeded to tear up the writhing fish with its eagle beak.

  'Cor, look at that!' shouted Harry. 'The fish eagle thinks its Christmas!'

  I got him away at last, feeling sick at the whole Creation for a time, while Harry babbled on beside me about the bloody eagle.

  But, of course, Harry was right. Who knows what fish or fish eagles feel? How can you argue with nature?

  Later I was sharing house with another man when Harry drew up at our front door at 11pm. One goes to bed early in the tropics (10 pm being usual) and rises early. Billy and I were already tucked up when we heard the crunch of Harry's car on the gravel.

  I rose and opened the door for him before he reached it. He stepped out of his car. Billy stood behind me. Harry had just come from the mine club. He looked at our night attire.

  'Don't tell me you chaps are in bed already! What's the matter with you? You're not old men! The night is yet young!'

  I forget whether he wanted us to come out to play or whether he wanted to come in to play. What I do remember is that when he stepped out of his car, he had a full pint of beer in his hand in one of the club glasses.

  I introduced Harry to the flying doctor business. I don't know whether he kept it up thereafter. His mental swings were as sudden as Toad of Toad Hall's, as I discovered on the way home.

  On the return flight from the Anglican mission, where he had met the usual priest, brothers and nuns, gone round the bare wards, etc seen the wretched cases, and been given a cup of tea in the common room, he fell strangely silent. Normally, even the noise of the aeroplane would not have been enough to repress Harry for an hour together.

  As we left the plane and walked to the shed of the tiny airport, it all burst out.

  'Wonderful people! Wonderful people, Warren! There they are, doing the Lord's work, out in the bush, looking after those poor savages, while we're revellin
g in the fleshpots of Kitwe!'

  He paused and looked me full in the face, his eyes round with earnestness.

  'I've made up my mind, Warren. I was thinking about it all the way back. I'm going straight from now on!'

  As I was not aware of any wide deviations from the strait and narrow on Harry's part in the past, I said nothing.

  We walked on. He glanced at his watch. 'Christ, Warren! Six o' clock already! The club bar'll be open. Come on! We're losing valuable drinking time!'

  I also took him to a games evening at the Catholic hall: roulette, pontoon, crown and anchor, etc, all in aid of church funds. We bought chips at the door. We did not have much money on us: as I remember, we restricted ourselves to dollar ones (kwacha). Harry soon lost all his money.

  I was reluctant to lend him any. I had limited myself to ten dollars, and meant to keep to it.

  Harry sat disconsolately on the edge of the roulette table. Then an astonishing thing happened. After the wheel had stopped and the croupier was going to work, I saw Harry's hand come out as if by itself. He was looking away at nowhere the meanwhile. The hand picked up a dollar chip and was about to slip it into Harry's pocket.

  The croupier, a hardened Rhodesian type, rested his rake.

  'Excuse me, sir! Would you mind replacing that chip, please?'

  Harry seemed to jerk out of a trance, glanced at his hand as if he had accidentally cut himself and meekly replaced the chip without a word.