Timothy offered to change our naira for us. In the afternoon, he met us again, with a secretive-looking friend who, in some obscure corner, took our naira in exchange for forty American dollars, then quickly slipped away.
Our plane was due to leave. We passed a policeman. Terry had no money to declare. She was walking to the plane while the policeman, with a surly face and a pistol on his hip, searched my wallet.
‘Have you declared all this money?’
‘Yes,’ I lied. I was getting acclimatised to Nigeria.
‘Because if you haven’t, I will arrest you.’
Pointless remark. I said nothing. He would have to drag me back to emigration to prove anything, when I would have offered him the forty dollars, like Pierre in the Congo, ‘for the police ball’. No doubt, he was trying to shake me, and his remark was not so pointless after all.
At any rate, we breathed a sigh of relief when the Pan Am jet took off for Kenya.
Terry and I had ten uneventful days in Kenya, which after our Nigerian adventures, was all we wanted. As neither Dante nor Milton succeeded in making Paradise as interesting as Hell, I will not try to surpass them.
Terry got her DNA diploma and was now a matron grade III, which was too high-powered for Shabani. She therefore applied for and received the matron’s post at Chiredzi, in the steaming south-east of the Lowveld: another long hop from Shabani - 200 miles.
We planned to marry in June, when she would retire from the service. We shared many delightful week-ends together at one or the other’s places.
A girl friend of Terry’s came to my house. Terry came to me in the garden, where I was taking the evening air. ‘How would you like to get married in Que Que?’ she asked me. That (pronounced Kweck-Kway) was where her friend’s husband had a farm.
And so we were. It was a small wedding, limited to our hosts and Terry’s immediate family. I had met my new parents: now I met my new sisters and brothers for the first time. At last, the lonely exile was a member of a large and happy family again, and the country of my willing exile I was invited to call home.
We all foregathered at the farm, and Terry and I were married in the church of St Luke in the town, whose were, of course, the proper auspices for a medical couple.
We had a week’s honeymoon at the Troutbeck Inn. This time, we ran to the Lake wing, the most luxurious. One of Terry’s friends had advised her to ‘get Warren to spend his money’ (Terry, as I have explained, had already spent hers, and paid husband-price rather than bride-price), and from the start, I discovered that two cannot live as cheaply as one.
We woke in the crisp winter air of the mountains every morning, with hoar frost on the ground, and on the heather - for the African heather, taller than the Scottish kind and always white in frost and flower, covers the hills not planted with pine trees.
We did all the usual things, and one afternoon climbed Mount Inyangani. This is 8500 feet, but as the veld at its foot is 7000 feet, it rather takes the rise out of it, so to speak, and so the climb itself is but a pleasant afternoon’s stroll.
But the mountain has an evil reputation, and few Africans will climb it, even if most of them saw any sense in climbing hills at all, except for some practical purpose. It is the abode of spirits, and it is true that people have disappeared on it without trace.
I had climbed it once before, on another winter day, with Graham Lee, the medical student. We reached the summit easily enough: it is a long hill, standing like a long barrow or ship against the sky, an easily recognised landmark from all quarters, and makes a fine ridge walk. But when we tried to come down this seemingly simple mound, we lost our way. We had to return to the summit no less than three times before we could find the way down, and then only got off the mountain as the swift tropical night descended. Tropical or not, it would have been a bitter spot to spend a winter’s night, well below freezing.
But now, this day, the path was clearly marked with cairns, no doubt, by the Mountain Club, and we had no trouble - at least, about direction. But Inyangani had another trick up his sleeve.
When we neared the peak, which stands alone at the head of the ridge, we found it occupied by a troop of baboons, who got very excited when they saw us. They began running about among the rocks, barking, and seeming to organise themselves.
Which they did. For the next thing, we confronted a cavalry charge of the barking brutes, as they came across the heather towards us.
I clasped my new wife with rather more courage than I might have felt on my own, and we instinctively stood our ground. Which was, of course, the right thing to do. To run away might well have been disastrous.
Suddenly, all together, they came to a stop, about fifty yards away. Their leader gave a final bark, and they all ran off to the left, leaving the peak vacant to our possession.
We climbed the last few feet, and found ourselves on the top - under the violet sky, in the blinding white winter light, looking a hundred miles to the west, across the veld, the ‘great spaces washed with sun’; and to the east, on the valleys plunging into Mozambique. A world of the eagles.
We came down easily, following the conspicuous cairns. We found a rock pool - a small perfect bath. I stripped and slipped naked into the icy water. Terry contented herself with sitting on a rock, watching my gambols.
At the end of our week, we left for home. On the way, Terry made me stop while she gathered some of those dry flowers from the roadside, that stay in the house, seemingly for ever, like artificial flowers, but natural and wholesome.
We stayed with Terry’s parents in Salisbury, and went on to Shabani next day.
When we arrived, we found a surprise party prepared for us by the staff, in African custom, to which we as great folks had to foot the bill for much food and drink. First, we had to change into our wedding clothes and appear on the balcony like royalty, to the hearty cheers of our loyal and loving subjects. We had to sit in state in the same costume on the veranda below, taking part in the feast, while our subjects proceeded to tear the house apart and smear it with mud (sic).
This is all part of the custom. The resulting wreckage is supposed to break in the new bride to her duties, and stop her straying for the next few weeks.
In the midst of the festivities, a Land Rover drew up outside - not the police, but Koos Bezuidenhout, the only other white in town besides ourselves who would have attended an African party. When he had eaten and drunk, he stood on the wall of the veranda and led the crowd in a rousing rendering of Ishe Komberera Afrika, the great southern African hymn, which even the British reader must know by now.
Then came a crash as Anderson, who was supposed to be waiting, fell over with a tray of drinks, whose sources he had obviously been conscientiously testing. He could not be roused. Koos threw him over his shoulder and carried him to his kaya, where he tossed him on to his narrow bed, and he was no worse in the morning.
By the time all had gone, we were left to contemplate our new nest - emptied of food and drink, completely knocked about, and filthy from top to bottom.
PART FOUR - ZIMBABWE
1 - Independence
The year before I married, Gareth and I took a New Year break at Inyanga, just after the cease fire, 1980. Jock had taken the Christmas holiday. We were driving home when we saw files of guerrillas trekking to the assembly points, manned by British and Commonwealth troops. The guerrillas were loaded with weapons and festooned with machine-gun belts. They looked half-starved, as lean as whippets.
‘Look at that!’ crowed Gareth. ‘They’ve been fighting for nothing.’
African politics was not one of Gareth’s main interests. I knew very well they were not giving themselves up for nothing. (They were not giving themselves up at all, for they retained their weapons in the assembly camps.) But no whites in the country and few people outside knew what Mugabe and Nkomo had up their sleeves; because for as many of the guerrillas as came to the assembly points, as many more stayed in the tribal lands to complete the political e
ducation of the people in preparation for the forthcoming elections. And most whites were surprised and horrified at Mugabe’s victory, having expected Muzorewa to win, after his sweeping victory in the elections of twelve months before. But Muzorewa was unable to stop the war: how many divisions had he got? So deluded were we by the internal propaganda of the country, that these consequences, which were obvious to everyone outside the country, surprised us.
Then came the elections, ‘monitored’ by the British bobbies, who must have felt like Alice in Wonderland. Most of them returned home without their helmets (through no fault of their own), which still grace many a Zimbabwean wall, like other trophies of the chase.
In the new year, we admitted two cheeky characters, calling themselves ‘freedom fighters’, who had each received a gunshot wound of the forearm, some months before. Their forearms looked very bent indeed, and as there was no urgency and the cases might have presented difficulties, I decided to transfer them to Bulawayo on the next ambulance in due course. Any sympathy I might have felt for them, they rapidly forfeited.
To say they treated the place like the Ritz would be inaccurate. The Ritz would soon have asked them to leave. They allotted themselves a private ward without reference to doctor or matron, and treated the staff like their slaves, ordering fancy meals at any time they fancied, etc. They drank beer and smoked with I imagine more freedom than was usually allowed (though I was always vague on points like that). At any rate, under pressure from the nurses, one day I gave them a telling off.
They complained about me to Comrade ‘Soft Guy’, the political commissar of the local brigands. I received a message from Sister Mutema that he would like to discuss the matter in the duty room.
Our two guests were present, still smoking energetically. I opened the proceedings myself by telling them to put their cigarettes out. They glanced at their superior, who nodded, whereupon they pinched out the offending articles and dropped them out of the window. ‘Soft Guy’ was the so-called chimurenga name of the officer: all who joined the ‘armed struggle’, or chimurenga, gave up their original names for the duration for chimurenga names, for all the world like entrants to a religious order. He was a tall thin man with a quietly-spoken manner which seemed to justify his sobriquet.
He asked me why I did not treat our two ‘comrades’ with more respect. ‘They don’t deserve respect,’ I burst out, as much from nervousness at my entirely novel situation as anything else. ‘They’ve been nothing but a nuisance to everyone since they’ve been here.’
Comrade Soft Guy glanced at Sister Mutema who was with us. Sister Mutema nodded and Comrade Soft Guy sharply ordered the two culprits out of the room. He assured me he would look into the matter, and the meeting broke up.
A few days later, Comrade Soft Guy’s luck ran out. He developed toothache and needed an extraction. I entered the ward one morning to find Jock dealing with him just inside the door. I have said Jock’s piano-playing lacked finesse, and I think the same was true of his dentistry. At any rate, Comrade Soft Guy was rolling about on a chair, under Jock’s head-lock and an evidently imperfect local anaesthetic, bawling like a sick cow, while Jock was saying, ‘No wonder they call you Comrade Soft Guy!’
There was nothing vindictive about this. I am sure Jock had as much simple faith in his local as he had in his dental skill.
Then I got an invitation to an independence party at the house of one of our sisters, about five miles out of town. When I told Terry over the telephone I was going (she was then in Salisbury), she said I must have rocks in my head. I was the only white present. Sister Mushaya’s husband ran a store and tavern, attached to their house, and sitting on the bar was the local guerrilla capo, Comrade ‘Bee-Gee’.
It was then he told me how they had spared Dr Scott. Comrade Bee-Gee was built like Mike Tyson, and moreover had the cold eye of one who knew how to aim a rifle, instead of waving it about, as his subordinates were cheerfully believed by the whites to do. All this made me glad for Jock’s sake that Comrade Bee-Gee approved of his activities; though he could have looked like King Kong and shot like Dead-eye Dick for all Jock would have cared.
Comrade Bee-Gee also told me that the two naughty boys had been ‘dealt with’ - which made me feel sorry for them for the first time and hope they were still above ground, or that Comrade Bee-Gee had not anticipated the surgeon in the matter of re-setting their fractures.
Comrade Soft Guy was also present - with a towel wrapped round his face, for some reason.
A succession of youths came in, carrying home-made imitation rifles, which they handed over to a stern-eyed Comrade Bee-Gee, which he dropped on a growing pile behind the bar. These were evidently the mujibas, previously described. They looked very sheepish, but were allowed to join the party.
Then a privileged number of us were invited into the house itself to watch Prince Charles on the telly lowering and raising flags (lowering anyway). And suddenly there was a call for the doctor.
A man in the tavern had had an argument with another man, who had struck him. The first man had a friend who was a deaf-mute, as devoted to him as a dog. The deaf-mute, a skinny little creature, possessed surprising strength, or spirit, because he sprang to the aid of his friend and knocked down the second man, who was much bigger than him, with a single blow. The second man fell backwards and hit his head on the concrete, just outside the door. When I examined him, he was unconscious with fixed but constricted pupils.
We threw him into the back of my car and I took him to the hospital, where I ordered the usual half-hourly observations. After three days, he was the same. There were no indications for surgery, but I ordered him to Salisbury for specialist management. There, after a few days, he died.
There was an inquest at Gwelo. I spoke my piece. Then the pathologist’s report was placed before me - brain laceration - and I was asked to elucidate. No verdict is reached at a magistrate’s inquest in Zimbabwe. The matter was not further referred.
It was a year or two before the new order made itself felt in the health service. I have said the hospital was divided into white and black, the white section (with the exception of the pensioners) being private and used by the mine doctors for their private practice. In 1979 (before independence), when Muzorewa became prime minister, the last official racial barriers fell away throughout society. The private wards were now open to all races, and educated middle-class Africans (as in hotels and other places their tastes inclined them to use) were no longer subjected to insulting exclusion: something which most whites by now realised should have happened years before. It would not have solved the country’s main problems, but it would have done much to help.
But the new government was still in the first flush of its Marxist-Leninist enthusiasm. It was not only concerned with race: it was concerned with class.
To be sure, the boss class took good care of itself: the first practical (as opposed to theoretical) principle of a Marxist state is, of course, the Nomenklatura - which is Russian for jobs for the boys. But private beds in government hospitals were out (except maybe in the capital for the more equal animals).
I was sitting in the dressing-room of the theatre with Percy, when I received a telephone call from the secretary for health - not the one who arranged my marriage, who had gone long ago - but a black socialist one.
‘I hear you still have private beds in your hospital.’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t you know that private beds had been abolished in government hospitals?’
‘No’ - nobody had told me. Our wide-awake hospital secretary, a little highly conscientious old man, called Peter Reynolds, would certainly have shown me any such directive, if only out of high indignation, even if I had missed it myself, which was more probable.
‘Are there any private patients in your hospital now?’
I reflected. As it happened, there were two - two little old ladies who happened to be pioneer pensioners.
‘Yes, there are two pensioners.’
‘What sort of pensioners?’
‘Pioneer pensioners.’
‘What are you talking about?’
I explained. The bit about people whose ancestors arrived before 1900 may have peeved him, but that was not my fault.
‘Get them out!’
‘Shall I wait till they are ready to be discharged?’
‘No. Get them out today!’
Well, by regulation, they could and should have gone to the old African ward, which would have been a cultural hardship, to say the least. It was a cultural hardship, as I said, to people like the secretary himself, and was not the sort of thing he was used to in Salisbury.
An order is an order. I put the telephone down.
‘What was all that about?’ growled Percy, whose antennae, as well as his ears, were in good working order.
I explained. Percy was now superintendent of the mine hospital. He offered to take the pensioners under his wing. In anticipation of such changes, the mine had built a new managerial and private hospital, small but gleaming. Percy offered the pensioners permanent accommodation there.
Well, these two old ladies were under Jock’s care, and he didn’t appreciate their premature discharge and transference to other hands on non-medical grounds at neither his nor their expressed wish. Nor was there any reason why he should, or reason why he should not be furious - which he was. Needless to say, his fury in no way included Percy, to whom he was duly grateful.
This still left the problem of outpatients. The ‘white’ hospital had a small outpatients department, still used by ‘government whites’ - ie, police and pensioners. Jock continued to see the pensioners in this outpatient department. (By now there were few Europeans in the police service and they had all gone private - as had the African police officers.) I could see trouble in this. (I should say that the previous secretary sanctioned the conjunction of our two districts on the condition that each of us should have the last word in his own area.) Of course, I sympathised with Jock. It was outrageous that a doctor should be separated from his patients, or they from him, against the wishes of both. But I had a family to raise in this country, and it behoved me to keep my nose clean.
Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa Page 32
