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

by Warren Durrant

  Muk was another tall Rhodesian. Bill used to say the sun made the stock spring up: he regarded the inhabitants of our islands (including myself) as a race of dwarfs. Muk had a peculiar sense of humour, and described the Ashwin brides as ‘the four ugly sisters’. The Micklesfields provided two more tall handsome cousins, a boy and a girl. Hugh was a geologist. Debbie was the one who dared to marry an ‘Italian’, though, like the ‘Dutch’ Boyce, he was as Rhodesian as Bill.

  Muk died of cancer in 1986, before he was fifty.

  And in Malawi, was another sister, ‘Bobby’, and her family, with whom we spent one happy holiday in that beautiful country. Bobby was most like Terry. And, needless to say, more tall, good-looking cousins, three boys and a girl. They moved about a lot, as husband Lionel was in the tobacco business: a charming man, the only one in the family, to Bill’s eye, as ‘short’ as me, although he was born in Africa (Malawi), until we were joined by the ‘Italian’ Andy.

  This was the immediate family: the ‘extended family’ would fill a book themselves, and as Bill has undertaken the writing of it, I will leave the task to him.

  In 1984 my redoubtable Scottish aunt, Ina, came to visit us. We had invited a number of people whose hospitality overseas we had wished to return, but at 70, Aunt Ina was the only one with the spirit to take us up. Admittedly, she was a seasoned traveller, having done a number of far-flung journeys on behalf of her church.

  I picked her up at Harare airport, having left Terry and the children behind at Shabani. They would join us later on the tour of the country we had planned. I took her first to Bill’s pig farm. He had certainly made an effort in converting one of the rough rooms into a passable lady’s bedroom; but on the first night we had a problem.

  Aunt Ina knocked on my door. ‘Warren, there’s an enormous spider in my room.’

  I went to inspect. Sure enough, there was a wall spider, about as big as a man’s hand.

  ‘That’s all right. It’s just a wall spider.’ They are, of course, quite harmless.

  ‘I don’t want to know what kind it is. I just want it out of my room.’

  I fetched a yard brush. Bill came to help me. Of course, the things run like greyhounds, and this one did, all over the place, and ended up behind the dressing table.

  So we had to move the dressing table, and continue the hunt in the dimly lit room. I took a swipe or two at the poor thing. We lost track of it. At any rate we didn’t have a body to show. We told Aunt Ina it must have run out of the room. I don’t think she was convinced, which wasn’t surprising, because neither were we. She told me later, she switched off her light and made up her mind not to think about it or anything else that might be in the room, and slept soundly.

  Aunt Ina had been given a message to deliver to Dr George (whose surname shall remain buried in shame) by his brother Walter in Edinburgh. I got him on the telephone and handed him over to Aunt Ina. She hadn’t asked to meet him; thought we might get a cup of tea, but didn’t expect him to shoot the messenger. ‘So nice to hear from you,’ replied George. ‘Have a nice holiday. Goodbye!’ Thanks very much! My words: Aunt Ina’s thoughts.

  We took a plane and saw the Victoria Falls. I took photographs with her camera. Then I tried to unload it, and ruined the film. We appealed to a young man who looked promising. A lucky choice; he was a professional. He showed me how to load and unload the camera (which Aunt Ina herself wasn’t sure of), and I returned to the Falls alone to repeat all the pictures. ‘And don’t stand too close to the edge, Warren Durrant! I was very worried about you yesterday. I’ve got to get you back to your wife!’

  We stayed at Wankie Game Park. One evening at supper, Aunt Ina felt chilly. It was July, winter. She walked back to our block to fetch a stole. After supper we walked back together, and saw the trees broken by a herd of elephants. Aunt Ina had missed them by about five minutes. Not a nice party to bump into!

  We returned to Harare, picked up the car, and travelled down to Boyce and Dozie’s farm, where Terry and the children met us.

  Then on to Bulawayo, where Aunt Ina felt really cold for the only time. She met Rosemary and Muk there. Then to Shabani and home. Aunt Ina saw the hospital, and came with me to a clinic out in the bare winter bundu.

  Then to Fort Victoria with Terry and the children. Michael had pointed out mombes (cows) to Aunt Ina and explained what they were. Aunt Ina spotted one. ‘Mombe,’ she said. ‘Cow,’ Michael corrected her solemnly.

  On to the Eastern Highlands - ‘Scotland in the tropics’: Melsetter, where Aunt Ina’s room opened on the magnificent panorama of the Chimanimani Mountains, a picture window indeed. Then the Vumba, where she got nipped by a dog, fortunately vaccinated, otherwise we would have to think about rabies. Finally, Inyanga, the most like Scotland of all.

  We dropped in at Gareth’s place on the way back to Harare. He had made a pile of sandwiches, being forewarned.

  And so to Bill’s, spiders resolutely ignored. Last stop before the plane home. While we were alone, Aunt Ina said, ‘That was the best day’s work ye did in your life, Warren Durrant, when ye married Terry!’ And I agreed. She also said, ‘Now you’ve got children of your own, you will appreciate better how people feel about them.’ ‘Too true!’ I replied.

  Little boys and girls differentiate early, for all the opinions and practices of modern educationists. Mary certainly loved dolls as much as Michael loved his pedal-car, etc. And Mary developed an early interest in weddings. Whenever we saw one from the car, black or white, we had to stop until Mary had indentified the bride, like the queen bee. And before long, we got invited to some.

  There were family weddings, but the one I remember most was that of an African colleague: or rather, it was his wedding breakfast. The poor man had got married some years earlier, and had children as old as ours, but had spent that time saving up for this obligatory event, which in the case of such a ‘big man’ as a doctor, included his whole clan, let alone his extended family. There were no less than a thousand guests, whom we joined in the meat and sadza (maize porridge), not being among the inner party. The latter ate rather more delicately in a separate room, into which Mary strayed to catch a glimpse of the bride, and was gently led out of. Then a disco started, which made such a tremendous noise, Terry and I could not bear it. We left early, after I had left the customary donation with one of the ushers. The formal ceremony, where the bride and groom sit like Egyptian gods, while the money is collected and the donors’ names and contributions called out, came later.

  After we left, Mary was disappointed. She was looking forward to a dance, seeming impervious to the dreadful noise. To compensate her, we stopped at a garage and let her slip out to buy sweets. She came running back in the path of an oncoming car. I shouted to her to stop. Thank God, it was a cold day and the window was closed or she might have heard me. Of course, one of us should have gone with her: parents should be everywhere, but aren’t. I felt miserable with guilt and said so. So did Terry, no doubt, as she tried to comfort me. Parenthood!

  Another delight of Mary’s was hotels - posh ones. If there was anything she enjoyed more than a posh hotel, it was a posher one. The plush surroundings, the attention of the waiters (and what a fuss African waiters make of children!), made her shine like a little star and enter the place with the glow of a little princess. Auntie Rosemary won a week-end at the Bulawayo Southern Sun, which was a very posh hotel. This was a busman’s holiday for her, on her own doorstep, and joyless enough without her husband, so she gave the tickets to us. It was a welcome break for us, perhaps not very thrilling for Michael, but was one of the high spots of Mary’s little life.

  Quite a different affair was what we called the ‘Spooky Hotel’ (which shall remain otherwise nameless). Our usual hotel in Salisbury was full, and they directed us to this place. We were booked in by a surly clerk, smoking at a rough desk. We took two rooms, divided between boys and girls. Michael succeeded in locking us out of his and my room, so we took the lift to the ground floor in search
of the surly clerk. We discovered that the ground floor had no exit: just a corridor ending in a blank wall. For some reason, I tried one of the bedroom doors. It opened, and there was the surly clerk, like the Cheshire cat, without his grin, smoking at his desk.

  We secured another key, and got into the room again. I switched on the light. The bulb exploded and sent the lamp shade flying across the room like a frisby. After that, there was no way Michael was going to sleep there. He could have been no more than seven. He shared his sister’s bed and left the haunted room to me.

  Besides these week-end breaks, we had our main holidays: best of all, a week or two in the national parks. Here, for about ten pound a night, one had a two-bedroomed lodge fit for a prince, with everything supplied, including servant, except food and drink. We went often to the mountains, where we made picnics, such as by the Inyangombe river pool, which I told the children was a natural pool, and Mary ever after called the ‘national pool’. Here, Terry and the children splashed in the shallow water, while the river curved dark and deep beyond. We rowed on the dam lakes, and I tried to catch trout. At least, I could get the giant horse-whip into the air to the extent of twenty yards out, if I never caught anything. Michael would assist me, first waiting at the foot of the grass jetty, until I had cast the line, then galloping up to wind it in, then back and forth again. This was game enough, quite apart from the question of fish, and I tired before he did. Needless to say, there was football and cricket, in which Mary joined, and such activities as made me advise people to have their children before the age of thirty.

  At Udu, at sunset, we heard the baboons barking on the kopje, beyond the lake, among the rocks above the flat-topped camel thorns - wha-hoo! wha-hoo! - and the children barked back and made them bark again:

  - concourse wild

  Of jocund din.

  Terry used to fear that children missed out in Africa: I was not so sure.

  At McIlwaine, we had a lodge, high among the rocks and trees, above the lake, where the dassies, the children loved, would creep as close as their curiosity and their fear balanced out. No such fear restrained the cheeky vervet monkeys, who would get into the house and pinch things, if you weren’t careful. There, we went game-viewing in the afternoon - not the best time - and saw buck, wildebeest and zebra in the long grass; hippo in the marshes, and hippo droppings like footballs on the roads; a giraffe or a herd of impala in the woods. Then back for a swim in the pool, before I got the braai (barbecue) going in the evening.

  And evenings were best always. I smoked my pipe and drank a whisky, while the meat roasted, and the deep peace of the African night grew around me. At Kariba, I saw a bat hawk, with its strange scimitar wings, dipping and turning, snapping up as many as twenty bats before sunset. At another place, I saw the pennant-winged nightjars, fluttering their streamers from their wing tips, and in the night heard the cry of the common nightjar: Good-Lord-deliver-us! And everywhere, the shrill scream of the bush baby.

  At home I would read to the children in the evenings. (We had television, but it was poor - black and white, and the programmes very limited.) They sat on either arm of my chair. First favourites were the Noddy books - in the original ‘golliwog’ edition, which had passed unnoticed in Zimbabwe, until the new PC edition arrived, which seemed to mean ‘parochial consumption’, as far as anyone in Zimbabwe could understand the strange Anglo-Saxon objection to golliwogs, which was seen as the poor old British lion losing his wits at last as well as his claws. The children spotted right away that Sid Golly’s garage had been taken over by somebody called Bobby Bear, I think. Useless to explain: I had to pass it off as a purely commercial transaction.

  Other favourites were the Ladybird books, especially The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, which was read many times, when Daddy had to finish, singing the carols to which Country Mouse returns in the church. Then I found a Victorian edition of the story, in an old book in the hospital library, which might have been written by Lord Macaulay for his unfortunate children (or nephews/nieces, perhaps?): ‘The plain fare of his Rustic Cousin soon palled on the cultivated palate of the Town Mouse -.’ The children didn’t recognise it as the same story.

  When Jock retired in 1985, we moved to the top house, which was more spacious and secluded, among the trees and three acres of rather wild garden. This was much better for a family than the rather pokey bottom house, which, for all its two storeys, had rather small rooms. We felt altogether more relaxed, especially Terry, who had to spend more time in the place than I did.

  But it was not altogether secluded; or rather, its very seclusion seemed to attract the lunatics we treated at the hospital, among everything else. Perhaps the troubled minds of these poor creatures found some peace in this quiet spot. One day, as Terry was writing a letter in the dining room, she became aware of a presence behind her. Looking round, she saw a man dressed in hospital pyjamas, staring into space. She said, ‘Good afternoon’, walked calmly to the telephone in the bedroom, and called for the male nurses, who came and led the man quietly away.

  Another time, after we had gone to bed, we heard a noise in the garden. ‘Be careful, Warren,’ said Terry, as she followed me to the back door. Outside, we saw a schoolgirl in her school uniform, calmly removing our washing from the line. She was a schizophrenic, poor thing; must have lately arrived, and not even changed into hospital nightdress. She wagged a reproving finger at us and said: ‘You must not leave your washing out after dark!’ A telephone call to the hospital saw the washing restored and the girl sent to bed.

  We were having Sunday lunch, when a girl of sixteen burst through the front door and ran screaming through the dining room into the kitchen, where she hid under the sink. She was pursued by two young men, who took no more notice of us than she did. We thought this must be another mental case, but were rather disturbed when the young men tried to drag her out from under the sink, where she was clinging to the drainpipe, especially when they began beating her with the garden hose, combining insult (to us) with injury (to her). Finally, they got her away by dragging her out by the legs and the hair, leaving a considerable quantity of the latter on the floor.

  Norah, who had come from her kaya to see what was happening, informed us that the girl was a perfectly normal schoolgirl, who had got a bad report and managed to lose it on her way home. The men were her brothers, who were paying her school fees and felt themselves aggrieved in the matter. She had no connection with the hospital, and must have run round half the town, like an antelope with the wild-dogs after her, before she sought refuge in our house. I thought I should have stopped the business, got rid of the two men, kept the girl in the house, and called the police. Thinking she was a lunatic had made me slow on the uptake, and I felt ashamed of myself. But such intervention would merely have postponed the thrashing I have no doubt she received when they got her home.

  Another Sunday morning, just before lunch, I was taking a stroll with Michael, who was then about four. We took our usual route - through the top gate, round the back roads, to the front gate, and up the internal hospital road again. We were just opposite female ward, and I was looking forward to my pipe and sherry, when a ward-maid came out and called, ‘Doctor, they want you in the ward!’

  There was nothing to do with Michael, so, per force, we went together. Usually I could leave him in the duty room. There was nobody there to look after him, but I told him to wait there, all the same. In one of the first bays I found a woman in status epilepticus. All the staff on duty, including the ward maid, were gathered round the bed, when I saw, in the ring of bodies, the small pale face of Michael, under his little bush hat, just appearing over the edge of the bed, studying the scene with intense interest.

  I gave instructions and left them to get on with it, retracing my steps homewards.Then I discovered that Michael, like Another before him, was not with me on the road; was, in fact, intent upon his father’s business. A male nurse conducted him to the door, with the gentleness only an African can show toward
s children, a consideration Michael did not return, as he struggled to get back to the interesting scenes within. Finally, they shut the door on him, and when I called him, he exhibited the face of tearful rage of Noddy, as illustrated in his books, in that character’s moments of frustration.

  An old man in hospital pyjamas, sitting on a seat nearby, propitiated Michael with a piece of sugar cane. This was the first time he had tasted it, and the new experience provided a sufficient distraction. He followed me up the gravel path to the house, quietly chewing.

  And when we got home, we ran into another problem, when Mary wanted to try the new goodie. After a good deal of protest from both parties, I cut it in half, and peace was restored.

  3 – Zvishavane

  About three years after independence, the name changes began. It consisted mostly of the Shonas claiming back the names which had been seized, not only by the pioneers, but by the Matabeles, who dominated the country before them. So Gwelo (Matabele) became Gweru; Marandellas, Marondera, etc. Shabani became Zvishavane. Names in Matabeleland stayed the same, except for some they took back from the whites, such as Esigodini for Essexvale. And the British Salisbury became Harare, which means ‘none shall sleep’, formerly for the roaring of the lions.

  I never got used to the new name of our town, which sounded more like some place in Russia than Africa. After warning people in England that the Russians had not (entirely) taken over, I wrote, in the manner of Constance Garnett: ‘On the family estate, near Zvishavane, Ivan Ivanovitch cast aside his fifth empty vodka bottle that day and exclaimed: “I am bored!” A loud bang from the next room announced that his sister, Sophia Ivanovna, had just shot herself. As Peter Simple would say: now write on...’