Fatboy and the Dancing Ladies

by Michael Holman

  “Paw-paw business . . .”

  A faraway look came over Mildred’s face.

  “I was remembering the dance in my village, when I was a girl . . .”

  There was a warning cough from Charity. For someone of her advancing years, Mildred continued to display an unusually close interest in the initiation rites of adolescents, and unless headed off could discuss them in embarrassing detail.

  That, at least, was Charity’s view. Mildred, on the other hand, felt that the decline in the practice of initiation and the rise of immorality were connected. She was about to say as much but again there was something in Charity’s eyes that told her she would not get very far.

  “It reminded me of the initiation dance,” she continued. “The needle entered the paw-paw and . . .”

  It was Furniver’s turn to interrupt.

  “Thank you, Mrs Kigali,” he said firmly. “We get the picture.”

  Mildred ignored him.

  “And so I was captured by my memories,” she said, and looked at Furniver as if defying him to contradict her, “and just as I did as a young girl, I began to dance. Like this . . .”

  Mildred got up from the bench where she was sitting, and hitched up her skirt.

  She took a turn round the table, moving as easily as a teenager, in a shuffling version of the conga.

  She beckoned Charity, and her friend joined in, placing her hands on Mildred’s hips and moving behind her in a subtle counter-rhythm.

  “And that was how it started,” explained Mildred. “We had danced maybe three times around Harrods. Some ladies ululated. It is a very exciting dance,” she explained. “Then just as I was finished what in my young days we called the paw-paw dance, there was a cry that was horrible to hear.

  “Tokolosh!”

  The shrill shriek had cut through the hubbub. The dancing ladies had stopped mid-step.

  “Tokolosh!”

  The terror in the cry had been palpable.

  34

  It was the sheer scale of activity at Kuwisha’s nondescript Wilson airport that impressed Japer as he waited while Lucy Gomball completed her briefing for the hacks who would be on the same WorldFeed flight to Lokio.

  The airport itself, long supplanted by the international airport built soon after independence, had a cast-off appearance, rather like a World War Two airfield in Britain, with prefabricated huts and a lonely control tower.

  Even a coat of paint would have transformed the grubby departure hall, hardly more than a shack, where Japer stood and looked around.

  To say that business was booming would have been regarded as bad taste. Nevertheless, the twin pillars of Kuwisha’s economy were certainly thriving.

  Tourists heading for game parks or the Indian Ocean clambered into small planes that could have been swallowed whole by the huge lumbering giants with UN marked on their sides, attended by an army of workers, and which operated out of the farther away of the two runways.

  Land Rovers and mechanical loaders went back and forth between a collection of hangars and huge planes with gaping bellies, as if feeding a gargantuan appetite for sacks of rice, or dried milk powder, or containers of cooking oil marked “Gift from the people of the USA”.

  Across from the hangars were the offices of the many safari companies that catered for the dreams of an Africa that was exclusive to visitors from abroad.

  Japer moved closer, close enough to overhear Lucy’s account of the state of the civil war in the neighbouring country that had left hundreds of thousands of civilians dependent on organisations like WorldFeed for shipments of essentials.

  As he listened to her briefing, Japer felt he was being seduced by a vast continent, and life in London seemed humdrum by comparison, trivial and inconsequential.

  Wild animals and children, Lucy explained, were the innocent victims of the conflict; a conflict that inevitably spilled over into Kuwisha. She described the world of journalists and aid workers, a world in which the sun was African and invariably blazing, the horizon endless, and the rivers infested, usually with crocodiles.

  As she warmed to her task the catchphrases and the clichés beloved of the press corps flowed off her tongue. In the world in which they lived and breathed, the players in the stories they filed occupied a region that invariably was hostile, where battles that were distant were fought in towns that were remote. On streets that were dusty, dogs that were mangy chewed on scraps that had been abandoned.

  She pulled no punches as she described a civil war that was bitter and brutal and bloody, which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians who always were innocent.

  Lucy described lines that were unending, of refugees who were pitiful, living in scenes that were biblical, carrying possessions that were pathetic, and who were fleeing warlords who were ruthless.

  And the cost of the war that created these horrors, the BBC asked?

  “About a million dollars a day,” said Lucy. “It’s time to go.”

  Japer was about to follow her, when he heard raised voices.

  He edged closer to the source. There was little doubt that something not far short of a scuffle had broken out between the correspondent for The Guardian and the Telegraph’s Africa editor.

  The two of them were at the head of the queue for tickets on the flight to Lokio, which this morning was operated by Christians Concerned for Africa.

  “It is my turn to buy,” said The Guardian.

  “Absolutely not,” said the Telegraph. “You bought the tickets when we went on the charter to Kisangani.”

  Japer listened in, astonished, as back and forth went what seemed to be an exchange about a matter that to an outsider seemed unimportant, yet one that aroused such passion it required the intervention of a Times colleague to resolve.

  Lucy ushered Japer onto the waiting chartered plane. As soon as he was seated, he took out his notebook from one of the jacket pockets of his safari suit, and started scribbling.

  He had heard about the calibre of the Africa correspondents, but what he had seen cast a new light on this particular group.

  “In the cut-throat business of journalism, the Africa corps operates like the front-line elite,” he wrote. “The quarrels and tensions are kept within their close-knit ranks – women, drinks, personality clashes; and it is hard for an outsider to win their confidence, impossible to persuade them to talk about the stress of reporting on the continent’s horrors. But when it comes to paying their way, they are scrupulous to a fault.”

  In his crumpled cream linen suit and Panama hat, David Podmore cut a figure of some elegance as he stepped out of the High Commission car which had drawn up at the entrance to the departure hall at Wilson airport.

  Briefcase in hand, he made straight for Lucy.

  “Wish I was going to Lokio, but the High Commissioner needs me here . . . pity, would have loved to have gone.” His voice trailed off.

  During his three years in Kuwisha, Podmore admitted, he had enjoyed few opportunities to get out from behind his desk, but when he did he relished it. And here, at Wilson, he felt close to the front line in the unending battle against disease and disaster, war and famine waged by the international community.

  Unlike some cynics, he was not inclined to bash the foreign aid agencies. By and large, he felt, they did a jolly good job. All things considered. Given the challenges they faced; and the environment in which they worked.

  True, some were what he called “a waste of rations”. Most, however, did a hard job very well, like the Irish charity he supported, encouraging his many visitors to follow suit. On his office notice-board was pinned a photo of a goat he had sponsored, yellow-eyed, wispy bearded, jaws caught in mid-grind, giving the creature’s face a lopsided look.

  “No ordinary goat, but an Irish goat,” he explained, one of 200 flown to Kuwisha by the charity, and distributed to needy families.

  Pearson’s response to the suggestion that he paid out the £10 needed to sponsor one of the creatures had been
“typical, bloody typical” of the man: “Talk about coals to Newcastle. Africa needs goats from Ireland about as badly as the Sahara needs sand from Darfur.”

  The diplomat had responded with vigour.

  “You think you are so bloody smart. Whoever came up with the idea deserves a medal. Simple, affordable and makes a difference. Makes a hell of a difference, in fact.

  “I tell you,” he continued, “the look of sheer delight on the faces of African families. With the greatest respect, Pearson, if only your cynicism could be matched by their optimism we would all be better off.”

  He looked around the departure hall but couldn’t spot Pearson. Pity. He would have liked to have seen his reaction to the press release prepared earlier at the High Commission.

  Lucy would do instead.

  “Nice to have a good news story for a change. All the horrors can get one down.” He allowed a look of pain to cross his face, and put on an expression that suggested he had witnessed horrors no man should ever see. “How’s it going in Kisangani?”

  Ever since Podmore had briefed a British aid minister on a visit to a WorldFeed project in the eastern Zaire town, he presented himself as something of an expert on the trials and tribulations of that part of the world. “If the ceasefire hadn’t held . . . Kisangani,” he would say, an expression of pain crossing his face, “Kisangani.”

  “I’ve got some good news,” said Podmore now. “Bit of a scoop,” he added.

  He gave Lucy a copy of the press release he had prepared.

  “Britain will lead the way in a campaign to show the link between saving Kuwisha’s endangered rhino and tackling the country’s homeless youth. Aid minister Hilary Bland will announce in London today that £5m will be committed to an ongoing programme in support of education and conservation.

  “Note to editors: Britain will provide a total of £40m through UK and European development initiatives.”

  “Not exactly generous, is it?” said Lucy, knowing that she was breaking the golden NGO rule about the inadvisability of biting the hand that funded you.

  “Five million quid may not seem much to you, Lucy, but it could do a lot on the ground.”

  “Five million, if they ever got it, would be marvellous, but you’re up to your old tricks,” said Lucy, wagging a mocking, admonitory finger at Podmore. “It’s the old double counting device. You announce a country programme at the start of the aid year, worth forty million in the case of Kuwisha. Then when something crops up, like a famine, or an education appeal, or assisting street kids, or supporting an Aids campaign, you dish out five million here, ten million there – but it is not what we call ‘new money’.”

  Lucy was getting into her stride.

  “Result is you get three public relations bangs for your buck. First, when you announce the forty mil programme. Then you get another pat on the back when you support a famine appeal or education project, ’cos most of us, including just about every hack, assume it is in addition to the forty mil the UK originally committed. And then we learn that you’ve included money from the European Development Fund. All very naughty indeed.”

  Taken aback by this onslaught, Podmore did his best.

  “Strictly off the record . . .”

  “Sorry, Dave, I’ve got to dash,” said Lucy.

  Although it was a bum-numbing, bone-shaking fifteen-hour journey to Lokio by road, it was a mere thirty-minute hop by plane.

  From the air, as the airstrip loomed closer, the camp, with its rondavels around the decent sized swimming pool and a double tennis court alongside, could easily be mistaken for an up-market tourist lodge in the middle of one of Kuwisha’s famed animal reserves.

  Japer’s plane bounced along the grass airstrip and rumbled to a halt next to one of half a dozen warehouses, fenced and patrolled by security guards.

  As Japer stepped out of the plane he was greeted with a snappy salute from the driver of a waiting Land Rover.

  “Good day to you, suh. I am Isaac.”

  “And I am Wilberforce, your guide,” said a young man smartly dressed in the uniform of the National Park Service. “I can answer your questions.”

  Both men smiled broadly.

  Japer returned the salute, and shook hands with both men.

  After coffee and biscuits by the pool next to the office buildings, they set off for the rhino sanctuary.

  Now this was really living, Japer decided. Africa was starting to work its magic. There was, after all, something worthwhile in this ambassador for children business – provided, of course, the appointment at the rhino sanctuary, a short drive away, did not turn out to be the ordeal he feared.

  35

  The Land Rover carrying Japer and Wilberforce was waved to a halt yet again. If the number of police check-points on the road from the landing strip to the rhino sanctuary were any indicator, the vehicles of Kuwisha must surely be among the most frequently checked in the world, Japer thought to himself.

  In the space of sixty kilometres there must have been no fewer than three roadblocks. At each one, a well-turned-out policeman circled the car, barking out questions in Swahili to which Isaac, the driver, gave monosyllabic responses. Tyres, brakes, headlamps, rear-view mirror, all came under scrutiny.

  Each time Japer went through his routine, explaining that he had come from London, to help the people of Kuwisha.

  “The Queen greets you,” he said when one inspection seemed unnecessarily rigorous. “I am ambassador for NoseAid,” he added.

  And each time, after checking the papers for the car and an exchange with Isaac, the police waved them on.

  “It’s the end of the month,” said Isaac.

  “Ah,” said Japer, “I get it. Car. Licence. Expires. Checking.”

  “No, no,” said Wilberforce. “End of the month. They are hungry . . .”

  “Good Lord,” said Japer, impressed by the example of hungry policemen who nevertheless gave road safety such a high priority.

  Soon they turned off the potholed main road, onto a rutted track.

  The Land Rover lurched from side to side, and only Japer’s seatbelt prevented his head from hitting the roof.

  Potholes and punctures permitting, Wilberforce assured Japer, they would reach the camp, which was home to the rhino the readers of the Clarion had adopted, in twenty minutes.

  “I assume,” said Japer, “that the road is like this because of the poachers?”

  “Excuse?” said Isaac.

  “The worse the road, the more difficult to get access,” Japer suggested. “In this way you can keep the location of the rhino a secret . . .”

  Isaac swerved to avoid another pothole.

  Wilberforce intervened.

  “Politicians,” he said, “always chopping, always eating.” His hand conveyed invisible food to his mouth, in the ubiquitous gesture that across Africa accompanied the phrase. “Eating,” he repeated, “always eating.”

  “Good God!” said Japer, shocked. “Disgraceful.”

  Wilberforce pointed to a group of giraffe, and Isaac concentrated on the track ahead. No further words from them seemed necessary. Though they were surprised that their passenger had reacted so strongly to the disclosure of what was common knowledge.

  Surely everyone knew that Kuwisha’s Department of Parks and Wildlife was rife with sleaze, and notorious for crooked deals in which money intended for road maintenance went on inflated or non-existent contracts, into the pockets of the politicians?

  Roads were bad because money was “diverted”, as the World Bank would put it. Simple as that. Deliberate neglect of a route in an effort to make sensitive areas of the national parks inaccessible in the hope of protecting vulnerable or endangered species, had nothing to do with it.

  Isaac negotiated another pothole.

  Just to make sure that he hadn’t been misunderstood, Wilberforce repeated both the feeding gesture and the words: “Politicians. Always eating.”

  He glanced at Japer, who seemed satisfied.

>   “Absolutely,” said Japer. He searched for a pen and notepad in one of his many useful pockets. “Like where I come from. Except they eat cows, not rhinos.”

  “Like Kuwisha?” said Wilberforce, somewhat uncertainly.

  Japer gave a cry of triumph. The notebook and ballpoint pen had been located in a handy pouch, sewn onto his trouser legs. This particular pocket was just above his knee.

  “Now tell me about the Masaai,” said Japer, pen in hand, notebook open. “At least they don’t eat rhino,” he chuckled.

  Isaac and Wilberforce laughed politely. The man must be mad. Best humour him.

  “Can I see Masaai in town?”

  “Plenty, plenty,” said Wilberforce.

  A thought suddenly struck Japer.

  “How many rhinos do you have in Kuwisha?”

  Wilberforce gave the question careful consideration for some time.

  “Many.”

  Japer made a note.

  “So how many is many? Approximately?”

  Although Wilberforce had a fair idea, he kept the figure to himself. Depending on the motive of the questioner, the correct answer could be “very few” or “too many”. It had to be pitched just right – few enough to keep up a shuttle of concerned visitors from far-off countries who used his services, and not so many that the shuttle would cease as international attention was focused on another African state. True, there was talk of a wave of poaching, not only of rhinos. According to the minister for the Department of Parks and Wildlife, there were at least fifty of the beasts – though the minister of finance thought this estimate was generous. Wherever the truth lay, Wilberforce was determined to keep his head down.

  More than his job was worth.

  “Plenty,” he said.

  Had the Land Rover not hit a particularly deep pothole at that moment, Japer would have pursued the matter. As it was, the combination of the jolt, and the answer to his earlier question – the matter-of-fact assertion that politicians as well as poachers were responsible for the plight of Kuwisha’s rhinos – distracted him.