A Single Swallow

by Horatio Clare

  The rain came again that night, with a lightning storm. In the morning Ouesso resembled a film set of small buildings sinking into fields of reddish mud. Car wheels spun and skidded and people picked their ways between mires with the concentration of hopscotch players. The kind hotelier showed me a stationery shop where the proprietor changed euros into CFAs, and a man in a splattered red car pulled up alongside us, and grinned. We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. He drove off.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘That was the man who owns the hotel,’ the hotelier said. ‘He is a very important person in Ouesso; he is in the customs. But now he knows who you are, you will be fine.’

  ‘He has made a lot of money in customs?’

  ‘Yes, a lot of money.’

  There was a very strange atmosphere in the town. People went to work, or out into the day, at any rate, in a rather unconvinced way, as if this was what normality demanded of them: the unconvincing thing was the normality itself. As far as I could tell, the only way of life in a place like Ouesso was to attach yourself to something or someone with access to money and then wait, hoping some portion of it would trickle to you. Apart from the few shops and bars there was no obvious income available to the townspeople but service in the police or the army: a great many men were in uniform. Everybody else seemed to congregate around the port.

  Ouesso stands on the banks of the Sangha River, which flows eventually into the Congo. Ouesso’s port principally serves motorised pirogues, canoes with outboard engines, but the Sangha here is a busy waterway and the riverside was crowded with people. Among them were the old woman, the young husband, wife and child, and Mariam, holding my notebook aloft.

  It was a joyful reunion. Mariam had found my emergency €50 note, concealed between the notebook’s binding and cover, but she could not read the English notice I had printed in the front, promising €50 for its safe return. While I went to deal with the police, the customs, the health authorities and the pirogue captains, she changed her prize into CFAs. The fake yellow fever certificate did not fool the man in the white coat but he was impressed by the real thing, and the crowded vaccination certificate. It took two hours and an altercation with a man I thought was running off with my passport (it turned out that he was an assistant to the chef du port) to be stamped out of Congo and secure passage upriver: I traded small bribes, cigarettes, submission, conversation, fees and taxes in return for my seat at the back of the motor pirogue. My travelling companions waved from the bank, Bertrand with his arms clasped above his head, as if sending the spirit of victory after me, and the canoe turned into the current. I looked away from everyone, afraid, in a ludicrous way, that I would cry. It was strange and miserable to become companions, to join a group and earn its kindness and feel its protection, and then to snatch myself away, to go on, always, always on. It was like leaving old friends for the last time.

  A warm heavy mist lifted off the river, trailing soaking fingers through the trees. The captain was about nineteen but seemed much older as he read and reread the river, slaloming between up- and down-currents, tacking up long straits, stitching sandbanks together. It was a far, far-away place, between worlds, between sense. The jungle on our port side was Congo but would become Cameroon. Up ahead of us and to the right what was now Cameroon would become the Central African Republic. Overhead the sky was thick grey vapour and around us the world was water, sand and ooze, squeezed between the roots of bent and fallen trees. An eagle flapped heavily across the river; I could not make out its species. Ahead the waterway divided as another river flowed into the Sangha from the west. Down this, at disproportionate speed, came a blistering white motor boat carrying eight or so passengers, three of them white men, and all wearing bright yellow full-body protective suits – not rubberised, like dry-suits, but light and bulky like chemical warfare gear. The white men and I stared at each other. One of them nodded, then they were gone.

  ‘Those suits,’ I asked the captain, ‘– Ebola?’

  ‘No,’ he smiled, ‘they are loggers.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his smile fading. We nodded through the wash they had left as if overcoming a bad taste in the mouth. I felt I had not seen any of my tribe for a year, and then there they were, so insulated from the river’s morning that they made this distant world seem diseased.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Confines of Cameroon

  The Confines of Cameroon

  IN NAMIBIA I had feared Zambia, imagining it a poor and desperate place. In Zambia I had feared Congo: the mere word conjured images of slaughter and anarchy, child soldiers and casual death. I knew very little of Cameroon. The police, I believed, would be grasping, and the political situation was unstable: in the last week there had been news of mass demonstrations and riots in Cameroon, sparked by a rise in the price of fuel but swollen by President Paul Biya’s suggestion that he might change the constitution to extend his twenty-five years in power. In the last week people had been dying in Yaoundé and Douala, shot down by the army. The guidebook said very little of the world that awaited upriver: ‘Cameroon’s wild east . . . logging, truckers, prostitutes . . .’ was all it made of Yokadouma, a town a day north, through which I would have to pass. Of our destination, Socampo, a frontier village on the river bank, it made no mention. Neither the village nor any road to it appeared on the maps I carried.

  I had no food and no knowledge of how the transport networks, if there were such, might operate; I had no contacts or telephone numbers in Cameroon, but I had learned trust. Where there were people there would be food. Where there were roads there would be vehicles. The journey seemed to have a momentum, an onward drive. I was beginning to have faith – in African travel, in the people, above all, but also in myself. As long as I could stay well, and barring any disasters, it felt as though that onrush itself would carry me through.

  The first sign of Cameroon was a break in the wet vegetation on the left side, a muddy haul-out and a few pirogues lying in the water like seals. In midstream a large boat with a cabin lay on its side on a mud-bank. Up ahead, where the wet sky loured, was a kind of mirage. A truck, yellow as a toy, floated across the dirty silver river on a raft, apparently buoyed on the mist. The pirogue nosed into the muddy slipway and we disembarked. There were three other travellers: a slender man with a blue baseball cap, a young, chubby woman, a hugely broad man with a sports bag and a red baseball cap on backwards. One of the pirogue captains asked me where I was from.

  ‘Portugal?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Non, Pays de Galles,’ I said again. It seemed a strange conversation to hold, on the slippery interim between the river and Cameroon: though overcast, it was as hot as the brightest Welsh summer day and wet as deepest autumn.

  The man looked about him sceptically, as if this was an obvious fabrication.

  ‘Oui,’ rumbled the big head under the red cap, ‘Pays de Galles – rugby!’

  Before we had even reached the customs hut at the top of the slope he and I were talking rapidly, exchanging names of flankers, fly-halves, teams, championships and results.

  ‘I am a rugby player,’ he said. ‘I have played for Cameroon.’

  I never doubted him. Patrice was immensely wide and fit and strong. Aged twenty-nine he had made two appearances for his country, once against Zambia, once against Botswana, playing prop. These are the sturdiest men on the field; in addition to his strength Patrice was also light on his feet, and deft. I knew rugby enough, had watched and played it enough, to imagine he would be formidable.

  ‘I have just been down to Angola,’ he said, ‘to meet a Portuguese agent. The French wanted me to go to France for a trial but they did not let me.’

  ‘Who didn’t?’

  ‘The Cameroon Rugby Union.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I am the wrong tribe,’ he said, with a snort.

  The customs hut formed one corner of the small muddy rectangle which is Socampo. At the other corners were
bars. Nodded heads and pointed fingers urged us up the steps and inside. We took our seats on a bench and the play began.

  Behind the desk is le Gardien de la Paix, ‘the Guardian of the Peace’, who looks like a paratrooper, in smock, jump boots, beret and expression of battle-fatigue. Facing him are our party: the Drama Queen, a traveller; Patrice and Blue Hat, also travellers; and me, a tourist. Watching us, seated to the left of the leading man, is the clerk, also in military uniform.

  Outside the wooden hut people come and go. Sometimes voices are heard. The midday is sticky hot. Anyone who becomes excited will sweat and reek. An empty chair stands in the middle of the hut, facing the Gardien’s desk. It is not clear who is in charge: the clerk, the Gardien, or someone else out of sight. Through the open door red mud, green forest, puddles of water and little bar shacks are visible. The Gardien gestures me to the chair, picks up my passport and studies it for a long time.

  Watching him, my thoughts teem with possibilities. He’s never seen a passport before. No, he’s never seen a British passport before. (Long pause.) He knows exactly what he is doing. The passport is fine, the visa is fine, I know it’s fine, I sweated to get it, it’s stamped, dated, paid for, the embassy . . .

  The Gardien turns a page. Then another.

  I decide he is reading the passport, reading it like a Bible. Never did a passport suffer such attentions! Any more pressure on this passport and it will burst into flames! Relax! I tell myself, re-lax . . .

  The other travellers shuffle a little. The Gardien allows himself a disbelieving shake of his head. He has a broad nose, thick sculpted lips and an expression which now droops with something like amazed disgust. He turns rapidly back to the Congo page, then forward to the Cameroon visa. Behind me I sense the travellers have stilled. At last, the Gardien speaks.

  ‘The stamp is out of date. You must pay.’

  I jump up, forgetting protocol.

  ‘Look you can see, this should be 2008 but it’s 2007.’

  ‘May I see?’

  ‘See – 2007.’

  There is an ink stamp, and a little paper stamp, like a star, and – the wrong numeral.

  ‘But I got it in 2008!’ I yelp.

  ‘Yes, you got it in 2008, you can see the date here, but you have a 2007 stamp.’

  ‘But I paid for it . . .’

  ‘Yes, you paid for it, you can see the amount here,’ the Gardien points out, helpfully.

  ‘But . . .’

  The Gardien speaks, wearily, imperturbably, with the same air of disgust. What is he so disgusted by, I wonder?

  ‘They should have given you a 2008 stamp. To give you a 2007 stamp they should have back-dated the visa so that it ran from 31 December 2007. But’ (shrug) ‘the stamp is wrong.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘There is a charge.’

  Boldly, with a sensation that I have suddenly understood something, though I am not sure what, I say ‘Fine!’ breezily.

  The Gardien lays my passport aside. I twitch, a gesture which says ‘Do you want all my money right now?’ and the Gardien ignores it and me. He is beckoning Patrice. Patrice rises and hands over his passport. The Gardien studies it briefly then picks up the first of three beautiful tools: a rectangular stamp, followed by an oval stamp, then a black biro. The stamps are stabbed into red ink then applied with great delicacy and pushed home hard. There will be no smudge. The biro is flourished. Patrice has not even bothered to sit in the interrogation chair. The passport is returned, he sits and Blue Hat is up next. The same thing happens and he too returns to the bench.

  They could both go now, I think, but they wait. We have shared a canoe ride, a short walk and a little gossip, but somehow, already, we are a unit. We are travelling together.

  The Gardien holds out his hand to the Drama Queen (henceforth ‘Queen’). She rises, angling to one side of the desk, and places herself between the Gardien and the clerk. She offers the Gardien a piece of paper. The Gardien’s look of distaste is firmly dug into his lips: now his eyebrows hoop and pucker with incomprehension.

  ‘What’s this?’

  The Queen mutters something quick and quiet, half in French, half in patois at double speed.

  ‘But it’s not you,’ the Gardien frowns.

  ‘Yes, it isn’t because it was taken from me, this is my ID though – I came through here about two weeks ago.’

  The Gardien looks offended, as if by an evil smell.

  ‘I came through! You stamped me out!’ she cries. She is not wasting any time in quiet dispute. She is escalating.

  The Gardien sighs, shakes his head, closes his eyes and picks up my passport. The Queen withdraws towards the door, muttering.

  ‘It’s ten thousand CFA,’ he tells me. Not too much. Nobody hisses or clicks behind me – which is a good sign – and anyway there is no choice.

  ‘Fine.’

  My passport is painstakingly stamped and returned. It is beautiful. I pay the clerk. The Gardien picks up the Queen’s piece of paper.

  ‘So this is you?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, surly now.

  ‘But it is not stamped.’

  ‘The one that was stamped . . .’ she begins, exasperated.

  ‘Was stolen!’ chorus Patrice, Blue Hat and the Queen.

  ‘She had everything . . .’ Patrice rumbles.

  The Gardien raises an eyebrow. There is a slight tightening of lips. The chorus falls silent. ‘Stolen?’

  The Queen loses her temper again: ‘Taken by the fucking police on the other side!’

  The Gardien studies the pathetic, inadequate, impotent piece of ‘ID’.

  ‘But I came through,’ the Queen wails. ‘You . . .’

  ‘Right!’ snaps the Gardien, and opens a beautiful ledger like a teacher’s marking book, its lines crammed with different coloured inks, the pages crisp and bowed with the weight of biros.

  ‘Which day? What name?’

  The Queen circles the desk to stand over him and they both study the ledger.

  ‘Maybe here . . .’ she says, her finger yawing vaguely across a page.

  ‘Date?’

  ‘Wednesday, Thursday, ah, the 19th . . .?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here! That is me.’

  ‘But that is not your name.’

  ‘No, it is.’

  ‘It is not the same name as this ID.’

  ‘Yes because my ID was stolen! I told you – the police took everything. This is my sister’s ID.’

  ‘Your sister? Your sister? This is not your ID but that is your name? What the hell is this? A joke?’

  The Queen seemed to snap. Her breath came in deep gasps as she rose in a crescendo: ‘A joke! A joke to you, not a joke to me! I have been travelling for three weeks and this is what I get every time I meet you, you bastards, I crossed here three weeks ago and you stamped me, you saw me, you put me in your book and then I cross over and they take my money, they take my passport, they take my ID and just to get back to my own home I have to borrow my sister’s ID and I had to pay them to get out and now I come back here and you say you can’t even find me in your son-of-a-whore book and what can I do? What can I do? What are we supposed to do when all we want to do is live without being robbed and humiliated by the sons-of-whores and thieves who take your money and take your ID and take your passport and write things down for no reason whatsoever and what do they say then –? Give me your ID and if you haven’t got that give me your money! And you have already taken all my money and I have not done ANYTHING WRONG!’

  Tears poured down her face. Patrice, Blue Hat and I were stricken by her caterwauling, which swelled to a truly pitiful howl and tailed off in racking sobs. Something like the involuntary wince caused by a baby’s screams was carved into all our expressions. Surely, I thought, this must melt his heart. My God, I’ll pay whatever it takes to shut her up and get her through. Perhaps we could have a whip-round . . .

  The Gardien merely looked at her, and at us, as she raved,
with an expression of deepening offence. Then he spoke. He did not begin quietly and he rose rapidly to a parade-ground roar. As she had, he played as much to the three of us, sitting on the bench, as to his opponent.

  ‘You have finished? You have quite finished? You are sure? Good, because this is what it is. I have never seen you before. You do not have ID. You tell me a pack of lies about coming through here, but I have nothing and you have nothing which says that is true. You come in here and shout at me and point at a name in the book that could be anybody and then you say we are all thieves and sons-of-whores and you scream about being robbed and just trying to live your life and you have the affront, the nerve, to shout all this at me as if it is my fault? Do you know what I am doing here? Do you know why you are here? Do you know what the law is? The law is my job. That is why I am here, that is why I am asking you for your passport, because it is the law. And do you know what the law says happens now? Let me tell you. The law says there is a prison where they have rooms built for ten men. Do you know how many people are in there? Do you? Thirty-five or forty. Do they care – no, they do not care – they take you and they throw you in, you and ten more like you. And THAT’S THE LAW. So don’t you dare come in here and SHOUT AT ME, RIGHT?’

  He let us go after that. I do not think he charged her anything. We all withdrew quietly to the bar of the Hotel du Port on the other side of the slipway, where we drank Guinness. I peered into my passport, at the fresh red stamps. Guardian of the Peace Second Class, one said, and there was his beautifully neat, elegant and symmetrical signature across the centre. I cannot forget his expression as he deciphered the tale my passport told. Somewhere, thousands of miles away in London, in the grand white embassy in Kensington that he had never seen, someone was secreting and no doubt selling 2008 visa stamps, which all the records would say had been issued and paid for. No wonder, stuck on a river bank as far from the cosmopolitan world of diplomatic privilege as it was possible to be, he had shaken his head. He looked like a man who was being informed yet again – presented with documentary proof, yet again – of the utter futility of his task. There was something magnificent in his expression of disbelief at the clarity with which he saw the system for what it was: the head-shake of a disgusted and invisible witness, chained to the furthest edge of the absurd scheme of things.