Her cameraman started to move on for the next shot. ‘Nice to have your confidence.’
‘Used to shoot film, didn’t see the results until it was developed days later. And you obviously know what you’re doing.’
‘Compliment accepted,’ said Mike. ‘How about we use the baby legs here and take a low angle shot across the desk. Hardly Ridley Scott but could make your guy’s papers look a bit more interesting.’
They milked the office location for all its worth. If that didn’t keep the medical officer happy nothing would. It was with relief that Nathalie heard that the outreach team were ready to load up the jeep. If she kept some of the faces out of this then the close-ups might be useful in her documentary. They moved the kit over to the vaccines’ room. Again it was just as Joseph had described: pokey, lit by flickering fluorescents, with a background of dirty white walls.
‘Can we kill the lights and use ours?’ asked Mike.
Joseph nodded, ‘If you think you can get them in here.’
‘Only need a couple of small Mizars, no windows you see, no light to compete with.’
‘What are Mizars?’ Joseph, normally introverted and offhand, seemed to be becoming interested in the film-making process.
‘Small Fresnel prism lights. Their lenses focus the light onto one particular area. Nathalie wants to make the room look intimate, need to see your hands on the packets of vaccines. Perhaps with a bit of vapour coming out of the fridge to show it’s really cold.’
‘Right, let’s go then. As long as the fridge isn’t left open too long, we’ve got a long way to drive and need to keep them as fresh as we can.’
Nathalie intervened. ‘No problem Joseph. We’ll rehearse the movement of you putting an empty packet into the cool box with the fridge lid closed before we go for the real take, happy with that?’
By now Joseph had got the hang of rehearsals, repeat shots and close-ups, so all went well in the vaccines’ room and they were ahead of schedule to film the loading of the jeep. Shooting in the exterior made things move along even faster and, as Joseph was keen not to leave the vaccines in the cool box longer than necessary, they loaded up the crew truck and followed the outreach jeep onto the highway towards the provincial hospital.
After a few kilometres the jeep took a sudden side turning onto a smaller single-track metalled road. There was no warning and Farai was taken by surprise. He wrestled with the wheel and slew the flatbed to the left.
‘Shit, Farai, I hope that stuff on the back’s tied down,’ shouted Mike, grabbing on to the seat in front of him.
Chris peered through the back window. ‘It’s still there, that webbing is really strong. Tom and I strapped it really tight, thought we’d get some potholes. Didn’t make allowances for Farai’s crap driving but it looks like it’s passed that test as well.’
Farai had managed to get the truck back in control. ‘Not my fault. Didn’t bloody indicate, he knew we were following him.’
‘Now then boys,’ said Nathalie laughing. ‘What is it with you men and driving prowess?’
The road became narrower and, as Chris had predicted, more potholed. The truck bounced from one ridge to another. Eventually the metalled road ran out altogether and they followed the jeep along a rutted earth track, stubble grass growing along the middle. They had had no rain here for a few days so clouds of red dust were thrown in the jeep’s wake. Farai wound up the windows. The truck’s air-con had seen better days but the stifling heat was better than being choked by lungfuls of dirt.
After about an hour there were some signs of life. The odd person here and there, carrying bundles, stepped aside to let the small convoy through. Next a few shanty buildings. Corrugated roofs, breeze block walls. And at last, through the dirt haze, a lopsided sign indicating they had entered a small provincial town. An arm extended from the window of the jeep in front of them. It pointed to another unmade side road. But this thoroughfare was wider. Small thatched shops lined either side, coloured plastic litter in the street. A party of schoolchildren, incongruously dressed in neat white shirts and pinafore dresses amongst the filth of the surroundings, streamed across the road. The outreach vehicle in front began to slow. Several metres to the front of it, a large wooden board on two poles. White with a large red cross. Underneath faded painted letters.
SHURUGWI REGIONAL HOSPITAL
Twenty-one
It was unlike any hospital Nathalie had seen before. A single-storey building with faded yellow stuccoed walls. The facade was bordered by a low wall holding up a thick concrete pillared veranda. In the centre half a dozen or so wide steps led to the entrance. The walls and steps were filled with seated people. Many clutching creased hospital cards, some wearing colourful headscarves, others grubby woollen beanie hats. Not one of them was in conversation, just staring blankly into the distance. They had evidently been waiting a long time. Nathalie followed Joseph into the building. They were confronted by an officer wearing a short-sleeved khaki shirt. The epaulets on his shoulders and sewn badges on his sleeves gave him a military appearance. He was partly concealed by piles and piles of manila folders. He continued stamping them loudly; ink pad to folder, ink pad to folder. Joseph coughed to interrupt him.
‘We have your vaccines. They require refrigeration so if you don’t mind I would be grateful if you would call the duty officer.’
The man looked up but persisted in stamping. The rhythm was mesmerising.
‘Down the corridor, third door on the left,’ he muttered laconically.
‘Thank you,’ said Joseph with emphasised politeness and gestured to Nathalie to follow him along the passageway.
The corridor was lined with chairs filled with yet more people clutching manila files. Some held infants in their arms, like the adults they were silent and staring. Posters on the walls warned of malaria, bilharzia, and typhoid. One contained a strip cartoon showing how to build a better Blair latrine. All in all, it was a pretty depressing place. But the worst was to come. Nathalie peered through the glass window at the first door she came to. The room looked more like a prison cell than a hospital ward. A number of iron beds, paint peeling, were aligned against the wall. The patients partially obscured underneath mosquito nets. A doctor in a white coat was pulling back one of the muslin curtains. He examined the little boy who was sitting cross-legged on a yellow knitted blanket, expressionless. Nathalie noticed that the doctor was wearing a mask and rubber gloves. What chance did the poor kid have in this environment? Joseph saw her concern and asked her to continue down the corridor.
‘The care here is better than the surroundings, but I’m afraid the medical supplies are less than we would wish for. The West seem to think that they can dump their out-of-patent drugs on us and no one seems to be interested in developing a fail-proof malaria vaccine. If malaria was contagious then I’m sure the big pharma companies would pull one out of the hat pretty quickly.’
This was spoken softly but with an edge that Nathalie had not heard from Joseph before. This made her a little uneasy, for the way he said the word ‘West’ and the tone of his speech chimed with the sentiment that she had received from her WEXA friends. She would have to keep an eye on Nursing Officer Karasa.
The hospital duty officer was pleased to see them.
‘Sorry to pull you out of your way but our stocks were becoming dangerously low.’ He looked towards Nathalie. ‘I’ve heard that you are filming the outreach team, and this may have upset your arrangements a little. Is there anything that we can do for you?’
‘Well there is one thing,’ replied Nathalie looking up at Joseph. ‘That’s if my friend here can spare the time. It would be great if we could get some shots of the hospital wards. They would be pretty emotive, especially as we are doing a prevention programme.’
Joseph shrugged. ‘We won’t be setting off until first light, so if you think it will really help. We’ve got to store the vaccines in the hospital fridge anyway so there’s no problem there. Of course, it’s up to the hos
pital.’
Nathalie’s real motive was to get some good shots for her documentary. Wards full of infected people, a possible consequence of a bioterrorist attack. She gave the medical officer her soft open-eyed look. ‘You bitch,’ she thought to herself.
The Duty Officer fell for it. ‘Of course, by all means. Let me know what you want and we will try to accommodate. Anything to help the immunisation programme, it’s a valuable resource.’
Whilst Joseph unloaded the vaccines into the hospital’s refrigeration unit, as a temporary store, the crew unpacked the flatbed. The sun was dropping and Mike said, in order to create the look Nathalie required – filtered light through the mesh surrounding the hospital beds with the silhouettes of the patients inside – he would need all the lighting they had. Nathalie tried to keep busy, helping to carry the lamp stands into the hospital. She was feeling really guilty; not only was she duping these poor people, she felt like a voyeur on other people’s misfortunes at the same time. Still she had done it before. If you wanted to make great documentary films then you had to push for the pictures and live with your conscience.
‘Small problem,’ Chris’s voice interrupted her musings.
‘Which is?’
‘Power, lack of it.’
‘There are lights on in the hospital, there must be electricity somewhere.’
‘Yeah, electricity but the wrong voltage. No way can we power up the lights you want.’
Tom overheard the conversation. ‘What about the generator?’
‘Too small,’ said Chris. ‘Only meant to power a redhead or two. Anyway, I don’t think they would want that thing inside the hospital.’
Nathalie was in one of her stubborn moods. ‘We’ve set most of the lamps now, I really would like to get that shot. Are you sure you can’t get enough power?’
‘Not unless someone turns the voltage up.’
‘And that would fix it?’
‘Yes but…’
Chris had no time to finish the sentence because Nathalie had started disappearing down the corridor.
Fifteen minutes later and Nathalie returned with a short Zimbabwean man wearing a boiler suit.
‘Chris, this is Benson. He is responsible for the small power station in this town. From what I gather they keep the voltage low to spread it around a bit. Not enough for the community otherwise; too many brownouts.’
Chris just stood there open-mouthed.
‘He doesn’t know whether he can get all the power you want but he is prepared to go up to the station. It’s on the hill about half a kilometre from here, and from what I can gather he’ll wind the voltage up.’
‘Shall I go with him?’
‘No need, he says he’ll give us all he’s got.’ Nathalie smiled. ‘But there is one thing you can do, he’s got a feeling that even with the adjustment there may not be enough. I want you to borrow a bicycle and cycle round the village asking everyone to switch off their lights and cooking appliances. Only for an hour of course.’
‘You what?’
‘Benson says that it’s getting near suppertime; a big pull on the power at this time of day. He reckons people won’t mind, especially if you tell them it’s for the hospital. Take Farai with you, I understand he speaks Shona.’
Chris could tell that Nathalie was being serious and this was confirmed by the enthusiastic nodding of Benson alongside of her.
‘I’ve been in this business a long time but there’s always a first for everything,’ he said and ran off to find a bicycle.
One by one the lights came on. ‘It’s working,’ said Mike with a big grin on his face. ‘Bloody marvellous. A whole village goes without its supper and we get a great shot.’
‘Don’t,’ said Nathalie. ‘I feel bad enough already.’ She took a quick look through the viewfinder. ‘Still, you were right, those lights make all the difference. Now let’s get this in the can and then everyone can get something to eat.’
It was dark by the time they had finished and Farai and Chris rushed around the village with torches shouting the all-clear.
‘I wonder what would happen if you tried that in London,’ joked Tom to Nathalie as he helped strap the kit back onto the crew truck.
‘Be lucky to come back with just an earful. One for a good story in the edit suite though, that’s if they believe you.’
Her remarks reminded Tom of his trip around Soho with Stefanie. ‘Yeah, I’m looking forward to that bit, Geoff sent me on a tour of post-production houses. The animation studio looked amazing. Will we be using some of that stuff?’
‘Depends. I only use graphics or animation if I can’t tell the story through live-action although, in this case, I suppose we might need some footage to explain how bacteria and viruses work. When it gets to that stage I might ask you to help out with the brief. But before that we’ve got the tough bit to do. The crew are in on the act; tomorrow afternoon I’d like you to act as a decoy.’
Tom scratched his head, ‘A decoy, in what way?’
‘Apparently Nurse Jones is meeting us at the settlement where the immunisation is taking place. I want you to distract her and Joseph away from the huts where we are filming our WEXA contacts. Perhaps you could get them involved in some sort of conversation about infection and bugs or something. While we are off doing our ‘boring’ local colour shots, say you’re the medical scriptwriter on our team and you need some help with it. I think she feels a bit undervalued so if you big her up I’m sure she would rather be talking to you than following us around in the mud.’
Tom secretly would have preferred to have been in on the interview with the so-called terrorists, but he knew he had to be a team player. ‘I’ll give it my best shot,’ he said reluctantly.
‘It’s got to be better than that Tom,’ said Nathalie seriously. ‘If I don’t get carte blanche with those guys we’re really up the Swanee.’
Their guesthouse, the Miners Lodge, was hardly the Holiday Inn. It was a rundown wooden-slatted shack on the edge of the town. The Lodge had confirmed that they could accommodate five instead of four but there were still only two rooms and the fifth place was provided by a camp bed, hastily assembled, in one of them. The crew said that they would take the room for three. Farai and Chris drew lots for the camp bed. It was obvious that Mike wouldn’t fit on it. Chris lost so the others offered to buy him a beer. Nathalie and Tom took the other room.
‘At least it’s got two single beds,’ said Nathalie. ‘One of the last shoots I was on I had to squeeze into one with the cameraman.’
‘Lucky you,’ quipped Mike.
‘Didn’t turn out that way,’ replied Nathalie reflectively. She quickly changed the subject. ‘Anyway that’s the sleeping arrangements sorted out, let’s hope we do better with the food.’
Tom reminded her that he was a vegetarian, and Farai recommended that it might be safer to avoid meat in a hostelry such as this so they all ordered sadza, balls of stiff maize that they could dip into a peanut sauce, with stewed vegetables. It didn’t sound very appetising and indeed it wasn’t but it washed down well with several bottles of local Bohlinger’s lager.
They all had a pretty restless night and no one was in the mood for talking as they gathered their things together at five o’clock in the morning. Chris limped to the truck holding his back which had been bruised by the protruding bar of the camp bed. Nathalie had tossed and turned all night, her stomach grumbling with cramps from the sadza, and waking fitfully from darkest dreams. She tried to get her head around the day’s plans.
‘Tom,’ she said hoarsely, sipping some water to moisten her dry mouth. ‘Can you try and find “Mein host”, pay the bill and get him to rustle up some packed lunches. I don’t think there’s any Michelin restaurants where we’re going.’
‘On it,’ said Tom, taking the stairs two at a time.
‘Youth,’ sighed Nathalie at Mike who was rechecking the lenses in his case.
Mike managed a smile as he snapped the box shut. ‘Come on old lady, I�
��ll help you to the truck.’
They had just finished loading when Joseph pulled up in the jeep. He looked fresh as a daisy even though he had been sleeping in the vehicle all night.
‘Follow me, I’ll take it slow, the track is pretty rough into the bush. Your truck looks pretty robust and, if we are lucky, for the most part the road is dry so I think you should make it okay. If you run into trouble use your horn and flash your lights. There isn’t a mobile signal where we are going. Well, that’s it. I’ll get going.’
Joseph wasn’t joking about the road or ‘track’ as he had called it. The crew vehicle crawled and bounced along it, throwing them around in their seats. The sun was coming up, burning the sky. The burnt orange hue was bleeding into the horizon, creating a black sharp-edged frieze from the trees. The blue Toyota jeep in front of them heaved and yawed as it turned into yet another side alley in the maze of tracks that weaved into the bush. Now Nathalie understood why Joseph had mentioned that it was fortunate that the roads were dry. If there had been rain the now dusty channels, lined with red sandstone bluffs topped with bunches of grass, would have been rivers of mud. She closed her eyes and tried to let the bucking vehicle rock her to sleep.
They had been driving for two hours when the jeep in front of them dipped into a depression between a cluster of rocks. Farai pulled up the truck to wait and see what was going to happen. Nathalie woke with a start.
‘Why are we stopping, are we here?’
Farai wound down the window and brushed some of the dust off the windscreen so that he could see more clearly. ‘No, the jeep is navigating some sort of obstacle; just holding back for a bit.’
Nathalie jumped out of the truck and walked up to the hollow that the jeep had driven into. She noticed that the dirt track turned into a metalled road at this point. It was cracked and pitted but formed a sort of inverted bridge across a narrow wadi. To one side of the road there was water but, on the other, scattered boulders across a dry sandstone riverbed. Joseph was rocking the jeep slowly forwards and backwards to test the tarmac. It seemed to be holding.
Drugs to Forget Page 20
