Their driver was a Maasai from Kenya; it was unusual for him to spend time on this side of the border. The recently departed guests had insisted on flying out from Musoma. They refused to listen when their guide advised against it, and in the end he gave up caring. If not before, they would realize when they tried to leave Tanzania from the airport in Dar es Salaam that they had entered the country illegally.
‘One week in a lockup and a few thousand dollars in fines,’ Meitkini guessed.
‘Or a few extra thousand and no lockup at all?’ Allan suggested.
Yes, that might work, but the Tanzanians were proud. Meitkini recommended Karlsson obey the laws of the land.
‘I would never dream of doing otherwise,’ said Allan.
Julius squirmed in the back seat. This general law-abiding attitude was spreading from continent to continent like an epidemic.
Meitkini didn’t believe in hocus-pocus or miracle cures. What he did believe in was God, and in humankind’s ability to live in harmony with wild animals. The Maasai didn’t hunt any more; those days were several generations in the past. Back then, you hadn’t been a man until you had killed your first lion. Nowadays the coming-of-age ritual involved first being circumcised, then surviving under the open sky for a whole year. Those who succeeded were upgraded to real Maasai warrior. That’s what they called them, even though they never actually made war.
‘It seems Merkel is on her way to winning the German election,’ Allan said, referring to his black tablet. ‘That should keep Europe together for a while. Unless there’s a civil war in Spain. The Catalonians are thoroughly tired of Madrid. I know how they feel – I was there the last time this happened.’
‘In 1936,’ said Julius. ‘It’s possible some things have changed since then.’
‘Perchance,’ said Allan.
Julius turned to the driver. ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t work to grow asparagus here, Meitkini?’
* * *
Agent B was at the wheel of the Land Cruiser she’d just rented. Traffic was almost at a standstill, and at regular intervals people climbed into her car without asking. They stayed there for fifteen minutes or more with no explanation, then jumped down again as if at some sort of signal.
Absolutely everything had gone wrong. There was the part where B was likely thousands of kilometres from the action. But there was also the part where Allan Karlsson now knew who she was. How was she supposed to explain her presence among those miracle tents, if she ever arrived and had the misfortune of running into the very target of her surveillance? Then again, if she didn’t find the old man, what was the point of it all?
Incidentally, what was the point of it all?
Oh, well, they were starting to move now. Maybe this jam was about to break— No, it wasn’t.
* * *
‘I think we’re here,’ said Meitkini, waking Allan, who had been taking a nap.
Their trip was far from well planned. It was starting to get dark and the friends had nowhere to stay. The thousands of hopeful Tanzanians around them appeared to be preparing fires to sleep next to, in anticipation of a meeting with the miracle doctor the next day. Fire was something wild animals had avoided throughout time. A fire, along with a guard armed with spear and club standing watch in two-hour shifts through the night, increased the chances of survival to almost a hundred per cent.
Allan took things as they came, but Julius and Sabine didn’t like the fire plan. Not least because they would first have to head out onto the savannah to gather up dry branches to burn, and it was getting darker by the minute.
Sabine checked with Meitkini to see what he intended to do. Could he stay until the next day, so they could all sleep in his car?
Well, the trip hadn’t taken as long as Meitkini had feared it would. But what would they do afterwards? They probably wanted to go back to Musoma, and Meitkini wasn’t headed that way. As he’d said, a fresh group of tourists was en route to him, and he had to entertain them for four days. He wouldn’t be available for a jaunt back across the Tanzanian border before then.
‘We’re not really in any big hurry,’ said Allan. ‘It might be pleasant to see what things look like where you live.’
Meitkini said that the kingdom of the Maasai looked the same on both sides of the border but, by all means, the friends were welcome to come along to camp for a few days. It was the off season, and he would make sure their visit was priced accordingly. But they would have to make this stop quick. They needed to leave by dusk the next day, at the latest.
Allan, Julius and Sabine thought a full day of miracles should suffice.
Everyone was in agreement. Meitkini drove the car to the side and handed out blankets to all. No one had considered food, but that problem solved itself. When ten thousand people gather in a given place, some form of commercial activity will automatically arise out of sheer human nature. Women walked two by two with baskets full of a variety of delicacies. Julius made an offer for eight sandwiches and four Coca-Colas.
‘I suppose you don’t have any liquor?’ Allan asked.
‘Is that all you ever think about?’ said Sabine.
‘They only speak Maa and Swahili, so they didn’t understand you,’ said Meitkini. ‘But I can answer for them. Coca-Cola is what’s on offer.’
‘You can’t have everything,’ said Allan.
‘Well, maybe you can,’ said Meitkini, opening the glove box to take out a full-sized bottle of Konyagi.
‘Look at that! What sort of delight is this?’
It was the most popular alcoholic drink in Tanzania. Best enjoyed with a slice of lime and a few ice cubes. Or with cranberry juice.
‘Or as is, straight from the bottle?’
‘That’s how I do it,’ said Meitkini.
‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,’ said Allan.
‘Cheers to that,’ said Meitkini, tossing the cork over his shoulder.
‘Will you accept company?’ Julius wondered.
* * *
It was totally dark when Agent B finally reached the tent city. The women and their goodies were gone. B had to set up camp in the middle row of seats, with no food or blankets. Nearly a year before, she had been offered a transfer to Singapore. Now she wondered what life would have been like if she’d accepted. Since it was too cold to sleep, she was forced to spend time with her thoughts for most of the night.
She had declined the offer in Southeast Asia for Franz’s sake. He loved his job as a dentist and had refused to go. Just three weeks after B had told her employer ‘no thanks’ on his behalf, it turned out that Franz had also loved his hygienist since a few months back. Her and her now-perfect teeth.
The break-up was tumultuous. Franz said he was beyond tired of never knowing where his wife was or what she was working on. She had told him all along that she was in the employ of the state and could say no more than that. For a long time he thought this sounded exciting, but once they’d been married for three years, and she kept repeating the same thing, it was just wrong. Was he supposed to have kids with a secret woman? What would their son or daughter write when they were assigned a school essay about their mother’s job? ‘She does things no one is allowed to know about’? The teachers would think she was a prostitute. Sometimes Franz suspected as much.
In the midst of all this she wanted to move to the other side of the world with him. ‘In the employ of the state’. From Rödelheim to what? It was bad enough having a secret wife. A secret wife in a foreign country was just too much. Plus there was the hygienist. And her teeth. B realized it wouldn’t help to punch them in, even if she had been so inclined.
Since then she was not only secret, she was alone too. The nearly impossible task of finding enriched uranium on the lam in Africa was an escape from everything else. She had been offered the job in Dar es Salaam at nine o’clock on a Wednesday. At five past, she’d said yes.
* * *
The next day’s ceremony would begin at eleven and last u
ntil one, when it got too hot. The camp came to life at seven a.m. The women with baskets of food were back. Everywhere signs in English and Swahili explained the rules. Each person who paid five thousand shillings (or, alternatively, two dollars) would receive a sip of the miracle drink, with Olekorinko’s blessings and incantations on top. Those without money would have to settle for the incantations.
‘Two dollars isn’t much,’ said Julius. ‘No more than the wholesale price of a bunch of asparagus.’
‘No,’ said Sabine. ‘But ten thousand bunches of asparagus per day will make you some money.’
Besides the twenty thousand dollars Olekorinko raked in during the big gathering, he offered private consultations in his own tent, twenty minutes for a thousand dollars or sixty minutes for 2500. The demand was huge.
Sabine wasn’t first in line, but second. She booked the shorter version at three o’clock. She expected she would be fully educated by the end.
Olekorinko spoke into a microphone to reach his audience. It was hooked up to two giant amplifiers that were run off eight car batteries. His organization was impressive. Sabine estimated two hundred women were walking around handing out kikombe cha dawa (a spot of miracle medicine) to all who could pay, and to the occasional person who couldn’t but looked sufficiently desperate.
Julius and Sabine tried what was on offer. The drink tasted bitter and didn’t have any immediate effect in any direction. Allan discovered that there was still a little of the Konyagi in the corkless bottle. He thought that was miracle enough.
The medicine man stood on a raised platform far away, and now he was singing something in Swahili. When he stopped, his assistant took the stage. She explained what was already on several of the signs: that the medicine worked only in the presence of Olekorinko, and only if he blessed it (which he had just done) and, above all, only for people who were free of doubt.
‘If you don’t believe in Olekorinko, his medicine doesn’t believe in you,’ the assistant said in English, Swahili and Maa. ‘Let us pray.’
And then she prayed. First in English.
‘Dear God, fill the kikombe cha dawa with the energy of your servant Olekorinko. Let that energy in turn fill body and soul of those who believe without doubt. Focus on asthma and bronchitis. On rheumatism and mental deficiency. On depression and unemployment. On HIV and AIDS. On cancer and pneumonia. On bad luck and poor love-life performance. On childlessness and on more children than the family can handle. Oh, dear God, lead Olekorinko and his students along the right path. Show us your goodness, Lord. You are our everything! Amen.’
A man next to Sabine was disappointed that his bacterial prostatitis hadn’t been included in the prayer, but from almost every other direction came great raptures.
Now Olekorinko began to sing in Swahili again. It was rhythmic and monotonous and accompanied by drums. And it lasted for at least half an hour. Meanwhile the two hundred women walked through the audience, gathering more requests for the additional prayers to follow. The man with prostatitis was able to call attention to his malady and was satisfied.
All in all, the ceremony lasted under an hour, not the promised two. The assistant’s explanation was that Olekorinko was more filled with spiritual strength than usual that day so he transferred a greater amount of healing energy per minute. No one had been cheated.
Olekorinko stood in the background, nodding in agreement with his assistant’s words, and concluded with a ‘Hallelujah.’
Scattered hallelujah responses came from the field before ten thousand people simultaneously got ready to start the difficult journey back, more content and possibly liberated from inflamed prostates and AIDS.
The only ones who remained were those who had booked one-to-one time with the healer. And one meek, depressed agent from the German security service.
* * *
Sabine’s twenty minutes with Olekorinko began with him meditating silently to himself. Allan, Julius and Meitkini were on chairs at the very back of the tent and had been instructed not to take part in the session. If they did, Olekorinko would have to release more energy and this would cause the fee to increase accordingly.
‘He knows how to get paid,’ said Allan.
‘Quiet!’ said Julius.
After the meditation, Olekorinko opened his eyes and met Sabine’s gaze. ‘What can I do for you, my child?’ he asked.
Sabine did not feel in any way as if Olekorinko was her father. But she was finally where she needed to be. She would have loved her mother, Gertrud, to be at her side.
‘I have a few straightforward questions,’ she said. ‘The first is, what does your magical drink contain, aside from your own soul and the support of God?’
Olekorinko observed her cautiously. He had encountered journalists before. Was she another? Some had even smuggled out the miracle drink and analysed it in a laboratory. This had led all the way to a government decree stating that the drink ‘is not harmful to human health and is therefore permitted to be sold’. Even back then, seven Members of Parliament with various afflictions had made the round trip to the miracle man by helicopter.
‘The active ingredient is just what you said: the energy of God, by way of me, his servant. But the Lord and I work in symbiosis with nature. The bitter sweetness comes from the mtandamboo bush. Is that something you’re familiar with?’
No, Sabine wasn’t. But she realized that the miracle man wasn’t referring to any secret ingredient. Such a thing could be found, given a history and exported to become a suitable business model in Europe. But God wouldn’t be so simple. His advantages and shortcomings were already well known at home. And, by the way, God? Wasn’t Olekorinko a witch doctor?
‘At home I work with clairvoyance and the driving out of ghosts. What experience do you have with those?’
Olekorinko’s four bodyguards were suddenly on edge. Olekorinko himself fixed his gaze on his guest. Sabine had just said something terribly wrong.
‘Witchcraft is of the devil,’ he said. ‘If you’re a witch, drinking kikombe cha dawa is associated with death. It is reserved for people who have chosen the right path.’
What was this?
‘The right path,’ Sabine mumbled, noticing how tense the atmosphere in the tent had become. What had she missed in all her research?
‘The right path,’ Olekorinko repeated. And he went on, in a low, hostile tone, to give her something much like a lecture. It was about witchcraft and how best to fight it. Happily, five hundred Tanzanian women were killed each year for being witches. But that wasn’t enough. Evil was always a step ahead. The only solace was that witches and wizards killed each other. Recently a magic man in Ngorongoro had killed a witch and cut her up into decently large pieces, each intended to bring him luck. Now he himself was imprisoned for eighteen years. That was all his luck had brought him so far. Nevertheless: wizards shouldn’t end up in prison; they could too easily continue their depravity there. They should die along with the witches.
Sabine was confused. Was this character honestly sitting there and distancing himself from sorcery in general? But he was the reason she had come. And brought her friend. And Allan.
She was flooded with the feeling that their trip to Tanzania had been pointless. Or had they merely sought out the wrong representative of what might be possible for development and export? If drinking a holy liquid extracted from the roots of nature to rid oneself of prostatitis wasn’t witchcraft, then what was?
Unwisely enough, she posed this very question. But instead of responding, Olekorinko signalled his bodyguards. Each took one step forward, then another. Were they about to …
At that instant, Meitkini stood up. He said something in Swahili. It sounded stern, and the bodyguards stopped in their tracks. They glanced around, across the bush outside the tent. It was below Olekorinko’s dignity to follow suit, but he sat with his back straight, watching Meitkini intently.
The Maasai man had somehow bought time for himself and his friends. He instructed
Allan, Julius and Sabine to leave the tent immediately and get into the car.
‘But I have a question,’ said Allan.
‘No, you don’t,’ said Meitkini, as he continued to keep an eye on Olekorinko. ‘Do as I say. Now!’
A minute or so later, they were driving away from the miracle man’s camp. After a little longer, Meitkini was able to relax. The first thing he did was apologize for sounding so harsh, but the situation had been more threatening than Sabine and the others had likely been aware.
‘May I say something now?’ Allan said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Does that character believe in himself?’
Meitkini allowed himself to smile. ‘I’m glad you didn’t venture to ask that in the tent, Mr Karlsson. You wouldn’t have got much older if you had.’
‘I probably won’t anyway. What did you say that made them stop what they were doing like that?’
‘I said that the African poison-arrow tree was watching them and would give them a jab if they didn’t calm down.’
‘The African what?’
‘They knew what I meant. I unbuttoned my collar so they could see from my necklace that I’m Maasai. They found it believable enough that a nearby kinsman could have them in his sights. There were at least ten bushes, rocks and hollows to choose from. By now I’m sure they know I was lying, but it’s too late.’
‘Unless that’s them behind us,’ Sabine said anxiously.
Meitkini glanced in the rear-view mirror and recognized the model of the car and the decal above the windscreen. ‘No, that’s a rental car. The kind tourists drive around in, but not Olekorinko and the likes of him.’
‘The African what?’ Allan said again.
‘Poison-arrow tree. That’s where we extract the poison we dip the tips of our spears in. A good hit will kill a seven-hundred-kilo buffalo in ten seconds. For a slight man like Olekorinko, it wouldn’t take more than a scratch.’
The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man Page 28
