Eighty Not Out (21 page)

Alibhai Stores strove to satisfy the demands of a rapidly growing expatriate community. A textile factory had recently opened and employed managers from the
UK
: I remember the shock of hearing a rasping Ulster accent bewailing the fact that she could not find any cornflakes. The only milk available was the Ultra Heat Treated (
UHT
) kind, which the girls condemned as undrinkable, or Carnation in tins. The shelves were packed with tinned guava, pineapple and pawpaw from new canning factories in Nairobi or Kampala; they were regarded as luxury, and held in high regard by both the African and Indian population, presumably because of the sugary syrup. Tinned mandarins, frankfurters from Eastern Europe, and crab from Russia also sold well. A Lebanese bakery produced white
bâtards
, which went stale very quickly, so again I made our bread. An elderly German woman and her son ran a farm on one of the islands in the sound, and had a small depot in the town where they sold pasteurised milk as well as large eggs in lieu of the problematic local ones; pork could be ordered, though often it tasted a bit boarish. Delicious tilapia fish could be bought at many wayside stalls, but even then supplies were declining due to over-fishing, rafts of water hyacinth, which made parts of the lake inaccessible to fishermen, and, of course, pollution, to which the new textile mill contributed. The farmers were liberal in their use of pyrethrum, which they could buy freely at the Agricultural Depot, and this, too, found its way to Lake Victoria.

Shopping excursions were possible only after we had employed an ayah to look after Mary and Michael. Maria's complexion was very dark, and her countenance scowling, but Michael, happy to be carried around on her back, did not have to look at it. Stephano excused her surly manner by explaining that she was the single mother of five, who worked to provide for them and her own mother, who had a small farm in the valley on the other side of our kopje. Stephano, the new shamba boy, Joseph, Maria, and ‘Mzee', a desiccated, wall-eyed ancient who lived in a hovel near the foot of our drive, congregated near the back door every morning for a protracted tea break. Sometimes the group was joined by another ancient who made beautiful, finely woven baskets with an integral purple design; a few have survived the years, but the purple fades in time. Our wall-eyed Mzee was so old that he had worked as a stone-breaker for the German army during the 1914–18 war. He told how harsh the soldiers had been with any labourer suspected of malingering or dishonesty: a lash had frequently been used and serious crimes resulted in execution – heads being displayed on stakes by the roadside. No free tea and sugar in those days.

It was not long before we found ourselves involved in a drama precipitated by Joyce returning to live in her father's already overcrowded quarters. The librarian had agreed a bride price with Stephano, who claimed that some of this was outstanding, that his son-in-law had shown disrespect and was taking advantage of his position at the institute to avoid coughing up the remainder. The situation was a tickly one for Fergus, the librarian being a colleague who thought this conferred an advantage when divulging his side of the story. This he did at length, seated at ease on our veranda, downing companionable pints, while Stephano lurked resentfully in the back regions. He claimed that he had taken the pregnant and indolent girl off Stephano's hands; an exorbitant price had been asked and he had done her family a favour, while demeaning himself by marrying beneath his station. Other accusations involved the borrowing of a paraffin stove, which had been returned only under duress, and then found to be damaged beyond repair (enquiry revealed that the stove had, in any case, belonged to the institute). More disputes concerned scraggy hens which ranged around both compounds, a tethered goat, and suspected ill-treatment of the librarian's affectionate dog, Bobby, which was already devoted to me. Further complications involved two children from the librarian's first wife, who, when the inscrutable Joyce decamped, were left in his care.

In some ways the stalemate suited Stephano, allowing him more time after work to slope off and drink too much pombe, after which he would return in a belligerent mood. Often raised voices would echo across the compound as he harangued his beautiful, if bovine, daughter before sleep overcame him. With bloodshot eyes and a hangdog expression, he would appear the next morning, apprehensive about how much we had overheard. He was also aware that I was not quite as gullible as he had first thought, being ignorant that the years spent in Ghana had given me a fair understanding of African attitudes, and the intricacies of the extended family system.

I discouraged the use of ‘memsahib', settling for ‘mama' rather than ‘madam', favoured by the Kofi brothers. Yet again, I did not fit any comfortable category. I liked to do a lot of the cooking myself, but finding that Stephano could make excellent curries, as well as preparing fish irreproachably, I allowed him to make many of our midday meals. This freed me to deal with secretarial work connected with the project, in the office space I had set up in a corner of our vast bedroom. The only competent secretary was in theory to be shared with Dr Eyakuze, who monopolised her when she was not absent on a training course, or on maternity leave. There were two typists at the laboratory, but their skills left a lot to be desired, so Fergus had expropriated an Imperial machine for me to replace the old Olivetti portable. I had also made enquiries about access to the darkroom at the institute: there had been an English photographer, but he had resigned, leaving a hopeless trainee in charge of what little equipment there was. However, permission would have to be obtained through the director; on hearing that I had run a university department, he made no objection, particularly when he saw that my work might well enhance project reports and would cost him nothing.

We joined the Mwanza Yacht Club – another reminder of colonial rule. The modest wooden clubhouse was almost on the sandy shore beside a very old gnarled tree, the roots of which were often under water; it reminded me of an Edmund Dulac illustration. One of the traditions was that female members would take turns to prepare a Sunday lunch for an unknown number, usually in the region of thirty. I recall how on one occasion I managed to make stuffed pancakes for fifty diners. We had acquired an electric fridge freezer from a departing Canadian couple – it was old and the star-rating allowed survival of the occasional cockroach, but far superior to anything we had previously owned. I also had brought from Ireland one of the earliest food mixers with attachments for kneading dough, mincing meat and grinding coffee. A large quantity of steak was minced, and I spent the previous day frying and stuffing pancakes, which were then covered with cheese sauce and put in dishes ready for reheating at the club. A circular letter from the chief engineer, also commodore of the club, to the effect that there would be an electricity cut from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. arrived the same day. Fears of putrefying pancakes and guest mortality were not realised, and my effort was appreciated even by an Italian family. Mass catering is not for me, but I wholeheartedly admire those who can and do, like the finalists in
MasterChef
.

These tasks terrified me, but the children so much enjoyed their visits that I suppressed my fears. They clambered over the rocks, climbed the tree, were taken out in the rescue boat, and to my surprise, accepted that they were not to paddle in the water because of the threat of contracting schistosomiasis. It was safe to swim in deeper water, and many adults did so from their boats. Few crocodiles remained in this part of the lake, but hippos were seen from time to time in the bay near Bismarck Rock.

The girls pleaded so relentlessly that I succumbed and a visit to Saa Nane zoo was arranged. A lone pioneer had dedicated his life to establishing it between the wars, but tragically, at the age of forty had suffered an incapacitating stroke while on leave in Europe, and had never returned. When we visited, there were no obvious signs of deterioration, but later reports indicated many problems had arisen due to no suitable director having been appointed. Apathy, declining visitor numbers, shortage of animal feed, and ignorance cast an all too familiar shadow on this small enterprise. An ancient Masai attendant, one of whose ears had been slit and elaborately coiled around the orifice, took our ticket money and let us through a turnstile. The giraffes were a bit too matey for my peace of mind and had to be shooed away with sticks; I was afraid of back-kicks when they did shift, or that they might take off through our party. They were, however, in good condition and really beautiful, as were several zebra. Gazelles lay around like so many cows, and an evil little dik-dik sprang on to small rocks, from which it then charged us, head down, with short sharp horns. The rhino, about which we should have been warned, stood immobile, wearing a supercilious expression: the girls suggested prodding him, unconvinced when told that rhinos can move at great speed. Most of all they were thrilled by a pair of large torpid crocodiles, insisting on sitting as close as possible on the wall surrounding their enclosure.

The western corridor entrance to the Serengeti reserve is about eighty miles north of Mwanza: Fergus and John McMahon decided to explore the possibilities of staying inside the park at a recently abandoned research camp that had been built for two German vets working for Bernhard Grzimek, the animal conservationist, the project having folded after much money had been spent on housing and laboratories.
Plus ça change
. Currently it was being used by a young zoologist friend, Richard, as a base for his research. It was decided to delay our first safari by a few weeks, by which time the treacherous black cotton soil near the entrance to the heart of the reserve should have dried out.

Meanwhile, the Schistosomiasis Control Project area had been chosen at Misungwi in Sukumaland some twenty miles south of Mwanza. Twice weekly Fergus and his team of field assistants spent a full day listing water-bodies, groups of dwellings, estimated population, species of water snail found and likely transmission sites. In the absence of a statistician, the data had to be tabulated by Fergus, although one was soon to be seconded from Nairobi for a few weeks, and
WHO
hoped to recruit a public health engineer. Together we dealt with a mountain of paperwork, much of which had to be sent to the regional office, with copies to headquarters.

Early in August Fergus flew to Nairobi, leaving me alone with the children for the first time in East Africa. The institute would have provided a night-watchman, but I declined and slept with a cutlass beside the bed. I knew that I could never bring myself to use it, and would have felt more secure if I had had a small gun, like the pistol my mother kept until the Royal Ulster Constabulary's regular inspections during the Troubles annoyed her so much that she handed it in. Nothing disturbed us at night apart from the howls of our resident hyaenas. At night their eyes could be seen in a group at the bottom of the garden. I remember a gruesome incident involving these animals, which took place during a barbecue held by the German vet, whose terrace overlooked the same gully as ours. An antelope was being spit-roasted, the air redolent with appetising smells, when our host's dachshund, which had wandered out of the pool of light, was snatched almost literally from under our noses. Subsequent howls of feasting ensured the party began on a sombre note. There were far too many hyaenas in our area, and the hungrier they got, the cheekier they became, but old-timers assured us they ate human meat only if it was carrion, or comatose from drink. Not long after this incident a body was found, its face entirely eaten, by the roadside not far from our house.

Inevitably, sooner or later, whatever their prejudices, almost all Europeans, particularly those with children, joined the Mwanza Club, which had a swimming pool and two tennis courts. It also had a library with some interesting books on the dusty, sagging shelving, but nobody was officially in charge of it, or bought new books. I managed to revive it to some extent, opening for two hours on Sunday mornings, arranging the shelves more logically, and wheedling some cash from the committee for new purchases, as well as appealing for donations of money and unwanted books. Damp had already damaged some books dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; almost all were foxed and some old engravings were missing, probably taken to be framed. An early edition of Livingstone's journals was incomplete: before we left in 1973 I ‘liberated' the remaining volumes, which bear the purple stamp of Mwanza Club Library, remembering how Fergus spoke with regret that he had not done the same for a valuable first edition set of
Bannerman's Birds of West Africa
, used to raise the seat of one of the clerks in Kintampo. At the poolside were a number of rusting metal chairs and chipped tables with malfunctioning canopies; a few bar staff, retained from pre-independence days, would bring orders and wipe the tables.

It was here that we met another couple who became lifelong friends. Donald Gilchrist, a tall, spare Scot with skin of the type that never tans, had worked at mission hospitals since graduating in medicine just after the war; some years later he qualified as a surgeon, and now worked at the old hospital in Mwanza. His wife, Jean, was a radiographer and they had two sons, Robert and Mungo, about the same age as Katharine and Mary. Donald is a philosopher manqué, and he and Fergus spent hours thrashing out world affairs, while ostensibly in charge of the children. Thankfully our girls could swim confidently from an early age, but other users of the pool needed constant supervision and there were several instances of near drowning while we were there.

Each month a film was flown in from Kenya to be shown in the open – no matter how liberally insect repellent was applied, one always returned home badly bitten. Some of the films came under the heading ‘family entertainment', but others, memorably
Spartacus
, were for adults, and I do not recall how Katharine persuaded us to let her see it – maybe it was later, when she was on holiday from boarding school in Kenya – but she was taken home in floods of tears after seeing Jean Simmons on her knees at the foot of the cross bearing the crucified Kirk Douglas.