Wild Spirit (24 page)

I didn't have long to wait before the second distraction convinced me that things in the camp were spiralling out of control. Late one Friday afternoon, two gendarmes from Makokou turned up unannounced, ostensibly to report on law and order in the camp. They'd travelled upriver in a company pirogue. Eamon, Rodo and I met
them at the guesthouse door, where they were swaggering and strutting in uniform, each with a shotgun slung over his shoulder.

‘We'll be staying for the weekend, and we'll need rooms,' the surlier of the two informed us. Rodo, Eamon and I looked at each other, took in the sight of the weapons and read each other's thoughts. We were likely to be in for a rough weekend, but they had us over a barrel.

‘Well, I think we can manage that,' Eamon said in his calm Midwestern voice. I had already decided to keep well out of it; I didn't want anything to do with them. The problem was, we could hardly refuse them accommodation, as the rooms vacated by the surveyors were still empty.

‘Dr Krol here will show you to your rooms,' Eamon intoned with exaggerated courtesy, nodding towards Rodo. When they had left for the
cas de passage
, Eamon turned and gave me an outsized wink.

I didn't see them for the rest of the weekend, but I soon discovered how they had spent their time. On the Sunday afternoon, I decided to check the state of the fridge in the guesthouse. Étienne and Bernard sometimes forgot to clean out rotting vegetables, and unless I reminded them about it, the bottom of the fridge would fill up with a soup of fetid brown liquid and slimy red and green solids.

When I opened the freezer compartment, six pairs of eyes, fixed in their death stares, and six open mouths full of stained teeth greeted me just inches away from my face. One had a small red fruit still stuck to its tongue. I was face to face with six powder puff monkeys, each tied up into a ball with its own long tail, unskinned, ungutted and just as they had been when the gendarmes' cartridges had brought them down. Trickles of dried blood spattered their black
hair. The white patches on their noses that gave them their name stood out pathetically against their startled faces.

I felt my blood pressure skyrocket. ‘What the hell is this?' I shrieked – uselessly, as it turned out, because there was no-one around to hear me. I slammed the freezer door shut and strode out of the guesthouse back to our flat. Win was sitting by the window reading.

‘Come and look at this!' I shrilled. I didn't stop to explain. Win trailed in my wake as I marched back to the guesthouse and flung the freezer door open.

‘Look what they've done! How dare they?' While I fumed, Win's sense of the ridiculous took over, and he dissolved into uncontrollable laughter.

‘It's not bloody funny!' I bellowed. ‘Monkeys carry all sorts of diseases, and they're shoved up against the food that people here are going to have to eat!' Win was doubled up, his face flushed bright red: it was the biggest laugh he'd had in months. I couldn't decide whether to be more outraged at the gendarmes' arrogance in stashing their spoils in our fridge, or at the prospect of the diseases that might be passed on from the carcasses stowed alongside our frozen meat.

Maddeningly, I was powerless to act because of who the perpetrators were. I wanted to hurl the carcasses out into the forest, but I didn't dare – just as when the
sous-préfêt
had shot the fish-eating eagle, I had to bite my tongue. If I ran foul of officialdom, both of us could be kicked out of the country at a moment's notice. There was nothing to be done but go back to the flat and have a stiff whisky.

The gendarmes left early the following morning and took the frozen monkeys with them. I didn't see them go, but if I had, I would have noticed what else they were
carrying off. It was only later that one of our welders told Jacques they had pulled rank and obliged him to fabricate a metal coffee table from company materials for them to take back as a souvenir. The coup de grâce was revealed later still: we found they had wrecked one of the toilets in the
cas de passage
during drunken revelry on the Saturday night. If this was how the constabulary behaved, I thought, there wasn't much hope for the rest of the population.

‘Two months to go,' I lectured myself. ‘Keep cool. Two months and we'll be out of here.' The gendarmes must have enjoyed their stay so much that they spread the word in town, because once the dry season had begun and the Djadié route was open, the sight of uniformed men with rifles driving into camp on a Friday afternoon ceased to be unusual.

I had a suspicion that all this stemmed in part from Eamon's laissez-faire approach. I had seen it in action often enough. Whatever the men asked for, Eamon would almost always agree to. He seemed incapable of refusing them. If I turned down a worker's request I regarded as unreasonable, he would go straight to Eamon, who would override me. Many of the families had relatives in Makokou, and word of Eamon's benevolence spread quickly. By then, I had worked out that Eamon saw himself as some kind of father figure to the Gabonese, an attitude that must have carried over from the early days when the country had been newly independent.

In mid-May, Carol began working beside me. She had only a smattering of French, so the prospect of having to conduct the radio links by herself once I had gone terrified her. But she was smart and eager to learn.

‘Don't worry,' I assured her. ‘I felt just the same when I started out. You'll get the hang of it after a while.' She
shadowed me each day and I briefed her on transport logistics, routine procedures and the problems she could expect to face. Gradually I introduced her to all the men who would report to her.

‘How did you learn all this?' she asked.

‘Blood, sweat and tears,' I replied with a grin. ‘No pain, no gain.' She nudged me playfully and we both dissolved into giggles. It was the most adaptive response to the madness that surrounded us. I knew Carol would be all right.

 

A fortnight before Jacques left, he brought the new mechanic up from Makokou for a familiarisation visit. Monsieur Bertin would take his place at the end of the month. When Jacques' last day came, I looked around at the faces in the room as we gathered to say goodbye and saw only sadness. Monsieur Bertin stood quietly on the fringes, saying little. I had given Jacques our contact address back in London, and I had his home address in France written in my diary.

‘We'll see you in September,' I promised, ‘on our way through to Greece.
Au revoir, Jacques, et bonne chance!
'

‘
Au revoir, Nettie
,' he said, and kissed me on both cheeks in the French fashion. He shook hands with everyone, then we watched as he climbed into the blue Land Rover for the last time and turned the key. The last we saw was his arm waving out the window before he turned the bend in the road and headed for the
débarcadère.

Rodo, Win and I exchanged looks, remembering Mario's anguished departure nine months before. The project had been plagued by staffing problems from the
outset. I couldn't work out whether it was intrinsically unmanageable, or whether this was normal in remote Africa when white people tried to achieve things. In two months we would be gone too, and all the daily frustrations would become fading memories. I wanted to leave on a high note, to carry part of the spirit of Belinga with me, and to cherish the gifts that my year in the forest had given me. I knew I would leave with a mixture of joy and sorrow – but it would be mainly joy.

The high point of Win's achievement at Belinga came early in June, when Eamon and Noni's house was at last finished. The last coat of varnish on the floors had dried, the ceiling beams glowed reddish brown against the white panels, and the solid timber of the bar top gleamed. Win had drawn on his lifetime's experience of architectural design to create the house in the best tradition of African wilderness lodges. The huge stone fireplace dominated the living room and would provide essential warmth in the cold dry-season nights. When he showed Noni through for the first time, she gasped with astonishment.

‘You should record your name on a plaque on the front wall so people will know in the future who created it,' she urged. I knew Win would never agree to a suggestion like that. It wasn't his style. He derived satisfaction from projects perfectly executed and designing buildings that gave enduring joy to those who lived in them.

He grinned dismissively. ‘But who'd be there to see it?' Eamon, in his understated way, congratulated Win and thanked him for what he acknowledged was an extraordinary effort.

It was such a monumental achievement that I wanted a memento of it, just for us. I persuaded Win to put on a
clean set of clothes and we drove up together that afternoon so I could take his picture standing in front of the house. After that, I photographed all the fine architectural detail inside.

Word of the house quickly spread around the camp, and soon all the staff wanted a guided tour. It was a triumph too for Win's chief carpenters – Bruno, Jean-Jacques, Nestor and Joseph. They had never worked on such a building before, and their pride in it shone in their faces.

 

The first half of June passed in a frenzy of preparation leading up to the arrival of the Comité Technique. Carol and I spent whole days planning menus, checking the bedrooms were ready and trying to anticipate the visitors' every need. Win put aside all other work to complete the refurbishment of the guesthouse and make eight new dining tables. By the time the party arrived on the night of 14 June, the guesthouse had been transformed. The walls gleamed with fresh white paint, and Carol had sewn floral curtains for all the windows and re-covered the lampshades with matching cloth. Potted ferns decorated the corners, and the new dining tables were covered with bright cloths I had cut out from lengths of
pagne.
As Doug ushered the party through the door, the look of amazement on his face told me all our efforts had been worthwhile.

While the guests were served welcome drinks, Carol put the final touches to the batch of pizzas she had made for their evening meal; on a nearby bench, the three lemon cheesecakes Win had baked sat ready on platters. The dining room hummed with conversation, some in English, some in French, and I caught snippets of it as I moved
about serving food and removing empty plates. Everyone thought the guesthouse charming, and they found it hard to imagine how such hospitality could be offered in a remote camp 600 kilometres from the coast and 700 metres up in the mountains.

In the morning, the flags of all the consortium partners were raised on the hillside above the guesthouse – Gabon, the USA, Germany, France and Romania – a reminder that Belinga was a flagship development for Gabon, and due protocol had to be observed. The delegates' program would include a tour of inspection of the entire camp, a visit to the drill sites, and a formal meeting to review progress and discuss future plans. Rodo had also organised a special dance performance by a group from Makokou for Saturday night, and Eamon and Noni would host a cocktail party at their house on Sunday evening.

Carol spent Saturday cooking a huge pot of curried lamb for their evening meal. Noni baked apple pies and Win had carved a miniature ebony souvenir for each guest from an ancient log that Eamon had brought in from the forest on a dozer. I hovered in the background, washing dishes, setting tables and emptying bins.

The guests arrived for their pre-dinner drinks in a buoyant mood, full of enthusiasm for what they had seen and eager to see the dance performance that would soon follow.

 

Down in the village, where we gathered after dinner, three large bonfires burned fiercely in a clearing below the bottom row of huts. Plastic chairs had been set out for the thirty of us, facing a palm-leaf pavilion where the musicians had set themselves up at the back.

A troupe of male and female Bwiti dancers had travelled up from Makokou two days beforehand – Rodo had organised their accommodation in the village and provided them with rations. They had been using the empty schoolhouse in the village for rehearsals.

Clusters of workers and their families had gathered on the sidelines. The night was cool and clear, with bright stars. I had brought the camera – this would be my only chance to capture such an event before we left.

The clanging, thumping music began, as always, without warning. When the dancers appeared in a long line from behind the pavilion, they looked like apparitions from some voodoo ritual in Haiti. Every face was painted white, obliterating the dancer's identity, and their features were outlined garishly in blue, red, orange and black. Some had blood-red crosses painted on their foreheads. The shuffling line of figures circled the fires, trance-like, their eyes glazed.

Some wore long white robes, like priests, with crimson sashes. Several women wore white veils like nuns. To one side, a colour photograph of Pope Paul VI had been pinned to a post. Strips of leopard skin dangled from some dancers' waists. They carried an eclectic mix of objects – fly-switches, bells, lamps, flags on sticks, torches and rattles – which they twirled in front of them or over their heads. I peered at their faces as they swirled past. Many seemed drugged, their faces expressionless, their eyes fixed in a vacant stare.

As the intensity built, some dancers prostrated themselves before the fires. Some leapt over the flames to the accompaniment of a dirge-like chant from the others. In the forest setting, the dance had a mesmerising effect.
My eyes began to close and my breathing slowed.

I was startled awake by the gasps of the audience at the sight of six male dancers, wearing only loincloths and bunches of fresh leaves, cavorting in a frenzied dance. One member of each pair carried the other on his back and they whirled in tight circles; their eyes rolled, their mouths gaped in an attitude of menace, and their nostrils flared. The other dancers were nowhere to be seen. Was this the African embodiment of Caliban, I wondered – the wild man of the forest, closer to animals than to humans?