Dizzy Worms Read online

  DIZZY WORMS

  For 25 years MICHAEL HOLMAN reported on the continent for the Financial Times, and continues to visit regularly. Brought up in Gwelo, Rhodesia (now Gweru, Zimbabwe), he took his first degree at the University of Rhodesia before he taking up a place at Edinburgh University, where he completed an MSc in Politics. From 1977 to 1984 he was based in Lusaka, Zambia, for the Financial Times as the paper’s Africa correspondent; he moved to London in 1984 when he became the FT’s Africa editor. In 2002 he took early retirement to write books. His first novel, Last Orders at Harrods, was published in 2005, the sequel, Fatboy and the Dancing Ladies followed in 2007.

  Michael Holman lives in London, and writes for a range of papers in the UK, Kenya and South Africa; Dizzy Worms completes the Kuwisha trilogy. He is currently working on a play – Missing Apartheid.

  Praise for Last Orders at Harrods and Fatboy and the

  Dancing Ladies

  “It is not easy to write a novel which combines humour with an understanding of the serious issues facing contemporary Africa. In this delightful novel, Michael Holman, a writer who has for many years commented on African affairs to a world-wide readership, has produced a book which is not only an entertaining and amusing read but also a profound comment on the political and economic landscape of Africa. The style is engaging, the characters lively, and the end result is a superb novel born of years of engagement with Africa.”

  Alexander McCall Smith,

  author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

  “Charity Mupanga is an African heroine in the spirit of Alexander McCall Smith’s Precious Ramotswe – big hearted, township-wise and self-reliant.”

  Peter Godwin,

  author of Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa

  “In this satirical feast, Holman hits his mark every time as he exposes the humbug and also the humanity of life in modern Africa. With a Dickensian cast of characters in the troubled nation of Kuwisha and a plot worthy of Waugh, this is a cracking fictional debut . . . Full of humour, hometruths – and anger simmering beneath it all – this is a book that must be read.”

  Aidan Hartley, author of Zanzibar Chest

  “Capable of far more than gentle humour . . . he weaves critical comments on foreign aid into an entertaining plot involving young Ferdinand Mlambo, dismissed from his job as houseboy at Kuwisha’s state house.”

  Financial Times

  “Very funny, very educational satire . . . fast-paced tale of absurd organisational chaos. As corrupt politicians, squabbling aid agencies and wellmeaning celebrities all jostle for power, the citizens of Kuwisha’s worst slum get on as best they can with the business of daily life.”

  Sydney Morning Herald

  “Holman writes some of the most insightful novels about Africa today.”

  BBC Radio 4

  First published in

  Great Britain in 2010 by

  Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

  This ebook edition published in 2012 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  Copyright © Michael Holman, 2010

  The moral rights of Michael Homan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-224-5

  Print ISBN: 978-1-84697-153-2

  Version 1.0

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  In loving memory of my dear brother

  Peter David Holman

  12/4/50 – 11/11/73

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My heartfelt thanks to: Gabrielle Stubbs, whose loving care continues to sustain me; to the friends who encourage me, in particular: Alan Cowell and Sue Cullinan; the Orr family and the staff at Jinchini, Kenya; Peter Chappell; Chris and Janet Sherwell; Quentin and Mary Peel; the late J. D. F. Jones; and Ann Grant; Dr Patricia Limousin and her colleagues at London’s National Hospital for Neurology; Hugh Andrew and Neville Moir at Polygon, my publisher and editor respectively; Judy Moir, whose sharp editing spotted errors and inconsistencies – those that remain are mine; Michela Wrong and John Githongo, who have long been my guides to the “real” Kuwisha; and I am indebted to my god-daughter Lilly Peel, who braved my bad temper to perform wonders; and to Sandy McCall Smith for his long-time support. Above all, I am grateful to my inspirational and indefatigable mother who has lived through a revolution in Africa.

  Rye Barcott and Salim Mohamed continue to bring hope to the children who live in an all-too-real Kireba (http://cfk.unc.edu/).

  The land of Kuwisha and the characters in this novel are the products of my imagination. Nearly everything else is true.

  A nightmarish air of normality greeted me when I flew into the shell-shocked city of Kinshasa. President Mobutu sese Seko had reshuffled his cabinet for the thirty-fifth time in ten years, and I was determined to find out why. My first port of call was the United States embassy, where the laconic ambassador was an old friend of mine. What was the significance, I asked him, of the reshuffle? Could it mark, I suggested, a paradigm shift in relations with the country’s fractious opposition?

  He drew on his cigar and puffed the smoke towards the rumbling air conditioner, and together we watched as it drifted away. He turned my question back on me.

  “What do you get when you shake up a can of worms?” he asked: “Dizzy worms, Ekim, dizzy worms.”

  And so it proved . . .

  In Search of Africa: A Foreign Correspondent Looks Back

  Ekim Namloh

  Polyglot Press, 1998

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  Peep! Peep! Peep! Peep! Peep! Peeeep!

  The vintage Braun radio at the foot of the plain coffin beside the altar flickered into life. A bulb within the old-fashioned receiver lit up and illuminated its tuning panel, aglow with the names of fortresses and outposts of a colonial world long past. Luanda and Lourenço Marques, Elizabethville and Nairobi, Cape Town and Johannesburg, Pretoria and Grahamstown, Pietermaritzburg and Bloemfontein, Bulawayo and Salisbury, Blantyre and Gwelo . . .

  The BBC time signal, which marked the formal opening of the service, echoed around the granite walls of the crematorium chapel, built many years before the east African state of Kuwisha won independence from Britain. The sound of the pips cut through the murmurs from the world outside. Muffled car horns, cries of street vendors and the tinkle of bicycle bells blended with the shouts of matatu boys as they drummed up passengers for their buses, which in turn merged with the laughter and chatter of children from the nearby school as they began their mid-morning break.


  Just as the last peep faded away, an old man entered, wearing a pin-stripe suit, dark glasses and a fresh rose in his buttonhole, a solicitous aide by his elbow. His unexpected presence was greeted with an almost tangible combination of fear and loathing, fascination and awe, as if a malign spirit was made manifest, Victorian in appearance but voodoo in its impact.

  As the late arrival took his seat in the front row, the chirpy Irish jig, “Lillibullero”, signature tune of the BBC World Service, burst out, relayed by loudspeakers wired to the organ loft, high above the congregation. It was out of the usual sequence. The composition, which began life two hundred years ago as a Northern Irish Protestant marching song, normally comes first, but the deceased had left specific instructions that the order should be reversed. Indeed, not long before his death he had personally helped splice the tape that was now playing to the congregation.

  Just last week, a couple of days before he passed on, he had summoned Boniface Rugiru, senior bar steward at the Thumaiga Club, to receive detailed instructions about the settlement of his estate and the disposal of his mortal remains.

  Word of the terms of the will had spread through Kireba like wildfire. The endowment was enough to cover the clinic’s running costs for years. More than that, it was enough to cover the fees that would allow Mercy Mupanga to achieve her long-cherished ambition – to complete a diploma in public health.

  From his vantage point in the organ loft, Rugiru looked down on the congregation. There was not a seat to be had, he noted with satisfaction. A dozen or more street boys, displaying their appreciation of the deceased’s insistence that they be given free dough balls to mark his passing, took up the best part of a row, scratching their intimate crevices with nonchalant indifference, peering at the rest of the gathering with befuddled curiosity.

  The distinctive smell of ripe boys, a powerful mixture of wood smoke and burnt tyres, acrid sweat and a whiff of bhang, made those who were sitting downwind wrinkle their noses, while those who were upwind gave thanks for their good fortune.

  One boy stood out among the fidgeters, however, sitting immobile but for a forefinger that constantly traced the left orb of his nose, his eyes fixed on a bull-necked man wearing the mayoral chain of office, staring at the back of his head with single-minded intensity.

  “Rutere!” hissed a woman in her forties, sitting a few feet from the boy. “Behave!”

  Boniface Rugiru took out his handkerchief, wiped beads of sweat from his brow, and shifted in the chair that would normally be occupied by the organist. To his delight and relief, the makeshift system that connected the radio to a tape recorder and on to the speakers, operated by switches on a panel in front of him, had passed its initial test.

  Rugiru, an imposing figure in his freshly pressed uniform of bow tie, black jacket and trousers – the Club committee had given him permission to wear the outfit off-premises – loosened his collar. It was too early to relax. But for the first time since that painful evening at the Club, he dared to hope that he would successfully discharge the heavy responsibilities placed on his shoulders by his old friend.

  He stopped holding his breath and inadvertently let out a strained noise, somewhere between a moan of satisfaction and a cry of triumph, which carried to the front rows of the packed congregation sitting below him . . .

  What a turn-out!

  Under one roof, the movers and shakers of the slum called Kireba had come together. Clarence “Results” Mudenge, proprietor of the Klean Blood Klinic, source of sound advice and dispenser of herbal potions, sat next to his friend Philimon Ogata, whose Pass Port to Heaven Funeral Parlour was doing a thriving trade. Mudenge took out the cloth he carried for the purpose and wiped his eye. Were he not in church, he would have removed it altogether and given it a good rub. Dust and a glass eye did not go together.

  Ogata coughed, a racking persistent cough, disquietingly similar to the one from which his late wife, Beatrice, had suffered in the months before her death.

  Alongside Ogata sat Mildred Kigali, devoted wife of Didymus, house steward by profession, senior elder of the Church of the Blessed Lamb by vocation, two septuagenarians who were pillars of their community; Charity Mupanga, owner and manager of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot), a well-known eating house on the edge of Kireba, sat at the end of the bench, keeping a maternal eye on the street boys.

  She looked up towards the organ loft, concern and compassion on her face, and turned to a middle-aged white man alongside her. Edward Furniver, manager of the Kireba People’s Co-operative Bank, whispered in her ear, giving her hand a squeeze as he did so.

  Some distinguished outsiders were also present. Mrs Bunty Benton, chief housekeeper at State House for as long as anyone could remember, had firmly turned down Rugiru’s invitation to take a place in the front row. Instead she sat at the back, next to the young army officer who had escorted her to her seat.

  Boniface Rugiru bowed his head and resumed his prayers for the soul of the man who had been his thirstiest customer, his most generous source of tips, and the family benefactor who had paid the school fees of the surviving four of the six children with whom he and his wife Patience had been blessed.

  Boniface also gave thanks to the Lord for helping him resist a terrible temptation. How he had longed to take the radio for himself. Instead he had honoured his late friend’s instruction that the Braun, which Rugiru had coveted ever since he had been a youngster, should accompany its owner into the flames. In a few minutes the receiver would be gone forever. Together with the coffin, it would disappear through the sombre brown curtains that concealed the furnace from the packed congregation.

  With the radio would go a chunk of Rugiru’s childhood, for it had been a cherished companion of his teenage years as the Thumaiga Club’s “small boy”, a friend to whose voice Rugiru had listened as he had dusted the owner’s bedroom.

  Even then, at the tender age of thirteen, he had dared to hope that one day the Braun would be his. Alas, it was not to be . . .

  Rugiru’s limbs twitched as he reached back into these memories. He had not danced for the radio since he was a toto; regrettably he had failed to persuade the bishop conducting the service to let him perform the ritual dance before the altar, in a final act of friendship.

  A thought occurred to him: although the space around the organ was cramped, there was room enough to pay a private tribute, accompanied by a silent rendition of that song in honour of the radio, which he had composed nearly fifty years ago.

  While the congregation was absorbed in prayer, Rugiru got to his feet. He double-checked that he could not be seen from below, and began to limber up with a couple of moves. They were tentative at first, for his joints were stiff. Then as he got into his stride, he showed how he had won the Northern Transvaal Ballroom Dancing championship when still in his twenties.

  Silently and with great agility, knees raised impossibly high, elbows jutting towards the heavens, torso bent parallel to the ground, Boniface Umfana Rugiru toyi-toyi’d his tribute to the radio and to its master, singing under his breath:

  Jo’burg, Cape Town and Salisbur-eee.

  The world is watched by the BBC . . .

  Pretoria, Bulawayo, Nairob-eee.

  Wherever in Africa you may be

  Bloemfontein, Gwelo, even Umtali,

  You cannot keep a secret from BBC . . .

  With a final silent stomp, the chant ended. Boniface mopped his brow. In less than a minute, the service would be over.

  Then a sudden movement caught his eye. As the Bishop of Central Kuwisha delivered the final blessing, and the coffin began to move out of sight, the bar steward watched with horror and anguish an act that was sacrilegious, truly offensive to his Christian soul and demeaning to the reputation of the country called Kuwisha.

  Spotted only by Rugiru, thanks to his elevated position in the organ loft, an arm appeared from behind the curtain, ripped out the wires that led to the radio, and withdrew, clutching the Braun. Although it w
eighed several kilos, the receiver disappeared from sight in an action that seemed almost as fast as the tongue of a chameleon plucking a fly from the air.

  When Rugiru’s involuntary gasp of pain, fury and anguish reached their ears, members of the congregation, moved by what they believed was an uninhibited display of raw grief, gave out a collective murmur of sympathy.

  Charity Mupanga spoke for them all when she whispered to Edward Furniver: “Poor Rugiru! His heart is very sore. My goodness, how he loved that old man.”

  The Kireba Youth Choir led the singing of “Nkosi Sikele’ iAfrika” and the congregation prepared to leave their seats.

  Rugiru looked on, helpless and incredulous.

  As the chapel emptied, he took a solemn oath, swearing in the name of the deceased that he would track down the thief, and make the scoundrel rue the day he had interfered in the last rites that marked the final journey of his old friend.

  1

  “Welcome to Kuwisha!”

  The immigration officer at the international airport handed back the passport to Digby Adams, Senior International Profile Co-ordinator and Cross-cutting Media Expert for WorldFeed, the Oxford-based aid agency.

  Digby took a deep breath. At last! Within five years of leaving university he had arrived on the front line of the battle against poverty, trained to serve as a development professional as dedicated as any soldier. He was ready to take on the curse of illiteracy, to confront the scourge of poverty, and to play the role of guide, mentor and spokesperson for the stakeholders of Kuwisha.

  The clammy heat had enveloped him like a steaming hot towel as he stepped out of the plane, and he took a lungful of what he was sure was the “real” Africa.

  Digby wiped his brow as he waited in the arrivals hall and kept an eye open for his travel companion. The battered luggage-carousel wheezed into life.

  Although early morning, it was already hot. So hot that in the city the feral street children, who normally flocked around visitors like predatory skinny birds, their beak-like fingers dipping into pockets of jackets and carrying away wallets, merely looked on at the passing scene, lacking the energy to throw stones at the mangy dogs that lay panting under whatever shelter they could find.