Dizzy Worms Read online

  The opening hands were dealt from a pack of business cards kept on the bar counter at Harrods. Players were allowed to return one of the initial five cards into the pack, in return for another card, issued face down from the pack by the dealer. The opening move in the game was a declaration: “I am a consultant” – though seldom did anyone challenge that claim. Consultants, after all, were as common as fleas on a dog and hardly a day went by when Lucy, Charity, Pearson or Furniver did not have one of their cards pressed into their hands. Challenges became more frequent, however, as the game progressed, and after two successful challenges against them, a player had to retire.

  The rejoinder to the opening challenge – “I am a consultant” – was “I am an expert”, and got the game under way. As the titles became longer and grander, so the stakes rose – usually expressed in bottles of Tusker.

  Cards were dealt from a stack that was regularly replenished by visitors to the bar, most of whom were unaware that they were contributing to the game.

  Players could either go for broke, using the one card; more often, they would back up what they hoped was the winning claim with what they called a “full head” – four cards from different sources but with the same rank – i.e. Consultant, or Expert, Expert Consultant and so on.

  In the time since Pearson had first devised the game, the all-round winner had been:

  Africa against Obesity and Child Abuse

  Senior Gender Specialist, Expert Consultant.

  “So those are the rules. Simple, really,” Furniver told a bemused Digby. “Best learnt by actually playing. Sure there is no time for a round of Experts?”

  Charity was not amused.

  “There are more important things, Furniver, than playing cards. Our visitor has lost his goat. She’s called Dolly. And she comes from London, England. Mr Digby,” she continued, “I’m going to introduce you to two of my boys who can look for this Dolly – but I think it will cost you many dough balls.”

  Digby’s request for help finding his goat did not go down well with the boys.

  “Mzungus,” muttered Ntoto, and joined Rutere in kicking a tennis ball against the steel side of one of the Harrods containers.

  Charity intervened.

  “Ntoto, you will not have to do it for nothing. You will do it for dough balls, surely.”

  The interest of the two boys immediately picked up. The ball play stopped.

  “We are listening now,” said Ntoto.

  “First, Mr Adams,” said Charity, “you must describe your goat Dolly to these boys. Boys, listen carefully to what he says. Now, please, describe Dolly.”

  “She’s sort of, well, goatish, really,” stammered Digby, “pongs a bit, to be honest, loves chocolate . . . mustard colour, sandy I suppose, with a brown patch . . .”

  Charity raised an eyebrow.

  The boys looked at him with contempt.

  “There are many brown goats with a patch in Kuwisha,” said Rutere. “Every herd boy knows every goat in his flock, and they have names for the patches, even. Some are shaped like the msasa tree, some like the cloud before rain. To say you have a goat with a brown patch is like telling someone . . .” He paused. “Like telling somebody that you live in a house in London with a door, and think this is enough for them to find you.”

  Aloysius intervened. “I will tell them about the goat,” he said to Digby. And, breaking into Swahili, he addressed Ntoto: “And don’t give me any of your cheeky nonsense, you tick on a hyena’s arse, or you’ll get a sound thrashing.”

  Ntoto was about to say something equally rude, but then he remembered, much to his embarrassment, that Aloysius’ taxi had been the target of one of their pranks, which had seemed entertaining enough at the time. But Aloysius had not forgotten the noxious smell that came from his taxi’s driving wheel for weeks. It was never a good thing to have a fight with the Mboya Boys who had no compunction about using flying toilets as their weapon.

  “Now tell them, Mr Digby,” said Aloysius, reverting to English, “how much you will pay them.”

  The negotiations that followed were complex and protracted. Charity listened with growing admiration as Digby revealed a tougher, more subtle side to his nature. When the deal was concluded, Digby jotted down the details in his notebook.

  “That is well done,” she said. “I myself thought it would cost maybe six dough balls.”

  Ntoto and Rutere, each cramming a sugared dough ball into their mouths, headed off to the city centre – if anyone could find Dolly, or tell the boys who had eaten her, it was the cripples.

  “I don’t like mzungus,” said Ntoto.

  “Worse than Guchu?” asked Rutere. “Never!”

  Ntoto had the last word.

  “I myself would give . . .”

  He paused, wanting to be certain, absolutely certain, that he really meant it.

  “Yes, for sure, I would give my last dough ball to a boy who made Guchu squeal.”

  Rutere nodded solemnly. Ntoto was right.

  “More chicken necks?” Charity asked Digby.

  “That was jolly good . . . Wouldn’t mind.”

  “Would you like a plate? Fresh! I make the best chicken necks in Kuwisha.”

  Digby nodded, grateful.

  “For two, please.”

  Charity bustled off to the kitchen.

  “I have a question, Aloysius,” he said, examining the menu. “I understand that times are hard, but what baffles me is why a Coke and a sticky bun is so popular. Why don’t poor people eat sensibly?”

  “Sticky buns? Who is wanting sticky buns? Dough balls only,” said Charity, returning from the kitchen.

  “I was wondering why people who are poor, really hard up, don’t spend their money on proper food.”

  He pointed to the menu which announced: Good Sticky for Today.

  “Very good value,” said Charity. “A maize cob roasted over the fire, shredded cabbage salad with vegetable oil and lemon juice dressing, chopped carrot and a cup of milky tea or glass of fruit juice,” she added with satisfaction.

  But just below was the option: Bad Sticky for Today – Cola and iced bun.

  “Choice,” Charity explained. “People want to choose between decent food and rubbish food. Otherwise they are like animals . . .”

  Yet another aid worker, Charity thought, as she went to prepare a new batch of chicken necks in the kitchen. Another foreigner who was embarking on his disaster tour, seeking to tick off the aid industry’s “big five” in the same manner as conventional tourists looked for the lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo. A visit to an Aids orphanage, to a UN feeding centre, to a donor funded school, to a low-cost housing project, and to a borehole . . . Visit Kireba and you could see all five in an hour.

  Locals had learned to live with the attentions of foreign journalists, visiting pop stars, politicians and aid workers, who were also to be seen more and more frequently in Kuwisha, an increasingly fashionable destination.

  Charity had lost count of the number of callers who ended their tour with a drink at the bar. Their behaviour reminded her of the only time she had visited a game park in Kuwisha, persuaded to do so by Furniver. At sundown she had sat on a game-viewing platform, overlooking a watering hole.

  “These people who come to Kireba, they are like the tourists on safari,” she had told Furniver. “They sit in their buses, or on their verandas, safe, and watch the animals as they come to drink water. These people who come to Harrods, they are the same, looking, looking at the animals of Kireba.”

  She snorted derisively.

  “I hear them, Furniver. I hear them talking. They come and look at us in Kireba, as if we are animals in a game reserve. They talk, talk, talk to each other . . . ‘I say, I’ve spotted a charcoal burner, just behind that coffin maker. And look! Just over there! An Aids orphan, being looked after by a very kind nurse.’ ”

  And then, amused by her own vivid image, she could not help laughing, and Furniver joined in.

 
12

  Were it not for the passion it provoked, together with a desire for revenge, the feud between Titus Ntoto and Mayor Willifred Guchu would have been amusing. It went back to that morning when a flash flood swept Ntoto and Rutere out of one of the same pipes that were now about to be laid in the earth, and which they had made their home. The onrush of water had left them half drowned on the banks of what was supposed to be a river but in fact was closer to being a sewer that ran through the slum and emptied its contents in the dam.

  Ntoto, half buried in a muddy, oozing, stinking wasteland, ended up in the clutches of the man he feared and hated above all others – Mayor Guchu. Normally Guchu, widely seen as President Nduka’s business partner, steered clear of Kireba, but the World Bank president was due to visit a pilot housing project the next day, and Guchu was anxious to ensure that all went smoothly.

  Accompanying Guchu on that dreadful day had been his security officer, Sergeant Sokoto, who had enthusiastically administered a thorough beating to Ntoto. At one stage the mayor himself had joined in, and Ntoto had never forgotten the relish with which Guchu had whipped him. And when Ntoto told Rutere what had happened, the anger and humiliation brought tears to his eyes, and in front of his friend he made a solemn vow.

  “One day I will make that Guchu squeal.”

  More than a year had passed since the boy’s humiliation at the mayor’s hands and Ntoto had yet to deliver on his threat.

  “Wait until the nshima (porridge) is cold before you put the poison in,” was an excuse that was starting to wear thin.

  “If the other boys”, warned Cyrus Rutere, “think you are afraid, they will not be afraid of you.” As he said this, he seemed to become an old man, reflecting on the ways of the world, wise beyond his years.

  His suggestion, however, of throwing a flying toilet though the window of the Rolls was dangerous, notwithstanding its superficial appeal.

  Ntoto had no doubt. The mess would be cleaned up, not by the mayor or his officials, but by street boys forced to help, who would then blame Ntoto for their unpleasant experience.

  “Enough nonsense, Rutere, or I will give you to mungiki – and you know what mungiki do to boys who are not circumcised.”

  Even the mention of mungiki made Rutere shudder with apprehension. The rival gang not only had a reputation for ruthless treatment of their enemies, including on-the-spot circumcision with the crudest of implements; if press reports were to be believed, they had made participation in obscene oathing ceremonies a condition of membership.

  Rutere was about to protest, then saw the look on his friend’s face, and thought the better of it. The hard, cold and ruthless expression belied his fourteen years, and for just a moment, Rutere felt sorry for the mayor – though only for the briefest of moments.

  Digby wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve and took a long draught of Tusker. Those chicken necks had been really, really good, and the world now seemed a better place – indeed, if only Rutere and Ntoto could find Dolly, he would call himself a happy man.

  “Another Tusker? Thirsty work, those chicken necks, especially on a hot day,” asked Furniver, who had reappeared, notebook in hand.

  “Read my mind, would love one. How did you end up in Kireba, if you don’t mind me asking, doing . . . well, whatever it is that you do?”

  “How did I end up here? Luck, pure luck . . .” was Furniver’s usual glib response to any question about how a wealthy London banker had come to make his home in an East African slum, running a micro lending business.

  But for those who persisted, and provided he was in a good mood, he told a story which began on a miserable, rain-swept summer day in London . . .

  For all his success in the City, Furniver told Digby, he had tired of the remorseless greed of his profession, had quarrelled with his wife and had been irritated by his son. He still found it painful to recall the evening he turned up at his home in Notting Hill, late as usual, to be confronted by a wife who told him that their marriage had reached an end. His son David also had news for him. He had decided to pursue his law degree and had dropped plans for a gap year in Africa.

  Father and son had quarrelled and David had thrown a letter on the floor, in a gesture of defiance and an assertion of adolescent independence. It was an invitation for an interview with Water Africa, which, if successful, would have led to him spending nine months in Kuwisha helping to build a water plant in Kireba.

  At the end of the sad and rancorous evening, Furniver had picked up the letter, stuck it in his pocket and had forgotten all about it until the next day when, driving into the office, he reached for his wallet and discovered the envelope.

  “So I just took a chance,” he said to Digby, “and went to the interview that David had arranged. The panel looked somewhat surprised to see me when I said I was there on behalf of my son – not to explain his absence, but to take his place. It was a rather odd experience, but had a happy ending.”

  Digby listened attentively as Furniver gave his account of what happened next . . .

  “So you want to do a gap year, Mr Furniver?”

  “Yes.”

  “In East Africa?”

  “Absolutely. I’d like to take my son’s place.”

  “Gap years are usually taken by, well, people between about 18 and 25.”

  “You’re not discriminating against me on the grounds of age, are you?”

  “Of course not, it’s just that it’s . . . well, a bit unusual.”

  “Ten minutes later they had warmed to me,” Furniver told Digby, “and a week later I was off to Kuwisha to start what I hoped would be my brilliant gap year. And so within a month or so of arriving here, I had my feet under the table at Harrods wondering what the hell I was doing in the water business. One morning I helped Charity negotiate a loan that went towards buying a much-needed second-hand fridge. And from there on everything fell into place. I realised that cheap money was as important as clean water and, while I knew not a sausage about clean water, I knew a helluva lot about managing money. So I moved in to what’s been home for the past three years or so.”

  He gestured towards the Kireba Co-operative Bank’s offices, one of the handful of brick and mortar buildings in the slum, which included a one-bedroom flat on the upper floor.

  He had opted to live there against the unanimous advice of Kuwisha’s expatriates, who had warned him that it would be a dangerous act of folly. The expat ladies had, during the first few months of his stay, tried to persuade him to move to the safer, “low density” enclaves of civilisation, and resorted to appeals to the baser appetites of a fifty-something bachelor, making regular gifts of home-made cakes and jams.

  Their husbands made clear that they regarded him as mad, a view shared by Kuwisha’s remaining white settlers. Furniver had declined all offers of alternative accommodation, and to the general surprise of expatriates and settlers alike, he had come to no harm. His flat had remained unburgled, and he had yet to be mugged. Neither fact was unconnected with the discreet presence and protection of members of the Mboya Boys United Football Club, a polite name for the local gang of street children, led by Titus Ntoto; and in particular members of the under-15 football team, whose ubiquitous presence Furniver had come to take for granted.

  Much against his egalitarian instincts, Furniver had agreed to employ a steward. Try as he did, he could not get used to being greeted first thing in the morning and last thing at night by a small and elderly man invariably dressed in spotless whites, his wrinkled brown knees peeping out between his long socks and his even longer shorts. Didymus Kigali made himself indispensable.

  “Seems you are well known at Harrods,” said Digby.

  “Become my open-air office,” explained Furniver.

  The power supply was erratic, and although he had installed a stand-by generator, it only produced enough power to keep the all-important computer running.

  However, Furniver had turned the electricity black-outs to his social advantage. The relaxed a
tmosphere of Harrods bar was a better place to do business than the office of the society. To see the man from whom you needed a loan sitting at a table, casually dressed, sipping a mango juice and nibbling on a handful of groundnuts, was a far less intimidating prospect for potential clients who would never have dreamt of crossing the threshold of a commercial bank.

  “Tell me about your work,” said Furniver, an invitation he regretted as soon as he saw Digby’s eyes light up with enthusiasm.

  “It has a dual thingie,” said Digby earnestly, “functioning at two levels. One is a sort of play on words, like a pun, sort of, you know. The other is showing that outside help – and outsiders can help – on a practical basis can have a positive and constructive impact. In a very real sense. It’s been a controversial issue. When the WorldFeed executive committee got to hear about it, the proverbial hit the fan. Luckily I was able to show that the vegetarian faction in WorldFeed – a nasty bunch, mark my words . . . Unless there is a purge of those blighters, they’ll take over . . . where was I? Oh yes, they had made a balls-up of their figures. The protein co-efficient is never as high as they claim. Anybody who has done first year in development studies knows that.”

  What on earth was the boy on about, Furniver wondered, though was too polite to say as much.

  “Going a bit fast for me . . .”

  If Digby heard him, he gave no sign.

  “All about stakeholders and the need to guarantee ownership of Africa’s transition.”

  Digby lingered over the last words in the sentence, suggesting that they had a special significance.

  Furniver decided to be obtuse.

  “Confess I’m stumped . . .”

  “Guaranteeing Ownership of Africa’s Transition. Goat! Got it? One of the lobby groups that WorldFeed sponsors. As I said, works at two levels – intellectual and practical. Hence Dolly. We have made quite a breakthrough.”

  “In a very real sense, I hope,” said Furniver. “Coffee?”

  “Wish I’d come out here on my gap year,” said Digby, washing down his last dough ball with a mouthful of Furniver’s coffee made from beans collected on Charity’s shamba.