Dizzy Worms Page 9

  Given that only a few minutes earlier the banker had seemed enthusiastic about the idea, the intensity of the response took Digby by surprise.

  “Rot,” said Furniver. “Utter rot. Waste of time.”

  He took another sip of his coffee and thrust the weekend edition of The Guardian in front of Digby’s nose.

  “Do you know,” he said, “that I came across one ad for a gap year which talked about helping Africa, and ended with the phrase ‘no experience necessary’? The gap year business has been a growth industry for years,” he continued. “Their parents not only pay for the air ticket out here, they also fund the charity their children leave behind, but as soon as their children return, the good cause collapses, the clinic or whatever. It’s a case of visiting far-off lands, meeting interesting people and patronising them, turning Africa into an adventure playground for middle-class youth from Europe.”

  Once launched he was unstoppable.

  “Don’t believe me?” he asked. “Well, just you have a look at the internet. Scores of websites showing young white people in charge of black people. Invariably the gap year bods hold positions of authority – administering medicine, writing on a blackboard, supervising a building project, in charge of a classroom . . . While all the time smiling black faces respond to white folks’ wisdom.”

  It was seldom that Furniver got going like this but when he did, it was with passion and anger.

  “Something is wrong,” he said. “You can spend a thousand pounds for two weeks in Ghana under some ‘media programme’, run by an organisation that tells you that by the second day you can be broadcasting to a grateful nation. Anyone would think that Africa is populated by cretins, grateful for anybody with ‘O’ levels from Europe. Something is wrong,” he said again.

  For Furniver this was the equivalent of a speech and as he realised he’d got carried away by the subject he coughed apologetically.

  “Time for a round of Experts?” he asked hopefully.

  13

  Digby opted for an early night, and accepted Furniver’s offer of a lift to the WorldFeed headquarters where Lucy had offered him a bed.

  “See you tomorrow at Harrods,” said Furniver. “Pearson and Lucy will be there. And believe me, you can learn about life by sitting on your bum and looking at the world around you. It’s called the gap hour, when you think and look around you. Far more important than a gap year. See you tomorrow,” he called out as the taxi left the grounds.

  “Next stop, the Thumaiga Club,” he told the driver.

  If the truth was told, he rather enjoyed the Club, bastion of privilege and order, and in particular the outspoken sentiments of its Oldest Member, who remained resolute and defiant in his unceasing battle against the follies of post-independence life.

  A few evenings earlier, Furniver had been shown into the cool, dark, fusty room that was called the Club Library, frozen at a period in the past, perhaps just before Kuwisha became independent, when far more weighty matters than keeping the library up to date were on the minds of the committee.

  “The member sends his apologies, suh. The night did not pass well for him. He asks you to wait. Tea, suh?”

  Furniver thanked Boniface Rugiru, declined tea, and looked around.

  Dornford Yates reigned supreme in that long-gone world, where members were urged to write down the title of their latest borrowing, and the date on which they borrowed it, in a notebook attached to a reading desk by a piece of string.

  He came across some of his favourite reading – a series called the East Africa Year Book, and paged through the advertisements of a world long gone. The Union Castle Line, Imperial typewriters, the Illustrated London News – “the greatest illustrated newspaper in the world”.

  The book’s statistics made him pause. In the mid-fifties Kuwisha had as many as 30,000 Europeans, and some 5 million Africans. Today the number of whites had halved and many of those worked for the UN and NGOs, while the African population had boomed: over 40 million – eight times that number of half a century ago.

  The 1950s were a golden age for the East African traveller, an era of river boats on the Nile, flights to Sudan, picnics at Pakwach, steamers on Lake Victoria. Most were destinations that were now described as war-torn or shell-shocked, reached by pot-holed roads fast reverting to an encroaching jungle and made impassable by landmines laid by rebels and dissidents. Hotels that once provided hot showers, cold beers and clean sheets had long since become ruins.

  Someone had made a desultory start to rearranging the library and clearing out unwanted novels, magazines and tracts.

  All books in this box 20 ngwee.

  Furniver looked through them, and one in particular caught his eye. Young Rutere would find it useful. He dropped a note into the honesty box, and saw that the notice was dated a decade ago.

  The bats were swooping low over the swimming pool, and the brief, in-between light of dusk was rapidly turning into velvet African darkness when Rugiru ushered him into the presence of the Oldest Member.

  Although he had misgivings about patronising an institution that was a refuge for the country’s elite, it had an abiding appeal, for it was an obvious sanctuary for a newly arrived white man in Africa. Furniver’s membership of his London club included reciprocal terms for Kuwisha’s centre of privilege, defended by its now overwhelming black membership as vigorously as it had ever been during the years of colonial rule.

  For his first few nights in Kuwisha, Furniver had taken a room there, and the man he came to call the Oldest Member had been one of the few at the Club to welcome him with anything like genuine warmth, offering to nominate him should he wish to become a full member.

  The exchanges had led to something that became friendship and for all the conservative views expressed by the old chap, who had been a district commissioner when the country was ruled by the British, Furniver came to enjoy their sessions.

  Once a week, usually on a Wednesday, he dropped in for a gin and tonic and a natter with the OM, crusty and cantankerous though he was. Had his outspoken views been uttered by anyone else, they would have attracted the attention of the country’s special branch.

  There was much speculation about the reasons for this apparent immunity. Some members recalled a rumour that he had known the Ngwazi in the war years before independence; others suggested that at heart the OM was a “liberal”, whatever the impressions to the contrary. All members, however, had come to accept the old boy as a fixture, rather like the contents of the musty Club library, with its first editions, comfortable leather armchairs and out-of-date club announcements on a green-baized notice board with a pencil stub hanging from a string.

  The OM spotted the approaching Furniver.

  “Mr Rugiru!” he roared. “Gin and tonic for my friend, and more cashew nuts, if you please! And don’t forget fresh lemon.”

  Pleasantries with his guest exchanged, the OM got down to business.

  “Going to get on my soapbox and have one of my whaddyacallems? Rants, that’s it, when I let off steam.”

  He winked at Furniver.

  “Always feel better afterwards.”

  When the old boy was on form, the passionate outbursts and tirades, delivered in staccato form and pace, were a stimulating mixture of prejudice, shrewd insights and lessons drawn from decades of experience as a district officer in pre-independence Kuwisha.

  On this particular evening, the Oldest Member began with a salvo against members of Africa’s post-independence generation – the “born-frees”, as they were known.

  “Got everything on a plate,” declared the OM.

  “On a plate,” said Furniver emphatically, nodding as if in enthusiastic agreement, while allowing himself to drift away and think about how he might persuade Charity Mupanga to give her hand in marriage.

  “On a plate,” he said again.

  He recalled her smile – not to mention her splendid teeth, revealed to their best effect when eating corn off a fresh-roasted cob . . .


  “One year,” said the OM, getting into his stride, “the indigenous were bending their backs under the burden of the colonial yoke, the next year they were running the show, their bums in the butter. And their sons and daughters, the so-called ‘born-bloody-frees’, joined their parents and put their own snouts in the trough.”

  “Snouts,” said Furniver, nodding his head.

  What was more, Charity’s sense of humour was tuned to his own . . .

  “Soon it all went wrong.”

  The OM popped a couple of cashews into his mouth.

  “Went wrong, absolutely, wrong,” said Furniver.

  As for her dancing . . .

  “Take Boniface, for example. Had he been born a couple of years earlier, he would have got a job in the civil service, when the Brits pulled out.”

  Boniface Rugiru didn’t look up from the glasses he was polishing at the bar. It was not the first time he had heard the OM let off steam.

  “Hips,” said Furniver.

  The way she moved her hips . . .

  “For God’s sake, Edward, stop thinking about that woman. Time you made an honest man of yourself.”

  Furniver was jolted back to the real world.

  “Word of advice. Do it. Clearly a sensible woman. Way she handled your jipu.”

  A cloud crossed the OM’s face.

  “Many a marriage would have been saved in the bad old days had a district officer been able to have their jipus dealt with. One lad had the thing on his wotsit, buggered around with it, got an abscess, and damn near cost him the family jewels. Wife left him. Poor show. Gather Charity and her cousin, wotshername, Mercy, did a damn good job on you.”

  The fly known as the jipu had a propensity to lay its eggs in laundry hung out to dry, all too often preferring underpants; and when an egg, thriving in warm sweaty crevices, became a maggot, the itch that signalled its presence was as irritating as it was embarrassing.

  For a few moments, both men seemed lost in memories that were too painful or too personal to reveal.

  “Patronage,” said the OM, breaking the silence. “Curse of the continent.”

  He tossed a handful of cashew nuts into his mouth, and Furniver prepared to take evasive action. The combination of dentures that didn’t quite fit, a subject that provoked a passionate response, and a handful of cashews almost invariably led to the listener being enveloped in a formidable spray of partly chewed nuts.

  “Corruption.”

  The OM looked defiantly at Furniver, as if challenging him to contradict an assertion of a self-evident and universal truth.

  “Patronage!” he continued. “Just a polite way of saying corruption. Destroys the whole country. See it everywhere.”

  He prodded the pile of newspapers that lay on the table, full of reports about looming hunger and imminent famine in north-east Kuwisha, and claims that business men and politicians were making millions out of food imports on which they had avoided paying tax but priced as if they had – thus doubling their profit.

  North East Province was in “a food deficit situation” according to the UN World Food Programme, which was appealing to international donors to rally round. The OM stabbed the offending article with a nicotine-stained forefinger.

  “There! Read it for yourself.”

  Furniver put on his specs, and obeyed. But by the end of the account, he was no wiser.

  “Usual weasel phrases by the WFP,” he said hopefully, but pretty sure that he had missed the offending point.

  The OM stayed silent, and Furniver tried again.

  “Can’t let the blighters starve . . .”

  His voice trailed off, knowing that the OM was perfectly capable of calling for such drastic action.

  “Let the blighters starve, you say? Steady on! Still, good to hear you calling for no-nonsense measures. Let the blighters starve!”

  The OM shook his head, like a parent unsure whether their child’s precocity should be reined in or rewarded.

  “Don’t suppose you can help it. Chip off the old block.”

  Furniver groaned inwardly, and looked around the bar to see who was in earshot. Boniface continued polishing the glasses. About a dozen members sat gossiping, in various stages of inebriation.

  One of them looked his way, a former justice minister who had strong views on the benefits of capital punishment. The Oxford-educated lawyer caught Furniver’s eye and gave him the thumbs-up.

  Furniver’s reputation for being to the right of the most conservative of settlers owed much to the OM. God knows how the misunderstanding had arisen. The OM had also got it into his head that Furniver was related to a notorious colleague from his colonial days, called Miles “Flogger” Moreland, now living in retirement on the coast, and whose willingness to use his sjambok, a rhino hide whip which never left his side, was legendary.

  Sometimes Furniver wondered whether he was not the butt of a perverse game, the nature and purpose of which was known only to his tormentor. He had once tried to suggest as much, and was greeted with a look of such glacial incomprehension from the OM’s pale blue eyes that he had felt obliged to beat a confused retreat.

  “You get carried away,” his host had remonstrated. “Bit too enthusiastic for the old days and its ways. Best kept under your hat.”

  The OM, whose voice carried across the Club room at the best of times, repeated his advice with a roar that could be heard at the swimming pool.

  Furniver took another sip of his drink, and waited for his host to get to the point.

  “How’s Flogger? Still living on the coast, is he?”

  The Oldest Member did not wait for a reply. Instead he stabbed the newspaper, covered in underlinings, exclamation marks and scribbled notes.

  “Now, that one, read that ad.”

  Furniver took a closer look.

  The UN Development Programme and WorldFeed were seeking a “regional transport expert co-ordinator” to operate in North East Province. The successful applicant would be expected to liaise closely with government agencies and oversee a communications strategy, in which the applicant displayed an ability to implement a comprehensive “knowledge management process”.

  Furniver read it carefully, but still found it hard to grasp what the OM was banging on about.

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Thank God for that! Thought the penny would never drop! More cashews, Mr Rugiru, and bring on the gin and tonic. Now let me tell you about the North East . . .”

  Furniver went for a pee. It was going to be one of those nights.

  14

  In his office in the suburban enclave which housed all the UN agencies, Anders Berksson was working late, studying the grim findings of the latest economic review of Kuwisha, which showed that 60 per cent of its people were living on $2 a day. To Berksson’s dismay, the report had already reached Head Office, and had triggered a predictable response.

  In such a promising environment, HQ had noted, there could be no excuse whatsoever for the fact that the UN Development Programme was facing a humiliating prospect. An agency that should be playing a leading role in Kuwisha’s struggle to overcome poverty was failing to reach its budget target, let alone exceed it by a respectable amount. Unless it raised its game, UNDP would actually underspend in the current year by as much as 3 per cent.

  A knock on the door interrupted Berksson’s depressing reading. His deputy, an Argentinean econometrician, widely regarded as one of the most talented employees in the organisation, had come to offer some solace.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” he argued. “You could not have done more.”

  He ticked off Berksson’s achievements: “Let’s begin with education.”

  Children of UN employees, he pointed out, now had a choice: to attend the local international school or to go abroad.

  “Or take security,” he continued.

  The growing problem of law and order in Kuwisha had led to a doubling of security patrols for UN workers and their families.


  “And health,” he went on.

  Health insurance had been extended, and treatment could now be obtained in Europe.

  “The fact is, the spending problem is structural. We live in a society where graft has been institutionalised. How can we possibly exceed our budget targets under these circumstances? Every project has to be reviewed, and the outcome, as likely as not, is cancellation, suspension or further review – usually at the pre-implementation stage.”

  Berksson nodded.

  “I tried telling that to headquarters and it didn’t get me very far.”

  He had listed the problems they had faced over the years, including past attempts to bring water to Kireba – at least 80 per cent of the projects had failed, despite UNDP’s best efforts.

  The two men stood at the window, taking in the lights of the city.

  “Good luck! You really deserve it.”

  The deputy handed over the latest assessment of spending in the financial year ending that month, and bade farewell. He was due to present his paper to a conference in Abuja: Discretionary Funding in Times of Austerity: The Kireba Experience.

  This time, Berksson pledged, it would be different.

  True, the news on the economic front was grim. The agency’s spending was down nearly 4 per cent, if the last quarter’s figures were taken on an annualised basis. And there was worse to come.

  The latest analysis suggested that over the four years that Berksson had been in charge, spending had fallen nearly 5 per cent.

  “God knows I did my best,” he muttered to himself.

  The new highway scheme had been cancelled, he pointed out, when it was discovered that the fruit processing project it was intended to serve happened to be located a few miles from President Nduka’s birthplace. That, coupled with the consultant’s report that questioned the viability of growing fruit in an area that was near-desert, was enough to put the scheme on ice.

  Then there was the proposed harbour extension! A victim of a cement scam. As for the new tourist resort on the coast, it had been unfortunately set back by the disclosure that most of the Cabinet had title deeds for land located in the centre of the planned development.