Eighty Not Out (11 page)

Months later a tennis match was arranged against a team from Lawra, a village in the north bordering the Ivory Coast. The ball boys, a few of whom turned up naked from time to time, were told that shorts were to be worn for this event. Plans escalated to durbar level, and David, now president of the club, welcomed the visiting team, accompanied by two tribal chiefs, in full regalia, who thundered into the compound mounted on short-reined, snorting stallions. This was exceptional because horses, notoriously, did not thrive as far south as the Ashanti region. Placated by his eminent position, David fulfilled the role of gracious host and presented the prizes, most of which went to our own team, apart from one singles player from a remote village near the Black Volta, so naturally gifted he would, if transferred to the
UK
, have been a county player. In the words of Francis Kofi, a senior field assistant: ‘We beat them into the ground.' It was almost midday when Fergus and I gave way to pressure and played an ‘exhibit' match against Karel Sin, a Czechoslovakian surgeon, and his wife, Marta. I was by this time better acclimatised, but found the experience, despite the applause, utterly draining. At the end of play the ball boys got pocket money and ice cubes to suck – a great treat. The adults downed Tusker beer, Pepsi-Cola and Fanta, before the visitors went to spend the night dispersed around the compound, leaving at dawn the following day on their the long drive back to Lawra.

My horizons were being widened on a daily basis: our immediate neighbours were Dr von Haller, his wife and two daughters, who came during school holidays. Von H. displayed many characteristics I had found intolerable in Rudolf, but Frau von H. was a pleasant, animated woman who claimed to be an artist of some standing; this was hard to swallow judged by the efforts displayed in their house. She was intrigued by the dominance of laterite in the local scene, painting it a raw terracotta, conflicting with pillar-box red flame-trees, purple bougainvillea – canna lilies, zinnias and orange Cape marigolds thrown in for good measure. Their girls were charming, deferring always to Pappi, and coming to me for advice on how to deal with a cat that belonged to the children of the Ghanaian accountant, but which repeatedly came to them, quivering with fright, for succour. Conscientiously they took it back, but it always returned. Despite Fergus's embargo on pets, when the girls went back to Germany the cat adopted us.

Luciano Rosei, another of the resident medical officers, came from Rome with his wife, Maria, ancient mother and two young children. He was pleasant and spoke English with enthusiasm; Maria, painfully shy, spoke haltingly. The children knew only Italian, as did their deaf grandmother who lived in a world of her own, munching and nodding her way through memorable meals prepared by her daughter-in-law. They often invited us, and it was our first experience of authentic Italian food. I learned how to make pasta with the aid of a machine bought at the
UTC
store in Accra; how to prepare beef, chicken liver and tomato sauce for tagliatelle, and to assemble lasagne. What came as a shock was the number of courses served: antipasta, little artichokes, a pasta dish, followed by steak and frites, fruit, cheese and biscuits, finishing with ice cream and coffee. Conversation was exhausting and topics limited because of Maria's poor comprehension; the unfortunate Luciano had to bawl a translation to Grandma, whose nutcracker face remained expressionless throughout her munching. The children ate small portions early in the meal before being dispatched to bed. A sullen-looking steward in a fez, assisted nervously by Maria, served the meal. Reciprocal entertainments were poor in comparison, although I remember producing a delicious toad-in-the-hole and classic English trifle, which was always a hit with the French, Germans, Poles and Italians. Pride disallowed my use of Bird's famous powder, but I could have saved myself much futile egg-breaking had I done so. Of eggs bought by Adda at the Kintampo market, roughly half were past their ‘sell by' date, so one learned always to break them singly. The steady supply we anticipated from our own chickens never materialised, as they were picked off one by one by a literal snake in the grass.

To compensate for the inadequacy of our ‘table', we provided translation services for all the medical officers who were required to send a quarterly report of their activities to David. This was often tantamount to writing the report, based either on a verbal account or a draft copy from the author scrawled in longhand or, worse, typed in single spacing without punctuation. At that time my typewriter was an Olivetti portable. The Imperial and Royal machines in the office block being for the exclusive use of the typists who dealt with the director's correspondence, Fergus had to rely on David's goodwill – and that of the typists – for secretarial services. I cannot recall how it came about, but soon I was dealing with all correspondence to
WHO
headquarters in Geneva and the regional office in Brazzaville in the Congo Republic, as well as editing and producing monthly reports to the
WHO
representative in Accra. At field level things were better: Fergus could rely on Francis Kofi, three junior assistants, a driver and a Land Rover. One of the juniors, Daniel Kofi, Francis's younger brother, proved to be a gifted draughtsman, capable of drawing maps, diagrams and tables related to the field studies. To reproduce these for quarterly reports, as I had no official position on the project, it was necessary to be circumspect about use of the darkroom, so as not to antagonise any of the ‘technicians'. Unfortunately it proved far from lightproof and I had to resort to fumbling about in our bathroom late at night. Photocopiers were in their infancy, multiple carbon copies of letters commonplace, telephone services erratic, and mail generally slow.

Fergus and his team were conducting snail surveys at bilharziasis transmission sites throughout Ghana – the Volta River project was in its infancy, and Lake Volta did not exist. The collection of snail species was vital, being the intermediate hosts of both the intestinal and urinary forms of bilharziasis (the common name for schistosomiasis). One site we surveyed was a large dam on the outskirts of Kumasi, where I first saw a lily-trotter, a beautiful purplish-brown bird with long legs, its wide feet adapted for doing precisely what the name implies. It was oppressively hot, the grass was long, and I was grateful that Fergus had insisted on my wearing rubber boots when a six-foot black cobra slithered from the undergrowth to cross my path.

We went to the far northern region, where native, bare-breasted women carried huge hand-coiled clay pots on their heads; some wore only a bunch of leaves fore and aft. Colonies of wood ibis nested in the baobab trees, and of the numerous small dams most had an area at one end where the women washed clothes and children bathed; at the opposite end sacred crocodiles basked on the sandy shore. Sinister incidents involving these creatures were infrequent, but larger specimens found in the Black Volta, which forms the border with the Ivory Coast, were much feared. David's empire extended to Gambaga in the north-east and Wa in the north-west of the country, and we visited both the
MFU
doctors, who came to Kintampo only if summoned by David. At Gambaga a young Frenchman, who was to marry within the year, lived a solitary existence; his only companion, apart from a manservant, was an importunate vervet monkey, which leapt around the house and ate from his master's plate without constraint. That they escaped incineration, as the result of a lamp being knocked over, astounds me: the animal was deported to the bush shortly after Philippe's bride, a Parisian ex-ballet dancer, took up residence.

The Polish doctor in charge of the clinic at Wa, Dr Korabiewicz, was an uniquely built giant, well over six feet tall, with a disproportionately short torso. In his mid-fifties he had, in addition to a medical degree, worked in a Warsaw museum on anthropological studies, and was an obsessive collector of native carvings. His personality was overpowering, but his second wife was far from subservient; the first had perished during a canoe trip down the Volga to the Black Sea. On our first visit he greeted us dressed only in a towel around his waist; a friend later commented: ‘You were lucky, mostly he's naked.' ‘Come in, come in,' he said. ‘You must join us for lunch, my wife is crying, the fridge is broken, but you are most welcome.' He seized me, kissing my arm from hand to elbow, before thrusting us into standard, kapok-cushioned,
PWD
chairs, and offering the first of a succession of drinks. Weather-beaten, with a pleasant, Slavic face, his now dry-eyed wife emerged from the kitchen to give us an equally warm welcome, seemingly unfazed by having to provide food for two unexpected guests. What the meal consisted of, I do not recall, but I shall never forget his insistence that we lower a glass of schnapps in one go before starting to eat. This was the start of a long friendship, though at the time we had no inkling that within two years we also would be stationed at Wa, helping to assemble his quarterly reports, the improvement in which David appreciated, while suspecting their authorship.

Back in Kintampo, there would regularly be an incident or dispute involving Adda's extended family, who lived north of Bolgatanga in Navrongo near the border with Upper Volta, which Adda needed advice from us in order to resolve. I had already learned much from Fergus, so was not quite the easy touch he took me to be, but in truth the skills of the old colonial district officer were missed by the autochthonous people.

Snakes, scorpions, toads, mud-wasps, giant centipedes, swarming termites, soldier ants, praying mantes, a variety of exotic butterflies, an orphan civet cat, and a royal antelope became familiar during the six months before Fergus managed to amass the documents required to formalise our union, which was to take place late in November at the Municipal Council offices in Kumasi. In the meantime I offered to help any of the laboratory staff who wished to improve their English or learn keyboard skills. Initial response was enthusiastic, but when it became clear a lot of ‘homework' would be expected, the class dwindled to the Kofi brothers. Both improved their standard of written English, and Daniel became an accurate typist.

Fergus, on his return for lunch one day called, ‘Come and look at this', opening the boot of the car to produce five feet of writhing, brilliant, iridescent green snake. Going to see the cause of hue and cry outside his office, he had found that the team of compound cutters armed with machetes had so horribly injured it that he intervened to finish it off. Never having seen an example of muscular contraction after death, I found it hard to believe it really was dead; examination of the head revealed no front fangs, but some snakes have poison glands at the back, and David, no stranger to snakes, was convinced that this was one of them.

A young pangolin, found clinging to its mother after she was killed for chop, was brought to Fergus with a five shilling price tag. Curled up in a scaly ball, it stayed like that until dusk fell, when it uncurled to reveal a soft pink belly, beady little black eyes and a strong tail. Thumbing through wildlife books made depressing reading – there were no records of success in rearing. I mixed up dried baby formula, but was unsure what strength to offer, and using a glass pipette, dropped milk around the creature's avid mouth. A lot got spilled, but enough went down to provide energy, and within days it was lumping around the house, climbing door frames and curtains, always returning to me, even, unless confined to its box, climbing into bed with us. I knew its only chance of survival lay in weaning, and teaching it how to find and break into ants' nests, so I took it outside at night and released it at the bottom of a hollow tree, apprehensive it might not return. Suddenly the silence was broken by something unidentifiable making a hasty exit, followed by the pangolin. During the days I broke into ant hills, hating the panic it caused in the ordered community. All to no avail – Pangloss, as we called him, resolutely returned to climb my trousers without showing the slightest interest in the swarming feast on offer. From time to time I gave him a warm bath to get rid of the smell of sour milk lodged between his scales, but gradually signs that all was not well began. He became listless and uninterested in milk, his little belly was clammy, and his gait wobbly. The vet thought the symptoms were due to malnutrition and vitamin deficiency, so it was unanimously decided the kindest solution would be to put him to sleep in his box with chloroform-saturated bedding. This task fell to Fergus and we both shed tears. Later I learned from the zoologist George Cansdale that a diet of finely chopped meat mixed with egg white might have worked. This was the first of many emotional involvements with orphaned animals.

August brought a wire from Rudolf announcing that our divorce had been finalised. I was surprised to learn – not from him – that he had married, almost immediately, a Scottish woman he had met at a Highland dancing group. She was still of childbearing age, and within a year Rudolf, in his mid-fifties, who had never shown the remotest interest in children, was the proud father of a girl, to be followed by a boy two years later.

It was now a matter of urgency to arrange our own marriage before my already extended residence permit elapsed. So we set off for Accra, where Fergus, as well as routine meetings with Ministry of Health and
WHO
officials, had several lectures to give. A ring had to be bought for the forthcoming ceremony, but while there were countless goldsmiths in Accra who worked with pure gold, it was thought wiser to buy one of European origin. At the
UTC
there were only three to choose from, but my mind was preoccupied with the whereabouts of the nearest lavatory: in the throes of my first attack of belly palaver, I fled to the staff facilities, saying, ‘Oh that one will do' and leaving Fergus to settle the bill. Made in Switzerland, it is a thin band of eighteen carat gold, engraved with a floral design now worn smooth.