Read Online Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa by Warren Durrant - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Warren Durrant
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Methodist hall, and for the first time made the acquaintance of
Alec. As the forms filled up with the scouts and cubs, evidently assembled for
some improving purpose, Alec invited me to take a seat beside him at the desk.
When all had settled down Alec stood up and began in his Welsh voice:
'This is our new doctor, Dr Durrant.' A
big clap. 'Dr Durrant would like to say a few words to you.' Then he sat down
and looked expectantly at me.
Now I don't know what gave Alec that
idea, because he was dead wrong. If there is anything I loathe it is having to
make a speech in public when I have nothing to say. It is not shyness: just the
mere fatuity of trying to make bricks without straw.
I need not have worried. I was about to
witness the genius of African interpreters, which I had merely glimpsed in the
Anglican church. I rose awkwardly to my feet, and before I could even cough,
one of Alec's officers sprang to my side.
'Good afternoon,' I began. The
interpreter went into action as if I had pulled a lever in his back, and
delivered a sentence which might have flowed from the rambling pen of Marcel
Proust. He paused and looked to me for more.
'It gives me great pleasure to be here
this afternoon,' I went on, beginning to feel almost eloquent myself. This
generated a whole paragraph.
After that it was dead easy, and was on
every miserable occasion I had to make a speech in Africa thereafter. I had
only to give the interpreter a verbal shove now and again and in half an hour
we had produced a speech which would have done for the House of Lords.
At the pagan end of the religious
spectrum lay the fertility clinic. I am not referring to anything at the
hospital, which in Western terms is a pretty sophisticated undertaking, not
much less than the open heart surgery I had hoped to find at Accra hospital. I
am referring to the establishment run by the witch doctor.
Twice a week I visited the outstations.
On my Friday trip to Wadjo I passed a stockade in which interesting things
seemed to be going on to judge by the drumming and ululating which came from
within. Samson, the chauffeur (for I was not yet trusted in the forest by
myself), told me this was the place of the fetish priest for women 'catch belly',
but I never pressed the inquiry any further.
Until the new matron came out. Jenny
left after another of those Greek tragedy affairs had broken out between her
and the GM. No reflection on either of them, who were both able managers; but
in the hot-house conditions of a small station in Africa, if personalities were
going to clash, they clashed resoundingly.
The new matron was a pretty English girl
called Sally, aged about thirty; and it was some time before anyone in those
sexist days believed in her existence as a matron at all, rather than the
heroine of a steamy tropical film, played by Julie Christie, whom she certainly
looked like. Even when, through diligent effort and a particular interest in
midwifery, she increased the weekly attendance at the antenatal clinic from
thirty to eighty, that wag, Danny Wilson, commented that most of them were
women.
So while I was showing Sally the ropes,
I thought it might be fun to drop in on the witch doctor's clinic, on our way
to Wadjo.
As we entered some of his helpers ran
forward and politely provided us with log seats. We looked around. At the back
was an awning with a ladies' band, all the ladies shaking rattles, beating
drums and singing. In the main area stood rows of other women, about fifty in
all, stripped to the waist with tin bowls of water on their heads. They swayed
gently to the music while little children, some barely able to walk, jived
around them.
I might say that rhythm seems inherent
in the African, almost from birth. Even the babies, after their jabs at the
hospital, don't cry like white babies: an immediate rhythmic 'wa! wa! wa!' gets
switched on in their bottoms, while they kick their mothers in protest and wee
ditto down their backs; nappies, like the
Alec. As the forms filled up with the scouts and cubs, evidently assembled for
some improving purpose, Alec invited me to take a seat beside him at the desk.
When all had settled down Alec stood up and began in his Welsh voice:
'This is our new doctor, Dr Durrant.' A
big clap. 'Dr Durrant would like to say a few words to you.' Then he sat down
and looked expectantly at me.
Now I don't know what gave Alec that
idea, because he was dead wrong. If there is anything I loathe it is having to
make a speech in public when I have nothing to say. It is not shyness: just the
mere fatuity of trying to make bricks without straw.
I need not have worried. I was about to
witness the genius of African interpreters, which I had merely glimpsed in the
Anglican church. I rose awkwardly to my feet, and before I could even cough,
one of Alec's officers sprang to my side.
'Good afternoon,' I began. The
interpreter went into action as if I had pulled a lever in his back, and
delivered a sentence which might have flowed from the rambling pen of Marcel
Proust. He paused and looked to me for more.
'It gives me great pleasure to be here
this afternoon,' I went on, beginning to feel almost eloquent myself. This
generated a whole paragraph.
After that it was dead easy, and was on
every miserable occasion I had to make a speech in Africa thereafter. I had
only to give the interpreter a verbal shove now and again and in half an hour
we had produced a speech which would have done for the House of Lords.
At the pagan end of the religious
spectrum lay the fertility clinic. I am not referring to anything at the
hospital, which in Western terms is a pretty sophisticated undertaking, not
much less than the open heart surgery I had hoped to find at Accra hospital. I
am referring to the establishment run by the witch doctor.
Twice a week I visited the outstations.
On my Friday trip to Wadjo I passed a stockade in which interesting things
seemed to be going on to judge by the drumming and ululating which came from
within. Samson, the chauffeur (for I was not yet trusted in the forest by
myself), told me this was the place of the fetish priest for women 'catch belly',
but I never pressed the inquiry any further.
Until the new matron came out. Jenny
left after another of those Greek tragedy affairs had broken out between her
and the GM. No reflection on either of them, who were both able managers; but
in the hot-house conditions of a small station in Africa, if personalities were
going to clash, they clashed resoundingly.
The new matron was a pretty English girl
called Sally, aged about thirty; and it was some time before anyone in those
sexist days believed in her existence as a matron at all, rather than the
heroine of a steamy tropical film, played by Julie Christie, whom she certainly
looked like. Even when, through diligent effort and a particular interest in
midwifery, she increased the weekly attendance at the antenatal clinic from
thirty to eighty, that wag, Danny Wilson, commented that most of them were
women.
So while I was showing Sally the ropes,
I thought it might be fun to drop in on the witch doctor's clinic, on our way
to Wadjo.
As we entered some of his helpers ran
forward and politely provided us with log seats. We looked around. At the back
was an awning with a ladies' band, all the ladies shaking rattles, beating
drums and singing. In the main area stood rows of other women, about fifty in
all, stripped to the waist with tin bowls of water on their heads. They swayed
gently to the music while little children, some barely able to walk, jived
around them.
I might say that rhythm seems inherent
in the African, almost from birth. Even the babies, after their jabs at the
hospital, don't cry like white babies: an immediate rhythmic 'wa! wa! wa!' gets
switched on in their bottoms, while they kick their mothers in protest and wee
ditto down their backs; nappies, like the
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