Over 30+ of working in unequal worlds I have gather many short stories, some amuzing, some sad some bizzare. As an aside to my CE blog I will post a number of stories for your enjoyment-maybe!
Working overseas one is often under observation and scrutiny at both a professional and a personal level. I remember a health adviser who, for a while at least, influenced the development policy of her employer by the holding capacity of her bladder. She was well into middle age with a weakness for designer label clothes and accessories. Her hair was faultless and rigid being covered regularly with hair spray. I never saw her sweat even on the hottest of days because her makeup was so thick. The only commercial airport was in the capital. The rest of the country was reached by vehicle on dusty corrugated roads or on sealed sections pitted by potholes. The Health Adviser had a phobia about toilets and would only use her own on-suite provided in the best hotel. Her holding capacity was about four hours. We knew this because visits to project sites or to meetings were never allowed to go beyond this time frame. This limited the geographical range of development projects to within about one and a half hours drive from the capital. The next largest town was about a four hour drive away. The most popular place to stay was Rosie’s guest house, a comfortable but barely adequate accommodation by the Health Adviser’s standard. After considerable persuasion the manager agreed to make a few prescribed changes to one room. To provide extra towels, fresh soap, to have it cleaned and the bedding changed daily and to redecorate. The room was to be held and only used by the Health Adviser. This suddenly increased the geographical range of and level of bilateral development assistance.
Our plan was to stay in the Hmong village in the Northern Highlands of Vietnam but on arriving we found it completely deserted. Only a few dogs barked at us and the chickens scattered as we walked past each house. Arriving at the house of the village chief we called his name but no one answered. We heard a movement inside and my colleague ducked underneath the door frame to enter. Inside we found about twelve children ranging from two to ten years of age. The eldest child, a boy, stepped forward and said that all the adults and older children were in the fields preparing the next rice crop. Breastfed children were taken with their mothers. The flesh on the left hand side of the boy’s face, from his ear down to his chin, was gone. His face was hideously disfigured and conscious of our stares he put his hand up to try and hide the scar. We sat down to have a cup of green tea made by an old lady sitting at the back of the house. The boy slowly revealed to us the cause of his disfigurement. As a baby his mother had left him alone and sleeping in his cot while she worked in the field. A large rat had jumped into his cot and eaten away his face. His screams had not been heard as everyone else was also in the fields. Finally the old women had reached the cot and shooed the rat away.
BEWARE SACRED COWS People who have to survive unequal worlds often have strong beliefs and are superstitious. In India, Hindus venerate cows because they are symbolic of abundance and of the sanctity of life. The cow is a sacred animal and it is seen as a matriarchal figure for being gentle, vegetarian and for providing nourishing milk. The cow is protected and honoured and the consumption of beef in Hindu culture is avoided . In everyday life cows are allowed to wander freely on the streets and in the parks. In the markets they try to snatch a meal from one of the vegetable stalls. Cows are untouchable but this privilege also means that if one becomes sick or lame it is left alone to either recover or die. One cow in my neighbourhood in New Delhi had an open wound on its flank probably caused by the collision with a vehicle. I had noticed that flies were regularly visiting the wound. The wound grew into a gapping hole and the flies continued passing in and out. By tempting the cow nearer with food I saw that the flies were actually bees. The cow had a bee’s nest inside its chest that I could see through the open wound. The next day I saw a group of boys using the cow as a cricket wicket. They had it tethered to a tree and the boy with the bat stood in front of the cows hind legs. The boy with the ball bowled down to the boy with the bat. If the batter missed the cow made a startled kick with its hind leg otherwise it looked quite content. I moved the boys on and untethered the cow.
The cow was to repay my kindness some days later when it lay down on the pavement in front of my house and died. This was considered to be a bad omen. It was in the middle of summer and the large carcass soon began to attract the attention of swarms of flies and stray dogs. The stench made my neighbours complain and the watchman refused to work because his sentry box was only metres away. After many fruitless calls to the local authorities I discovered that the dead cow could only be removed by one caste. Word would eventually reach members of this caste and they would come to remove the dead cow. But they never came. Summer passed into autumn and under the influence of heat, maggots and dogs the carcass slowly disappeared. By winter there was just a pile of hide and bone. The remains of the cow then moved from being an eyesore to becoming a landmark as people in the neighbourhood piled rubbish on top of it. One day the local authorities came to remove the rubbish which they considered to be a health hazard. The cow was finally removed and all that was left was a dark stain, which after two years had not gone away.
This witch doctor was also famous for his power to charm crocodiles. As I was leaving he invited me to buy a chicken from a nearby householder. We walked over to a large circular pond adjacent to the village which contained only about half of its capacity for water storage. The witch doctor started to wave the live chicken around in the air while at the same time shouting. This went on for only a few minutes before the water in the pond started to ripple and move. The head of a large crocodile poked out of the water and it lay half sub-merged and motionless looking at the witch doctor. Then, very quickly, too quickly for comfort really, the crocodile scrambled up the bank of the pond, lifted its head and opened its mouth wide towards the witch doctor. The witch doctor tossed the squawking chicken, which must have had a good idea of its fate, into the mouth of the crocodile. The large mouth clamped down and an egg shot out of the chicken. The crocodile flattened its body to the ground and chomped on the chicken. Standing directly in front of the crocodile he directed me to move to the tail. This is not something I wanted to do but straddling the tail I lifted it up with both arms thinking that one sweep and I would have been next on the menu.
THE MIGHTY TUMBU FLY-A STORY OF THE NAIVE TRAVELLER 1
It was whilst I was on a lunch break at a popular outdoor café in Kumasi that I met Paul. This was his first visit to Africa and he was staying in a low budget hotel in the centre of town. The old wooden hotel was a traditional colonial design with a balcony at the first floor level from which the bedrooms where accessed. On the ground floor were the kitchen and staff quarters. The hotel was on a busy street but the area at the back opened into a courtyard, dominated by a large mango tree. Here the staff prepared food, washed clothes and the guests, mainly travellers, sat at wooden tables and talked about their adventures. We shared a table in the outdoor restaurant sipping warm beer. I had placed an order for fried plantains and beans cooked in palm oil and Paul wanted to try fufu a traditional dish of pounded maize served with bush meat or on this day, smoked fish. We could hear the thud, thud of the large wooden mortar being pounded into the pestle of maize to make the doughy lump of fufu. Fufu was considered best served slightly salty from the sweat of the person doing the pounding. I suggested that Paul not eat his fufu with the smoked fish. The week before a friend had bought some smoked fish from the market. She had prepared the fish by removing the bones, head and tail. This she fed to the family dog. Sitting down to dinner that evening she called for the dog. It usually ate any scraps of food thrown to it at meal times. Looking down the family saw the dog lying motionless on the floor. It was dead. The smoked fish was buried and she never bought it again.
Paul’s preparations had been very thorough. He had read the travel books, spoken with other travellers and searched all the relevant websites. Arriving a few days in advance of his two friends he was to collect three motorcycles from the port customs. Ghana was the starting point of an overland journey that would take the three men through Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, France and home. They had been planning this journey for a long time and it seemed to me that Paul was very excited at the prospect of starting his adventure. But after three days and many hours at the customs office he was no nearer getting a release of the motorcycles.
Paul’s paperwork was in order, he turned up in person, smartly dressed and in good time at the customs office. But Africa was a new culture. Customs officers earned less than $40 a month and yet they needed $300 a month to support their families. The difference between salary and income came from the extra money that could be obtained through people like Paul who were expected to pay an ‘administration fee’ to have their items released. Corruption was a part of everyday life and existed at all levels of society. At the post office you were also expected to pay a ‘fee’ to the teller otherwise your stamps may be removed and your letter ‘lost’. Once, in an elevator, the operator gestured to me for a ‘fee’ by extending the flattened palm of his hand. The fee was to be paid before he pressed the number of the floor I had requested. Many people did their everyday jobs because of the opportunity it provided them to make the extra money they needed to survive. Together poverty and bureaucracy provide opportunities for corruption. This may be the signature on a document, the next step in a process, and the next opportunity to earn money. Corruption is tolerated so long as people did not abuse the system. If they took just enough for their family it was accepted. If they abused their position and got too greedy it was punished. The worst form of punishment was public humiliation or sometimes an execution.
Luckily for Paul the customs officer had previous experience of dealing with Europeans. He arranged a meeting with Paul in an unoccupied office and asked to see his passport. His passport had six empty pages. Immigration would not allow him to leave Ghana with only six empty pages and therefore the customs officer could not allow the release of the motorcycles. He needed at least ten empty pages. Paul did not know if this was true or not (in fact it was not true) and so he stood his ground. The customs officer was much smaller than Paul but his control-over the situation and his confidence was menacing. The customs officer could get a favour from a friend who worked in the immigration office to grant special permission for Paul to use his passport. But he would have to pay $300 ($100 per motorcycle) for the ‘administration fee’. Suddenly it dawned on Paul what was happening, why they were alone, why the custom officer had not asked him directly for money and why Paul had been wasting so much time. The customs officer did not want to risk losing face by being refused and so asked for a ‘fee’ on behalf of a friend. He had subtly manipulated the situation to benefit both Paul and himself. The motorcycles were released soon after.
That evening Paul had recounted the loss of the $300 to his two friends, who had arrived that morning. They ate mangoes taken from the tree in the courtyard. They lay everywhere beneath the tree as this was the season and the air was sickly sweet with the smell. The three men opposite me were properly dressed with long sleeved shirts, trousers and boots to avoid mosquito bites. I could smell that they had applied insect repellent. Paul paid especial attention to hygiene and made sure that his sweaty clothes were washed everyday by the guesthouse staff. His laundry was hung out each morning to dry in the courtyard and he always got his back fast because it was iron-free, bought especially in preparation for the long road ahead.
The tumbu or putzi fly lays its eggs in clothes hanging out to dry and upon contact with human skin the eggs hatch. The larvae burrow into the skin and grow into maggots that present themselves as boil-like sores or myiasis. The simple solution is to iron all your clothes, including underwear, the heat of the iron killing the eggs .
The three men were delayed by a few days while they unpacked, checked and provisioned their motorcycles before getting underway for Burkina Faso. I did not hear about Paul until two weeks later when I was visiting a friend in Bolgatanga, a border town in the far north of Ghana. Our bus driver was a large muscular man. He had to be strong because the steering was not power assisted and the large wheel took strength to control on the rough roads. The driver stood at the bottom of the steps and before boarding we had to pay him a fee to ensure our safe passage. This did not work. The driver had travelled from Bolgatanga the night before and had only managed a few hours sleep. He was tired and inside the bus was very hot. Losing control the bus veered off the road and overturned in the sandy scrub. The people, animals and belongings inside the bus were scattered everywhere and as I lay on the ceiling of the overturned vehicle I could feel hot diesel fuel running down my arm. People were screaming and the air was hot a full of dust. There are no emergency services in Ghana to respond to an accident such as this. Slowly we crawled out of the bus and helped pull the injured free. My friend had been standing at the time of the accident and was thrown the full length of the bus. The skin on this shin was completely torn away to the bone. Our dilemma, like many of the other passengers, was how to get to the nearest clinic for treatment. This was in Bolgatanga about 60 kilometres away. Any passing private vehicle was stopped but only those who could afford to pay were taken. My friend was lucky to survive. He had enough money to pay for a car to take him to the clinic. Paul did not know about the tumbu fly and so when he started to develop a red itch on his upper arm he thought it might be an infected mosquito bite. In Bolgatanga he was advised to visit an expatriate doctor at the local clinic. But Dr. Johns was in Scotland attending the funeral of his young son. The boy had inhaled a peanut that became wedged in his windpipe. The housemaid had rushed the boy to the clinic where Dr. Johns was working in a makeshift operating theatre. His services were constantly in demand and he had strictly told his orderlies not to disturb him whilst performing an operation. The housemaid had to wait outside and the boy died of suffocation before his father had finished, just metres away. Death from choking is not uncommon in Africa, especially in children. It is a simple operation to remove the obstruction and one that Dr. Johns must have performed many times before.
This was doubly tragic because Dr Johns had lost his other son two years earlier from an accident involving a scorpion. The newly arrived doctor had built a climbing frame, swing and sand pit in the back yard of their one storey home. The cool moist sandpit had attracted the scorpion which hid beneath a plastic bucket. The local people in that area are the Frafra. This is s a colonialist term given to a subset of Gurnsi peoples living in northern Ghana. The Frafra are very superstitious. Some had said that the accident was because of an evil spirit placed on the child by a local witch doctor who was jealous about the arrival of a new white doctor. None had witnessed what happened.
Paul visited a local doctor instead who advised him that it was a tumbu fly larvae and that it was not dangerous. The larvae, once it developed, could be easily removed with a dab of vaseline followed by a good squeeze. The Vaseline stops the maggot from being able to breathe and when squeezed it is pushed out. The tumbu fly maggot would live under his skin for weeks without any real harm. Paul made the decision not to remove the tumbu larvae in his arm. He was only a couple of weeks from home and wanted to show the boil and the maggot to his mates back in his local pub. The gory sight would show them how exotic their adventure had been.
The three men journeyed on across the border and into Burkina Faso. But Paul’s arm had become increasingly painful and swollen to the point where he could barely ride the motorcycle. The maggot had died in his arm and had become infected. The men could not speak French and so turned back from the capital city of Ouagadougou to seek medical care in Bolgatanga. The road was not sealed and the riding had been slow and painful for Paul who had by now developed a fever. His friends took him to a local clinic but after two days Paul made no improvement. He died there shortly afterwards.
A sickly sweet odour seeped into the vehicle. We ignored its presence waiting for it to fade away. It grew stronger, more rancid and heavy. We wound down the window but this just let in the hot and humid outside air. The smell did not go away and I held my breath. It had become too much to bear. ‘What is that smell and where is it coming from’ I asked no one in particular. No one answered. ‘Stop the car’ I said to the driver. While he checked the engine, it might have been a dead animal under the hood, I checked inside the vehicle. Nothing was found. It must be something in the luggage. But before I could begin my search one of the other passengers stepped forward and pulled out a large plastic bag. Opening the bag we saw inside two green water melons, a dragon fruit, some bananas and the cause of the stench, a durian.
Widely known in South East Asia as the ‘King of Fruits’ the durian is distinctive for its large size, smell and formidable thorn-covered husk. The fruit can grow up to 30 centimetres long and 15 centimetres in diameter, and typically weighs one to three kilograms. Its shape is usually oblong and the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale-yellow to red. The odour of the ripe fruit is very strong and penetrating but the flesh of the durian was famously described by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace as a “rich custard highly flavoured with almonds". This combination has led to the saying that the durian ‘tastes like Heaven and smells like Hell’ . The smell is so awful that I have seen people being ejected from public transport because they were carrying this fruit in their luggage.
No one, except for the owner of the durian, was prepared to travel any further with it in the vehicle. We had to find somewhere else to store the fruit. But nowhere else could be found on the vehicle due to its awkward shape and weight. In a dilemma the driver noticed a beggar lying by the roadside. We placed the durian by his head which seemed to immediately arouse him, and left some loose change to compensate him for having to dispose of the fruit. Our fellow passenger did not speak for another four hours. She was furious because the durian had been a gift for her pregnant sister who had a craving for the taste of its flesh. We tried to compensate by buying more dragon fruit and pawpaw but I do not think it would have held the same appeal to her sister.
The bicycle The bicycle, either Chinese made or the older English Humber and Raleigh, is a common mode of transport in Sri Lanka. It is used for personal and commercial purposes and can be passed down as an heirloom or as part of a wedding dowry, staying in a family for many generations. Only essential repairs can be afforded, such as a flat tire, and are quickly fixed by road side vendors. Other repairs, such as worn brake pads, lights and missing mudguards, have to be overlooked and few bicycles are roadworthy. For many families their bicycle is the only means to transport goods to and from the market, to take sick people to the clinic and to visit relatives on festive occasions. Visit any morning fish market and you will see tuna, shark and seer fish strapped to the back of bicycles, so large that their tail fin touches the ground on one side and their nose touches the ground on the other. Fish sellers with wooden soap boxes strapped to the back of their bicycles filled with crabs, shrimps, fish, banana leaves and a set of weighing scales cycle along remote paths and cattle tracks to reach villages. Here they sell the produce that they have bought that same day in the market. Women rarely ride a bicycle and are usually seen as a passenger or travel with the family into the market. This is normally two adults and two children but I have seen two adults and four children on one bicycle. The return journey is more difficult because the cooking pots, vegetables, fish and meat, woven mats, chickens and sacks of rice purchased at the market are also carried on the bicycle. In motion the bicycle and its load achieves a finely balanced momentum that is constantly threatened by an accident with other cyclists, vehicles, dogs, wandering livestock and potholes. Adult men often travel three to a bicycle and children who are only just able to walk can be seen using the family cycle to fetch sugar from the village store. I once saw four men on a bicycle, one riding in a standing position, one sitting, one on the handle bars and one in a coffin strapped to the back.
THIS IS TRUE STORY
ReplyDeleteWorking overseas one is often under observation and scrutiny at both a professional and a personal level. I remember a health adviser who, for a while at least, influenced the development policy of her employer by the holding capacity of her bladder. She was well into middle age with a weakness for designer label clothes and accessories. Her hair was faultless and rigid being covered regularly with hair spray. I never saw her sweat even on the hottest of days because her makeup was so thick. The only commercial airport was in the capital. The rest of the country was reached by vehicle on dusty corrugated roads or on sealed sections pitted by potholes. The Health Adviser had a phobia about toilets and would only use her own on-suite provided in the best hotel. Her holding capacity was about four hours. We knew this because visits to project sites or to meetings were never allowed to go beyond this time frame. This limited the geographical range of development projects to within about one and a half hours drive from the capital. The next largest town was about a four hour drive away. The most popular place to stay was Rosie’s guest house, a comfortable but barely adequate accommodation by the Health Adviser’s standard. After considerable persuasion the manager agreed to make a few prescribed changes to one room. To provide extra towels, fresh soap, to have it cleaned and the bedding changed daily and to redecorate. The room was to be held and only used by the Health Adviser. This suddenly increased the geographical range of and level of bilateral development assistance.
SADLY ANOTHER TRUE STORY
ReplyDeleteOur plan was to stay in the Hmong village in the Northern Highlands of Vietnam but on arriving we found it completely deserted. Only a few dogs barked at us and the chickens scattered as we walked past each house. Arriving at the house of the village chief we called his name but no one answered. We heard a movement inside and my colleague ducked underneath the door frame to enter. Inside we found about twelve children ranging from two to ten years of age. The eldest child, a boy, stepped forward and said that all the adults and older children were in the fields preparing the next rice crop. Breastfed children were taken with their mothers. The flesh on the left hand side of the boy’s face, from his ear down to his chin, was gone. His face was hideously disfigured and conscious of our stares he put his hand up to try and hide the scar. We sat down to have a cup of green tea made by an old lady sitting at the back of the house. The boy slowly revealed to us the cause of his disfigurement. As a baby his mother had left him alone and sleeping in his cot while she worked in the field. A large rat had jumped into his cot and eaten away his face. His screams had not been heard as everyone else was also in the fields. Finally the old women had reached the cot and shooed the rat away.
BEWARE SACRED COWS
ReplyDeletePeople who have to survive unequal worlds often have strong beliefs and are superstitious. In India, Hindus venerate cows because they are symbolic of abundance and of the sanctity of life. The cow is a sacred animal and it is seen as a matriarchal figure for being gentle, vegetarian and for providing nourishing milk. The cow is protected and honoured and the consumption of beef in Hindu culture is avoided . In everyday life cows are allowed to wander freely on the streets and in the parks. In the markets they try to snatch a meal from one of the vegetable stalls. Cows are untouchable but this privilege also means that if one becomes sick or lame it is left alone to either recover or die. One cow in my neighbourhood in New Delhi had an open wound on its flank probably caused by the collision with a vehicle. I had noticed that flies were regularly visiting the wound. The wound grew into a gapping hole and the flies continued passing in and out. By tempting the cow nearer with food I saw that the flies were actually bees. The cow had a bee’s nest inside its chest that I could see through the open wound. The next day I saw a group of boys using the cow as a cricket wicket. They had it tethered to a tree and the boy with the bat stood in front of the cows hind legs. The boy with the ball bowled down to the boy with the bat. If the batter missed the cow made a startled kick with its hind leg otherwise it looked quite content. I moved the boys on and untethered the cow.
The cow was to repay my kindness some days later when it lay down on the pavement in front of my house and died. This was considered to be a bad omen. It was in the middle of summer and the large carcass soon began to attract the attention of swarms of flies and stray dogs. The stench made my neighbours complain and the watchman refused to work because his sentry box was only metres away. After many fruitless calls to the local authorities I discovered that the dead cow could only be removed by one caste. Word would eventually reach members of this caste and they would come to remove the dead cow. But they never came. Summer passed into autumn and under the influence of heat, maggots and dogs the carcass slowly disappeared. By winter there was just a pile of hide and bone. The remains of the cow then moved from being an eyesore to becoming a landmark as people in the neighbourhood piled rubbish on top of it. One day the local authorities came to remove the rubbish which they considered to be a health hazard. The cow was finally removed and all that was left was a dark stain, which after two years had not gone away.
NEVER SMILE AT A CROCODILE
ReplyDeleteThis witch doctor was also famous for his power to charm crocodiles. As I was leaving he invited me to buy a chicken from a nearby householder. We walked over to a large circular pond adjacent to the village which contained only about half of its capacity for water storage. The witch doctor started to wave the live chicken around in the air while at the same time shouting. This went on for only a few minutes before the water in the pond started to ripple and move. The head of a large crocodile poked out of the water and it lay half sub-merged and motionless looking at the witch doctor. Then, very quickly, too quickly for comfort really, the crocodile scrambled up the bank of the pond, lifted its head and opened its mouth wide towards the witch doctor. The witch doctor tossed the squawking chicken, which must have had a good idea of its fate, into the mouth of the crocodile. The large mouth clamped down and an egg shot out of the chicken. The crocodile flattened its body to the ground and chomped on the chicken. Standing directly in front of the crocodile he directed me to move to the tail. This is not something I wanted to do but straddling the tail I lifted it up with both arms thinking that one sweep and I would have been next on the menu.
THE MIGHTY TUMBU FLY-A STORY OF THE NAIVE TRAVELLER 1
ReplyDeleteIt was whilst I was on a lunch break at a popular outdoor café in Kumasi that I met Paul. This was his first visit to Africa and he was staying in a low budget hotel in the centre of town. The old wooden hotel was a traditional colonial design with a balcony at the first floor level from which the bedrooms where accessed. On the ground floor were the kitchen and staff quarters. The hotel was on a busy street but the area at the back opened into a courtyard, dominated by a large mango tree. Here the staff prepared food, washed clothes and the guests, mainly travellers, sat at wooden tables and talked about their adventures. We shared a table in the outdoor restaurant sipping warm beer. I had placed an order for fried plantains and beans cooked in palm oil and Paul wanted to try fufu a traditional dish of pounded maize served with bush meat or on this day, smoked fish. We could hear the thud, thud of the large wooden mortar being pounded into the pestle of maize to make the doughy lump of fufu. Fufu was considered best served slightly salty from the sweat of the person doing the pounding. I suggested that Paul not eat his fufu with the smoked fish. The week before a friend had bought some smoked fish from the market. She had prepared the fish by removing the bones, head and tail. This she fed to the family dog. Sitting down to dinner that evening she called for the dog. It usually ate any scraps of food thrown to it at meal times. Looking down the family saw the dog lying motionless on the floor. It was dead. The smoked fish was buried and she never bought it again.
MIGHTY TUMBU 2
ReplyDeletePaul’s preparations had been very thorough. He had read the travel books, spoken with other travellers and searched all the relevant websites. Arriving a few days in advance of his two friends he was to collect three motorcycles from the port customs. Ghana was the starting point of an overland journey that would take the three men through Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, France and home. They had been planning this journey for a long time and it seemed to me that Paul was very excited at the prospect of starting his adventure. But after three days and many hours at the customs office he was no nearer getting a release of the motorcycles.
Paul’s paperwork was in order, he turned up in person, smartly dressed and in good time at the customs office. But Africa was a new culture. Customs officers earned less than $40 a month and yet they needed $300 a month to support their families. The difference between salary and income came from the extra money that could be obtained through people like Paul who were expected to pay an ‘administration fee’ to have their items released. Corruption was a part of everyday life and existed at all levels of society. At the post office you were also expected to pay a ‘fee’ to the teller otherwise your stamps may be removed and your letter ‘lost’. Once, in an elevator, the operator gestured to me for a ‘fee’ by extending the flattened palm of his hand. The fee was to be paid before he pressed the number of the floor I had requested. Many people did their everyday jobs because of the opportunity it provided them to make the extra money they needed to survive. Together poverty and bureaucracy provide opportunities for corruption. This may be the signature on a document, the next step in a process, and the next opportunity to earn money. Corruption is tolerated so long as people did not abuse the system. If they took just enough for their family it was accepted. If they abused their position and got too greedy it was punished. The worst form of punishment was public humiliation or sometimes an execution.
MIGHTY TUMBU 3
ReplyDeleteLuckily for Paul the customs officer had previous experience of dealing with Europeans. He arranged a meeting with Paul in an unoccupied office and asked to see his passport. His passport had six empty pages. Immigration would not allow him to leave Ghana with only six empty pages and therefore the customs officer could not allow the release of the motorcycles. He needed at least ten empty pages. Paul did not know if this was true or not (in fact it was not true) and so he stood his ground. The customs officer was much smaller than Paul but his control-over the situation and his confidence was menacing. The customs officer could get a favour from a friend who worked in the immigration office to grant special permission for Paul to use his passport. But he would have to pay $300 ($100 per motorcycle) for the ‘administration fee’. Suddenly it dawned on Paul what was happening, why they were alone, why the custom officer had not asked him directly for money and why Paul had been wasting so much time. The customs officer did not want to risk losing face by being refused and so asked for a ‘fee’ on behalf of a friend. He had subtly manipulated the situation to benefit both Paul and himself. The motorcycles were released soon after.
That evening Paul had recounted the loss of the $300 to his two friends, who had arrived that morning. They ate mangoes taken from the tree in the courtyard. They lay everywhere beneath the tree as this was the season and the air was sickly sweet with the smell. The three men opposite me were properly dressed with long sleeved shirts, trousers and boots to avoid mosquito bites. I could smell that they had applied insect repellent. Paul paid especial attention to hygiene and made sure that his sweaty clothes were washed everyday by the guesthouse staff. His laundry was hung out each morning to dry in the courtyard and he always got his back fast because it was iron-free, bought especially in preparation for the long road ahead.
The tumbu or putzi fly lays its eggs in clothes hanging out to dry and upon contact with human skin the eggs hatch. The larvae burrow into the skin and grow into maggots that present themselves as boil-like sores or myiasis. The simple solution is to iron all your clothes, including underwear, the heat of the iron killing the eggs .
TUMBU 4
ReplyDeleteThe three men were delayed by a few days while they unpacked, checked and provisioned their motorcycles before getting underway for Burkina Faso. I did not hear about Paul until two weeks later when I was visiting a friend in Bolgatanga, a border town in the far north of Ghana. Our bus driver was a large muscular man. He had to be strong because the steering was not power assisted and the large wheel took strength to control on the rough roads. The driver stood at the bottom of the steps and before boarding we had to pay him a fee to ensure our safe passage. This did not work. The driver had travelled from Bolgatanga the night before and had only managed a few hours sleep. He was tired and inside the bus was very hot. Losing control the bus veered off the road and overturned in the sandy scrub. The people, animals and belongings inside the bus were scattered everywhere and as I lay on the ceiling of the overturned vehicle I could feel hot diesel fuel running down my arm. People were screaming and the air was hot a full of dust. There are no emergency services in Ghana to respond to an accident such as this. Slowly we crawled out of the bus and helped pull the injured free. My friend had been standing at the time of the accident and was thrown the full length of the bus. The skin on this shin was completely torn away to the bone. Our dilemma, like many of the other passengers, was how to get to the nearest clinic for treatment. This was in Bolgatanga about 60 kilometres away. Any passing private vehicle was stopped but only those who could afford to pay were taken. My friend was lucky to survive. He had enough money to pay for a car to take him to the clinic. Paul did not know about the tumbu fly and so when he started to develop a red itch on his upper arm he thought it might be an infected mosquito bite. In Bolgatanga he was advised to visit an expatriate doctor at the local clinic. But Dr. Johns was in Scotland attending the funeral of his young son. The boy had inhaled a peanut that became wedged in his windpipe. The housemaid had rushed the boy to the clinic where Dr. Johns was working in a makeshift operating theatre. His services were constantly in demand and he had strictly told his orderlies not to disturb him whilst performing an operation. The housemaid had to wait outside and the boy died of suffocation before his father had finished, just metres away. Death from choking is not uncommon in Africa, especially in children. It is a simple operation to remove the obstruction and one that Dr. Johns must have performed many times before.
TUMBU 5 AND FINAL
ReplyDeleteThis was doubly tragic because Dr Johns had lost his other son two years earlier from an accident involving a scorpion. The newly arrived doctor had built a climbing frame, swing and sand pit in the back yard of their one storey home. The cool moist sandpit had attracted the scorpion which hid beneath a plastic bucket. The local people in that area are the Frafra. This is s a colonialist term given to a subset of Gurnsi peoples living in northern Ghana. The Frafra are very superstitious. Some had said that the accident was because of an evil spirit placed on the child by a local witch doctor who was jealous about the arrival of a new white doctor. None had witnessed what happened.
Paul visited a local doctor instead who advised him that it was a tumbu fly larvae and that it was not dangerous. The larvae, once it developed, could be easily removed with a dab of vaseline followed by a good squeeze. The Vaseline stops the maggot from being able to breathe and when squeezed it is pushed out. The tumbu fly maggot would live under his skin for weeks without any real harm. Paul made the decision not to remove the tumbu larvae in his arm. He was only a couple of weeks from home and wanted to show the boil and the maggot to his mates back in his local pub. The gory sight would show them how exotic their adventure had been.
The three men journeyed on across the border and into Burkina Faso. But Paul’s arm had become increasingly painful and swollen to the point where he could barely ride the motorcycle. The maggot had died in his arm and had become infected. The men could not speak French and so turned back from the capital city of Ouagadougou to seek medical care in Bolgatanga. The road was not sealed and the riding had been slow and painful for Paul who had by now developed a fever. His friends took him to a local clinic but after two days Paul made no improvement. He died there shortly afterwards.
‘Tastes like Heaven, smells like Hell’
ReplyDeleteA sickly sweet odour seeped into the vehicle. We ignored its presence waiting for it to fade away. It grew stronger, more rancid and heavy. We wound down the window but this just let in the hot and humid outside air. The smell did not go away and I held my breath. It had become too much to bear. ‘What is that smell and where is it coming from’ I asked no one in particular. No one answered. ‘Stop the car’ I said to the driver. While he checked the engine, it might have been a dead animal under the hood, I checked inside the vehicle. Nothing was found. It must be something in the luggage. But before I could begin my search one of the other passengers stepped forward and pulled out a large plastic bag. Opening the bag we saw inside two green water melons, a dragon fruit, some bananas and the cause of the stench, a durian.
Widely known in South East Asia as the ‘King of Fruits’ the durian is distinctive for its large size, smell and formidable thorn-covered husk. The fruit can grow up to 30 centimetres long and 15 centimetres in diameter, and typically weighs one to three kilograms. Its shape is usually oblong and the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale-yellow to red. The odour of the ripe fruit is very strong and penetrating but the flesh of the durian was famously described by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace as a “rich custard highly flavoured with almonds". This combination has led to the saying that the durian ‘tastes like Heaven and smells like Hell’ . The smell is so awful that I have seen people being ejected from public transport because they were carrying this fruit in their luggage.
No one, except for the owner of the durian, was prepared to travel any further with it in the vehicle. We had to find somewhere else to store the fruit. But nowhere else could be found on the vehicle due to its awkward shape and weight. In a dilemma the driver noticed a beggar lying by the roadside. We placed the durian by his head which seemed to immediately arouse him, and left some loose change to compensate him for having to dispose of the fruit. Our fellow passenger did not speak for another four hours. She was furious because the durian had been a gift for her pregnant sister who had a craving for the taste of its flesh. We tried to compensate by buying more dragon fruit and pawpaw but I do not think it would have held the same appeal to her sister.
The bicycle
ReplyDeleteThe bicycle, either Chinese made or the older English Humber and Raleigh, is a common mode of transport in Sri Lanka. It is used for personal and commercial purposes and can be passed down as an heirloom or as part of a wedding dowry, staying in a family for many generations. Only essential repairs can be afforded, such as a flat tire, and are quickly fixed by road side vendors. Other repairs, such as worn brake pads, lights and missing mudguards, have to be overlooked and few bicycles are roadworthy. For many families their bicycle is the only means to transport goods to and from the market, to take sick people to the clinic and to visit relatives on festive occasions. Visit any morning fish market and you will see tuna, shark and seer fish strapped to the back of bicycles, so large that their tail fin touches the ground on one side and their nose touches the ground on the other. Fish sellers with wooden soap boxes strapped to the back of their bicycles filled with crabs, shrimps, fish, banana leaves and a set of weighing scales cycle along remote paths and cattle tracks to reach villages. Here they sell the produce that they have bought that same day in the market. Women rarely ride a bicycle and are usually seen as a passenger or travel with the family into the market. This is normally two adults and two children but I have seen two adults and four children on one bicycle. The return journey is more difficult because the cooking pots, vegetables, fish and meat, woven mats, chickens and sacks of rice purchased at the market are also carried on the bicycle. In motion the bicycle and its load achieves a finely balanced momentum that is constantly threatened by an accident with other cyclists, vehicles, dogs, wandering livestock and potholes. Adult men often travel three to a bicycle and children who are only just able to walk can be seen using the family cycle to fetch sugar from the village store. I once saw four men on a bicycle, one riding in a standing position, one sitting, one on the handle bars and one in a coffin strapped to the back.