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Lilly Loveless sat staring at her Gmail inbox, on a cold winter morning in Muzunguland. Unlike other days, she had come in earliest of all the postgraduate students at the Muzunguland African Studies Institute at Bruhlville, because she was expecting an urgent email. Her co-supervisor in Livingstonetown had promised her the contact details of an African colleague at the University of Mimbo where she was seeking affiliation to do fieldwork for her PhD on ‘Sex, Power and Consumerism in Africa.’ She was excited and relieved, now that her research proposal had been successfully defended and the way cleared for her to undertake her second African visit. The Ethics Committee had given her a tough time and asked grilling questions about the dangers of voyeurism posed by her proposed study, but she eventually sailed through reassuringly.

Funding had been secured from the Ministry of Cooperation, the Royal Aids Foundation and the Michel Foucault Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Power. Riding high on her accomplishments and bubbling with prospects, Lilly Loveless was set to go.

All she needed was a letter of affiliation: these famous letters without which, so she had been told, Muzungulanders find it impossible to penetrate the bureaucracies of African ministries of research. ‘No permit, no research’, that’s the maxim. Without a letter of affiliation she couldn’t even aspire to get a visa from the Embassy of Mimboland, the country tied to the grants she had received. She had tried persuading the consular officer. This might have worked, had she not, most regrettably, boasted that she was after all injecting millions of Mim dollars into the struggling Mimbo economy, so “Why all the fuss?” Her attitude seemed to have toughened the resolve of the consular officer, who came short of screaming: “Forget your bloody money, arrogant…!” Now she knew only a letter of affiliation from Dustbin’s collaborator at the University of Mimbo, bearing all the stamps and seals of approval, could deliver her visa.

She recalled reading, in Nigel Barley’s Innocent Anthropologist, of similar experiences the author had had with the embassy of another African country, not too dissimilar to Mimboland. She stood up and looked through her bookshelf for the book, opened the relevant page, which she had dogeared from her undergraduate Anthropology years and read.

How similar in their indifference to progress African countries are! And how insensitive to the need to protect even their own self-interest! To discourage potential visitors with such attitudes of callous indifference was worse than shooting oneself in the foot. Little had changed for the better, much for the worse.

Her experience of Africa was limited though, very limited. Apart from the masses of books she had read, books written mostly by Muzungulanders and by Africans whose knowledge of their continent was like a river humbled by the dry season, Lilly Loveless had had only a short two-week holiday experience of the lovely beaches of Sunsandland, one of the most exotic, exciting wonders of the tropics, dreams of which have kept many a Muzungulander going.

The email eventually came through. Lilly Loveless clicked and read:

Dear Lilly, the contact details of my Mimboland colleague whom I insist you meet as he has similar research interest to yours are:

Dr Wiseman Lovemore

Department of Social Work

University of Mimbo, Mimboland

Email: Wiseman.Lovemore@yahoo.com

Dr Wiseman Lovemore is a fascinating and accommodating fellow whom I am sure you will like. He isn’t exactly international in terms of Google, but he is an intelligent man with solid convictions. I cannot locate his cell number, but his email address should suffice. Just email him your travel details, and if you are lucky and he checks his mail, which unfortunately he doesn’t do often, he would most certainly go to fetch you at the airport. If you miss him for whatever reason, simply make your way to the university campus upon arrival – some 40 to 50 minutes away by taxi, in Puttkamerstown. Ask the first person you meet, and you should be taken to the Department of Social Work where Lovemore is as solid as an oak and the easiest person to find.

Safe trip and enjoy your fieldwork.

Best

Dustbin

Lilly Loveless started typing immediately.

Dear Dr Wiseman Lovemore,

My name is Lilly Loveless. I am a student reading Social Geography at the Muzunguland African Studies Institute, Bruhlville. I am writing to you about the research I’d like to carry out for my PhD over the next six months in Mimboland. I am writing courtesy of Professor Dustbin Olala, who has pressed me to contact you. Given your expertise on the subject I’d like to work on, I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts now and once I am on the ground. In a nutshell, I shall be investigating changing sexuality and power relations occasioned by growing obsession with material possessions and the desire to consume Muzungu products in a context of screaming poverty.

I am very interested in your work, which, I must admit, I haven’t read but which your friend, my co-supervisor Professor Dustbin, thinks very highly of. The most recent thing by an African that I have read on this theme is the paper: ‘Fishing in Troubled Waters: Disquettes and Thiofs in Dakar’. I would like to know what you think of this paper, which fascinated me, although the author writes as if African women are irredeemably consumerist and helplessly easy to manipulate by men of wealth and power. I can’t say whether or not the situation he paints is real and widespread, but I could bring a copy of the paper along for you, if your library does not subscribe to Africa, the journal in which it was published. Indeed, it would be a huge honour if we could meet up to discuss the topic as soon as I arrive…

She was full of questions. First, she urged and pleaded with him to send her an urgent letter of affiliation, duly signed by the Vice Chancellor of the university. Failure of which, the letter must be signed by the Dean. She also had questions about where to stay.

“Sorry to bombard you with all these questions,” she wrote, “but as I am sure you can understand, I would like to do as much groundwork as possible before I get out there. Finding accommodation is a critical part of this. I would really appreciate it if you could be so kind to make necessary arrangements for me in this regard as soon as possible because I am very worried about having adequate accommodation.”

She equally wanted to know if Dr Wiseman Lovemore knew of any NGOs “that have sexuality, consumerism, empowerment and gender transformation as particular goals,” that she could contact. “I would ideally like to present case studies on two or more such organizations, in order to gain a critical understanding of the relative success and influence of non-state actors with the phenomenon.”

She concluded her email with, “I cannot thank you enough. I look forward to hearing from you soon,” signed it off, and clicked ‘Send’.

Dr Wiseman Lovemore replied sooner than Lilly Loveless had feared: “I look forward to welcoming you to Mimboland, although I’m unable to think up possible accommodation for you right now.”

In truth, he didn’t even want to try. Still fresh was a recent experience with another female Muzungulander student who arrived only to accuse a colleague, who had bent over backwards to accommodate a similar request, of having acted dishonestly by conniving to stick her into an expensive mildewed “rat hole.”

So he wrote: “If I find nothing before your arrival, here are the names and prices of a few hotels for you to choose from … It rains round the clock here this time of year, so expect the rooms to be damp and mouldy …”

He was not unaware of the fact that even zero star hotels such as those he had recommended are exceedingly more expensive than living with a family or renting a place, but he simply wouldn’t allow his efforts to be rewarded with ingratitude.

“You could always find more appropriate lodging once on the ground.”

With regard to NGOs he didn’t want to discourage her by saying he lacked faith in them. Instead he said she could easily link herself to one or several on arrival, as “Mimboland is a place where NGOs are formed and deformed on a daily basis”, and “the University of Mimbo has even employed the services of a fulltime money doubler to liaise with mushrooming NGOs that wither away like blighted plants.”

Then he gave her the good news: “Find attached a letter of invitation, not affiliation, signed not by the VC, not by the Dean, but by the HOD. It is the best I can do for you. Hope it works…”

And as a special favour to his friend Professor Dustbin Olala, he offered to meet her at the Sawang International Airport, “if you send me your flight details in time, and if the Internet gods are good humoured. In any case, look out for a man with your name on a placard.”

“Safe trip and he clicked.

The next week for Lilly Loveless was one of hectic preparations for what her mom worriedly termed “Lilly’s impending African misadventure.” In a way, her mom was right to. The first and only time she ventured into Africa for two weeks of vacation, Lilly Loveless came back with a few screws rearranged. Her choice of music had changed overnight into appreciation for wild drumming. She had plaited her lovely curly hair into dozens of little braids. She had practically forgotten her boyfriend of two years. All reasons why her mother would rather she went elsewhere to do her fieldwork.

“Tribal communities are all over the third world, why your fascination with Africa?”

“Mom, you too much,” Lilly Loveless would say, whenever her mother went on and on about the need to rethink her choice.

“And I am right to,” her mom would persist. “Africa is too dangerous for a young woman on her own. See what happened between you and …”

“Africa had nothing to do with it,” Lilly Loveless would interrupt her mom. “The relationship would have ended with or without what happened in Sunsandland.”

Her mother would shut up only to resume yet again, at the next mention of Mimboland. But Lilly Loveless had made up her mind, and there was no turning back.

***

The Air Mimbo flight was hitch free. The few women on the flight with Lilly Loveless were black, elegantly dressed, heavily jewelled, and mostly wore artificial hair grafted into their own hair or as wigs. The majority of Lilly Loveless’s co-passengers however were men, mostly black Africans, with only a handful of whites whom she thought were businesspeople, development agents, international civil servants, or husbands of Mimboland ladies. There were a few Arabs as well, mostly Lebanese – was her guess – if the literature on these parts of Africa was to be believed. And there were Chinese as well, lots of them, of whom the Muzungulander media had become so jittery of late, posing as they do, as the new conquerors of the consumer world. She imagined each of them with ‘Made in China’ stamps in their briefcases, ready to conquer every city and every village in Africa.

Lilly Loveless did not regret her “courageous” decision to fly African. Her initiation into Mimbo ways started just as she had wished. Already, she had drank three cans of Mimbo-Wanda, the country’s most popular beer with its trendy, pacesetting, football-loving, Internet-crazy, cell phone conscious, vivacious youth, thanks to the friendly stewardess, Yoyette, who was keen on making her feel at home. She attracted Yoyette’s attention while standing at the back of the plane, watching the stewardess make coffee, as she waited for another passenger to finish up in the toilet. In her smart Air Mimbo outfit, Yoyette moved around the small kitchen opening this miniature metal cabinet and closing it securely before turning to open another. Lilly Loveless could not help remarking, “You girls sure do know how to manoeuvre in small spaces.” The stewardess paused, gracefully holding a small coffee cup by its handle, turned, and looked Lilly Loveless up and down, and back up, and said slowly, “We sure do, pretty.” And they bonded instantly.

Lilly Loveless sat next to an elderly man with a fulfilled belly – politician by profession or aspiration. “You’ve got lovely blue eyes and nice curly blonde hair,” the man told her. He kept insisting she must come and study in Nyamandem the capital city instead, because, to his mind, no serious knowledge ever comes from the periphery, not to mention a rat hole like Puttkamerstown. “Nothing that matters happens in backyards,” he said repeatedly, licking his lips as if he had smeared them with honey. “Truth hails from the centre, falsehood from the margins,” he claimed, and with the fullness of his eyes, he protruded onto her face, “That you should know, being from the mother of all centres.” What made her slightly uncomfortable was the way he splashed his sneezes and coughs as if everyone around him wanted his showers of blessings.

On her other side, at the window, sat a thin light-skinned black woman in a colourful lacy top that exposed her midriff, tight-fitting jeans, and big gold loop earrings. Her straightened shoulder length hair with waves almost overwhelmed her small face but with stunning effect. Before takeoff, she worked frantically on her laptop. Then she spoke on her cell phone in a rapid stream alternating between languages and interspersed with “Bisous, bisous.” Later, over a meal, Lilly learned she had just completed a degree in reproductive health in Muzunguland where her mother was originally from, and was now returning home to Mimboland to take up a post to train in HIV/AIDS prevention. When Lilly asked her how she lived her ‘métissage’ the woman replied that these days, even if it doesn’t show in the skin we are all mixed somehow.

The descent to Sawang International Airport was breathtaking. The plane plunged gently through the clouds, revealing a vast and extensive sea of green in glorious synchrony with the sleeves of the Atlantic Ocean. This was the once virgin rainforest Lilly Loveless had only read about or seen in documentaries on TV. Even with the pride of its virginity gone, the balding rainforest was still a rare environmental hope in a world busy writing cheques the environment couldn’t possibly cash. The sooner more and more people understood that one can only command nature by obeying it, the better for all and sundry. Her heart flowed out to the mangroves below and to the shorelines of the beach to the east, full of colourful fishing boats and people in screaming attires. But her enthusiasm was tempered just as they approached the runway – a maze of grey shacks rose from the swamps like a nightmare. Greyer, because of the rain.

The landing was smooth.

After touchdown, the woman to her right offered Lilly Loveless a box of 250 condoms, saying “life’s too sweet and too short to waste”. Lilly Loveless broke out into a big smile and thanked her for the timely gift, having forgotten to bring some along despite repeated insistence by her reluctant mom. The woman also handed her a business card saying, “Don’t hesitate to give me a call if you need something while in Mimboland.” What a lofty mission she had! In a continent already devastated by lords of war, it made all the sense in the world to snatch what was left of life from the jaws of HIV/AIDs with laudable actions like hers.

“A few thunder clouds shouldn’t dampen your enthusiasm,” the man to her right told Lilly Loveless, giving her his card, on which he had added by hand his personal cell phone number. As they separated, he whispered to her with his eyes, “I’m waiting for you in Nyamandem. Call me.” She looked at the card which had a Nyamandem address on one side and a Muzunguland address on the other: “Honourable Epicure Bilingue”, she read with a shake of her head, as if to say “What a name!”

If there was one thing Lilly Loveless regretted with the start of her Mimboland adventure, it was the fact that in her rush to get to the airport in time, she had forgotten to bring along her yellow booklet of vaccines. As a result she was detained by a no-nonsense health official at the Sawang International Airport who forcefully administered injections which he refused to accept she had had just days before.

“How do you expect me to believe that? Show me your card!” The man blared, making her feel like a child lying in broad daylight. She would not be allowed to contaminate the land of Mimbo with yellow fever, cholera and meningitis. And she paid for the vaccines at a rate more than exorbitant in money, comfort and time. The whole exercise took nearly two hours, making her virtually the last passenger to come through from immigration to the baggage area.

The scorching heat, humidity, poor ventilation and the officials’ undisguised reluctance to be understanding compounded the stifling feeling in Lilly Loveless.

By the time she had finished oiling the thick dry lips of the two lady customs officers who had insisted on looking beneath her mom’s dirty XXL underwear, which she had packed on top precisely to deter such a meticulous item by item search for God-knows-what, Dr Wiseman Lovemore, a man not gifted in patience by any standards, had given up waiting and left the airport. So Lilly Loveless, seeing no placard with her name, succumbed to the aggressive persuasion of a determined taxi man and implored: “University of Mimbo, Puttkamerstown, s’il vous plait.”

“Yi please me time no dey,” the taxi man sought to reassure her, mimicking her whiteman-woman accent, the way a child would with its fingers to the tip of its nose singing: “Whiteman with your long nose, since ma mother born me I no ba see me whiteman …” “You go pay Mim$40,000,” he told her.

“That’s too much,” she screamed. “I look for another taxi!” Dustbin had forewarned her against the exorbitant rates of the opportunistic taxi men in Sawang.

“La distance est longue. Puttkamerstown faway. Na ara kontri,” he tried to explain.

She was adamant; the amount was just too much.

“So na how much you go pay?” he asked.

“Wait a minute,” she told him, taking out her notebook. She consulted it, then said, “Not more than Mim$10,000.” That’s the amount Dustbin had advised her not to go over.

“No, no. Dat moni small plenty. No man for here go take you to Puttkamerstown for dat amount.” The driver swore. “You pay Mim$20,000 or you take ara taxi if you see am.”

Lilly Loveless studied the pros and cons of wasting more time haggling with a second, and perhaps a third and fourth taxi man, and concluded she was better off yielding. “Let’s go,” she sighed.

“But if road long, and traffic dey, you go pay more, foseka petrol dear,” the driver insisted as she entered the car.

She pretended not to understand what he said, but was determined not to pay a cent more.

“Your safety belt is unsafe,” said Lilly Loveless, as she discovered the belt had been cut into two halves.

“Na all dat I get… No fear,” he told her.

The taxi man was far from reassuring. Once he started driving, he seemed to head straight for the potholes perforating the battered roads. In his equally battered Toyota Corolla that had no shock absorbers to cushion the tortuous ride, they trotted along as if on a hoofless horse. The front and back windshields of the car were splattered with adverts, including one which touted, “My Toyota Is Fantastic.”

More like “My Toyota is in Plastic,” Lilly Loveless thought, hardly bringing herself to appreciate the irony the way she ordinarily would. To be fair though, one could have the slickest car in the world, but with roads as rubbish as this, there’s little to do but pull, dive and stumble along. Just then, she noticed a very slick car proving the point.

Lilly Loveless was amazed by the crater size potholes made worse by pools of muddy rainwater. This was testing to the limit her philosophy of ‘wetter is better’, especially as the splashes made by the passing cars stank like sewage. Rotting refuse mountains at the corner of every street were colonised by swarms of flies, maggots and rats nonchalantly fattening themselves up. Lilly Loveless and the taxi man went through swampy neighbourhoods, where the car gathered mud and children struggled with floating household refuse and sewage, as if in a sort of fashion parade. The car, which already smelt oddly, picked up more nauseating stenches as the tires grew thicker with mincemeat of unattended waste. At one point, she thought she saw a man lying in the middle of the road, perhaps dead, but no one bothered to stop and help, her own driver included. She fumed, but conversation between them was difficult, as what the taxi man said seemed to suggest the man was catching up on sleep in preparation to lose sleep as a night watchman.

If she hadn’t done her background reading, she might have thought Sawang had been at the heart of a savage war and bombing in which chaos had mass murdered order. She knew Mimboland as the peaceful armpit of a turbulent Africa, and now she was being forced to reappraise what the books had told her by the bumpy reality of a city hardly at peace with itself. The city’s roads and refuse had been totally neglected, just as the air conditioning, toilets and other facilities at the nightmare of an airport. It was as if Mimboland had gone for decades without a government, for not even a warzone devastated by warlords and years of reckless abandon could look this miserable and disabled.

She was glad to be heading for Puttkamerstown, as she simply couldn’t stand Sawang.

Though empathetic to him, Lilly Loveless was also suspicious that the taxi man was not in a hurry to bring her to her destination. He exasperated her with his backstreet options, indirections and indecisions, but she was too scared to put her foot down. The car lurched along bumpily, yet no university was in view.

At one point, the taxi man stopped abruptly and turned to her. “Whosai you say you di go?” he asked. It was evident he either didn’t know the University, or he was simply eating up time in the hope of squeezing even more out of her.

“University of Mimbo!” she screamed and rolled her eyes, barely containing her mounting impatience. She could see he looked equally perplexed. She gathered courage and forced him to ask for directions.

“That’s far away from here, way out of the city,” a bendskin rider told them. “You’re in the wrong place, wrong direction,” the man looked questioningly at the taxi man, as if asking what he was doing with a taxi in a city he mastered so little. “Turn left, left again at the first roundabout, drive straight ahead for three hundred metres or so, make a right turn after the mango orchards, and drive on, looking out for the signposts for directions.”

Lilly Loveless took down notes, not sure her driver understood a thing. She would guide him. They thanked the Good Samaritan bendskin rider, and made a U-turn.

Lilly Loveless could see there were hundreds of motor bike riders like the one who had given them directions. They were picking up and dropping off passengers, apparently much abler to negotiate the potholes and traffic than the taxis that competed with them. She also noticed people on bicycles, some with crates of eggs mounted behind them. They seemed to ride so nonchalantly, unaware of the risk that, with one too-quick movement of the handlebars, a whole day of earnings could be smashed to the pavement in white and yellow glowing and moving globs punctuated by broken shells.

There was this lady, mounted on her bike, doubtless on her way to somewhere important, as she was not stopping for passengers. Lilly Loveless admired the strapless top she wore, made of a print fabric with leopard and tiger designs combined. Her two-toned braids matched her top. Some were gathered loosely on the back of her head while others tumbled to grace the space between her bare shoulders. Her long brown trousers were wide and her heels, braced against the pavement briefly for traffic to ease up, were high. Her handbag waited obediently over the handlebar of her bike…

There were lots of people on foot as well, furious and provocative in their busy-ness. The stench emitted by the farting gutters and refuse mountains made them spit in the streets as if in a spitting competition.

A few kilometres on, a nervous Lilly Loveless asked in silence: “Didn’t he turn the wrong way again?” Not to, said a voice in her, he’ll find his way.

Whatever the sights of Sawang and its inhabitants, Lilly Loveless’ mind was firmly on her fate. She was full of anecdotes about the unpredictability of this land of Mimbo, and it appeared the Mimbo people themselves made no secret of the attribute, as they would proudly proclaim: “Nothing is impossible in Mimboland.”

Lilly Loveless couldn’t contain her joy when the taxi man, after an hour and a half of countless contours and detours, eventually stopped at the entrance to the university still under active construction. A white banner held together by wooden poles and scaffolding had “University of Mimbo” inscribed in bold black letters, followed by “The Place to Be” in a much, much smaller font, almost impossible to read from any distance. She made a mental note of the contrast. She would ask Dr Wiseman Lovemore if there was more to the inscription than met the eye, although she had read somewhere that young Mimbolanders were reluctant to study at home, preoccupied as they were with dreams of seeking authentic qualifications from Muzunguland. A tall fence was being constructed around the university campus. This also she made a mental note of. She had read that this twenty-year-old university was one of the youngest in Mimboland, but she didn’t know it was this fledging, if her eyes and first impressions were to be trusted.

The plainclothes, casually dressed security guard in rubber sandals inspected the documents of the taxi man but would not touch the passport Lilly Loveless instinctively tendered him. “No need,” he smiled, and let them through.

“Dis na university, farm for book people,” said the taxi man, half serious, half mocking.

Lilly Loveless smiled comfortably for the first time since the airport.

“Whosai you wan maka drop you?”

“Department of Social Work,” she said, fidgeting with her trousers to untie her money belt.

The guard indicated the way and the taxi man proceeded to the Faculty of Social Sciences. “Ma road end for ya,” he announced, stretching out his hand.

Lilly Loveless handed him Mim$20,000, a stiff look in her eyes.

He got the message, thanked her, and drove away, a broad smile on his face. Even without the bonus he had hoped for, he was satisfied to have met a client who paid generously. Neither his wife nor his girlfriend would call him “Japanese handbrake” today. But first, he would head for the nearest kiosk to place his bet and hope on his favourite Muzunguland horse, and then prepare himself to watch the race on TV, sponsored by Pari Mutuel Urbain Mimbolandais.

It didn’t take Lilly Loveless long to locate Dr Wiseman Lovemore. He was quite well known – a solid presence on campus à la Dustbin. The first person she asked was able to take her right to his office, where he was explaining to a female student behind closed doors aspects of a lecture she had either missed or not understood, or had insisted on having as a private tutorial.

This would never happen in Muzunguland, a lecturer alone with a female student in his office, with the door closed, the thought crossed Lilly Loveless’ mind as she introduced herself.

Short, thick, big-headed, almost neck-less, and with eyes like a butterfly in a flower garden, Dr Wiseman Lovemore welcomed his guest with a smile, his mind at work – a hunter contemplating his tools in the face of game. He fumbled between an offer of tea and a seat, as he dismissed the student, mumbling something about continuing the exercise later.

Lilly Loveless was keener on sorting things out right away, so she declined the tea, which normally she would have loved, as the weather was chilly and tea with her was a way of life.

“Sorry we missed each other at the airport,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore shook hands with her warmly, slightly uncomfortable with her height and sharp, blue eyes that seemed to absorb everything they settled on. “I thought you were not on the flight, since I waited and waited…”

“I was delayed at immigration and customs, details of which I won’t bore you with.”

“Hope you didn’t have any problem finding a taxi...”

“Let’s not talk about the taxi either. Can you believe it? I get into one and ask to be taken to the University of Mimbo. The taxi man has no clue where this is, but insists on taking me, only to drive round and round. Luckily we asked someone who showed him the way at last.”

“Thank God he brought you here in one piece. It could be worse.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“I see you are married,”remarked Dr Wiseman Lovemore, abruptly.

Lilly Loveless looked at the gold ring on her finger and smiled, but said nothing. She didn’t know how to begin to tell him her mother had insisted upon the ring as a way of keeping prying and preying African men at bay.

“I know you must be tired. A quick tour of the department and the faculty, then we go,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore, picking up his bag and leading the way.

He did a quick round of introductions in the building that housed the Department of Social Work and Faculty of Social Sciences before taking her in his car to drive round the expansive, impressive but very underdeveloped campus of the University of Mimbo.

Again, the fence under construction caught Lilly Loveless’ attention.

“This is a long and expensive fence in the making you’ve got here,” she remarked.

“Yes, and a controversial one too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Opinion is divided and there’s lots of tension in the air,” he whispered. “That’s all I can say for now. More when we are out of here.”

Lilly Loveless nodded. Dustbin hadn’t mentioned a thing about how paranoid Mimbolanders were. Or was Dr Wiseman Lovemore being overly dramatic and mysterious about the fence?

They drove back, packed his car “because petrol is damn expensive, and there is too little of it in the car. I’m just a poor lecturer.”

She smiled knowingly this time. Dustbin and others had already prepared her for this and a lot more.

“Financially, how we survive here at UM is difficult to say,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore unfolded his poverty. “All I know is that we beat Christ when it comes to miracles.”

Lilly Loveless took the cue. She would have to babysit him financially, if they were to socialise.

They both jumped into a taxi, with Lilly Loveless stating upfront that she would pay, which slightly wounded Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s ego, but he didn’t protest. They headed for Mountain View Hotel, where he had reserved a room for her for the first few days of her fieldwork.

The girl at the reception was fair in complexion and youthful. She had a sweet face and her dimples were merry. Lilly Loveless noticed her lips as well, poised gently and firmly, one luscious lip on the other, together they spoke even when no words moved them. Covered in a creamy gloss that let their deep natural glowing brown colour show, the girl’s lips warmed you just by looking. One turned up at an impressive angle and the other sharply down, accentuating the line that separated and brought them together.

The girl herself seemed unaware of the arresting power of those prominent lips proudly protruding. She introduced herself as Britney, part-time receptionist and full-time student, studying during the day and working evenings. “You are welcome to Mountain View.” She handed Lilly Loveless a form. “You can stay as long as you like. We are not expensive and there aren’t many customers in any case.”

Lilly Loveless smiled to herself, wondering if her employer would keep her if he heard her.

Dr Wiseman Lovemore helped Lilly Loveless to her room with her luggage and returned to wait in the dingy reception lounge while she showered.

When she came back downstairs, she looked fresh and had changed into a pair of jeans and a white shirt. She was carrying a sweater.

“I didn’t know it would be this cold in the heart of the tropics,” she told Dr Wiseman Lovemore, as she put on her sweater.

“It must have escaped Dustbin, for Puttkamerstown is generally a cold place, all year round. It used to be worse before the university was created. Since then, there has been a population explosion that has made the town slightly warmer. Lots of people farting into the air…”

“Where did you say we were going?”

“I thought I should welcome you with a drink and something to eat, if that is OK with you.”

“Good idea.”

“Let’s go to Mountain Valley, a place I know well.”

“Mountain Valley?”

“It’s a restaurant, a drinking place, and also …” he laughed.

“What?”

“It is also a resting place.” He was smiling mischievously.

“Resting place?”

“Yes, where men and women go to rest.”

“You mean sugar daddies and sweat mamas… where they bring their catch?”

“I couldn’t have stated it any better.” Dr Wiseman Lovemore thought to himself, this woman is dynamite, much more than meets the eye.

“Interesting, definitely a place worth discovering. The perfect start to my fieldwork.”

Mountain Valley was a walking distance from Mountain View. Rich in vegetation including a healthy abundance of flowers both wild and tended, the landscape attracted Lilly Loveless. If there was one thing in Mimboland to command her resilience and plead for forgiveness for all the sins of Sawang, she was sure it was the scenery of Puttkamerstown. There was the overarching Mount Mimbo, with all its hypnotic majesty, impressive and mystical like the chariot of the gods, to crown it all. Luckily the skies were clear, allowing the mountain to throw off its dark and white blanket of rain clouds and reveal the fullness of its beauty to welcome her eyes, marvel and sense of spectacle. She felt good, like a tropical flower that cannot blossom without the sun. Instinctively, she made the sign of the cross, and thanked the stars, which was significant, for she was neither Christian nor religious. A worshipper of nature maybe, nothing more.

Dr Wiseman Lovemore told her of the mountain race, an international event that takes place every year in the month of February, and that entails running up to the top of the 5000 metres high mountain and back. She was impressed by his lengthy account of how a local female participant who habitually races barefooted and hardly looks her age had been crowned “Mountain Hare” for winning more times than anybody can remember. Lilly Loveless felt tempted to take part in the next race, even if it meant only going as far up as the Upper Eden or Stop One, of what Dr Wiseman Lovemore said was a three-stop-race to the top. The mountain was full of gods, she was told, who needed constant attention, and who were known for showing displeasure once in a blue moon by coughing out red hot fire so vicious it could swallow whole villages.

Lilly Loveless had the feeling Dr Wiseman Lovemore was addressing the anthropologist in her by talking of gods and fire instead of volcanoes. She made no comment as a social geographer.

They walked past several relics of Muzunguland colonialism, which Dr Wiseman Lovemore, not a tourist guide by any stretch of the imagination and neither overly romantic about the past or keen on sightseeing, did his utmost to bring home to Lilly Loveless, whom he was determined to impress. There was the Bismarck Fountain, which had long ceased to flow, just like Bismarck after Willem II became Kaiser. There was the prestigious Lodge, initially constructed by Puttkamer as a birthday present for a daughter of the soil who had mastered the needs of his heart. A significant symbol of power or powerlessness in a way, the lodge had been passed down first to the Prime Minister of West Mimboland, then to the President of the Federal Republic as a federal palace, and finally to President Longstay of the United Republic as a Regional rest house, which in effect meant an end to occupancy, as Longstay hardly ever saw the need to venture into the periphery. He is famously known to have proclaimed recently when the country was up in flames with thirst for various freedoms: “Democracy is a very expensive disease; we feel better when it is cured. As long as Nyamandem breathes, Mimboland is alive.” To mark the solitude, disuse and neglect the Lodge now enjoys, the clock which had been faithful throughout the history of colonial presence ceased to tick in 1972. It is rumoured that President Longstay dreamt with such conviction that federalism was a wasteful nightmare that the clock ceased to tick in evidence. So, tourists, when they get close enough, can see that the clock’s hands are stuck at 5.45 – dawn or dusk they can’t tell, but who cares?

They came to the colonial graveyard, which Lilly Loveless said she must see, but which Dr Wiseman Lovemore was cold about, given his conviction that the dead must not be disturbed. So he stood by the main road while she went to see. She counted the number of graves, wrote down in her notebook the names on the tombstones, and placed the colourful leaves of a nearby plant on the grave closest to her as a symbolic wreathe.

“There are twelve of them,” she said, upon rejoining Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “What do you imagine they died of?”

“Illness, probably. Malaria,” he didn’t know for sure. “There was a war between the local population and the Muzungulanders who came seeking their land and taking over their lives,” he added. “But there were not that many casualties. So it must have been to the mosquito that they finally succumbed.”

“Probably. I’ll find out from the Archives.”

“Much as nature lured the Muzungulander to Africa, nature also had a way of cutting down to size their fantasies. If it wasn’t disease, it was tough terrain that made it particularly difficult for them to penetrate and humble the heart of darkness. And many fell by the wayside, thanks to these hazards.”

“If there is any truth in what you say, the Archives will be able to tell me.”

“I can see you swear by the Archives,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore, half mockingly. “I’ll show you the Archives tomorrow. It is too late to go there today, as it is long past office hours.”

“No hurry.”

“It is curious isn’t it?”

“What?”

“That your Muzunguland forefathers in Mimboland should survive the war but fall to the mosquitoes. This means that both were involved in the liberation struggle. We might never have had our independence had the mosquitoes not joined in the struggle,” he chuckled.

“Interesting perspective,” was all Lilly Loveless could say. She had never thought of things in that light.

“Do you know why they fell to the mosquito?”

“No,” said Lilly Loveless. “Do you?”

“I read somewhere that when they came, they did not manage more than a bed of radishes, when all sort of vegetables do so well here and elsewhere in the region,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “They depended on tasteless tinned foods instead of scratching the soil to grow food…”

“What has that got to do with dying from mosquitoes?” Lilly Loveless interrupted.

“Can’t you see? Dependence on canned foods means that your forebears did not keep gardens, and no gardens meant that they lived surrounded by bushes, and therefore mosquitoes.”

“Clever thinking,” Lilly Loveless agreed.

“Their failure to domesticate their surroundings led to the mosquito showing them pepper, which is why I believe there ought to be a monument in honour of the mosquito, in every African country,” he went on.

Lilly Loveless was a bit irritated.

“Yes,” he insisted. “We need a monument to the mosquito, in the public square!”

“That reminds me.” Lilly changed the topic in exasperation. “Could we pass by a pharmacy for me to pick up some mosquito repellent spray?”

“My pleasure.”