Читать книгу Warlord - James Steel, James Steel - Страница 16

‘Hello, hello, welcome to Panzi hospital! My name is Mama Riziki and this is Mama Jeanne and Mama Lumo!’

The head counsellor, Mama Riziki, is cheerfully upbeat, an ample middle-aged woman in a multi-coloured dress and matching headcloth with a fake Louis Vuitton handbag hooked over her shoulder. She points to two similarly smiling women standing next to her. They are both brightly dressed ladies from the town of Bukavu up the road, unlike the four peasant girls that have come in to the hospital from the bush. Mama Riziki has been doing this job for years and knows that she has to cheer up these poor traumatised rape victims. One is only eleven.

‘So, ladies, we are here to make sure that you enjoy your stay at Panzi and you go home healed and well. Some people are here for over a year and we will all become a big happy family.’

Mama Lumo butts in, ‘Yes, and when you go home they won’t recognise you, because we will feed you lots of rice and you will get big and fat like me.’

The induction session is happening on one side of the main hallway of the single-storey hospital building. A woman patient who is leaning against the wall chips in, ‘Yes, look at my hair. My husband won’t recognise me when I get back. Mama Jeanne did it for me.’ She touches her elaborately plaited hair and they both giggle with glee.

Eve is sitting on a bench with three other girls who also arrived that day. They all have the smell of stale urine hanging around them and one of them is pregnant. Eve has been feeling very nervous and awkward and so far has only talked quietly to one girl called Miriam, but the typical Congolese banter is beginning to cheer her up and she smiles nervously.

It’s just what Eve needs to get her out of her shell-shocked, stigmatised mood. The taxi driver who brought her to Bukavu initially didn’t want her in his minivan and demanded extra payment because she was unlucky. He made a big fuss about getting plastic sacks put on the seat so she didn’t leak urine on it and no one sat next to her the whole journey.

But when the security guard shut the hospital gate behind her and she was inside the compound, Eve suddenly felt safe. It is the first time in years that she has had the feeling of being protected from the men with guns.

Mama Riziki is pleased with the girls’ smiles and beams back at them.

‘OK, so when you are under the care of your Mamas here you will do lots of things. You will help with cooking and cleaning in the hospital and we will keep you busy, oh very busy, with lots of courses. You can do bookkeeping or tailoring …’

‘Yes, and cooking with me …’

‘And I’ll do medicine and hygiene.’

The courses help to keep the women busy and heal the psychological wounds of the rape as the surgeons stitch up the tears and gunshot wounds in their genito-urinary tracts to stop them urinating and defecating uncontrollably.

‘We will always make sure you leave here healed and ready to go back to your families. Sometimes it does take one or two or maybe three operations before the tears heal but we will always be with you. Praise God for your arrival here today!’ Panzi is a Pentecostal-funded hospital and Mama Riziki prays over them.

Eve bows her head and prays hard. She knows her family doesn’t have the money to let her stay for more than one operation.

‘Yamba, hi, it’s Alex.’

A guffaw of delighted laughter comes down the line.

‘What?’

The cackling continues in such an infectious way that Alex starts laughing as well. Eventually, they both draw breath.

‘Alex Devereux,’ Yamba says his name and hoots again.

Alex grins and waits.

‘It’s good to hear from you.’

‘It’s good to hear you too.’

There was a pause as they both absorbed the pleasure of hearing an old friend’s voice after a long time. They have had only sporadic email contact since the end of the last mission.

Yamba is someone Alex feels at home with. It is an odd combination – public school cavalry officers aren’t often seen with Angolan mercenaries – but the two of them have been through a lot together. More important than shared experience are their shared values: a fierce, self-reliant professionalism offset by a black sense of humour.

‘How are you, man?’ Alex asks.

‘Yees, OK …’ Yamba says, smiling and nodding thoughtfully. ‘How are you?’

‘Yeah, OK.’

‘How is your hut?’

‘My hut? Oh, yeah, it’s good, thanks,’ Alex says, looking around at his house. ‘It’s got a new roof.’

‘Oh? Like a thatched roof or maybe some tin, yes?’

Alex laughs again. ‘Yeah, that’s right, I got a piece of tin from the market, fits really well.’

‘And have you got yourself a wife yet?’

Alex guffaws. ‘No.’

‘Ah, you are behind the curve,’ Yamba says with relish; he loves using new idioms that he has picked up.

‘I know, I haven’t even got divorced yet. What about you, have you got a bird?’

‘No,’ Yamba laughs. ‘I have taken up cooking and most African women think I am gay when I tell them I cook,’ he cackles. ‘But I have a little lady friend who I visit in Luanda every now and then.’

‘A la-dy …’ Alex says in a ridiculously suggestive tone.

Yamba laughs.

‘And how are the poor and sick of Angola?’

‘Oh, they keep dying on me.’

‘Oh …’

‘Yes, I shout at them and tell them not to but they just don’t listen to me.’

Yamba is known as a strict disciplinarian with the soldiers he commands. He joined 32 Battalion as a teenager after his family had been killed by the communists and rose to the rank of sergeant major in a vicious bush war. He always wanted to be a surgeon.

He was educated at a Jesuit school as a boy – was head boy in fact – and the religious order’s disciplined morality has stayed with him. He admired Father Joao’s tough asceticism and still has him in his mind as the epitome of what a real man should be. It all shows in his appearance: six feet two, lean, shaven-headed. His face is as daunting as a dark cliff with lines like rivulets worn into it by exercise, self-denial and hardship.

‘How’s the clinic going?’

‘Oh, OK, you know. I bribe the right people in the Ministry of Health, I argue with the right people in the Ministry of Health and sometimes we get supplies and sometimes we don’t. We’re not going to save Africa but I am racking up God points big time.’

Alex laughs. ‘Good works.’

‘Yes, good works. Isn’t Catholic guilt a marvellous thing?’

‘Hmmm.’

The laughter eases out of Alex’s voice as he gets to the point of the call. ‘Well, I have a good work in mind.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Yamba sounds amused.

‘Hmm, this is quite a big good work actually.’

‘Oh no, what are we doing this time? Haven’t we interfered with enough governments? You’re not on that again, are you?’

Alex’s voice begins to sound more serious. ‘Well, this time we’re going to set up a new country.’

Yamba stops laughing.

Smoke drifts across the forest glade, catching in a shaft of lemony morning sunshine. Otherwise everything is still and silent.

It’s just after dawn and the raucous chorus of birds has died down. The glade is surrounded by high trees and thick undergrowth, wet with dew. Two large mounds covered in earth, ten feet in diameter, burn gently and little streams of smoke emerge from cracks at the top like snakes and, in the absence of any wind, slide away down the slopes.

The charcoal burner stirs from under his shelter of white plastic sheeting and pokes a long stick into the bottom of one of the piles, checking if it is ready. He is of indeterminate age – he is so black and wizened by his trade he could be middle-or old-aged. He reeks of smoke and his eyes are red and rheumy. His body is streaked with smears of sweat-congealed black charcoal powder.

He’s been up all night tending to his two kilns. He has to heat the bundles of wood cut from the forest just enough to drive off the excess water – too much and it will turn to ash, too little and it produces unsaleable smoked wood. What he wants is that light, brittle residue that the women of Kivu use to fuel their cooking fires. The trade is worth thirty million dollars a year, wood in the deep bush is free and all he needs to do is to live in this isolated spot cutting trees and tending his kilns.

Charcoal burning is not a job for every man. The skills are jealously guarded and kept within a secret community; he learned the trade from his father along with many other secrets about how to communicate with the spirits of the trees and the animals that live in the forest and how to make charms for all of life’s requirements.

He picks up a spade and starts shovelling earth over the vents at the bottom of the heap to cut off the flow of air. The combustion inside the mound gradually dies off and the streamers of smoke emanating from it fade to wisps and then stop. He makes himself a cup of black sweet tea, finds a sunny spot and settles back to wait for one of the traders he supplies.

He dozes off but about midday a call from the bush on the slopes below him wakes him up and he hears the sound of a man breathing hard and the thud of his feet on the mud.

A bare-chested man emerges through the bush heaving his tshkudu uphill. The lean fibres of his chest muscles stand out as he pushes on the handlebars.

‘Ah, Antoine, good to see you,’ the charcoal burner says quietly and offers him a drink from his yellow plastic jerrycan of water.

Antoine smiles, takes grateful glugs, and then splashes his body and wipes off the sweat. He accepts a cup of tea and the burner asks, ‘So what’s going on in the world?’

‘Oh, did you hear about that riot up in Butembo?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, Socozaki was playing Nyuki System. Nyuki were losing two–nil and so their goalkeeper walks up the pitch and tries to cast a spell on the other goal. So all the Nyuki players go mad and have a brawl on the pitch and when a policeman comes on to stop them he is pelted with stones by the spectators.’

Antoine shakes his head. ‘So then the police fire tear gas and the crowd stampedes. Eleven people were crushed to death. What can you do?’

‘Eh,’ the burner agrees, ‘the goalkeeper should have been more crafty.’

‘Hmm. So how much for the bags?’ Antoine jerks his head towards the pile of grubby sacks.

The burner names his price and Antoine looks disappointed. Then he pauses and a sly look creeps onto his face. ‘Ah, but I have a present for you from the Kudu Noir.’

The charcoal burner sits up. ‘Show me.’

The trader gets up and pulls a bundle out of a plastic sack on his tshkudu; it’s about a foot long and carefully wrapped up. ‘Have a look, it’s the real thing.’

The burner opens it, looks inside and smiles slyly. ‘A girl?’

‘Yes.’

The burner nods with satisfaction. ‘That’s good, female spirits are more powerful. I’ll make the powder; the Kudus will be pleased with this. OK, so now we can trade.’ He also gets up, goes over to his shelter and pulls out a small packet of grey powder in a clear plastic bag.

The trader looks at it with bright eyes. ‘The real thing?’

‘Yes. It’s pure albino bone. Sprinkle it in a mine and the gold will come rushing to you.’

He rubs his jaw. ‘OK, what’s your price?’