1. ON THE EDGE IN ZAIRE

BUKAVU, 9 APRIL

From the air Bukavu was distantly visible at the base of a steep mountain, its three long narrow wooded peninsulas stretching far out into Lake Kivu. As MAF descended towards the airstrip at 1.00p.m. (two hours late), an immense expanse of blue appeared amidst the bush – a city of close-packed hovels, sheltering 90,000 Rwandan refugees, its blueness created by UNHCR tarpaulin roofs. Pre-grandmaternity, I would have been avid for information about how this camp is now being run. Today I merely observed it, was avid only for information about Rose’s development since last I saw her on 15 January.

I stepped off the plane into the arms – almost literally, he seized my elbow – of a tall, fat, complacent-looking Zairean soldier. In French he asked if I was the grandmother. Proudly I said ‘oui’. Briskly he led me past those numerous predatory bureaucrats who lie in wait for foreigners entering Zaire. Smiling, he delivered me to Andrew. No immigration officer was interested in my passport, no customs officer even glanced at my rucksack. Importing grannies is costly. But the dollars are effective.

I had been forewarned, I knew that Zaire is not as other African countries are: at least not those through which I have travelled. Here no one pretends that there is a functioning government. And if soldiers and civil servants go unpaid for years they must somehow acquire money, whenever and however and from whomever they can. Naturally dollar-rich foreigners are their main targets but this is not standard corruption. Zaire’s real corruption happens at the top in Kinshasa and for more than thirty years has been indulged by the US and French government – among others.

We hastened to the Land-rover, Rose peering at me rather suspiciously from beneath her wide-brimmed sunhat. One doesn’t linger in Bukavu’s ‘airport’, a huddle of flimsy shacks around two once-slid but now semi-derelict colonial office buildings. Numerous heavily armed soldiers stroll to and fro, eyeing all newly arrived passengers speculatively – and to deny their demands is unwise.

The main road bisects the refugee camp. Although small, compared with Goma’s ‘metropolitan’ settlements 120 miles to the north, it seems a vast intrusion on this rural scene. Reputedly it is less violent than Goma’s camps but one prefers, said Andrew, to drive through as quickly as possible. The vibes are disturbing. The pedestrian traffic on the verges was heavy as refugees carried WFP-donated foods to be sold illegally to Zaireans. Many women, using forehead straps, were bent double under the enormous sacks of grain on their backs. Scores of men, women and children, returning to the camp, bore headloads of firewood. No one was conversing or smiling – or looked capable of ever again smiling.

During that twenty-mile drive I fell madly in love with Kivu Province. Even my enchantingly cheerful grand-daughter, who already seemed to be thawing towards Nyanya, could not entirely distract my attention from the lush hilly beauty – hills grassy or forested, overlooking the jade-green waters of Lake Kivu, matching other forested hills on the far (Rwandan) shore. Here, towards the southern end, the lake narrows and that shore is only a few miles away.

Sometimes banana groves line the road and we stopped to spend Zaires 15,000 on a hand offered by three small boys, pitifully skinny yet bouncy and grinning. Watching this transaction, my heart sank. I’m bad at sums and in countries where three, four and five zeros complicate calculations I tend to lose my cool when shopping. Zaires 15,000 was one US dollar three months ago; now it’s about forty US cents.

Not far from Bukavu a large military tent stands by the roadside, labelled UNHCR. Several soldiers lounge at the entrance, ready to register the exit from Zaire of refugees returning to Rwanda. Because no refuges are returning to Rwanda this tent might be described as cosmetic, a symptom of the arcane political game being played by the various aid agencies, the Zairean, Rwandan and Tanzanian governments, the genocidal camp administrators, the sinister Hutu militia (known as the Interahamwe) and representatives of that amorphous entity, the International Community. I was about to revert to my pre-grandmotherly state of mind when Rose smiled directly at me, for the first time ever. Thus beguiled, I forgot all about genocidal refugees, corrupt institutions, self-serving ‘humanitarian’ aid agencies and devious governments.

On the edge of Bukavu, Andrew pointed out the city’s brewery. He knew this would make me feel secure and relaxed; a beerless holiday might overstretch Nyanya’s equanimity. This being one of few surviving local industries confirms the Lonely Planet East Africa Guide’s observation: ‘In Zaire the beer rarely runs out. Aside from Australia and Germany, there are few other countries which place such a high priority on their beer supplies.’

Thus far the road had been surprisingly good; in Kivu Province only those twenty miles are tarred and few of the potholes exceed six inches in depth and a yard in diameter. But now, as we entered the city, its disintegrated streets reduced Andrew’s speed to fifteen m.p.h. I noticed Rachel clutching Rose more tightly; the local drivers – not similarly inhibited – send their vehicles careering from side to side, swerving to avoid the worst chasms as though performing in a stunt film. Mercifully Bukavu is a mini-city and we were soon out of the centre, in the almost traffic-free quartier de Muhumba. As for Avenue Walungu – it is a winding rural laneway where goats graze on the verges and beyond the garden hedge of No. 19 a maize-field slopes steeply down to the lake.

A month ago, on Andrew’s erratic satellite ’phone – an over-rated gadget, liable to induce frustration-ulcers, and, if often used, bankruptcy – I had heard about Budgie, the fourth member of the family. Prosaicly, I had assumed him to be feathered. But – a joyful surprise! As I walked into the living-room, a minute ball of grey and white fur unrolled itself and stretched, then greeted me like an old friend, loudly purring. Of course I should have guessed; neither Rachel nor Andrew can live catless and Budgie was presented to them, at the age of six weeks, as a ‘Welcome’ present. Although born in January, he still looks too small to have left his mother. He is singularly ugly – the archetypal alley-kitten – but of ineffable charm and immensely composed. He and Rose are mutually devoted; they share the satisfaction of dominating all available adults, black or white, resident or visiting.

Towards sunset a three-minute walk took me down to the shore – to a secluded spot, overhung by tall pink and orange wild flowers – for my first swim in Lake Kivu. It’s ten years since my last holiday but this one was worth the wait.

10 APRIL

No. 19 is a compact little bungalow: living-room, two bedrooms, a small kitchen and bathroom and – most important and most used – a patio, some fifteen feet square, of polished concrete, overlooking the colourful garden, the lake below and the opposite peninsula. That peninsula runs into Rwanda, as I realised that night when house lights went on across the water from us but the small dwellings of the north remained in darkness. All are unoccupied; fear of Interahamwe incursions from the camps keep them so.

Two servants go with this modest home, part of the deal made by Andrew’s NGO with the Zairean owner who lives in Kinshasa. Paul is the elderly cook-cum-cleaner who lives two hours walk away and arrives punctually at 8.00a.m. six days a week. When he leaves at 3.00p.m. Mpolo, the askari (chowkidar in India) takes over until next morning. Supposedly he stays awake all night and in his tiny mud-floored hut by the gate (its roof is UNHCR tarpaulin: these may be bought in the market for $30) there is no encouragement to sleep, only a hard-backed, broken-legged chair. He also tends the garden and washes and polishes the Land-rover – second-hand, imported via Dar es Salaam and Bujumbura from where Andrew drove it at the beginning of January.

Two servants suggest affluence. But – there is no teapot so tea must be brewed in the kettle. And there are only two each of glasses, mugs, plates, knives, forks and spoons. It seems my arrival would necessitate sharing until I pointed out that empty honey jars can be used as glasses/mugs. I revel in this zany life-style, the bizarre colonial left-over of two servants juxtaposed with the extreme frugality of a conscientious 1990s development worker. And there is a hilarious incongruity about seeing my daughter thrust willy-nilly into a memsahib role – going to the gate to negotiate with vegetable sellers who call her ‘madam’. In some ways she is, I have to admit, slipping into this role with ominous ease, seeming very happy to recline on the patio watching Paul hanging out Rose’s nappies – he of course having washed them. And then he must iron them because of the mango fly which likes to lay its eggs on damp clothes. When these hatch out (if not killed by a hot iron) the worms invade bodies through the skin and make trouble – of what sort I’m not sure. However, Rachel’s happy reclining is perfectly natural; to relish household chores is unnatural. Only those who take p.c. to the point of fanaticism (as I stupidly did thirty years ago when living in Pokhara) or who are obnoxiously mean, would decline to share their relative wealth by employing servants in a country as desperately poor as Zaire.

Many vendors of fruits and vegetables, rabbits and chickens, souvenirs and scarves, bang hopefully on the gate shouting for ‘madam’. Happily this title in Zaire does not have its South African connotation. Here there is a hint of amiable mockery in the voices of dignified elderly vendors as they thus address the ‘mistress of the household’ – barefooted, clad in threadbare shorts and T-shirt and looking younger than her twenty-seven years.

11 APRIL

The capital of Kivu Province must surely qualify for the Guinness Book of Records: a city of quarter of a million with no public transport, no postal service, no telephone service, no functioning bank, no newspapers in any language, no ex-pat dentist, a doctor only at irregular intervals and hospitals without medicines. However, Bukavu’s welcoming and cheerful citizens (who have nothing discernible to be cheerful about) more than compensate for those little inconveniences. As do the clear deep waters of Lake Kivu (a swimmer’s paradise) and the perfection of the climate and the beauty of this whole region – in my experience never excelled, and only rarely equalled, on any continent. Within forty-eight hours, Bukavu had become my favourite city in all the world.

Goma and Bukavu, at the opposite ends of Lake Kivu, were the colonists’ favourite retreats from the relentless heat and humidity of the Congo Basin – the Belgians’ Simla and Darjeeling, inherited post-independence by Zaire’s Mobutu-pampered élite. Spacious holiday villas, and more modest homes for the permanently resident provincial officials, were built on the long wooded peninsulas rising steeply from the lake. These usually attractive dwellings are well spaced out, each surrounded by a glowing abundance of flowering trees and shrubs. Our Avenue Muhumba – on the middle peninsula, towards its tip – winds between plantains and tall trees swathed in purple bougainvillaea; plots of maize, beans and ground nuts separate the bungalows. None of these is large: probably lesser officials were the original inhabitants.

I have, by chance, arrived here at a most propitious time, towards the end of a rainy season. Now the vegetation is all new and vigorous and the dust still being controlled by infrequent but heavy showers while high, gently drifting clouds constantly change Lake Kivu’s colouring: from jade-green to black and blue to silver. On most of our walking routes the lake is visible and it never disappears for long – except in the city centre, the ex-commercial district. Well, not quite ‘ex-’; some muted commercial activity continues despite galloping inflation and closed banks. The one thriving industry, already mentioned, produces a tolerable brew: Primus, sold in half-litre returnable bottles. So precious are these that there is no deposit system; without an empty you cannot buy a full …

On the main avenues several ‘European’ stores (most now Indian-owned) seem large in contrast to the average African shop and still offer an amazing selection of non-perishable imported goods – at formidable prices. You can buy lavatory paper, shampoo, hand-cream, toilet soap, lipstick, sun-lotion, paper napkins, disposable nappies and edible items like biscuits and breakfast cereals made in Kenya and tinned Kraft cheese from the US. No one seems to know by which route American-made cheese travels to Kivu Province; it must be weirdly circuitous. And why import this repellent comestible when an excellent hard cheese is made on a Catholic mission farm not far away and sold in the butcher’s shop? (Expensive but one of the staple foods at No. 19.) But perhaps the importer of Kraft (three times as expensive) is catering for those elderly American radio evangelists who drive their jeep round and round the city centre loudly relaying taped fundamentalist messages. In contrast to all else in the ‘European’ shops, authentic British booze is astoundingly cheap: $15 for a bottle of Scotch (standard size) or Gilbey’s gin. Rachel patronizes such shops only to buy Scotch for special occasions and Klim powdered milk for our tea. Rose of course has her personalized milk supply.

A Belgian returning after thirty years would certainly find Bukavu’s centre dismal, proof that Africans can’t govern themselves … I, however, like its run-down grottiness (two fingers to the free market and the consumer society), its wide hilly chasmic streets, its shattered pavements and peeling, once-imposing commercial façades. The provincial governor’s residence and the old colonial administration offices – now the offices of moribund Zairean government departments – are clustered on the most densely wooded peninsula and guarded by unkempt soldiers who usually look mad or bad (sometimes both). These buildings are stuccoed, tin-roofed, pleasantly unpretentious – quite unlike their British equivalents, built to remind the natives that Britain’s empire was unique in scale, power and wealth. Significantly, the city’s dominant building is a Catholic church-cum-seminary and boarding school, a massive fortress-like complex on the highest ridge of our peninsula. Here, as elsewhere, the missionaries and the colonists worked closely together – were in effect part of the same team.

12 APRIL

This morning Rachel purchases Flopsy for $5. (He has to be Flopsy because one ear permanently hangs down.) Far be it from me to question the purchase, we’re all entitled to our eccentricities. But having impulsively acquired a rabbit (to save it from a neighbour’s pot?), where to house it? Luckily there is a spare bedroom, the space Nyanya would be occupying if she didn’t prefer sleeping out on the patio in her flea-bag. So Flopsy has been installed in the guest-room while alternative arrangements are being made.

Something unsettling happened this afternoon. Opposite the patio, a row of tiger-lilies flourishes in the rich soil below the hedge. Overnight one bloomed brilliantly – the first to flower – and at breakfast time Rachel rejoiced loudly, rushing town to admire it. Then we got back from the market at 4.00p.m. to find that it had been uprooted and thrust through the hedge into the maize field. Only Mpolo could have done this, though of course he denied it. Seemingly an inane deed, yet unsettling precisely because we all three felt it was not inane but mysteriously purposeful. Just occasionally, in Africa, one is made deeply uneasy by the operation of inexplicable forces no longer encountered (perhaps never encountered?) in our world. This was such an occasion.

When I first saw Mpolo, when he opened the gate on our arrival from the airstrip, he gave me the creeps. His eyes disconcerted me – an his manner. No, ‘manner’ is the wrong word; in fact he welcomed me enthusiastically without being obsequious. I should have said his ‘aura’. But these instant and apparently irrational reactions to another human being evade analysis, whether they be negative or positive. It’s interesting – maybe even significant – that Paul, too, seems always ill-at-ease with Mpolo.

Sitting on the patio this evening, drinking our Primuses and watching the glow-worms on the lawn (they need to be protected from Budgie), we were all slightly subdued.

13 APRIL

The construction of a rabbit-run doesn’t normally overtax human ingenuity. One needs only a few lengths of wood, a roll of chicken-wire, a few ounces of nails and a man with a hammer. But life in Bukavu is not normal: where to find chicken-wire? Yesterday and today Rachel, Rose and I roamed through the markets, enquiring. No one sold chicken-wire, no one knew where chicken-wire might be sold. It would have been easier to buy an AK-47 ($25).

By now Rachel and Rose are well-known and evidently well-liked in both markets. ‘Mama Rosa! Mama Rosa!’ – the greeting comes from all directions as we appear. Nowadays these friendly vendors see no tourists and very few muzungus of any brand. Quite often their friendliness extends to giving a well-meant but uncomprehending advice about how Rose should be carried. Her sometimes travelling on Rachel’s front in a cloth baby-sling worries Africans who believe a baby’s place is on the back. But even when she is on the back, in a purpose-built knapsack, they remain worried. This, to them, looks cruelly insecure, allowing her too much freedom of movement; when sleeping she slides down into what looks like an excruciatingly uncomfortable position. (Obviously it isn’t: she often sleeps thus for hours.) Then kind advisers crowd around, eager to help this clueless young Mama (and equally clueless Nyanya) by adjusting Rose’s head and limbs. Understandably, Rachel finds this trying; and mother lucky enough to have a sleeping infant wants to keep it that way. But for the sake of inter-racial harmony she contains her irritation.

In recent years, technology has begun to invade some of Africa’s traditional markets – calculators, digital weighing machines, even mobile ’phones. Of such innovations Bukavu’s markets are innocent. Here even the accursed plastic bag, global befouler of landscapes, has not yet arrived. You bring your own basket or container, or accept goods wrapped in the pages of used copy-books – allowing shoppers to appraise the academic standards (low) of Bukavu’s youth.

Rachel and Andrew favour the smaller (but still large) hilltop market some fifteen minutes’ brisk walk from No. 19. After rain its narrow paths, between close-packed ramshackle stalls, become canals of liquid mud. And always the aromas of decaying vegetation and rotting fish envelop the area. Here we buy fresh fruits and vegetables, rich and beans and Budgie’s tiny sardine-like fish. It is a joy to see fruits and vegetables of irregular shapes and sizes, knowing that what the food industry would consider their ‘blemishes’ guarantee their flavour and wholesomeness.

The larger market, near the centre, sells every sort of foodstuff (indigenous) and hardware, cloth and meat. Two or three men, grunting and sweating, may be seen pushing a handcart up the street laden with whole skinned bullocks – or maybe, here, they are young bulls? The butcher’s hefty young assistants then dismember the carcasses with machetes, a procedure that too vividly recalls the other uses of machetes in this region not long ago … Flies swarm, enthusiastic and undeterred. Cravenly, but perhaps sensibly given our European lack of immunities, we buy from a more ‘Western-style’ butcher in the centre. His slaughtering and dismembering methods are akin to the market butcher’s but he doesn’t permit flies to alight on the meat – at least not within view of his customers.

Eggs are most often available from pavement stalls along the main streets, stalls that also sell cigarettes, fizzy drinks, combs, bread and second-hand shoes. No one can explain why eggs should be so scarce and expensive: fifteen pence apiece for what we would consider pullets’ of bantams’ eggs – half and dozen are needed to make a decent one-person omelette. Fresh milk is unobtainable because of the lack of transport and refrigeration; the nearest herd grazes twenty-five miles away. But sometimes, at unguessable intervals, yoghurt comes from the mission farm and Rachel avidly stock-piles it. Fish is not as plentiful or as cheap as one would expect. Lake Kivu is volcanic and occasional releases of poisonous gas from the lake floor are said to be responsible for limiting the fish population. End of market report.

There’s more to rabbits than meets the Irish eye. At home they are jolly, furry, hoppity, cuddly creatures, most often seen at dawn nibbling the dewy grass. A Bukavu rabbit is a very much larger creature with – I discovered this evening – a kick like an ostrich if not held firmly in a certain position.

14 APRIL

Nyanya is having a holiday with a difference. Somehow I have become responsible for Flopsy-care, which gives me an unusual insight into the workings of a rabbit’s bladder and bowels. Flopsy’s prodigious output of urine baffles us. ‘How and why?’ we ask ourselves; he drinks none of the water diligently changed in his dish morning and evening. We can only deduce that his fodder (Flopsy-sized mounds of greenery freshly cut twice a day on nearby verges) has a 50 per cent water content, at least. Unfortunately, by the time this water emerges it has been so processed that it indelibly stains the concrete floor and anything else within reach – like my rucksack. When Flopsy took up residence I placed the empty rucksack, invitingly open, in a corner of the guest-room, thinking Flopsy might fancy it as a burrow-substitute. Instead, he fancied it as a latrine and peed copiously within, bleaching the back forever.

Rabbit urine is pungent. Thrice daily I get down on my hands and knees and mop it up, the scour the floor with Vim – or whatever substance Paul uses instead of Vim. (It is causing the skin on my hands to flake off.) As for a rabbit’s bowel movements, these of course are extremely civilized: neat, dry marbles – but unbelievably numerous marbles and strewn all over the floor. I hand-pick them one by one, risking a dislocated back as I insinuate myself under the low bedstead (it’s too heavy to move) in pursuit of the almost inaccessible. Then I fling the fistfuls into the garden where they annoy Mpolo by besmirching the concrete rain-channel he so assiduously sweeps every afternoon. When on duty, the adorable Paul observes my endeavours with a twinkle in his eye; he had adjusted well to working in a nut-house where la bell mere sleeps on the patio floor while a rabbit occupies the guest-room. Mpolo is less adaptable; he looked quite alarmed, the evening Flopsy arrived, on seeing me apparently weeding the garden by torchlight, a task Mpolo is paid to do by daylight.

For all this hard labour, my reward is Flopsy’s increasing acceptance of his skivvy – almost amounting to affection, or so I tell myself. He no longer hops under the bed when I open the door but wriggles his nose quite frenziedly in what could be interpreted as a greeting – even a welcome. He also takes food from my hand and, if I hold one of his favourite herbs out of reach, he is trusting enough to climb on my lap, place his forefeet on my chest and stretch up for the treat. Rabbits can elongate in the most extraordinary way, as though made of elastic.

Somehow, during these sessions, I see out of the corner of my eye a very small grey pay being inserted under the door. Budgie has taken to spending hours outside the guest-room, his posture that of a cat by a mouse-hole; instinct tells him that what he smells within is a feline’s natural prey. However, when formally introduced to Flopsy (at least eight times his size) poor Budgie was momentarily paralysed with terror – then fled. Flopsy, on the other hand, seemed amiably interested; he hopped out the open door and stared rather wistfully in the direction of the vanished potential friend. Rachel intuits he’s lonely – needs a wife … Andrew looks ahead to the demographic consequences and discourages this idea. ‘Unless,’ he said, ‘Nyanya plans to settle in Bukavu.’

15 APRIL

This morning Paul staged a protest. The household’s only floor-cloth, with which he washes the floor every day, became over the week-end – despite my scrupulous rinsing and re-rinsing, then hanging in the fresh air and strong sun – became so powerfully redolent of Flopsy pee that Paul dreads the whole house being polluted. I promised to buy another floor-cloth today.

Then Paul reported a rumour that chicken-wire might be available in a commercial area very far away, serving what old South Africans would describe as the ‘township’. (And during the Belgian era that is what it was, in fact if not in law.)

Galvanized, Rachel (Rose-encumbered) and I set out to walk to this distant possibility. In the centre a Zairean friend noticed us, offered us a lift and – what was much more urgently needed – his assistance as guide, translator and mentor. On the way to the semi-derelict industrial zone we passed the prison. Outwardly, one of the best-maintained buildings in Bukavu. Then Louis’ gleaming new Land-cruiser slowly lurched up a steep flood-grooved track lined with small jeery-build shops stocking very little of anything. Louis was determined to solve our problem; he seemed to regard the procurement of chicken-wire as a worthwhile challenge and patiently investigated shop after shop following up on clues given by numerous friends and acquaintances.

At last, from the darkest corner of a cramped scrap-iron store, a roll of chicken-wire was dragged out with difficulty. (Flopsy should be forever grateful to Louis: no way could we, unaided, have found it.) Then arose a serious question: how many metres did we need? Half a dozen friendly men converged on the scene to give advice. They spoke only Mashi and/or Swahili. Louis translated into French for Rachel’s benefit, Rachel translated into English for my benefit. There was no sense of anyone’s trying to exploit the muzungus’ ignorance, the advice offered was practical. Were Flopsy to be caged and fattened – his destiny the pot – we needed only six metres. If, however, he was destined to be a member of the family, living happily ever after in the garden, we needed thirty-six metres. So we bought thirty-six, at US$1 per metre. Then we had to find the wood and the nails: two more sagas. A man with a hammer is proving absurdly elusive; that will be tomorrow’s saga. In Bukavu housing a $5 rabbit costs more than $50. Thatcherites might argue that Flopsy is not a cost-effective addition to the household. But I disagree.

This is my first ‘family’ experience of the ex-pat life, as distinct from being the guest of ex-pats. Yet it hardly counts as that; Rachel and Andrew have no white social circle and, given their happy state of unwedded bliss, don’t need one. That is yet another of Bukavu’s charms: it is free of the obtrusive ex-pat colony to be found nowadays in most Third World cities. Its foreign aid workers number fewer than a hundred and are mostly UNHCR, who work in their own enormous compound and are disinclined to emerge from it. The missionaries, of various denominations and nationalities, are equally self-sufficient though in general more friendly.

I’m told the missionary presence in Zaire (particularly eastern Zaire) has always been exceptionally strong – and surprisingly eclectic, though in Rwanda and Burundi the Catholic Church led the field by many lengths. Here you get all sorts in hot pursuit of ‘native’ souls: Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses – the lot. At the turn of the century the Belgians were happy to see any sort of Christian setting up shop – or rather, setting up schools, hospitals, clinics, orphanages, homes for the handicapped. Thus the colonial authorities were let off the hook and could concentrate on exploiting the Congo’s amazingly lucrative natural resources. To this day, many Zaireans remain dependent on these foreign-funded social services. Some missions have been established for several generations and in their areas of operations regard themselves and the real ruling power, perhaps in coalition with a local Big Man who scorns the Kinshasa (mal)administration.

16 APRIL

Rachel rightly identifies No. 19’s electrical equipment as the greatest threat to life (our lives) in Bukavu. The kitchen is the area of maximum hazard where an out-of-control cooker delivers mighty shocks to the unwary. To avoid these – when you need to pick up a kettle or lift a saucepan-lid to check on the stew – it is essential to unplug the cooker. But that action is itself life-threatening. The flex is frayed and unravelling, the plug’s pins are wobbly and from that menacing plug-socket droops a tangle of multi-coloured bits of wiring. To compound the kitchen’s hazards the plumbing is defective. Water sprays wildly and forcefully from the sink tap so one is standing on wet concrete while interacting with the homicidal cooker. I marvel that we’re not all underground by now, leaving Rose to fend for herself. Last evening the living-room, hall and patio lights repeatedly came on and went off without human intervention. Andrew then decided an electrician was needed and volunteered also to find a man with a hammer; the two manhunts could be combined.

After breakfast I shouldered my grand-daughter and walked into the centre in search of cheese – a traumatic expedition. Perhaps Rose is teething, or had colic, or was hungry at the wrong time. For whatever reason, she registered misery very loudly on the way home. It would have been futile to pause and attempt to console her: obviously she needed mummy. But often I was stopped by reproving women – occasionally by reproving men – who pointed out that the baby was distressed, raging with hunger, demanding attention. How could I ignore those strident, agonised cries? What sort of callous brute was I? Quickly demoralisation set in; rarely do you see or hear an African baby-on-back howling and apparently being ignored. Africans take baby-care seriously and I was a blatant failure, should never be left in charge of any child … Given the language-barrier, self-defence was impossible. I couldn’t begin to explain that Rose was not being ignored, that each howl pierce my grandmaternal heart and stimulated me to walk at Olympic speed towards maternal comforts. Even worse than the spoken reproaches were the silent hostile stares as I went on my harassed way – stares accusing me of a crime against humanity. We were only half-way up Avenue Walungu when Rachel came hastening towards us. Reunited with her milk supply, Rose fell silent.

Unless out of Bukavu, going about his business in the bush, Andrew returns from his office at lunchtime for forty-five minutes. The magnet is not food but his daughter, usually awake ad midday and energetically rolling around on the patio. Rolling is her latest achievement and now she can’t be left alone for an instant; there is a four-foot drop from the patio’s unguarded edge into the concrete rain-channel. I feel sorry for Paul, who has a considerable reputation as a chef (Belgian-trained when young) but whose culinary talents are wasted on No. 19. He is never required to cook a meal; the ingredients are unavailable and so are utensils, apart from one very large saucepan. However, Rachel and Andrew look pretty fit on their diet of bread, cheese, fruits and vegetables.

Today, Andrew did not return at 12.40; the man-hunt was taking longer than expected. An hour later the Land-rover appeared, loaded with three electricians and a carpenter. Andrew, very unusually for him, was looking just a trifle fraught. He led the trio wit their box of tricks into the house, leaving Rachel and me as spectators of the carpenter’s creativity. He unrolled the wire and thirty-six metres suddenly seemed an awful lot; ad a privileged muzungu rabbit, Flopsy is going to have more personal space than the average Zairean human.

Africans are amused by harmless muzungu foibles, like building a fortress-equivalent for a rabbit. Also, they enjoy novel diversions. Soon Paul, and several of the neighbours’ askari, and sundry passers-by were assembling around the carpenter, considering with him the wire and lengths of wood which, we could see, were seriously challenging his creativity. Neither Rachel nor I had any advice to offer; our skills lie in other directions. Much calculating ensued, the design was eloquently debated, many suggestions were made, lengths of wood were measured without benefit of a measuring tape. Although Mashi was the language in use, facial expressions and graphic gestures made clear the general drift. Eager volunteers stepped forward to help the carpenter cut two of the lengths. Then, after much experimentation, it was realized they had been cut too short and must be nailed together again …

It was time for me to give Flopsy’s floor its second scrubbing of the day. Indoors, I paused to observe the electricians’ progress. The fuse-box in the garage had been disembowelled, various plug sockets had been removed from the walls, the cooker’s intestines were exposed, two light switches hung loose, two more lay on the floor and the trio were in contention about what to do next – what was the core problem …? Of course experts often disagree. But I had the impression these three were ‘electricians’ only in their own estimation.

That was many hours ago. Now Flopsy’s fortress is half-built (to be completed tomorrow) and the trio have left things looking normal though the light remain idiosyncratic – in fact rather more so than before. When they demand an $85 fee Andrew gave them $10 because they do seem to have brought the cooker under control.

It’s been a long hard day, by Bukavu standards. And now, as I write in my flea-bag on the patio, yet another landmine has exploded on the opposite peninsula. One can only hope it was set off by a wandering animal rather than a reckless human.

17 APRIL

Until recently essential information, like the date of my arrival, could be faxed by Andrew by courtesy of UNHCR, via their head office in the USA. And Rachel was able to fax me a list of ‘Urgent Requirements!’ – though the inclusion of a baby’s toothbrush made me question that adjective. But now the UN has withdrawn this ‘personal faxes facility’ for NGO employees, leaving us at the mercy of Andrew’s capricious satellite ’phone. Such a degree of cut-off-ness from Outside, is for me, holiday-enhancing. Here escapism is effortlessly achieved; one isn’t running away deliberately, the rest of the world has somehow floated off, become remote to the point of unreality, leaving the visitor free to respond ecstatically to Bukavu’s beauty. Perhaps one should feel guilty about being so happy in one of Africa’s unhappiest regions. But how could I be other than happy, practising my grandmaternal skills in this dotty household on the shore of this loveliest of lakes?

However, though to me Bukavu is Paradise it must, at present, seem otherwise to the indigenes. On my very first morning here, when we set off to walk to the big market, Rachel stopped as we approached the centre and said, ‘Let’s turn back, there’s trouble in the air.’ I, drunk on the beauty all around, had noticed nothing. But Rachel was right. Soon after we turned back a student demo erupted along our route, a young man was shot dead by the army, the market stalls closed hastily. I asked Rachel how she had detected ‘trouble in the air’. Succinctly she replied, ‘People’s body-language.’

In my holiday mood I felt no compulsion to even try to understand what goes on here. Does anyone understand? Probably not. Is anyone in control of events? Apparently not. Zaire is in a state of suspended anarchy. Rumour Rules OK. One senses, among ordinary Zaireans, a preference for not knowing ‘the facts’. Like who shot a father-of-six last evening as he stood fishing for his children’s supper on the bank of the Ruzizi here it marks the border with Rwanda? And who lays the landmines occasionally heard going off after dark on the little paths crossing the border? And who planted the ground-shaking bomb that woke me the other night in the small hours? That mighty explosion has never been explained – or rather, it is explained in half a dozen ways, none ever confirmed. To nights ago several gunshots and much angry shouting were heard nearby and next morning our neighbours had disappeared. They were reputed to be sinister Rwandans, Hutu officials who, having helped to organize the genocide in their home communes, fled to Zaire after the RPA victory. Were they shot dead or merely forced to move?

This morning Andrew and Pascal, one of his Zairean colleagues, took off on a three-day journey to inspect rural projects. Normally Rachel is stoical about physical danger but this evening I sense some anxiety, cheerfully suppressed yet detectable by the maternal antennae. A few weeks ago Pascal’s mother-in-law was killed by a landmine while driving home from Uvira. And the Zairean army, which roams all over, setting up road-blocks where it fancies, is universally feared. It isn’t of course a real army, as we understand the term, but an undisciplined rabble – uniformed, armed, unpaid – who feel (and are) free to terrorize the population. Significantly, the troops stationed in Kivu Province come from far away, from other tribes: they are, in effect, an alien force.

Last evening in the bar of Chez Chris (our nearest source of Primus, a hotel five minutes’ walk from No. 19) I met a young Italian NGO worker who had just had a typical encounter with the army and was still looking slightly shaken. Two soldiers stopped him in the centre and asked to see his passport. Foolishly, he had left it at home. The soldier demanded an on-the-spot $100 fine. Antonio explained that he never carries cash and proposed going home to fetch his passport – vain hope! Both soldiers sat into his Pajero, pushed their rifles against his back, ordered him to drive to is office and pay the ‘fine’. He did so. He had no alternative. Bukavu lacks any Higher Authority to whom one can appeal feeling confident that justice will be done. SNIP (the secret police) don’t quite fit into that category though they do wield a great deal of power.

18 APRIL

One of our favourite walks is to an alternative swimming spot, directly across from No. 19 on the opposite peninsula. A rough track, high above the lake, winds around the bay formed by the two peninsulas and for much of the way is shaded by towering trees, some now aflame with crimson blossom. The feeling remains rural, despite this being one of Bukavu’s rather affluent suburbs – an expanding suburb where several new homes are being built. Although ambitiously designed, these may not last very long; the bricks look dodgy and the builders’ workmanship even dodgier. Here too are a couple of those abandoned half-built houses so often seen in Africa where entrepreneurs seem peculiarly vulnerable to the boom-and-bust syndrome.

From the track we scramble down a precipitous slope on which a few cattle graze – handsome lyre-horned beasts, their chestnut coats glossy – the property of a local Big Man. The teenage boys who herd them sprawl in the shade of a solitary blue-gum and observe our progress wonderingly. While Rachel swims, Rose looks slightly anxious, not sure whether or not that bodiless head means Mummy is still around. While I swim, Rose has a compensatory feed. Across the quarter-mile stretch of water, Paul may be seen hanging out nappies.

Lake Kivu is the world’s third deepest lake, after Lake Baikal and the nearby Lake Tanganyika, it is 1400 metres (approximately 4200 feet) deep in the centre. The water’s temperature is almost perfect – just a few degrees too warm for my taste. However, that allows one to stay in more or less indefinitely. Opinions vary as to whether or not the bilharzia snail resides around the Bukavu shores. I choose to believe that it doesn’t.

When we bathe en famille I stay quite near to the shore to entertain Rose with splashy aquabatics. Serious exercise happens during my solitary sunrise and sunset swims, starting from below No. 10. Sometimes I cross our bay to the opposite peninsula, sometimes I swim down the centre towards the Rwandan shore, never approaching too close lest there might be snipers lurking in the forest. (Snipers do lurk there, I’m not being fanciful.)

By now the local fishermen have adjusted to meeting a muzungu mama in the lake and they greet me with jolly shouts as they row to or from the wide waters beyond. Their pirogues come in different sizes from six-foot canoes, easily managed by one or two small boys, to thirty-foot craft manned by six men or more. These often work in threes, joined by ropes – but several yards apart – to form a trawler. When fishing is over, the raised net hangs in front from a pole frame and, seen from afar by a swimmer, this contrivance looks like some giant insect. As they row home up the bay – standing, wielding their broad paddles with graceful power – the sunset glows golden on their naked black torsos. Always then they sing, a deep-throated traditional fisherman’s chant – a wondrous sound, floating across the darkening water, matching the rhythm of their movements. If they had outboard motors and ghetto-blasters, would they really be richer?

19 APRIL

Nyanya won’t be swimming to the opposite peninsula ever again. This morning, as I approached my turn-around spot – where Rachel and I dive in and the cattle come down to drink – an appalling stench wafted towards me. At first I assumed a calf or goat must have drowned and was beginning to decompose; in my home river one occasionally comes upon dead livestock caught in the reeds by the bank. But this was a dead (very) human, enshrouded and carefully tied in two semi-transparent nylon sacks and dumped at the weedy edge of the lake. For one horrified moment I trod water while taking this much in. Then, wile quickly turning away, I glimpsed a second sack containing a child’s body. In future my swimming will be confined to the centre of the bay.

Andrew returned this evening after an uneventful journey: or if there were any ‘events’ he didn’t mention them. I told him and Rachel about my unpleasant encounter but swore them to secrecy. They, I suspect, thought this rather absurd – Nyanya being melodramatic. However, in places as lawless as Bukavu it’s prudent to keep your mouth shut. Corpses in Lake Kivu are none of my business.

20 APRIL

Rose-care, predictably, generates the most squalid feature of daily life in No. 19. I’m not referring to her bowel movements – admittedly less tidy that Flopsy’s but swiftly cleared away, with skill and discretion, by an alert parent. (While awake she leads a naked, nappy-free life on the patio.) It’s her ingesting, not her excreting, that revolts Nyanya. For some reason (reading too many modern baby-care books?) Rachel and Andrew feel their daughter should, aet. five months, be ‘onto solids’. Nyanya says nothing (‘mustn’t interfere!’) but suffers in silence.

Solids, in this context, are mashed banana and/or mashed avocado. Neither is, from a practical point of view, solid. Both have the potential to render everything within reach sticky, smelly and stained. Rose, whose mother’s milk is delivered on demand throughout the twenty-four hours, naturally has no interest in solids as nourishment. But solids as a game – one that totally focuses parental attention on Rose – she simply adores. Just think of the things you can do with all that squidgy stuff!

A ceremony precedes Rose’s ‘meal’-times. The cushions are removed from the relevant chair, leaving only bare wood, a large basin and a cloth are placed nearby to deal with the aftermath, Rachel and Andrew strip to their underpants (Nyanya likewise, if she is participating in this repulsive ritual) – and then away we go … The too easily imagined details need not be recorded. Parents and infant seem thoroughly to enjoy themselves from start to finish. Rose – cunning beyond her months – swallows just enough to keep the game going and make her parents feel their effort is worthwhile. But were they neurotic types, who really believed their five-months-old needs solids, they would not be in a psychiatric ward.

Just once I broke my vow of silence, casually mentioning that Rachel, a child of proven strength and stamina, spurned solids until she was two and a half. However, my suspicion is that those ‘meal’-times are in fact a game for all three, an entertaining if messy bonding process. And of course the Bukavu environment favours the playing of such games. In a climate not conducive to stripping naked, and with carpeted instead of concrete floors, solids might be less fun.

21 APRIL

Family routines develop quickly; early on week-end mornings I go walkabout with Rose for a couple of hours to give her parents a break from parenting. It is then my fervent hope that the sky will remain overcast (as quite often happens here at this season) to spare me the fag of holding a large umbrella over my precious burden, at precisely the right angle. The fact that Bukavu’s altitude keeps the temperature down is deceptive; we are almost on the equator and the sun’s rays are proportionately dangerous. Moreover, Rose is a carbon copy of Andrew: red-gold hair, dark blue eyes, very fair skin. (You’d never guess Rachel had also contributed genes.) In consequence, if even five toes briefly escape from the umbrella’s shade they turn bright red, her parents are traumatized and Nyanya is blamed for having allowed her to become seriously sunburnt. Happily this morning was overcast at 6.30a.m. But of course I took the umbrella.

Quite a few Important Persons live in quartier de Muhumba. Turning right from No. 19’s gate, one walks along the upmarket end of Avenue Walungu where dense flowering hedges half-hide spacious bungalows and an EU flag flies above the high walls of an invisible mansion and soldiers regularly prowl in groups of three or four. (Much to Paul’s discomfiture: he dreads meeting them.) Whether these patrols are guarding the homes of the affluent of planning to rob them is a moot point. Farther on, the French consul’s shrub-studded lawn slopes down to the shore where his large speed-boat is moored. This is one of the few sources of pollution (oil and noise) on Lake Kivu; the others are the UNHCR launches that take supplies to the refugee camp on a nearby island.

This morning I turned left out of Avenue Walungu to continue up a much wider avenue shaded by magnificent trees, the large gardens flooded with colour – and here it was that Rose turned bolshie. She was objecting to being on my back instead of hanging in front, the position to which she is more accustomed. Or so I intuited; I’m re-learning that with babies you have to do a lot of intuiting. She was on my back because as she gains weight (which she is doing rapidly, despite minimal solids) the frontal position becomes increasingly arduous for the carrier. After half an hour one’s neck muscles are aching, after an hour they are throbbing. However, I now paused to make the loudly demanded change. But I chose the wrong spot, near the gateway to an imposing mansion set well back from the road. As I laid my burden on the wayside grass a scowling soldier appeared, bristling with suspicion. Aggressively he questioned me in pidgin French and demanded to see my passport. Slowly the soldier thumbed through it, then complained that it is ‘dirty’. True enough; it is battered and rain- and sweat-stained and full of smudgy African visas and arcane bits of paper pasted in at intervals by South African bureaucrats who were trying, unsuccessfully, to keep track of my movements in and out of their country. As the soldier began to criticize my Zairean visa Rose intervened at maximum decibel level; she had had enough of lying, ignored, by the wayside. I grabbed my passport, turned my back on the enemy, picked up my grand-daughter, shoved her into the sling and harnessed myself the right way round from her point of view. The soldier shouted something abusive as I hastened away. Later, Andrew told me that the mansion is the residence of the military Commander-in-Chief of Kivu Province, a very Big Man indeed. But this inadequately explains the hassle; it is hard to imaging any activity more blatantly innocent than an Nyanya adjusting a baby-sling.

Soon Rose was asleep and an hour later (my neck muscles throbbing) were on another peninsula, on a deserted stretch of road out of sight of any dwelling – an unusual circumstance in Bukavu. This was not our lucky morning. Here a ragged Rwandan refugee – an elderly man – suddenly emerged from the roadside bushes and demanded dollars. Truthfully I said I had none, was carrying no currency. He didn’t believe this. He was a nasty character; one could easily imaging him participating with relish in a genocide. I was scared – badly scared. He pulled at the sleeping Rose’s feet, protruding from the sling, and repeated his demand. Rose woke and yelled. Then he made to undo the sling’s zip and I was about to use the umbrella as a weapon when a group of pedestrians came into view on the far side of the wide road. Through two fingers I whistled piercingly (one of my few skills) and without hesitation three young men rushed to the rescue. The refugee fled but was furiously pursued and beaten up – how badly I couldn’t see. Meanwhile the womenfolk of the group had joined me, all carrying prayer-books and wearing brilliantly patterned flowing gowns and piled-up turbans. They abused all refugees in torrential French (I can understand more than I can speak), then concentrated on Rose who had picked up the vibes and was howling for Mummy (I intuited) and didn’t want to be concentrated on by five total strangers.

When my rescuers returned, panting and sweating and indignant, one of them said in English – ‘You are stupid! Here is safe no more, we have too many criminals from the camps.’

Having made grateful noises and shaken hands all round I turned towards No. 19, another hour’s walk away. Luckily the walking rhythm works wonders; within ten minutes Rose was asleep again.

In the West we play strangely little attention to the impact of a million or more refugees on their host country. (Apart from statutory exclamations of horror about the damage done – inevitably – to the environment.) Busy with our humanitarian efforts on behalf of the Rwandan refugees, we seem to regard Zaire and Tanzania as the obvious and appropriate states for city-sized camps. But just supposing some magic carpet had deposited those refugees in Europe – would our affluent countries have accepted them? I very much doubt it. Most of us prefer to be ‘humanitarian’ by remote control, donating money – the easy way out. Africans, however, are expected to be ‘humanitarian’ by tolerating disruptive concentrations of refugees in impoverished countries where their presence grievously exacerbates local problems. True, dollars beyond reckoning cascade into host countries; therefore some African governments are said to be very partial to refugees – the more the merrier. But aid money indiscriminately sloshing around has a deleterious effect on the economies of poor countries, or so I’m told by those who understand such matters. Little trickles down to the indigenes who most need it; instead, it circulates among the already wealthy who have houses to let to ex-pats, or run import businesses, or in other ways can ride on the ‘humanitarian’ gravy-train.

Can it be true that things tend to happen in threes? Rose and I were on the home peninsula when a tall, heavily pock-marked young man came towards us, stared hard as we passed, then turned back to walk close beside me demanding money in French. Again there was no one in sight though a few houses stood far from the track, on the slope above. I walked on steadily, feigning to ignore this latest demand. The man followed, jostling me quite roughly and now using English: ‘You have many dollars, give me – quickly!’ As we approached an Italian NGO residence I decided to bang on the gate; with luck an askari would immediately appear. Then a side-gate opened, two Zairean men walked out and abruptly my molester turned away. Rose, still asleep, didn’t register this third ‘incident’. It really is odd – three unpleasant encounters being packed into a few hours on a Sunday morning when otherwise I have found Bukavu trouble-free.

22 APRIL

Even on the shores of Lake Kivu, escapism can’t be allowed to take one over completely. Before leaving home, an old friend now working with an Irish NGO in Bangladesh had given me a task to do. Niamh is considering applying for a job in one of Zaire’s refugee camps and wants my impressions of that particular humanitarian scene. Until yesterday, I had no hope of collecting any impression; visitors are forbidden to enter most camps and discouraged from entering the rest. Then last evening a Land Cruiser arrived with a note from an aid worker who had heard that I was ‘around in Bukavu’ and invited me to visit her NGO’s residence-cum-office.

Eagerly I set out after breakfast, bearing Rose on my back because Rachel was in agony (severe toothache) and needed a Rose-free interlude while her pain-killers were taking effect. With the nearest reliable dentist 700 miles away in Nairobi, I can’t think of a less suitable location for a dental problem. In times past it made sense to give a bush-dentist a chance to sort things out – but not now, not in the Age of AIDS.

The NGO’s headquarters, three-storeyed and outwardly ugly, stands on the edge of a wooded cliff. Its long, high-ceilinged sitting-room is comfortably furnished and well-equipped with the latest electronic music-making equipment –a far cry from frugal, tranquil No. 19! Enormous picture-windows overlook miles of shimmering water with a superb range of rugged blue mountains lying along the horizon to the north-west. (Mountains so tantalizing that at the back of Nyanya’s mind a plan is germinating … More of that anon.) A grey parrot, hopping around the floor pecking at biscuit crumbs, conveniently distracted Rose while I talked with Bridie and three of her colleagues – young people of different nationalities, all on their first posting in Africa. None is informed about or interested in the political background to the Rwandan refugee crisis. However, I will after all have a few impressions for Niamh. Bridie has suggested my visiting a small camp (29,000 or so) twenty miles north of Bukavu. Tomorrow she is taking medical supplies there and on Thursday another vehicle will return me to base …