1

“Africa,” said the Oldest Member, stretched out in his green leather armchair in front of the fireplace at the Thumaiga Club, favourite watering hole of the elite.

Dusk had fallen, and the sudden shift from bright sunshine to soft half-light, and then abrupt darkness, caught the last players on the golf course by surprise. The click of steel on ball gave way to conversation as the group entered the bar, nodding at the OM as they ordered their rounds.

“Africa,” he said again, and sighed, his outstretched feet nudging the day’s papers, dropped on the floor next to the chair.

The front pages had much the same headlines: “UK Aid Minister Backs Rhino Debt Link”, declared one. “World Bank Pledges Rhino Aid”, announced the other.

“Indeed,” said Edward Furniver, wondering just what point his host was trying to make. He took a handful of roasted cashew nuts from the bowl on the drinks stand. Furniver was in no hurry to get back to his modest flat above the bank’s office in Kireba. And while there were aspects of the Thumaiga Club he heartily disliked, there was something soothing about Kuwisha’s leading social venue. Old values – dressing for dinner, signed chitties rather than cash, and a black ball for undesirable candidates for membership – were maintained with unbending enthusiasm by the successors to their colonial counterparts. Whatever their differences, they shared the same belief in rule through committees.

An evening at the club was like being in a protective cocoon, where mementoes of the past kept out the realities of the present. He soaked up the atmosphere of down-at-heel gentility, where the sanctity of the Residents’ Lounge was preserved by alert waiters, who courteously but firmly expelled visitors who dared to intrude. He loved to sink into the leather armchairs, flick through an old copy of Country Life, and wonder who had gone to the trouble of collecting what seemed to be the complete works of Dornford Yates. The last entry in the notebook attached with a piece of string to a stub of a pencil was dated a decade earlier: “Residents Only”, said a note on the dusty cover. “Two books maximum”.

“How about one for the road?”

The OM’s voice boomed around the bar, now nearly empty, the golfers having departed. Boniface Rugiru, the long-serving bar steward, took the orders for another round.

Rugiru was a member of the “too late” generation, for whom independence had come just a few years too late. He missed out on a place at one of the hitherto segregated state schools that had opened their doors to black students; and without a secondary school certificate he had no chance of getting a job in a civil service that was open to black citizens of Kuwisha.

Instead he ended up behind the bar at the Thumaiga, a chief bar steward at the height of his profession, and earning a pittance. But if he was bitter, he didn’t show it. Instead he radiated a quiet confidence – a big man with an easy smile, proud of the seven children he had brought up to respect their elders and to fear God.

“And more cashew nuts, if you please, Mr Rugiru,” the OM called out. “As I was saying . . . Plenty of activity. Too many gimmicks, not enough progress,” said the OM.

He gestured at the newspapers:

“Trouser talk, my boy, that’s all it is. These chaps turning up for this World Bank conference – all bloody trouser talk. Save the bloody rhino one week, gender issues in semi-arid regions the next. When that doesn’t work, the silly buggers hug a tree and plant a street boy,” he rumbled on.

Did the former district commissioner have a point, Furniver wondered?

Forty years after independence, Kuwisha was poorer than ever. Millions and millions of dollars in assistance from donors seemed to have made little discernible difference. Surely the OM was right – things should be better?

“It’s all a bit like the wheeze that chap Potemkin pulled.”

Edward must have still looked puzzled, and the OM continued: “You know, the soldier chap who fooled his wotchacallit, empress, Catherine, Russia, couple hundred years ago. Gave her the impression that she was in charge of a better show than was actually the case.”

History was not the strong point of Edward Furniver, ex-London investment banker turned micro-lender to the masses of Kuwisha’s biggest slum. But he dimly recalled reading that in General Grigori Potemkin’s time, Russian villagers were instructed to erect elaborate façades portraying thriving settlements. They concealed the brutal realities, and misled the empress about conditions under her rule, leaving her convinced that her affairs were in far better shape than was actually the case. The OM drained his gin and tonic, and again summoned Boniface, who was polishing glasses behind the mahogany bar counter. He said something in Swahili that made them both chuckle.

“These days we fool the old ladies who run the WorldFeed bookshops and rattle the collecting cans. Get them believing that poor bloody Africa is better off for their help. Not so. In fact, it’s the victim – of the very people who claim to be its friends.”

“Steady on,” said Furniver, although somewhat nervously. Disagreeing with the OM could bring out the mean streak in the old settler. “Steady on. May have been true a few years ago, but things have been picking up. World is taking notice, and there is more aid money promised. Growth rates up. And there’s debt relief . . . and China wants its raw materials, oil, copper, coffee . . . Geldof, Bono and so on . . .”

Edward Furniver tailed off.

The OM brushed his intervention aside, flapping a dismissive, liver-spotted wrinkled hand.

“Fact is, you and I know that Kuwisha is deep in the poo. Africa ditto. Writing was on the wall long before Aids appeared. God knows who to blame . . . foreigners, slave trade, colonialism, Cold War, didn’t help. The indigenous have got a lot to answer for . . . and the poor sods have been cursed with bloody awful leaders.”

If it were possible to take an angry sip of a gin and tonic, the OM took one, and as he swallowed he made a face, as if he had downed a mouthful of bitter medicine. He wiped his narrow moustache, a carefully trimmed mix of ginger and grey, and reached out for the nuts.

“Not just that they were unable to run the traditional in a brewery. Not their fault they couldn’t. Weren’t trained. But come independence, the blighters drank the place dry, so to speak, and borrowed from banks, which were all too happy to lend. And instead of spending the money on a decent brewery or whatever, they put it under their mattress. Not in Africa – in their new homes in London, or Paris or New York . . .”

The OM marked the end of what for him was a speech by sucking his teeth, and with his tongue, adjusted his dentures, making a soft clicking sound.

“Of course, the Foreign Office Johnnies didn’t help, giving ’em independence too soon. Frankly, we all share the blame. Now we plan to send more billions in aid, to little effect, ends up in bank accounts abroad.”

He reached into his jacket, and extracted a packet of Sportsman cigarettes, along with a box of matches. After four unsuccessful attempts, he got a stick to light.

The OM took a long draw.

“Have to justify this help, so we all pretend aid works. WorldFeed and their pals pretend it works, otherwise their collection boxes would be empty. The local politicians pretend it works, or their overseas bank accounts would run dry. Visiting politicians pretend it works, otherwise they would have to explain to their voters back home why so much has been wasted.

“And of course there are the tossers who come to Africa at the taxpayers’ expense.”

In the OM’s pecking order of villains, a tosser was about the worst there was, reviled beyond a “loafer”, and far worse than a “so-and-so”.

“See the ads, every week, in The Economist. Take the latest one . . .”

He picked up a copy of the magazine from the rack next to his chair, and flicked through the appointment pages.

“Got it! Listen to this: Climate Change Adaptation Support Programme for Action: Research and Capacity Development in Africa – CCASPARCDA.”

A piece of cashew nut had stuck under his dentures; he removed the plate, gave it a wipe with his handkerchief, replaced it and continued.

“As a general rule, old boy, the longer the acronym of an Africa do-gooder, the bigger the waste of rations. And what will these chaps in CC etc. do?” He tapped the offending page with a nicotine-stained forefinger.

The OM read out the job description: “The successful candidate will have an entrepreneurial approach to the identification, design and management of research for development; providing intellectual leadership . . . a demonstrated track record in working effectively within multidisciplinary teams . . . What the hell does all that mean?”

The Oldest Member tossed another cashew into his mouth, and looked at Furniver with sharp pale blue eyes.

“Flogger had the right idea,” he said wistfully. “Ever hear from him?”

The OM had got it into his head that Furniver was related to “Flogger” Morland, a district commissioner notorious for his iron rule during the colonial era, when he ran an area of Kuwisha nearly the size of Texas. Furniver had given up trying to convince the OM that Morland was no relation; indeed, he had never heard of the man. He said nothing, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Pity,” said the OM. “When you next write, give him my best.”

The evening was ending.

Furniver went to relieve himself while his host signed for their drinks.

He took advantage of the full-length mirror in the Gents, and on his way out paused to inspect his reflection. He sucked in his stomach, pulled his shoulders back, and straightened up. Charity was right. His posture was terrible. He vowed to take more exercise.

Re-emerging into the lobby a few minutes later, he nearly bumped into Boniface, busy polishing the brass door-handle of the Gents. The steward looked embarrassed, and mumbled a response to Furniver’s greeting. Looking back a few days later, Furniver realised that he should have spotted that something was amiss. Club chores were allocated with iron precision. Never would a bar steward perform any task not directly connected with dispensing drinks.

The OM joined him in the lobby, and sniffed loudly.

“Has someone been using a bloody aftershave?” He sniffed again: “Pongs to high heaven! Give you a lift home? By the way, gather you and that bar owner, Charity Mupanga, good friends, hmm? Splendid woman! Word of advice, old boy. Marula berries make the thingy wotsit – old Batonka proverb. Or to put it crudely, the wise man counts his buttons when the crow feeds, as they say in Nyali. Get my drift?”

The two men walked through the arched club entrance into the African night, and Furniver used his expensive high-tech key-ring torch, “visible from a mile away” the makers claimed, to light the way.

He changed the subject.

“About this Potemkin business . . .” he said as he got into his host’s Mercedes.

The OM’s reply was drowned out by the roar of the night flight to London as it passed overhead.

In the undercarriage of the plane, a young stowaway started to shiver . . .