27

Like schoolboys returning from summer holidays, delegates from the international aid community were gathering in Kuwisha for the World Bank conference, many having arrived on the same flight as Japer. They greeted each other with easy familiarity as they lined up at the conference registration desk in the lobby of the Outspan Hotel.

A cynic would have seen the venue as appropriate to the event, likened by a local newspaper columnist to a meeting of neocolonialists in a hotel as old as colonial rule itself, built around an oasis of green lawns and flowerbeds, an implicit challenge to an independent Kuwisha.

Ghosts of long-departed settlers patrolled the wooden-floored corridors, decked out with the same Christmas decorations, brought out by the same staff, year after year. Yellowing framed photographs of the colony’s first farmers lined the walls. They sat in stiff poses, a Remington rifle by their side, dogs lolling at their feet, and servants on hand, in front of thatched homesteads named after the British counties from which they and their families had come.

A dapper, well-spoken government delegate, wearing a plastic accreditation card marked “Official” was holding court in the hotel’s lounge.

“First, your people came with the Bible. When they arrived, we had land. We started reading the Bible. A very, very good book indeed. But when our forefathers looked up from reading, the settlers had occupied their land.”

His audience of half a dozen or so delegates listened respectfully.

“Then we fought for our independence. But you people had not forgotten your magic. You gave us independence. And when we looked up from our celebrations, we found that we had debt to your banks. Forty years after independence you give us what you call debt relief. Too late! You call it commerce, I call it exploitation.”

The speaker smiled.

“In fact, it is what the Good Book calls usury. You people from the World Bank and from Europe, you see yourselves as our benefactors. But we see you” – he prodded a delegate from Sweden who was nodding approvingly – “as members of the new generation of colonisers.”

With that salvo, Newman Kibwana, lawyer and former opposition leader turned senior civil servant, bellowed with laughter, slapped his thighs, and got up. “See you at the conference.”

Before he could leave, however, the UKAID minister had a question for him.

“How are things at Lokio?”

The aid base in northern Kuwisha was Africa’s biggest such centre.

“Fine! Keeps me busy, too busy to make trouble,” grinned Kibwana, before striding away with a retinue of officials, supplicants and kinsmen, escorting him to the hotel entrance like tugs around an ocean liner.

The UKAID minister could not contain his enthusiasm.

“Impressive. Bloody impressive.”

His colleagues rumbled their assent.

“Do you know,” he asked the group, “that Kibwana flies to Lokio every weekend? Back and forth to that godforsaken place. Week in, week out, he monitors the UK aid shipments. No picnic, I assure you . . . Looks certain he’s going to get a cabinet job. And we will really miss him.”

Just then their order arrived, and Noraid, who was about to ask a question about stakeholders and ownership, was distracted.

“Bloody starving,” he said apologetically, tucking into a toasted cheese sandwich.

UKAID continued: “We’ll really miss him. Pay his air fare to Lokio, plus a per diem. And by golly, we insist on receipts – and to be absolutely frank, he comes up with them at the end of every month, like clockwork. Everything from petrol for his Land Rover to the weekly flight.”

Most of the listeners agreed. Newman Kibwana set a good example. And sharp though his comments were about the role of the donors, he had a good case. Even the Germans and the Japanese were prepared to concede that there was much in what he said.

While their visits to Kuwisha would last a mere three days – less in the case of those who had to get to Maputo for the opening of the UN preliminary conference on climate change – the decisions they took had an impact on the lives of the people of Kuwisha that would be as far reaching as those taken by their colonial predecessors.

In the meantime there was much to be done.

Wearing expressions of harassed concern, the delegates lined up for their identity badges, signed for their per diems, enrolled in workshops and seminars and breakaway sessions, and slung over their shoulders the conference bags packed with learned papers, engraved pens, key-rings, and a T-shirt which declared: “Kuwisha, Home of Hope”.

“Any spare T-shirts?” asked the representative from DANIDA.

“No,” firmly replied the young lady from Kuwisha who was responsible for their distribution.

DANIDA gave her a sceptical look. He was about to say something to her when an angry exchange at the hotel reception caught his attention.

A delegate from UKAID was complaining that the hotel’s email system had collapsed, and that the business centre was to close at eight o’clock that evening, despite assurances that it would be staying open until ten o’clock.

“Typical, bloody typical,” he was saying.

“I don’t believe it! It can’t be . . .” exclaimed DANIDA.

Adrian Mullivant looked up.

“Yes, yes . . .” said DANIDA. It all came back to him now. “It was at Naivasha, that conference, what was it called? . . . ‘Managing good governance in post-authoritarian transition’.”

Mullivant’s irritation about the emails lifted from his features as he matched memory with the enthusiastic face in front of him.

“Good Lord! Surely not! Noraid?” He looked surreptitiously at the identity card which hung around his greeter’s neck. “DANIDA, yes of course, DANIDA . . . was it at Lake Naiva? Or Nairobi? Yes, Nairobi . . . ‘Conflicting paradigms in multiethnic communities’.”

The two men embraced, foot soldiers in an endless battle against poverty.

“You’re right, absolutely right,” said DANIDA. “It was Nairobi. But wasn’t it ‘Transparency and good governance – the challenges for Africa’?”

“Didn’t you chair the breakaway group?”

“The workshop, actually. Called ‘Monitoring resources . . .”

“. . . without conditionalities’.” UKAID completed the sentence, adding: “Bloody marvellous it was, too. Great presentation.”

“Someone had to say it,” said DANIDA modestly.

“Gather you got a bit of stick when you got home?”

DANIDA nodded.

“The usual suspects. The NGOs . . . Gave me a hard time. Local rep. of CCA said I was patronising . . .”

His voice trailed off. Christians Concerned for Africa was one of the heavyweights in the aid business and any government agency that took them on had to be sure of their ground.

“Claimed that I had failed to adapt to a stakeholder agenda. Sods! What about ownership, I asked . . . they just ignored that.”

Mullivant sucked in air through his teeth, and wished he had not raised the subject.

“The old stakeholder line, eh? Must have hurt.”

DANIDA nodded again. “We do so much for them. Pour funds down their throat. Without our support, where would they be? Half their programme is paid by us. And do we get any thanks?”

Mullivant slapped his colleague on the back. “Won’t seem so bad after a gin and tonic, old boy,” and he marched DANIDA off to the bar where they were joined by two delegates from Scanaid, who were ending a grim account of their money-changing experience at the airport.

“. . . so instead of selling ngwee at whatever it is to the pound, he was selling at the euro rate, and pocketing the difference.”

The others murmured commiserations.

“Place is full of scams,” said Mullivant. “Getting as bad as Lagos. Take what happened to me this morning.”

Colleagues around the table looked expectantly at Mullivant.

“I was sitting in the back of this taxi, just this morning, on my way here, from Kireba.”

The very word Kireba was enough to move the listeners. To have actually gone there . . . there was a satisfying murmur of respect for a man who had braved the horrors of the notorious slum.

“I was reading a rather good paper on the role of women in semi-arid areas. We were stuck in a traffic jam, crawling along, when there was a thump, and the face of a young lad was pressed against the right-hand window.

“Seems that a retarded boy had deliberately fallen under the wheel, a common ploy, it appeared, and his companion had threatened to call the police. You know what that means?”

His audience had not a clue, but nodded nevertheless.

“Under Kuwisha law, anyone who witnesses a vehicle accident is obliged to go to the police station and report it. My taxi driver was terrified. Kept saying how terrible the police were. One of us had to go. Meanwhile my briefcase had disappeared, presumably lifted when my head was turned. Then the driver said he had to go to the cops, and I got pretty concerned. He warned me, pathetic really. Said he had no choice. Had to go, because the boys had his taxi registration number. ‘Please, suh, don’t come with me. You are a friend of Kuwisha who helps us with aid. But these police, they are always chopping . . . They will want you to give them presents. Let me go’ . . . So off he went, poor sod; he’ll be lucky if the police don’t hold him. Anyway, I gave him $100 for his trouble . . . the police may leave him with half that. D’you think I paid too much? Would hate to be taken for a ride.”

“Cheap at the price,” said DANIDA.

“Lucky escape – would have done the same thing,” said Scanaid. “Bastards.”

They broke up, but not before a brief and inconclusive exchange about the difference between the per diems provided by the World Bank, the UN and their respective employers.

Mullivant looked at his watch.

“I’m off. Want to get a seat for the opening. Gather Hardwicke is in good form. Apparently his speech will shake up things in our business. Not before time . . .”

The hot water system at the Hotel Milimani was not working.

The room steward summoned by Pearson shrugged his shoulders.

“It is World Bank, suh.”

Much of Kuwisha, it seemed, was “World Bank”, thought Pearson.

So why should the hot water system at the Milimani work when the state-owned electricity company operated well below capacity, and the railways did not run on time, and the primary schools overflowed with pupils? They were all “World Bank”, the term that in Kuwisha had become synonymous with nonperformance or inefficiency.

He had a shave, did not spend long under the cold shower, welcome though it was to wash away the traces of prison, and decided he would walk to the office.

The journey from the hotel to the Financial News office at Cambridge House took little more than fifteen minutes, and was safe enough during the day. Nevertheless, Pearson took off his watch, and put it in his briefcase, along with his wallet, and set off.

It was a journey he enjoyed.

Halfway down the hill, he bought a cob of sweet young maize, roasted over a charcoal brazier, and read the papers while having his shoes polished; and he fended off the good-natured efforts of the curio vendor to get him to buy one of the animal carvings on display.

As he made his way along the boulevard into the city centre he felt that something had changed in the way he saw Africa. He had been held by the police for a short time, yet somehow the experience had both brought him closer to the country, and created a sense of detachment.

No, “detachment” was not the right word. Perspective? That was it. He had acquired a sense of perspective. He was still thinking about this when he rounded the corner of Kaunda Street and went through the lobby of Cambridge House, the press centre for foreign hacks.

Pearson had to remind himself that he had been away from his office – his former office – barely three days, yet Africa already seemed to be reclaiming its urban territory.

The lobby was being retiled; a restaurant had just opened up on the floor above his office; and the drab grey building was getting its first coat of paint for years.

The lift took him up to the third floor. Although the Gents toilet on the press-centre corridor was a good thirty yards away, the sweet-sour whiff from the combination of Jeyes Fluid and male urine climbed up his nostrils like a homing pigeon into its roost.

For the first time, he took a close interest in the notice-board on the right as he went in. It had been something he had taken for granted before his arrest, seeing it as no more than a source of second-hand Land Rovers and other four-wheel drive vehicles, of radios and CD players, flat screen televisions, iPods and DVD players, all for sale by departing expatriates.

Now Pearson read the ads differently, looked at them in a new light, paying more attention to accompanying notes, handwritten and typed, that were sprinkled between photos of TVs for sale, or houses for rent.

The notes seemed like haikus on themes of loyalty and service. There was Anna, “a first rate nanny, loves children, references from BBC and VoA”; and Shilling, “a brilliant cook, loves catering, great references”; and “Blessing, hard working maid”; and Loveday, “excellent driver and first class mechanic”; not to mention a dozen “superb” gardeners and “reliable” askaris.

For all of these citizens of Kuwisha, the departure of their employers was a cataclysmic event. Not even the promise – which often would be kept, at least for the first year and sometimes even longer – of help with school fees, or a parcel of old clothes, or settlement of medical bills, would ease their anxiety.

But for the owners of the goods on sale, however, their departure was a financial bonanza, thanks to the sale of their stereos or their four-wheel drives, or TVs, at the market rate.

As workers for foreign non-government organisations they were allowed to import their possessions, free of tax. And when the goods were sold, when the owners left Kuwisha, they were entitled to remit the proceeds, through the account of the aid organisation that employed them, at the official rate of exchange.

It was a financial bonus, and in the views of the recipients, well deserved recognition of their commitment and dedication to the welfare of the people of Kuwisha.

Pearson continued on his way down the passage to his office. Apart from the hardworking and conscientious correspondent for the Japanese news agency, no-one else was in.

Some things didn’t change.