‘Cabin crew to positions for landing.’
Vanessa braces, and clutches her landing card, her passport, her Yellow Fever Certificate, and worries that the pilot’s coming in too fast. Isn’t Uganda rather high, she wonders? In which case, he might bump into it. The voice on the intercom was confident, perhaps over-confident, and certainly too young. They are bounding through the clouds now; there’s turbulence. She finds she is sweating, and frankly, frightened, but she must remember not to try to fly the plane. Twenty-seven years ago, when they were just married, Trevor had told her that on the flight to Paris where they were going on their honeymoon. ‘Relax, Nessie. Try to enjoy it. He’s a trained pilot. Let him fly the plane.’
She dares a glance out of the window now and is relieved by the sight of toy trees and houses. If the engines failed now, she might still survive, and she’s suddenly near enough to see sharp fronds on a palm tree, she’s level with a roof, red ridged roof-tiles – and with two bumps, they have landed, and her heart leaps up as the engines throttle thunderously down the runway. She beams a triumphant smile at the boy, it is always such a relief to have made it, but he looks back blankly, eyes veiled with sleep. And suddenly Vanessa’s full of energy, re-infused with hopefulness, the first on her feet as they roll to a halt – though the mean stewardess motions her down again.
She emerges into a warm pink morning. The air smells wonderful: of earth, of growth. The sky is low and misty, with a thinly veiled sun. It’s a small airport, and they set off walking, a narrow stream of passengers, white people and Africans. Only one stream is open in Immigration, so everyone goes through ‘Ugandan Residents’. It’s as if Uganda’s giving her a personal welcome.
The baggage hall, by contrast, is hell. Only one carousel is working, reluctantly, its armoured plates rubbing over each other like the broken shell of a dying armadillo. On one particular corner, all the cases get stuck, and baggage-handlers zestfully chuck them on the floor. This seems to be the baggage-handlers’ main function, so a great bruised herd of unwanted cases is slowly surging across the room. Anxious passengers strain to keep an eye on both the herd and the tame line of cases traipsing in from outside.
Vanessa’s flight bag arrives quite quickly. She strides forward to claim it, one of the elect. But the other case, the real, important one, with almost all her things, doesn’t follow. At first Vanessa stays cheerful. She offers a harassed-looking woman beside her an old hand’s smile: ‘Well, this is Africa! T.I.A!’ (An expression she learned on a travellers’ website, and has been dying for the chance to use.) But the woman says, ‘Bitte? Verstehe nicht,’ and then darts forward, as Vanessa’s heart sinks, to collect her own bag with a cry of belonging.
As the baggage hall empties of people, Vanessa learns how much she loves her suitcase. The familiar faces from her flight light up in turn as their luggage is reborn through the flap in the wall. How gladly they bundle them on to trolleys, how gaily they speed away out of sight. She’s alone, destitute, in Africa. Why ever did she come? It was all a mistake.
Then the worst moment: the next plane arrives, new chattering strangers flock into the hall, and soon their luggage will be driving out hers. By now only one last lonely bundle from London is circling the carousel, wrapped in layers and layers of glittering plastic, so small it is ignored even by the baggage-handlers, who refrain from casting this one on to the floor. It makes her think suddenly of her grandson: so small and vulnerable, encased in all his layers.
And then the ugly flap lifts one more time – and everything changes, for there it is, the very last case to arrive from London: blue, battered, but her own. Vanessa runs round the carousel to meet it, and swings it, mighty midget-style, on to her trolley. My things, my things, my most beloved.
But the Sheraton bus, to her dismay, has gone. ‘They knew I was coming,’ she complains to the polite and passive woman in Sheraton uniform, whose dark eyes are lowered over her golden jacket. ‘Dr Vanessa Henman. I was confirmed.’
‘Ah, sorry,’ the woman agrees, caressively (Vanessa remembers those Ugandan ‘sorrys’: how kind they sound, a descending bird-call). ‘But the other guests, they sometimes do not like to wait. So would you like to pay for a special taxi? I can arrange it. Only 20 dollars.’
Vanessa’s battle-light comes on. She is hot, and tired, and it isn’t fair. ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she says, shortly. ‘I was down for the bus.’
‘So would you like to pay 15 dollars?’ the woman inquires, cautiously. ‘It is OK.’
‘I just want to get there,’ says Vanessa, ‘soon.’
But soon, very soon, she is regretting she said it. The young, eager driver of a special taxi arrives, smiling and out of breath, and she remembers, with relief, that a Ugandan ‘special taxi’ does not mean a specially expensive one, but merely a taxi for one person, as opposed to ordinary taxis, which hold lots of people, vegetables, chickens. Her driver’s name is Isaac. He has bright, dark eyes, an American t-shirt, cut-off trousers. At first, Vanessa thinks he looks sweet.
Urgently instructed by the Sheraton woman in their own language, Isaac begins a headlong, hooting dash for Kampala, apparently taking the straightest line no matter what bends there are in the road. He claims she has interrupted his breakfast, which he had been about to eat at the airport. ‘Ah, sorry,’ Vanessa says, and realises she is accidentally mimicking the caring intonation of the Sheraton employee.
‘Of course, I did not mind missing it, you must not be late for your appointment,’ he says, with eager, reproachful virtue, and accelerates to show his keenness, jerking erratically through grinding gears. ‘Luckily, I am a fast, safe driver. This is not my car, but I can drive it.’
Soon he ‘wonders’, as he drives at breakneck speed, whether she will buy him breakfast in Kampala? He smiles so sweetly, and she is so surprised, that she hears herself agreeing, and at once regrets it.
Before long she finds Isaac has one obsession. He does not like Museveni; Museveni’s family, even less. He thinks Museveni’s family is ruining Uganda. He is driven to heights of irony if anything remotely connected to politics comes up, and sometimes when there’s no connection at all. At first she does not understand his scoffing asides about ‘the First Family’.
‘There seem to be fewer trees than before.’
‘Yes, they are being cut down for firewood. The First Family must have money.’
‘Is the new shopping centre finished, at Garden City?’
‘Of course! First Family must shop somewhere.’
‘I’m a little worried about mosquitoes,’ she says, to change the subject, but also to explain why she is rubbing herself with cream from the shameful plastic bag of unguents.
‘Madam, do not worry about the mosquitoes,’ he says, turning to look into her eyes so an oncoming bus bearing the slogan GOD SAVES almost hits them, and Vanessa sees the frightened face of its driver. ‘There is no malaria in Kampala.’
‘People always told me that before,’ says Vanessa. ‘But all the Ugandans I met had had malaria. Have you had malaria?’
He shrugs. ‘Of course. But the bazungu do not get it. And the rain will wash away the mosquitoes.’
‘I thought mosquitoes liked water? I’m sure they do.’
But he looks sulky, and ignores her. Perhaps he knows his epidemiology is sketchy. Or else he wants to fob her off with nonsense. She grips the seatbelt hard with both hands as he honks oncoming traffic out of their path.
Bip-bip-bip-BEEEYUP! Pip-pip-pip-pip-B-A-A-A-R-P! It is a fanfare of arrival. A famous writer is in Kampala!
‘Are you ready for CHOGM?’ huge billboards inquire, or more defiantly, ‘Uganda is ready for CHOGM’. By the side of the road, red earth, low shacks, rather fewer of them than she remembers, but a lot of brick building is going on. ‘Is this building work for CHOGM?’ she inquires.
‘Everything is for First Family.’
She had forgotten how enchanting the children are. Small troops of them, single-file, leap neatly off the road and back again as they thunder past. ‘I love your school uniforms, so smart,’ she says.
‘Of course you like them, they are British,’ Isaac says. He seems less polite than when she first embarked, as if she’s broken some pact by disagreeing with him, although the subject of dispute was only mosquitoes.
‘Our children would refuse to wear them,’ says Vanessa, stung by the idea that she is typically British. ‘Actually I like Ugandan things.’
He seems to snicker to himself, and she feels insulted, but of course he is just young. She tells herself she must not take against him. He is not so much older than her son Justin.
She spots a big pile of what must be charcoal. So that’s where some of the trees have gone. But some remain; lush date palms, pineapples, and are those ...? ‘Are they matooke?’ she asks, proud to deploy a local word.
‘Obviously they are bananas,’ he says, smiles sideways annoyingly, and just misses a lorry.
‘It doesn’t matter, please watch the road.’
But the nearer they come to Kampala, the less he can do anything but join the great clunky jam of white metal public taxis, and they slow to a heaving, parp-parp-ing halt. And now they are in the Kampala Vanessa remembers. The roadside is a seething mass of stalls and sellers, going back as far as the eye can see, with hand-painted signs whose cheerful ambition flares gallantly over tiny box-sized shops: WISE AFRICAN AIDS RESEARCH CENTRE; MAAMA SOPHIA GENERAL MERCHANDISE.
‘I love all this. It’s so interesting,’ she says, good humour coming back. ‘What is this district called?’
‘It is Nateete Market,’ the driver answers. ‘The government has sold it, because of CHOGM. Soon we will have a modern market!’
‘Is this a good thing?’
‘Of course. Except the market traders do not think so, or the customers. Profits will go to the First Family.’
Now Vanessa’s hips are starting to ache, and she’s bored with the First Family, and the red dust is blowing in through the window, slipping grainily under her contact lenses. It is exciting, but she wants to sleep, or eat, or do anything except keep travelling.
It is a huge relief when the Sheraton guards raise the red-and-white-striped pole to let them in. They sweep down the drive through the Sheraton gardens, gold-jacketed men salute their arrival, the driver unloads Vanessa’s cases, and they march through the arch of the metal detector, which blares shrilly, but the armed guard waves them through: she’s a middle-aged white woman, she can’t be a terrorist.
And Isaac? Oh, he’s just her driver. They barely look at him. All the guests have one.
Vanessa is keen to pay him off: 15 dollars, as agreed, plus a tip of 4,000 Ugandan shillings, about 2 dollars, which is more than 10 per cent, and uses nearly all the currency she’d saved from her last trip to Uganda. But Isaac still lingers, as if expecting more. ‘That should cover you for something to eat,’ she urges. Isaac looks at the floor, and says, ‘It is OK,’ but his body language implies that it isn’t. (Yet he’s hardly going to eat at the Sheraton, is he, where breakfast would cost five times as much!) Her own mouth waters in anticipation. Golden fried potatoes, eggs, steak, smooth terraces of mango, watermelon, pineapple, glistening on enormous china dishes. Sheraton breakfasts are an event!
The back of his red t-shirt and Harlem-style cut-offs look suddenly poor as he crosses the bright foyer. Has she done right? But of course she has. She has been more than fair. She dismisses it.
The receptionists stand like gleaming statues in a gold-clad row behind the long desk. Poor things, thinks Vanessa, why can’t they sit down?
On the other hand, why doesn’t someone help her with her cases?
Now, at once. Is she invisible?
Somebody does. He is old, and smiles a lot. His eyes look damp, as if they are melting. She’d forgotten how black Ugandans are. Or is she unnaturally pale? In the mirrored lift, the contrast is startling. As they fly upwards, he smiles some more, and Vanessa begins to find it oppressive. ‘So sorry I can’t give you a tip,’ she says, with emphasis, to be sure he understands. ‘I have only large dollar notes.’ ‘Dollar notes,’ he nods eagerly, but then his smile fades as her apologetic hand signals get through. ‘It’s OK,’ he says. It’s another disappointment. But with kindness, and good manners, he smiles at her again. Then he wheels the great case right into the room. ‘Thank you,’ she says, and changing her mind, she gives him her few remaining Ugandan shillings.
And the room? It’s fine. An enormous bed (how long is it, she wonders, since I shared a bed? Will anyone, ever, share my bed again?) – an emperor-size bed, with snow-white linen. One whole wall of her room is window, with a view over the lush Sheraton gardens – rows of palms, pink and purple blossom – and behind them, skyscrapers selling insurance, traffic jams, smoke, half-built buildings, and the hills she remembers, Kampala’s green hills – though there are definitely more new red roofs, marching out from the centre into low hazy cloud, stretching away into the distance.
Yes, she is here. In Africa. Vanessa can’t wait to get acclimatised. Unlike most white people (she tells herself) she is not afraid to go out on foot. She will just lie down and relax for a second ... Then she will have breakfast, and go and meet the natives!
It’s 9.15 AM. But when she wakes again, breakfast is over. It’s nearly lunchtime.
(If Vanessa had in fact gone down at 9.15, she would have met a native, the Executive Housekeeper, who had just popped down for a word with Front Office. Mary Tendo would have been as amazed as Vanessa. And both women would have laughed and hugged, and Vanessa would have cried, though Mary Tendo wouldn’t, and our story would have untangled in a flash. Instead, Vanessa slept like a baby, and Mary sang as she got back to her office and spotted an email from Trevor in her inbox.)