10

Total Immersion

March 1962 saw us reunited in Rome, where icicles were hanging from the fountains. Fergus had prudently bought some fur-lined boots, but for our visit to the Villa d’Este on the outskirts of the city I wore the gunmetal winkle-pickers I had added to the black and blue jersey suit ensemble – now topped by a three-quarter-length black moleskin coat – and suffered accordingly. It was impossible to travel with clothing suited to all climatic zones, and WHO now limited cabin class travel for staff members to long-haul flights, so our baggage allowance was tourist class.

The next stop was Cairo, where we stayed at the historic Mena House Hotel. I do not know how the hotel looks today, but at that time it stood on the fringe of the desert looking directly towards the Pyramids of Giza. The fertile green strip that extended from the banks of the Nile ended abruptly here – on one side of the road, palm trees and luxuriant vegetation, on the opposite side an infinity of Sahara sand. Slow, fat flies were everywhere, persistent in their attempts to settle on one’s face. Furious traffic, scuttling pedestrians, honking horns, malnourished donkeys and mules, blind people and persistent touts were, like the flies, widespread. Fergus had won his battle for funding to attend a conference on all aspects of bilharziasis, as he was scheduled to read not only his own paper, but that of a colleague who had suffered a stroke a few weeks earlier.

As ‘distinguished’ visitors, we were taken everywhere by minibus or saloon car. On the opening day of the conference a luncheon, hosted by the minister of health, took place in the banqueting hall of one of the ex-royal palaces, a gilded room lit by three enormous chandeliers. The menu started with shrimp soufflé, then roast goat and, in deference to Western taste, potatoes. Already feeling replete, we were startled by the arrival of two huge turkeys surrounded by piles of saffron-flavoured rice mixed with pine kernels. That was followed by slices of pink glazed gateau topped by whipped cream and marzipan strawberries, and finally fresh fruit and viscous coffee. The feast over, a tour of Prince Mohammed Ali’s palaces began. The palaces were built in the late Victorian era and now housed a museum. Every object was a triumph of intricate craftsmanship, beautiful inlaid work in mother-of-pearl, ivory and wood, some with delicate silver inlay, and ceramic tiles covered entire walls. The ceilings were made of gold-encrusted carved beams with red, blue and green paint detail, interspersed with udder-like protuberances in the same colours. In the vast family room intricately carved wooden chairs lined each wall, throne-like and uninviting; however, comfort was offered by several gigantic red leather studded sofas, set among a plethora of side tables, which displayed signed photographs of most of the British royal family in art nouveau silver frames. Silk Persian rugs in fiddly floral designs almost obscured the marble floor. The next day all the delegates were taken for a private visit to the Cairo Museum to see much of the contents of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The masks and animal carvings were timelessly beautiful, but the collection had a neglected aura, making us feel that many artefacts the wicked old colonials had made off with were better preserved for future generations in London and other cultural centres. That evening we were guests at a ‘traditional style’ dinner in one of the best restaurants in the city. The decor represented the interior of a Bedouin tent, and the air was heavy with smoke and cooking fumes. Again there was an endless procession of dishes, most of which tasted of burned fat, and all meats, by our standards, were tough. The pièce de résistance was a pigeon with the head on.

We visited Memphis, where little remained but giant columns, a small sphinx and an immense statue of Rameses II: our guide, a cultured Egyptian woman with some French ancestry, took us to Sakkara where we trudged hotly through the desert from one tomb to another – rather dull to inexpert eyes. But then we were taken into the heart of one of the Pyramids to see hieroglyphics so perfect they might have been recently cut. Outside hordes of shouting men with camels, ponies and mules fought furiously for our patronage, beating not only each other, but their rivals’ animals. A timid member of our group was in danger of being torn apart as he got out of the bus, bleating pitifully, ‘Is there some trouble?’ Fergus, being tall and well built, navigated the crowd, wearing a lofty expression like one of the camels or General de Gaulle.

I attended the meeting at which, on the final day, Fergus presented the two papers to a packed hall. Most of the other papers were beyond my comprehension, so I spent a lot of time in the peaceful gardens of the hotel, reading or writing in the warm winter sunshine. One day I became aware of a small figure dodging furtively between the bougainvillea and hibiscus bushes: it was male, about twelve years old, and his opening gambit was on the lines of ‘Pssst, I take you in the town and you see my brother and sister’, for what purpose was not specified. Terrified of being spotted by hotel staff, he departed quickly when I made it clear I had no intention of accepting his invitation.

The Egyptians were just as accomplished as the Russians or Chinese in evading questions: they even managed to prevent us from visiting a local village, despite it being on the official list, to inspect its irrigation system, and see an active transmission site on the outskirts of Cairo. One of the doctors, on learning it took seven years for a medical student to qualify in Britain, told me proudly that in Egypt the time taken was a mere four. We sensed that Egypt was just as great a dictatorship as other better-known ones. Some of the people we met were outspoken in private, telling us that citizens were not normally allowed to leave the country, but that if they decided to emigrate they might do so, taking out only the equivalent of £500, thus sacrificing their wealth as well as their nationality, and risking repercussions on any remaining family members. Parents were not permitted to send children overseas for schooling.

Scheduled to fly to Accra via Timbuktu by United Arab Airlines – known as Misrair – we checked in at ten in the morning. It was already very hot, and the airport flies were of a larger and more persistent type than average. I had a cold at the feverish raging sore throat stage, and both of us were tired after the frenzied activities of the week. Hours passed during which a periodic announcement would be made that our flight would be boarding soon; more time would elapse, then a further delay with the promise of a meal, for which vouchers were distributed. After another long interval the vouchers were taken away and we heard that we would be boarding after all, and food would be served on board the aircraft. My main preoccupation was a desire for early oblivion; the thought of food was repugnant but a cold drink would have been welcome. By late afternoon Fergus’s efforts to get me one produced a lukewarm Fanta, and he was toying with a plate of pasta of the Cephalonia variety.

On take-off we held hands tightly as always, while I counted more seconds than usual before we were airborne, allowing time to reflect on what percentage of accidents occur either at take-off or on landing. UAA and its pilots had an unenviable reputation, and we had met pilots from other airlines whose views were unprintable. On a list of notoriously dangerous runways, Cairo featured, as did Athens and one in the Canaries, at which there was a subsequent disaster. But soon we were cruising and the skyline softened through shades of orange, through turquoise to indigo, and I thought of the distances between oases, the bizarre rocks in the Hoggar region, the nomadic Tuareg people about whom we had read, and the vastness so many brave travellers had managed to cross. As we neared Timbuktu the pilot told passengers to resume their seats and fasten seat belts, and some obediently did so, but a number continued to stroll around chatting to their friends, ignored by cabin stewards. On landing, once the doors were opened, even though it was the middle of the night, the temperature was hotter than any we had experienced in Cairo. Many got off and were replaced by women carrying unwieldy cloth-bound bundles too large for the overhead lockers, and a noisy, inebriated football team returning to Lagos after victory in Mali came on board.

At Accra we were met by the Austrian representative for WHO; well used to the exhausted, embittered state in which many of his colleagues reported back on duty, he took us straight to the government guesthouse to recover. The next day Fergus dashed around retrieving the car, getting it taxed, insured and relicensed before we took the road back to Kintampo again.

We stayed two nights only in the guesthouse, where Gilbert, Grace and Charity had spent the New Year. A new fridge had been installed, there was a clean checked tablecloth, and the mosquito nets had been replaced. David Scott, by then on his penultimate tour in Ghana, had been replaced by Dr Grant and his wife, both Ghanaian, who now occupied the director’s house, and were hospitable in every way. We shared the guesthouse with a newly recruited Polish doctor: he was not shy in talking about the state of his own country, but undiplomatic in his criticism of Ghana and its inhabitants: ‘These people are so fucking lazy and unreliable.’

Our cat, now in rude health and with a few more battle scars, had settled with Luciano’s family and tolerated child company well; his relationship with their cook, however, was guarded. They gave a dinner party to mark our imminent departure to Wa, which was regarded by many as being too remote for a family. Much time was taken up by old acquaintances coming to ‘greet’ us, including the old hermit who brought me two dozen eggs – a very generous gift. The Kofi brothers were already installed at Wa and Adda, who had been on paid leave during our absence, was soon to join us there.

All advantage gained from our pre-dawn start was lost when we reached Yeji and joined an impatient crowd of foot passengers, lorries and cars waiting for the broken-down ferry, which was stuck on the opposite side of the river. Sucking oranges rather than depleting our supply of drinking water, we stayed there all morning, while the noise, dust, heat and smells escalated. When all hope of reviving the engine had been abandoned, a hand-hauled winch system went into action and the ferry reached our side of the river. Doubts about the safety of the winch were loudly voiced – particularly where heavy vehicles were involved – but eventually foot passengers and cars were allowed on board. We were relieved to land on the north bank after the short, jerky crossing. The rest of the journey to Wa was uneventful, apart from a burst tyre, which, had it not been for Fergus’s inspired driving, would have landed us in a dried-out river bed: this left us with no spare tyre.

It was almost dark when we reached the Water Supplies resthouse, where we were met by a disagreeable young German who grudgingly agreed that our reservation was valid. Later we learned that his detestation of the British was notorious. The caretaker, when he shuffled on duty, was more amiable: he lit the lamp immediately, produced some discoloured ice cubes, covered the table with an ancient chequered cloth, and set two places with bent cutlery. I produced some bread, margarine, sardines and two bottles of warm Tusker beer; with fresh pawpaw and lime to finish, it was quite a balanced meal. We lay in a huge tepid bath and scraped the hardened red dust from the interstices of our skin before collapsing on the usual lumpy mattress under a stained, much-mended mosquito net.

Next morning we went to inspect the house that had been allocated to us. The setting was delightful in a large overgrown garden, which owed its design to some long-departed European. The bungalow, built to German design early in the century, had a large central living room, two huge bedrooms and a bathroom. The kitchen was joined to the house by a walkway roofed with rusting sheets of corrugated iron. On the floor of the main room, below holes in the ceiling, were stalagmites of bat droppings, the broken shutters were caked with the nests of mud-wasps, and the mosquito netting was torn in many places. The lavatory pan was encrusted, its seat broken; the chain that dangled from a rusted cistern had lost its handle. The bath and handbasin were also coated in grime. Fergus, prompted by a pervasive smell, made an outside inspection, which revealed that the soil pipe led to a septic tank beside which was a damp area with a meringue-like frothy topping.

I sat down on one of the hard PWD chairs and cried; Fergus was grimly silent. As we were to be stationed there for at least three years, it was important neither to offend local sensibilities, nor adopt an attitude that might be interpreted as colonial; at the same time it was essential to make clear to the appropriate authorities that the house was unacceptable, and failure to provide suitable housing was a breach of contract. The appropriate authority was the district commissioner, who was sympathetic, admitting that Karel and Marta Sin – against whom we had played the tennis match at Kintampo – had also rejected the house and now lived in the only acceptable alternative. Goodwill was expressed, and he promised that repair work would start immediately; in the meantime, the only solution he could offer was for us to stay in the weekend retreat house that the founder of the MFUs had built in the 1920s at Dorimon, a small settlement near the Black Volta, roughly thirteen miles from Wa.

At Wa there was a branch of the UTC, the Love All Canteen Bar and Restaurant, and a scattering of Lebanese stores where – in addition to candles, sugar, tins of tomato paste, Blue Band margarine, sardines, pilchards, matches, needles and coarse thread – brilliant cotton cloths, mostly printed in Holland, and a choice of top quality English woollen suiting was sold. A large market was held once a week, when a pig would be slaughtered for the benefit of the small non-Muslim population – this market would be the main source of our household supplies, so we stocked up before we left for Dorimon.

The Black Volta forms the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso, known before independence as the Gold Coast and Volta respectively. Dorimon, in addition to its scattering of dwellings, had a mud-built mosque and a marketplace. The population was small, with only about thirty adult males, some of whom were from the Lobi tribe, which had its roots in the Ivory Coast, and were not very advanced. The retreat house was sited on a slight hill overlooking the dam just outside the village; it was a traditional thatched round-house with separate quarters for the resident caretaker and visiting servants. A relic from the days of Empire, unlike the bungalow, it had not been allowed to deteriorate, having been kept scrupulously clean by the willing, if somewhat dim-witted, Da, who had been blinded in one eye by a spitting cobra.

Simbu, who lived in the village, was supposed to keep the vegetation surrounding the hut complex short and snake free. Da and he, as salaried government employees, were therefore figures of substance in the community. The caretaker should have commanded more deference than a mere grass-cutter, but nobody had much respect for Da, as he belonged to the Lobi tribe, many of whose customs and taboos were widely despised. They filed their front teeth, were reputed to eat dogs and snakes, did not allow women to eat chicken or eggs; their artefacts were crudely made and personal hygiene was not a priority. Da had a pregnant wife and a two-year-old son; all three looked malnourished – indeed, the child exhibited the classic signs of kwashiorkor: reddish hair and a distended belly. He clung to his mother, from time to time grabbing a razor strap breast for comfort.

It was clear that, as a woman who was going to spend a lot of time on my own while Fergus was at the laboratory, I would have to establish myself as second in the pecking order. Adda had not yet returned, so in the meantime a daily routine would need to be set down. The local pidgin was even more basic than what I had learned, and the regional dialects so numerous that even Adda was to have problems. Now resigned to being ‘Mama’, I winced when Fergus was addressed as ‘Massa’; we encouraged the use of ‘Doctor’ in preference, but with limited success. I counted the days until Adda’s return, confident that he would establish order, and that his dominance, as an ‘educant’ who had attended a mission school and could read and write, over Da and Simbu would be accepted without protest.

The three bridges on the tortuous thirteen-mile track back to Wa were liable to inundation, and could be washed away during flash floods, so it was imperative that work on the bungalow should be finished before the next rains. The good news circulated that Fergus was a soft touch for a lift, so each morning a hopeful group waited beside the vehicle – mostly the project Land Rover, but sometimes the Peugeot 504 shooting brake, which had replaced our Zephyr: it might have been a Bentley considering the awe it inspired. He learned to inspect the contents of large bundles before allowing them on board; if they contained dried fish or monkey flesh, the owners were encouraged to walk or wait for one of the open trucks that visited the village on market days, but these cost two shillings, well beyond the means of most. Patients for the health centre who displayed open sores, gigantic umbilical hernias or other obvious afflictions were never refused; nor were the very old, even if their excuse for a visit was unconvincing. Pregnant women with bowls of eggs or writhing red and yellow hairy caterpillars to sell at the market were also hard to refuse. The arrival of long-stay occupants of the rest-house was a major event: this couple displayed none of the autocratic ways of some previous visitors, and seemed genuinely interested in the wellbeing of the people, so goodwill must be maintained to ensure a continued taxi service. Gifts began to arrive within days of our taking up residence: mainly fruit and vegetables, but sometimes a bowl of guinea-fowl eggs, only a quarter of which would be fit for consumption.

The plan of the house was based on two circles: the larger living area was open to a veranda, from which a path led down to the dam; the smaller was a bedroom with an en suite recess for a handbasin, shelves and a shower, from which a trickle of murky water full of wrigglers flowed. The kitchen was a flat-roofed afterthought leading off the living room. Our priority, as usual, was to get the refrigerator working, as the only other means of storing food was in a wood and wire-mesh meat safe, the legs of which stood in tins of kerosene to deter ants and cockroaches. Not even a long-handled brush, dustpan or mop was to be seen. Da’s sweeping technique involved bending double, with a loosely tied bundle of dried grasses; for dusting chairs, shelves and tabletops he used an ancient feather duster. Almost all the letters I wrote to my mother asked for supplies of Wettex cloths, the lives of which were short because my instructions that they should be squeezed rather than wrung dry were ignored. My pleas for the correct use of clothes pegs were also ignored; I pointed out the circular gap that was meant to grip the line, but they were thrust to the hilt, putting maximum stress on the spring. The wooden sort were useless, as they just disappeared. Washing was a back-breaking job carried out between a stone sink and two battered zinc buckets; notwithstanding this and the need to conserve water, clothes always emerged looking bright and clean. This phenomenon exists throughout Africa: on their day off, immaculately dressed men in crisp white shirts emerge from primitive abodes. Compared with the current situation, life at Kintampo had been one of pampered luxury.

I found ample material for missionary zeal in an effort to improve the dietary habits of Da’s family: the child ate no fruit, eggs, meat or vegetables, and it was clear that his mother’s milk supply was inadequate. To my ultimate regret I encouraged supplementary use of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) dried milk powder: this worked well enough when I was around to supervise, but in my absence milk would be left uncovered or in feeding bottles lying around on the ground, a magnet for flies. Advice was listened to politely, but while the parents were concerned by the child’s failure to thrive, no serious effort was made to introduce a more varied diet. Future prospects for the survival of this toddler were grim after the birth of the next child.

Simbu, accompanied by two lively puppies, reported for duty every day. Smart in appearance, wearing clean cream shorts with matching top and turban, cutlass in hand, he was the antithesis of Da; his life, however, was not without its problems, details of which were later revealed to Adda. His first wife, though nominally a good Muslim, had drunk beer and smoked hash; the second just sat around all day and refused to cook. Clearly disenchanted by lack of success in the marriage market, Simbu said: ‘I finish, they be all the same.’ It was suspected that his second wife had been pregnant at the time of purchase, so she had been returned to her family, with which there was an ongoing dispute over the price originally demanded, some of which was still, according to her father, outstanding.

Simbu made an eight-hour onslaught on the shrivelled vegetation surrounding the compound, stopping only for a short break at midday to consume a dish of boiled cassava seasoned with chilli pepper and palm oil sauce. The resulting cull was eleven snakes ceremoniously laid out for Massa’s inspection when he returned from Wa in the late afternoon: some were pronounced harmless, others were vipers, but there was one black spitting cobra of the type that had blinded Da. The heads, one of which had been in the act of swallowing a toad, were then buried to ensure that nobody would extract the poison to use for tipping arrows.

Late at night, after the day of compound cutting, I was sitting in the lavatory hut, enjoying the beauty of the moonlit scene, when a reptilian head appeared at the open door. Mesmerised, I lifted my feet off the ground while the seven-foot snake made a slow circuit of the hut, disappearing behind me for what seemed an interminable time, before sliding off in the direction of the main house. I raised the alarm, but immediately regretted having done so when the compound quickly filled with frenzied humanity swinging oil lamps, wielding cutlasses and assorted heavy sticks. The hapless cobra tried to climb the curved slope at the base of the house wall, making itself an easy target, and was decapitated. I felt something of a traitor and reproached myself for having overreacted – after all, it had only been searching for food and had not threatened me. After that, when I saw anything that might trigger a murderous hunt, I kept quiet.

The village policeman regularly accompanied a procession of women to a safe spot that he chose on the shore of the dam, where they could wash clothes and gather water for the day. Bearing on their heads a variety of receptacles, from calabashes and beautiful giant clay pots, down to buckets and chipped enamel bowls, the women complained loudly when his choice involved a longer walk than necessary, but they were in awe of his authority, so laughter was subdued and the spontaneous merriment characteristic of washing assemblies throughout Africa was absent. The proximity of three young crocodiles on the opposite shore did not noticeably worry any of them.

Each morning at seven the primary school children were taken to the edge of the dam for their morning bath: this consisted of the children stripping off and huddling in a compact group, over which the teacher threw several buckets of water. It was his duty to ensure that nobody urinated in, or defecated near, the water. Sadly, swimming in the dam was prohibited, as a means to limit transmission of bilharziasis and Guinea-worm infections. Any person with an open Guinea-worm sore was forbidden to enter the water at all. Bilharziasis is a debilitating disease, the severity of which depends on what Fergus cringingly described as ‘the worm load’; but Guinea-worm disease (dracunculiasis) struck me as the more horrible of the two. A long worm can emerge from sites such as the lower leg, the nipple, the end of the tongue, or even the penis. With patience the worm can be wound around a matchstick, taking care not to break it, because to do so risks formation of an abscess. Control of Guinea worm is simple – just boil the drinking water. River-blindness (onchocerciasis), spread by a tiny black fly, was also widespread in the region. Added to repeated attacks of malaria and limited diet, the chances of survival to adulthood were low – many babies died in their first year, others before they were five.

After the initial cutting, there was little for Simbu to do, but still he reported daily with the two pups, which were quick to sense that in my company life was bountiful. Both were smooth-haired pi dogs with a white diamond on the forehead, and a white-tipped tail: the bitch, Fu-Fu, was a ginger-coloured sharp-witted opportunist wary of all humans; but the darker, brindle male, known as Simbu Dog – there being no possessive in pidgin English – was devoted to me and would lie blissfully contented in my lap, legs in the air, while I tickled his pink belly. His proportions were good and he smelled of clean young animal and wood smoke. Jealous of anyone who made rival demands on my attention, he would get between me and the intruder, snapping at his sister if she came too close. The two grew sturdier, thanks to hand-outs from the kitchen, more proof that I was a soft touch where animals were concerned. One of the laboratory assistants begged me to look after his young ‘pet’ sheep while he went on leave, but it was quite a while before it dawned on me that the animal was being fattened for slaughter, and leaving it in my care was an insurance against theft.

I had a makeshift desk on the terrace, where, with my Olivetti, I typed regular letters to my mother and coped with Fergus’s secretarial work. The contract with the Ghana government and the UN stipulated that secretarial help should be provided at all duty stations, but this was seldom honoured, or if there was an efficient secretary, her services would be monopolised by the national counterpart. There were two official typists at Wa, but one was on leave and the other could not type, restricting his talents to clerking. I recall having to produce four copies of a report written for the regional office – I do not know how I did it, because these were the days of carbon copies.

At the outset I had feared loneliness, but soon settled to a routine of food preparation, writing, photography, sewing and resolving minor domestic crises. While we remained at Dorimon the only means of cooking was a Primus stove, so menus were not ambitious. Tomatoes, shallots, peppers and aubergines were never in short supply, nor was cooking oil, so we lived for some weeks exclusively on ratatouille and eggs in one form or another. A whole cow’s liver, warm from slaughter, was delivered one morning with the sincere thanks and compliments of a local chief who had benefited from our taxi service. To dispose of this luxury without causing offence posed a real problem, as every activity within the compound would be known in the village by sundown. To feed bits to the dogs would be regarded as outrageous waste; to give large portions to friends and servants might be deemed ungrateful. The cuttingup process was unpleasant and I found myself remembering Fergus’s account of a visit to an abattoir during his student days, looking for signs of liver fluke. Adda’s return coincided with this gift and I gave bits to him, Da and Simbu, swearing them to a secrecy in which I had little faith, lavish trimmings went to the dogs, and some I claimed to have frozen. Any thought of burial at night was a nonstarter. I would either be discovered in the act or by some mortifying excavation of the site the following day.

Within hours of his appearance, Adda had established a hierarchical pecking order within the compound. Fergus, when on site, was number one; next was me; then Adda usurping Simbu, who was in charge when there was no guest in residence; Simbu reigned over the cowed Da and his wife, whose nominal duties were sweeping in and around the round-house. The only time Da’s voice was raised in authority was when a team of compound cutters arrived from Wa and needed surveillance. Even then, Simbu was likely to appear from the village and take over command.

Nearly every day brought some drama, often involving mortality. Much to Adda’s satisfaction the nesting house martins, whose droppings adorned the mosquito netting over our bed, were silenced by an unidentified predator after a night of restless chirping. A gun was stolen from a policeman who had carelessly laid it in the ditch while inspecting a headless corpse on the Dorimon–Wa road. There were two murders, and a near skeletal body had been found lying on a mat by the roadside. The drunken driver of an overloaded lorry killed nine of his passengers, all of whom had known he was drunk, but were anxious to get home quickly. Six prisoners awaiting trial died of suffocation in a crowded cell at Wa prison.

By this time we had become reacquainted with Karel and Marta Sin. It was Karel’s first assignment outside the Czech Republic and he often consulted Fergus when he had suspicions about the background of cases brought to the hospital. He was learning fast, both at home and at work – so was his wife, who was in charge of paediatric care. In Prague they had lived in a small flat with shared kitchen and bathroom, their only means of transport a Vespa scooter. Now they had a house, servant and their first car, a Volkswagen Beetle. The car had been ‘borrowed’ by a friend of his steward, who then crashed it hundreds of miles away near Tamale. Reluctantly he sacked his servant, the intermediary, and embarked on the convoluted process of making an insurance claim. He had been called to examine the decapitated corpse found on the Dorimon–Wa road; it was already ‘high’, flesh remaining only on the hands and upper chest. He thought the pool in which it was half lying had dried up, exposing it to view, and that dogs had decapitated it. We suspected it was a cutlass job, and had been dumped. Nobody seemed unduly upset, and no person had been reported missing. On another occasion a woman with a huge belly swore, ‘No not pregnant – last menstruation two months ago’; she was suffering intense pain, no heartbeat could be heard and the swelling was lopsided, so he decided to operate – giving a heavy anaesthetic. The incision revealed a full-term child, which survived the anaesthesia, but only just. Karel was furious, suspecting, as we did, that the woman had wanted an abortion.

Few callers disturbed my morning ‘office’ sessions, which, in any case, would become unbearably hot by ten, forcing my retreat to the shade inside the house. Dr Korabiewicz would interrupt a visit to the village to call for coffee and a chat: his usual greeting, a kiss sweeping from wrist to shoulder, was hard to receive with poise – particularly as I almost always wore an unflattering one-piece ‘playsuit’, combining shirt and shorts, flipflops and, by this time, no bra because I was a martyr to prickly heat. He made routine calls to some of the outlying huts, but foremost in his mind will have been to cajole some ancient artefact out of the chief: he was known to pay high prices, and some found their way to private collections or as museum exhibits in Warsaw. His wife had been known to countermand his advice and to tell his patients to halve the dose that he had prescribed for them. Of the pair, she commanded greater respect.

Nights became more oppressive, forcing us to sleep outside, but often gusts of wind, combined with distant thunder claps and forked lightning, indicated an imminent violent storm. Semi-awake, we would drag the camp beds inside, only to take them out again when the lightning had subsided and no rain had fallen. When that happened, the heat became almost unbearable. For our evening meal Fergus had taken to wearing a fetching pair of blue mesh underpants, while I wore one of my playsuits with gold brocade ankle boots because I had been unable to find any mosquito boots in Belfast – an outfit reminiscent of a Principal Boy in one of Jimmy O’Dea’s pantomimes. Wearing boots was essential – I remember a painfully swollen insect bite on one ankle came to the attention of a field dresser whose job it was to carry out minor first-aid duties, who insisted on treating it with his ‘secret’ tribal tincture – ‘We make a paste of squirrels’ entrails or sometimes we use donkey dung’. All this with a straight face – he genuinely believed in its efficacy.

We remained at Dorimon until the rains had turned parts of the road into a morass. Work on the house in Wa was still not finished, but the risk of being cut off by flash flooding was too great. We had been happy in the round-house, and left with regret. We were also fond of Simbu Dog, who worshipped us, although he obediently trotted off with Simbu at the end of the day. We discussed the possibility of buying him for the going price of five shillings, but were deterred by several factors, chief of which was the amount of travel we undertook, and what to do with him when next we returned to Europe. There was also an element of not wanting to wound Simbu’s pride. Having a salaried job, some sheep and goats, as well as two fine dogs, although, unhappily, no satisfactory wife, made him a man of substance in the village. Reflecting proudly on the growth of the pups, he voiced his intention to operate on Simbu Dog who had only one testicle: ‘I will take the other one, then he get big and no go bush and get chopped by they Lobis.’ Fergus, who had not long before heard agonised yelping coming from the village, where a small crowd was gathered around a bucket in which a dog was immersed, did his best to discourage such unprofessional intervention, threatening in jest to do the same to Simbu. He even extracted a promise that nothing would be done without employing the services of the vet at Wa, for which he would pay. We went back twice during September and October to collect vegetables from a small patch of garden, by then almost flooded, and to pick some grapefruit, which were rare in the north. Simbu Dog was overjoyed to see us, appearing in rude health, but I had a premonition that Simbu would not honour his promise.

I consulted a Czech obstetrician at Kumasi hospital during August 1962: he put on a surgical glove and did an internal examination, exclaiming, ‘Oh, here it is’ – a confirmation that I was at last pregnant. Then he wrote a letter to one of the leading obstetricians in Belfast, advising ‘bringing forth’ in the UK: not so much from the viewpoint of the mother as that of the child.

The regional office chose this time to defer decisions on almost all aspects of Fergus’s project, implying that unless the Ghana government approved and signed a five-year plan of operations by the end of the year, he might well be out of a job. In the meantime, they proposed that he should undertake short-term surveys in neighbouring Ivory Coast, Togo and Dahomey. Although we did not know it, this stalemate was just the beginning of years of uncertainty about where and when the next assignment might be. Fergus considered returning to an academic career, but at that time there were few openings for biologists specialised in tropical parasitology. There were opportunities in Canada and the US, but I was prejudiced against the North American lifestyle. He was offered an interesting, but ill-paid job in Copenhagen, but we both had reservations about Denmark being the best country in which to spend the early years of raising a family, principally because of its notoriously difficult language. We hoped that ultimately a suitable vacancy would arise at the headquarters office in Geneva, although the system of ‘geographical distribution’ strictly limited the number of British appointees.

The kitchen in the old German house had been cleaned and painted, the rotten draining boards and sagging shelving replaced, and a capacious refrigerator had been supplied, although it proved to be just as temperamental as all the others. A new stove had been delivered, so after months of cooking on a Primus, I could at last produce a decent meal. The cockroach population flourished as before, and a flock of persistent hens was always in or around the kitchen, the door of which had to be left open much of the time to allow some circulation of air.

All our clothing was faded and threadbare, and while replacement shirts and shorts could be found or made for Fergus, my problems were more complex. Weighing heavily on my mind was the thought of what I would wear in December when we would return to ‘civilisation’. I was still no more than a bit thick in the middle, although the baby began to kick during the week of our move. It had been decided to delay going to Accra until my departure was imminent because a curfew had been imposed between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. and machine guns were everywhere, involving more police and military stops and inspections than usual. I would need a dress for any functions we might have to attend. At one of the Lebanese stores I bought a length of attractive material that looked like shot silk but was 100 per cent synthetic; a subtle dove’s-breast pinkish brown, patterned with large, hyacinth-blue abstract flowers. It was fiendish to handle, slippery with a tendency to gather, and dissolved into spun sugar if the iron was too hot. However, teamed with the metallic winkle-pickers, it looked quite elegant and saw me through dinner at the Ambassador Hotel, some private parties and a reception at the University of Ghana, held by the vice-chancellor, Conor Cruise O’Brien and his new wife, Maire. We were invited to meet Dr Alan Nunn May, the English physicist and convicted Soviet spy who, nine years after release from prison, held a post as research professor in physics at the university, and his Austrian wife. Both were good company and easy to get on with, though there were awkward moments of constraint when some topic provoked an evasive response. We suspected he was still ‘travelling’ and part of a group then establishing a network throughout Ghana.

As my pregnancy progressed I bought a length of dark grey fine wool men’s suiting and, crawling around on the cement, cut out and tailored a two-piece maternity suit, composed of pencil slim skirt with an obligatory U cut out of the front, and a threequarter-length top. Worn with one of the first Khrushchev-style black fur hats bought at Harrods in Knightsbridge, a flamecoloured silk scarf, the Swiss Bally shoes and crocodile handbag, I felt I could still compete in the fashion stakes.

The three months before I flew back to Northern Ireland were packed with incident and I was also very ill with what was first thought to be another attack of malaria, but was subsequently agreed to have been blackwater fever. At one point my temperature rose to 103 and I was drifting in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware that the Kofi brothers were praying nearby. I vomited everything, including water, but Karel gave me an intramuscular injection, which lowered the fever, and I made a gradual recovery thereafter. Fergus was distraught, although Karel assured him that the ‘parasite’ would not be harmed. The same month he read in the Observer that his best friend, who had worked on tsetse control in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), had died in a car accident near Gatwick on the first day of a long anticipated home leave; his wife and three children – one only two months old – had survived, but the eldest one lost a kidney.

Late in October Fergus succumbed to another hard-luck story: a child of thirteen looking for work told a pathetic and convincing tale of how he had left his village twenty miles away because, ‘My father and mother both die and I have only sisters who cannot feed me. The people in my village are very bad.’ He had such a frank and open countenance that even Adda was taken in, to the extent of allowing him to sleep in his quarters. He did a little daily grass-cutting in return for chop money, and of course I dished out drinks of milk and bananas to supplement his meagre diet. Part of the tale was that there was an uncle who might look after him, but that a new school uniform was required if he was to return to school, and the uncle could not afford it. Fergus made unfruitful enquiries, and cross-questioned the child, who looked hurt at the suggestion he might be lying. In the end it was agreed that we should buy the uniform in return for small services until term began. Then one morning a ‘nephew’ of Adda’s spotted the boy and asked what he was doing on our premises, as he had absconded from school some months ago, taking with him the £4 his father (alive) had given him to buy the uniform and had apparently been living on this ever since. It transpired that almost all had been lies. Adda found one of our coffee spoons in his box, while another had already disappeared – presumably sold. He was escorted down to the MFU office and further grilled before being put in the care of the social welfare officer until his father should come and claim him. Tears came, and Fergus felt a brute, until Francis Kofi told him the boy had been loudly complaining that Fergus had promised him thirty shillings and had failed to pay up. So that was yet another ‘last time’ we were going to fall for a hard-luck story.

I stayed with my mother during December, January, and into February. We had more respect for each other by this time, and I enjoyed driving around the Ards peninsula with her, pausing near Mount Stewart House to watch a huge flock of wheeling lapwings and trying to interest her in watching the birdlife of Strangford Lough. In the evenings we watched the television I had introduced, against considerable resistance, to my mother’s living room; she soon became an addict, and together we watched That Was The Week That Was and episodes of Z Cars, during one of which I went into labour. Meanwhile, Fergus was making surveys in Gabon, Cameroon and the Congo. A visit to Geneva, to discuss his future with WHO, was planned for early February, and it was hoped he would be in Northern Ireland for the birth.