chapter fifteen

RAIN, RAIN, RAIN AND NEW PEOPLE

The onset of the big wet coincided with the long-awaited arrival of expatriate staff and the drilling contractors from Canada. The expatriate population in camp ballooned from nine to seventeen, propelling my battles over fresh food supplies to a new level of frenzy. The vivres frais normally arrived twice weekly, when flights operated between Libreville and Makokou. I had doubled the size of the orders, and waited anxiously for each consignment that came up on the pirogues. But I hadn’t bargained for how much the wet season could disrupt transport throughout the country.

The problems began one day in April. I had waited all day for a consignment, but when the truck arrived from the débarcadère all the driver had on board was hardware and drums of fuel. I felt my anger rising, and at the five o’clock radio session I gave Doug a blast. ‘What the hell’s happened to our vivres frais? We got absolutely nothing today! How are we expected to manage?’

Doug’s voice came over the air through a burst of crackle. ‘Nettie, I know for certain the glacières were loaded on the plane. Godart specifically told me he supervised it himself.’ Godart was SOMIFER’s accountant and manager in the Libreville office. ‘I’ll look into it and let you know first thing tomorrow.’ My imagination went into overdrive – if they’d been loaded, then what had happened to them in transit? After I finished at the radio, I put Étienne and Mambo Bernard in the picture, as they had been expecting ingredients for that evening’s meal, then drove down to the cas de passage to tell Samba Bernard and Léon the same story. We had plenty of tinned vegetables to fall back on, but I knew that everyone’s tolerance for them would wane quickly.

At nine o’clock the following morning, I switched on the radio and called up Libreville. Doug’s voice came on, sounding harassed. ‘Nettie, you’re not going to believe this. The glacières were loaded all right and the plane left, but on the approach to Makokou the pilot couldn’t land because the weather was so foul and the beacons at the airport were out of order, so the son-of-a-bitch was forced to turn around and come back to Libreville.’

‘Oh great!’ I groaned. ‘What do we do now?’ It was a reprise of the supply problems we had experienced in the lead up to the fête eight months before, except that now I had less patience with the chaos that constantly dogged our endeavours and we had twice as many people depending on the food supplies.

‘Nettie, I’ll charter a special plane if we have to. Give me a couple of hours to work on it, and let’s talk again at eleven.’ By the time we spoke again, Doug had arranged a charter. It would leave Libreville that day. With any luck the food would reach us within a day and a half.

The three glacières arrived late the following afternoon. I expected the worst, since they had been in transit for so long, and wasn’t disappointed. I opened them to find squashed tomatoes and wilted celery covering what lay underneath, and a jumble of ruptured tubs of yoghurt that had leaked all over the bags of eggplants and capsicums. The cheeses, meat and salamis had fared better, though, and some of the cabbages and cucumbers looked salvageable.

Étienne looked on in dismay as I sorted through it. He shook his head. ‘Les légumes sont fatigués, madame,’ he said. Tired vegetables – yes, that captured it perfectly, I thought. Étienne’s highly individual way of expressing himself always brought a smile to my face – like the night he had encouraged me to eat up some remaining salad at dinner because ‘Ça ne dort pas, madame,’ – it doesn’t sleep. From that night on, I could never think of a lettuce salad without recalling that it wouldn’t sleep.

At the afternoon radio link, I told Doug the food had made it, but that it seemed an expensive way to move perished vegetables around the countryside – the air charter had cost US$1000. It was to be the first of five charters in the three weeks that followed, however, as the depredations of the weather and the unreliability of the navigation beacon at Makokou combined to disrupt aircraft movements. Our radio links became more frequent – two in the morning and two in the afternoon – to coordinate the movement of extra pirogues and keep us informed. As the radio sessions gobbled up more and more of my time, I cursed the wet season and the chaos of Africa and began to look forward to the time, just months away, when I wouldn’t be doing the job any more.

I often started work before 7 am and finished after dark – much depended upon the arrival and departure times of pirogues. All the empty containers – 200-litre fuel drums, gas bottles, glacières and cantines – had to be returned promptly to Makokou. If we didn’t keep them moving, Kruger would become testy because it messed up his system. So I established a routine of assembling the empty gas bottles, glacières and cantines at the door of the guesthouse the night before, ready for the truck driver to load. The non-return of empty fuel drums emerged as a sore point from time to time, but I couldn’t help that, as I had no control over them and no idea of their whereabouts. Whenever Kruger got cranky about them, I referred him to Eamon.

Each month the cash and stock at the économat had to be reconciled to ensure the company recouped its outlays on the huge volume of merchandise purchased for resale in the village. The économat now stocked over 150 different lines, from bicycles to double foam mattresses, and everything had to be accounted for. And because I felt sorry for Rodo at the end of each month when he had to prepare the 100 pay packets for the men, I also worked with him adding up the hours and deducting any advances people had received.

My tiny salary was laughable given the job to be done, but I rarely thought about it. Like everyone else, I did whatever was necessary to keep things running. When I did stop to ponder it, I weighed up the frustrations of the job against everything our life in the camp had brought: our time with Josie, the visit to the bat cave, and my hour with Ikata. Those were the things that would remain with me forever, whereas I knew the chaos would pass.

For me, the arrival of the two new expatriate couples brought fresh faces and the promise of a fuller social life at last. My nine months as the only white woman in camp had ended. Both men were geologists, both the wives were nurses, and all had worked elsewhere in Africa. The recently married French couple, Michel and Marie-Claire, had come to Gabon from Mauritania. Michel looked to be about forty, tall, with thinning hair and an ebullient personality. Marie-Claire was younger, tall and slim with olive skin, quietly spoken and serious. She’d spent a year delivering babies in Mauritania, and as I grew to know her I formed the impression she could handle almost any situation with equanimity. It had been agreed that she would run the infirmerie once they settled in. Like most of the French people we had met in Gabon, neither of them spoke any English.

By contrast, the American couple, Jim and Carol, had come straight from a year’s work in Sierra Leone, where the national language was English, and they only spoke a smattering of French. Jim was short and stocky. He reminded me of the sort of Australian men who had gone to Papua New Guinea as kiaps or patrol officers in the 1950s: he wore khaki shirts and pants and a broad-brimmed hat, and used words sparingly. Carol had enough zest and personality for both of them. She was in her twenties, with an engaging smile, long brown hair and a zany outlook. I warmed instantly to her and knew we were going to get on.

The two couples moved into the brand-new mini-apartments that Win and the carpenters had recently finished. Rodo and Jacques had moved into similar ones several weeks earlier. Each dwelling was equipped with power, bottled gas for cooking, showers and a septic system with flushing toilets.

I had little contact with the team of Canadian drillers once they began work. They came from the French-speaking part of Canada, but I soon discovered that I could understand very little of what they said. I was puzzled until Jacques explained that the French they spoke derived from a much older form of the language, and had changed little since the time of the early French settlers. I wasn’t the only one having trouble – the Gabonese workers couldn’t understand them either. All four of them were short and muscular and they smoked a lot. Although they were courteous whenever I met them, they were used to a rough life in frontier environments, and seemed uncomfortable talking to a woman. They kept to themselves, so I had no opportunity to get to know them. They moved into the suite of upgraded rooms in the cas de passage and took their meals there alongside the surveyors.

The chance to get to know Carol, Jim, Michel and Marie-Claire better came at Easter. We invited them and Rodo to our flat for cheesecake and sangria on the Saturday night. It was the first gathering we’d had in the flat, and it made me realise how much I had missed a normal social life. Win spent the afternoon baking a lemon cheesecake, using dozens of the miniature tubs of Petits Suisses – a soft white cheese intended as infant food – that Libreville had been sending us. He sprinkled the top with grated lemon rind and spice, so that when it came out of the oven it looked like an illustration from a gourmet cookbook.

Rodo arrived carrying a small box, but wouldn’t tell us what it contained. Only when we had finished the sangria, demolished most of the cheesecake, told stories and laughed a lot, did he reveal what was inside – six hens’ eggs, one for each of us, finely painted all over in brilliant colours and intricate patterns. No two were the same.

I thought at first they were ceramic. ‘Where did you get these? Did your mother send them from Germany?’

‘No, no. I had Étienne hard-boil them for me, and I painted them myself this afternoon with felt pens. That’s what we do in Bavaria at Easter.’ He presented each of us with one and wished us happiness.

I had never seen their like. The delicate patterns could have been Persian miniatures. ‘Rodo, they’re exquisite!’ I said, and hugged him hard. All the trials of the past months had not toughened Rodo or lessened his sensitivity. With this gesture, he’d made us all feel like a family, even though we came from four different countries. Everyone was in such high spirits by the end of the evening that we decided to have a barbecue at the Djadié the next day, weather permitting.

 

Wind-swirled fog swept through the forest as we drove out in convoy after breakfast. Win had packed steaks and Carol had brought potatoes and onions to bake in the fire. On the way we stopped to watch bands of monkeys leaping from tree to tree, hornbills in flight, and a family of partridges feeding at the edge of the road.

The fog had cleared by the time we reached the river. Jim and Michel gathered wood and built the fire while Win coated the steaks with powdered garlic, and Marie-Claire, Carol and I wrapped the potatoes and onions in foil. With glasses of red wine in our hands, we sat in a long line on an old upturned pirogue to watch the fire burn down to coals. I felt myself relaxing into a warm and mellow state. The fragrance of the burning wood, the peace of the river and the camaraderie all conspired to consign the worries of the camp to somewhere beyond the borders of my mind.

We lingered over the juicy steaks and jacket potatoes, not talking much, just listening to the cries of birds echoing through the forest. After lunch, everyone swam in the river and lay on the sandbank to dry off. Only a change in the weather forced us to pack up and leave. Light rain soon developed into a downpour that lasted all the way home. When we arrived back, the camp was quiet: there had been no crises, and Eamon had done the radio link for me.

 

Now that the apartments were finished and occupied, Win and his men were able to concentrate their efforts on finishing Eamon’s house in time for the arrival of his wife from America in May. Doug had christened the house ‘Eamon’s Palace’ because of its size and luxurious design. Win had designed it as a showpiece, using the finest local timbers for the internal finishes. The floors were varnished wood, exposed beams supported the roof, and a huge stone fireplace dominated the living room. Like the guesthouse, it was built in natural stone – rough lumps of red ironstone that blended in with the red earth. It occupied an elevated site just below the forest line, and the front windows afforded views out over the camp towards the village. As each week passed, I watched it take shape, and with it saw Win’s creative satisfaction blossoming.

Just when it seemed that things were starting to settle down around the camp, a bombshell dropped: Jacques, our experienced and tireless mechanic who could fix anything anytime, had had enough. He submitted his resignation and would be gone in a month. We found it difficult to imagine how the camp could function without him, and braced ourselves for an increase in the chaos.

 

Ever since our weekend at CNRS and my encounter with Ikata, I thought constantly about my dream of becoming an anthropologist. Apart from the excitement I felt at the prospect, there were many practical things to sort out. It wasn’t just my future at stake: I had Win to consider. How would he feel about my embarking on a degree in my thirties? What would it mean for us financially if I had to give up work to do it? How would his life change if I spent four years burying myself in books and assignments?

I chose my moment to broach the subject. It was a Sunday when we had a morning to ourselves, with no distractions.

‘Sweetheart, what would you say if I said I wanted to go back to university?’ I began.

Win’s eyebrows shot up and he fixed a searching gaze on me. Then he swallowed hard and readjusted his weight in the chair. ‘I’d be delighted for you. I think you’re capable of doing anything you set your mind to – you’ve proven that time and time again. What do you have in mind?’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about Josie and Ikata, and rereading that article about Biruté Galdikas working with the orangutans in Kalimantan. I can’t get it out of my mind. And Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, too. They’ve all forged good careers working with great apes. It’s not something I would ever have contemplated before we came here, but I want to try. I’d like to do something for gorillas, and I really want to be with them. If I could make my living working with them, I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful. But I’d need a formal qualification first and I believe that, with my humanities background, that should be anthropology.’

Win’s mind immediately turned to the practicalities. ‘What would be involved if you did? Where would you start? How would you get into it?’

I had few answers. ‘I’m not sure. I’m not even certain that anthropology would be the best pathway, but Biruté has an undergraduate degree in anthropology, so that’s what I’d investigate first.’

‘So how do you find out?’

‘Well, I’d have to contact some universities once we finish here. Assuming we go back to Brisbane, the University of Queensland would be the obvious first port of call, but I don’t know what they offer or even whether I’d get in without a science background.’

‘And would you do it part-time or full-time?’

‘I’d probably have to do it part-time and work during the day, to pay for the fees. The only problem with that is I’d be forty before I finished. If I did it full-time, you’d have to support me. Either way, it wouldn’t be easy.’

We sat in silence for a few moments, looking out the louvre windows onto the forest. I could see Win was weighing up all the likely ramifications. We both loved the forest and the gorillas, and after our time at Belinga we were unlikely ever to settle into a conventional suburban life. And he knew that once I had set my heart seriously on something, I pursued it relentlessly. I always finished what I started and didn’t do things by halves.

He looked hard at me. ‘Well, if that’s what you want to do, I’ll support you every step of the way. You know that, don’t you? I want you to be happy, and I want to see you fulfil your potential, because you haven’t been able to do that so far. I’ve had my chances – now it’s your turn.’

‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ My eyes misted over and I hugged him hard. I could have hoped for no greater expression of devotion and commitment than that. Our love and partnership were stronger than ever, and together we would plan and work steadily towards a new future.