Thinking inside the box

Wednesday 8th September

For reasons which escape me, Sudan bans the use of cameras without an official permit. And even though South Sudan seeks independence from the North next year, the rule still applies. Indeed my team leader tells me that a policeman reprimanded a visitor recently for looking too long at the bridge over the Nile. 

It’s not that I set out to be different, but I’m not very good at copying the way other people do things. Long ago, I went for a job with a consultancy firm. A man in a suit chatted with me in a bar at Victoria, then invited me to an event called an Assessment Centre, where they gave us pastries and orange juice. They talked a lot about thinking outside the box, pushing the envelope, and blue sky thinking. Next day, the chap in the suit rang me to say that perhaps I thought just a little too far out of the box for his clients. Mrs M professed brief indignation at his folly, and went off to work.

This evening I am thinking inside the box.

Like many buildings in Juba, my hotel bedroom is a pre-fab hut.  It is made of grey coated metal panels, linked by galvanised struts. They seem to treasure protective plastic on things here, and it hangs like sunburnt skin from the roof.  Fortunately my room also comes with air-con and a lady called Saaeda who cleans it and washes my socks. And the hotel seems to have recruited from all over the region to cook rather tasty versions of TexMex, Jalfrezi, Irish stew, and Ugandan matoke plantains.

My pre-fab is in CAT Alley, as we call it, as this part of the hotel “camp” is largely populated by freelancers under contract to CATatonix, the celebrated consulting firm. CAT Alley is also home to many cats who remind me of Mandallay’s dear departed Trinny. We had thought her looks to be Egyptian, but these pussies' fine bone structure, ginger blotches on white fur, and ringed tails suggest that Trinny too may have been South Sudanese. Either way, Trinny must have been a lady of the Nile. For the great glory of my hotel is that it is on the west bank of the White Nile, a great conveyor of water, a quarter mile wide, by which we eat our big East African breakfasts and dinners. We also take pastries from the breakfast buffet in paper napkins for lunch.

In the morning, my associates and I leave our tin boxes, and enter a 4X4. We bounce over the dirt till we get to Juba’s small network of paved roads, and then fan out with our papers and pastries, to our various ministries and offices. These are also largely in pre-fabs of grey coated metal panels. We spend much of the day stabbing at our rectangular laptops, to the background of each others’ conversations through thin walls. My boss entertains me by talking about the plays he is writing, and his forthcoming book on Juba Arabic, that he says is a pidgin of classical Arabic. He skypes his brother in Khartoum, and the whole family joins in. Then he shares a bag of hot, fat cassava chips with me. My laptop goes on standby.

In order not to lose my wits entirely, I have to seize the sliver of day between the working box and the sleeping box. So at 5.30 I chivvy my zealous fellows to the 4X4 to jig back to our night-time cuboids, where we can watch the rectangular portable television, or type more rectangular emails, if there is a connection.

Running shoes on. My relaxed team leader says it may not be wise to leave the beaten track. The war has been over for five years, but land mines are still a possibility. He later explains that the landmines in question are deposited by people who lack access to Thomas Crapper's contraption, or even to a pit-latrine.

At last, a brief moment without rectangles. The cars, motorbikes, children and animals criss-cross between the pot holes and obstacles. Many of the tracks are just made by feet and vehicles. All around are hovels of laths, wattle, cardboard, plastic sheeting emblazoned with UNHCR, most homes barely more than shelters, and no taller than me. These seem to be returnees from abroad, or country people in search of work. People sit, wash, cook, eat in the open.

I hear voices, African languages of which I know nothing, then suddenly a few slightly more familiar sounds, perhaps Juba Arabic.

Old men and children cheer me on, and some join me for a few yards. We negotiate a herd of goats being driven towards the market pen, where men holding tethered animals are in earnest debate. A rich goaty aroma rises with the dust. Tall long-horned cattle look over the fencing. Beside a footpath is a rough plot patterned with mounds, perhaps for cassava plants. 

 “Morning!” shout the children at any time of day. Or “How are you?”, and once “Give me one pound.” They carry jerry cans to fetch water, from where I have not discovered. Ours comes from a borehole below the hotel. It is clean, but makes the tea taste of salt and earth. Suddenly I get a biff on the bum, and turn to see a young girl, waving her plastic water can triumphantly, shrieking with laughter with her brother.

The dusty remnant of sunset at my back guides me East over the potholes to the flashing green illuminated palms of the hotel entrance. I sit by the blackening surface of the Nile, and watch ghostly branches bobbing in the water.

If I’m honest, I’m rather disappointed that no one has apparently seen the moon tonight in time to declare Eid, so we could all have a day off. I could take my laptop through the heat down to the trees and easy chairs beside the river. But they haven’t.

Instead I lie on the bed, and two miracles happen. Mrs M hooks my phone up to Skype, despite her professed ignorance of any invention more modern than the Biro.The other miracle is that all three Ms find their tongues to grace me with a version of their lives appropriate to an old man.

Tomorrow is another box. I wonder what’s in the envelope.

Sorry for late posting. T 'internet isn't what it might be here.

Wok the Line

Slow down Joanna:

Lumley Beach reaches Cape Sierra at Aberdeen

The enthusiasm with which the ladies of the night greet me in Cape Sierra village ought to be embarrassing, but it makes me smile. I will pass over the telephone call that reached me in the Freetown City Council Chamber, where I was in earnest discussion with the members of the City Health Committee. I must impress on my young friend Mamood to be careful whose telephone he borrows to ring me.

I had arranged to meet Mamood at 6pm to run along the beach as usual, but he was nowhere to be found when I jogged into Cape Sierra village tonight. He does not have a watch. I waited outside the cafe, with the ladies and the little brown baby Frankie. We discuss the night’s work ahead, the bars and restaurants they will visit. "I don't envy your job", I offer, rather gallantly I hope. "We don't like it either," is the reply, "but life is very complicated." The proprietor keeps her eye on us. Somehow I imagine that she is my chaperone, her comfortably padded form guaranteeing my fidelity to Mrs M.

No sign of Mamood, so I jog off down the road to Aberdeen Circle, and onto Lumley Beach. It’s a good two miles from here along the gentle curve of the bay to the Atlantic Bar at Lumley. If the Atlantic's loudspeakers haven’t been fully wound up, you can relax in the big cushioned wicker chairs.

Otherwise, my preference is to use the plastic chairs on the beach where the staff get sand in their shoes to bring your Star Beer or Schweppes tonic water. I like to sit just above the high tide, somewhat smarter I fancy than Canute, watching the light fade into a thick humid sky, feeling the "fresh breeze", that everyone likes here. Between mouthfuls of tonic and free popcorn, I say “fresh breeze” over to myself. I try to copy the lovely soft Freetonian French “r”. It cools you just to say it.

photo by coolasas

It’s a run-walk-run session this evening. It takes me an age to get to the big “Africell” mobile phone advertisement billboard that marks the half way point to the Atlantic Bar. I think this must be the hottest and most humid time of the year. The rains are still just an occasional downpour, though we had strong winds last night, bringing down trees and advertising hoardings. We will have to wait till July before the gods open all the taps. Then everyone who has a house just has to sit inside till the rain stops, or till the house gets washed off the hill or into the sea.

There are empty coconut shells on the beach, but I have yet to locate someone who sells them, so settle for a coolish Fanta from one of the vendors outside the Atlantic. Nobody would mind if I pranced into the Atlantic in my “Stockport 10” running top, but, over the last 19 years, the 3Ms have instilled an iota of shame in me. The funny thing is that Mrs M has taken the opposite tack: once prone to raise a well-trained eyebrow at a misuse of the word “pardon”, she may yet dance naked in the garden beneath a full moon. It is better to travel hopefully, they say.

Wok Tok

Mamood intercepts me on the return journey to Aberdeen. He has been doing his laundry. He says he has not been to wok since I was last here. Between puffs of warm air I explore the significance of this wok. It seems that the Chinese frying pan in question refers to some form of paid employment on the beach, which he does when he is not in school.

I conclude that Mamood is keen to tell me that he has been going to school, and I share his pleasure in this. I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but for the price of two shrimp kebabs at the Barmoi Hotel, I was able to settle the unpaid portion of his school fee on my last visit. As I hope to be coming here for up to three years -  what joy for a freelancer is such a prospect! - I thought I’d at least be able to keep in touch with him, so we can see how it goes. I feel a bit sheepish about this, but my colleague Lance tells me he has four boys in Malawi, where he worked for many years. They are now all adults. He talks of them as fondly as of his grandchildren, and of his other favourite subjects, which include the opera and Premier League football, the latter more useful for small talk here than the first.

Mamood is studying twelve subjects, he tells me in the walking bits, but maths is difficult. Outside the oddly named bar, Family Kingdom, a motorcycle has left a convenient tyre track in the sand. I draw markers across it with my finger: a circle for Aberdeen Circle, a bottle for Atlantic, and the Africell Billboard in the middle. We put numbers underneath, and a zero under Africell. The ladies come past in a taxi, on their way to Roy’s, and stop to say hello.

Mamood and I play hopscotch along our number line. +2 -1. What’s that? +1-2. What’s that?

"I have never seen that thing," he marvels. "They have never taught me this." It is possible that he has realised that I am mad. I say that the number line is the greatest thing in mathematics, and the zero in the middle was invented by an Indian. I don’t know these things to be true, but they are good enough for now.

Mamood says he will come to bring me his maths homework. Not now I hope. It is past my bedtime. We leave early tomorrow for Port Loko.

A freelance is the happiest of men.

8 minutes to Aberdeen or Eternity

Freetown, Sierra Leone

Things aren’t what they were. They’ve put seats in the helicopter that ferries us from Lungi Airport over the Sierra Leone River to Aberdeen. And Aberdeen links Cape Sierra to the capital Freetown.

The way things were (thanks to roystonford)

In the old days, we squeezed around a mountain of luggage in the middle of the fuselage, and sat on a bank of ragged foam cushions against the sides. If we were lucky, the washing line strung across the tail carried a few grubby pairs of ear defenders. And sometimes we even received a security briefing from a young man in a singlet. “Don’t worry”, he'd say, “about the vibration as we come into land: these guys [the Russian pilots] are experts.”

It’s the same Soviet-era helicopter, and feels as though it has been recycled with a job-lot of old hardware from a former satellite republic. Neither the battered gunmetal door nor the safety record inspires confidence, but then neither does the hovercraft (it tends to sink), the ferry (bow doors stuck open) nor the road (5 hours in dry weather).

At least the helicopter flight is brief: eight minutes to Aberdeen or Eternity. And now we can go to the Maker in a proper seat facing a flat-screen video presentation of Sierra Leone’s gorgeous beaches.

There are even real windows to look out of, though it’s mostly blackness beyond Lungi airport perimeter, for Lungi village only has kerosene and candles. But as we draw closer to Freetown, the marvel of electricity illuminates a little more of Aberdeen than it did the last time a freelance contract wafted me this way.

Yes, anyone would think that things are looking up here in Sierra Leone, despite all that global misery that our would-be leaders can’t quite handle back in Blighty.

Aberdeen, Grafton, Murray Town, Regent Road. Mrs M will feel quite at home, if ever I earn enough airmiles to get her here. From Kissy in the East to Lumley in the West (I think), Freetown is a sort of crazy Monopoly board invented by a mad hatter. Its roads and settlements are scrawled over hillsides, ravines, swamps, riverbeds and bays, and as often than not the name of each has more than a hint of the old Mother Country.

I hear that IMATT, the International Military Assistance and Training Team, has continued the tradition of applying British names to this corner of Africa. The hub of their staff accommodation is called Leicester Square (£560 rent with a hotel if you land on it). Perhaps if you can’t pay, they send you to Coventry Street (£28 rent with no house).

Well, it’s fine by me, because everyone says that the British Army and IMATT have done a great job in helping bring about and hold onto a delicate peace here for nearly a decade. If things are looking up, or at least not looking as dreadful as they might, it must be, in most part, thanks to the maintenance of that peace.

It’s hard for a soft old freelancer not to get a bit emotional, and feel a tiny bit proud of our boys and girls.

Still we like not to overplay the fact that we are the old colonial power. So we leave the coat of arms at home, and work far too hard at everything till our short sleeved shirts and M&S chinos are drenched in sweat. This is a source of great amusement to our African counterparts who wear good quality suits or tailored Africana and shiny brogues in well air-conditioned offices.

There’s plenty to talk about after so long out of town. Who is in, who’s out, who’s been sacked for corruption, or got a job at the Bank? What’s happened to Macaulay? What of Gloucester? It’s enough to bring on a small rash of Shakespeare. The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?

As I write, the date of my return to Marple Bridge and Mrs M at Mandall Mansions is a little uncertain, thanks to an Icelandic volcano.