I've been thinking alot about Africa recently. I miss our family and friends there, and I miss my friend Paul who is sick again and not doing so well. I wrote this with Paul in mind awhile ago. I'm wishing Paul a speedy and complete recovery.
He called me yellow girl and served me manzi (water) and Mosi (beer). He cleaned the rafters above the bar wearing a piece of mutton cloth wrapped neatly around his head and served gin and tonics in a tuxedo I gave him. He was my friend and the first man ever to propose to me twice. Often during afternoon tea, he would amuse the guests by spontaneously joining in with the lodge choir, dancing around the bar with a tablecloth tied to his hips, emulating the old women from the nearby villages.
Paul Mwale was my first introduction to Africa and I found him on the day I arrived in the Luangwa Valley. He was crouched on top of a mahogany bar, his gangly legs up around his ears as he rocked a 10 ft stick- the tip wrapped in ever trusty mutton cloth- back and forth in a pendulum manner, cleaning the dust and cobwebs from the beams above the bar. He smiled at me as I passed and my initial impressions were that of a mad man. However, his smile was infectious and I laughed, releasing what seemed like a decade’s worth of tension and most definitely a years worth of depression. I knew in that instance that trading in my stiletto’s and business suit for khaki clothes and flip flops had been the right decision.
The last seven years of my life had passed in a blur and in a continuous effort to get ahead I ran the proverbial rat race and found myself as the director of public relations for a luxury hotel in Washington DC at a very young age. A job which proved to be ill fitting as I spent too many hours carousing with journalists in the local bars and became mired down in a bog of booze and depression. Professionally I was on the “grown up” tract, but personally I was stuck and could not quite make the transition from college partier to responsible adult. The future looked bleak. I knew I had to change something. Critics sniped I was off to “find myself”, I knew better than that….I was actually off to save myself.
Evolution happens slowly but consistently and so it was with me, each day the layers of sadness seemed to peel away like the skin of a bush snake. For the first time in a long time I was interested in everything, asking a million questions of the guides, the African staff and the mzungus (whites). They all answered my questions with enthusiasm and endless patience. I felt like a kid again, curious and wanting to know everything about this strange and magical place that had captivated me so completely. I spent hours on game drives looking for the Big Five, quietly watched African sunsets , and most importantly I listened. It seemed the more I listened to the sounds of Africa, the stiller my soul became.
But it was Paul Mwale that brought my smile back. My heart laughed when he did, his smile was so infectious that gradually my spirit returned and I began smiling with my eyes again. I knew I had come in to his good graces the day he asked me to marry him. Immigration and extending visas is always a worry for the foreign staff, and Zambia was no different. My time had come to make the trip to the Customs and Immigration Office. Armed with an irrational politeness, an everlasting patience and a tube of Colgate toothpaste as a bribe if all else failed; I set off. Paul Mwale could see I was anxious. He confidently leaned across the mahogany bar, “ah yellow girl, palibe mabvuto (no problem), I marry you, make you wife,” was his romantic gesture followed by a string of gravely laughter.
Not long after that proposal Paul began to get sick, really sick. He would arrive each morning for work with a chest rattling, bone shaking cough. I missed most of his decline as I was now working some distance away in the bush, returning to the lodge only after days, sometimes weeks. Each time I returned I would visit my friend at his home in the village. Paul was now too sick to work but would still greet me from his bed with his trademark grin. He took shallow breaths and had a cough that came from so deep it felt like it emanated in his toes. Though no-one ever mentioned it, there was an elephant in the room. We begged him to go and see a doctor, everyone suspected he had a “slow puncture” - African speak for dying of AIDS. He refused to go and get a test.
One day I got a call on the radio, the only form of communication between the main lodge and the isolated bushcamps. Paul Mwale had left for the hospital, now no-one had heard from him for over a week. Around this time I was due to have a break from the bush and was setting off to the neighboring country, Malawi, to meet the people who would become my future in-laws. While I was busy working, asking questions and shedding my sadness I also managed to fall in love. So here I was with the man I would marry two years later embarking on a journey to his home, but along the way, this man who loved me knew I wouldn’t rest until we found Paul. Just after noon we pulled up at a ramshackle building along a dirt track that took us into the hills near the Malawi-Zambia border. The inside smelled of piss, human excrement and lacked the odor of disinfectant one associates with a sterile hospital. My palms began to sweat. I developed tunnel vision, not wanting to see the sick, the diseased and the dying who surrounded me on all sides.
Eventually we found the man in charge, explaining our situation we asked after Paul Mwale. “Is he also from Mfuwe?” he asked nonchalantly. We nodded. “The Mfuwe man is dead.” I just stared and John barked, “What was the Mfuwe man’s name, can we see the records?” An eternity passed as the nurse shuffled through his index cards, finally pulling one out and passing it to us. It wasn’t Paul.
On our return from Malwai, we found Paul propped against the wall on a bare mattress in his hut. The squalor and stench was almost more than I could stand, but I smiled at my friend and ignored the squalor. He pulled himself up, smiled and called me “madam, my yellow girl” and then launched into John calling him Chimbwisi (hyena) the name the staff affectionately called their boss. Proudly he presented his doctor’s report, it seemed he didn’t have HIV after all; he had Tuberculosis. I looked at John in disbelief could you have TB in this day and age? My mind flashed to the future afraid the pin prick the nurse would make on my forearm would balloon up like a puff adder bite. Miraculously six months later it didn’t.
I looked over and saw the tuxedo I had given Paul hung carefully along the wall. Months earlier my dad had brought Paul a new tuxedo to replace the frayed bow tie and worn shirt he had likely dug out of a missionary barrel. His reaction was magic and he levitated six inches off the ground, dancing his wild hip shaking dance which signaled he was happy. Now here he was, no hip shaking dance, but proudly clutching a dirty piece of paper that declared there was no “slow puncture” he just had TB. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry I hugged Paul (I may have held my breathe a little), I came back as much as I could over the months Paul was home on bed rest armed with fruits and juices and watched his shallow breathing gradually grow stronger.
I started to grow up the minute I met Paul Mwalee he and Africa became my tutor, my mentor and guided me from the drifting no man’s land I seemed stuck in while scrambling through my twenties. Paul and Africa gave me a new appreciation for life and put me back in touch with the pleasures of childhood: unabashed curiosity and shameless love without question. Watching Paul live, almost die and live gradually eased me into adulthood where I learned the importance of love, trust and gratitude. It seems for me that growing up is a continual evolutionary process. If ever I get stuck again I’ll just think of my friend Paul with his head wrapped in mutton cloth doing his hip shaking dance grateful that his breathe is no longer shallow and I’ll be grateful I had the pleasure of knowing him and get myself unstuck.
