African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [144]
It is the evening of the same day, the sun gold and low, making shadows. We are standing by a strong new fence, paid for by some foreign Aid source.
Handsome black and white cows are crowding up to the fence to look at us.
The Coffee Farmer is holding forth. ‘Look at this fence. I know what it costs. You don’t get fence of this quality under X pounds a kilometre. To fence this bit of bush must have cost ZY pounds. It will last Z years. Yes, first-class fence, bloody marvellous. But if you had slung that wire from tree to tree, doing it properly so the trees are not hurt, then it would have cost XZ pounds and you could have fenced in three times the area.’
He stands on his two solidly-planted feet, hands on his hips in front of a group of Africans, who are listening gravely. I and the South African woman, both appreciating this traditional scene, white man lecturing blacks, catch each other’s eyes, carefully do not smile, turn our attention to the cows who both wish and do not wish to become acquainted. That is, they come, drawn by curiosity, to a point about five feet away, then stand ready to jump back and off at the slightest movement from us.
We hear, ‘That is the trouble with all this Aid money. They just waste it and waste it. But why didn’t you tell them…why didn’t you simply put your foot down and…’
All this is nonsense, because everyone knows that when international experts descend on an area they will decide exactly what they want done, and the locals will like it or lump it. We can just imagine saying to some well-conducted Swede or German, ‘Never mind about steel fence stanchions, just sling the wire from tree to tree and…’
‘It’s all heartbreaking,’ we hear. ‘The one thing that is essential, the key to everything, the priority is fencing land properly so the mombies can’t get on it and so it can rest and come back and there won’t be erosion…just look at this.’
He is leading his class to look at a fenced area that has no mombies on it. ‘Look. That soil has rested for two years and you can see how the bush is coming back. See that plant? When you see that plant it means there hasn’t been a beast on it for at least two seasons. You see my point? If you use trees instead of metal stanchions then you could enclose three times the area.’
Across the fence where the beasts are is a commotion. Another group of cattle approaches the first, pale dust rising about their hooves and dulling the shine of their hides. It is led by a bull. The first group is led by a bull. The invading bull comes forward, presumably to negotiate with the first about sharing this bit of grazing. The two bulls stand nose to nose snorting while the cows meet and mingle and begin to graze. A newly-born calf, as loose and sinuous and shining as an empty black silk glove stands with his nose to the fence, his back to the herd, staring at us with a look of wild affront.
‘And there’s another thing,’ says the Coffee Farmer. ‘Money wasted, wasted, wasted on status symbols. Now the fashionable thing is to have a house made of burned brick. But making bricks means you have to burn wood. You waste wood. Why not kimberly brick? It is perfectly good. Did you know there are countries in the world that never use burned bricks, they use bricks made of mud and water and they last for centuries. Why do you people insist on…’
The two bulls have come to some agreement and are now peaceably co-existing.
‘It makes me absolutely wild,’ says the Coffee Farmer. ‘I go around the villages and everywhere I see these kilns, what for, money wasted, all the wood wasted…’
When the Coffee Farmer is out of earshot we ask the officials and the villagers if they mind being lectured.
They do not look at each other. Then they smile and after a pause one of the villagers says, ‘No, we don’t mind. We know he wants to help us. He is a good man.’
It is impossible to know if they are being polite. We discuss the incident and decide they mean it, that is, the villagers do, but the officials may be a different